The Narrative Multiverse Within the Universe Of The Bible: The Question Of “Borderlines” And “Intertextuality” -- By: Gary Edward Schnittjer

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 64:2 (Fall 2002)
Article: The Narrative Multiverse Within the Universe Of The Bible: The Question Of “Borderlines” And “Intertextuality”
Author: Gary Edward Schnittjer


The Narrative Multiverse Within the Universe Of The Bible:
The Question Of “Borderlines” And “Intertextuality”

Gary Edward Schnittjer*

[Gary E. Schnittjer is Assistant Professor in Biblical Education at Philadelphia Biblical University, Langhorne, Pennsylvania.]

I. Introduction

A beginning does not mean that it is the first thing in the sense that nothing comes before it. It is the beginning in reference to whatever comes after it. It is the beginning of something. In narrative literature, and here I am interested in biblical narrative, a beginning is one of the edges, borderlines, boundaries, horizons, or the like, of the narrative context itself. Do the borderlines of the scroll, including the beginning, define the context for interpretation in the case of the meaning of narrative? This question can be considered in relation to many things, but for my present purposes I wish only to think about the relationship of story and echo.1 Biblical narratives contain echoes which seem to invite, simultaneously, reading within the boundaries of the scroll or book itself and crossing the scroll’s edge to read the narrative in relation to other biblical writings which can be “heard” in it.

The problem which prompted this study was born by uniting basic observations concerning what is often called, within biblical hermeneutical studies, “intertextuality” and the set of interpretive questions related to “context.” That is, how do literary echoes affect context? Defining context in order to render interpretation is necessary, and yet, seems to be defied, in certain senses, by intertextuality. Again, a beginning, at least one within the human realm, never starts in a vacuum. There is always something else, something before it. A beginning, in the case of a narrative, is so, according to the conventions associated with Aristotle’s thinking on tragedy, as well as epic and comedy, because of its relationship to what comes after the beginning, namely, the whole or the middle and end.2 I am going to use, as others have, Aristotle’s idea of beginning and end,

with a middle inherently related to the beginning and end, as indicative of narrative in general. The borders of the narrative itself are delineated by the interrelated beginning, middle, and end.

Although it may be tempting to claim that the edges of the scroll containing the narrative define the outer limits of the story’s context, the echoes within this context reach outside of it. Texts contain echoes which reach beyond the context of the book itself.

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