| International conference leads to book on orality and writing in Scripture |
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A new book that emerged from an international conference on the San Francisco Theological Seminary campus has recently been published in the highly regarded series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament.
The Interface of Orality and Writing: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres (Mohr Siebeck, 2010) was edited by SFTS Associate Professor of New Testament Dr. Annette Weissenrieder and Senior Research Professor of Old Testament Dr. Robert Coote, who were conference organizers.
With the assistance of an anonymous gift, SFTS sponsored an international conference on the interface of orality and writing in Scripture to honor former professor Dr. Anne Wire. The papers from the conference, which was held in San Anslemo in the spring of 2009, make up the new book in addition to several related essays.
The book’s 21 authors represent a who’s who of world experts on orality and the Bible. Authors include Wire, Weissenrieder, Coote and renowned scholars in classics and Jewish studies.
The book, which focuses largely but not entirely on the Gospel of Mark, furthers the comparative perspective that has been important in the study of the oral matrix of written scripture. It breaks new ground in adding a visual dimension—particularly the role of public images—to that study.
Survey of contents
I. Introduction The Interface of the Orality and Writing Hearing, Seeing, Writing in New Genres
Susan Niditch: Hebrew Bible and Oral Literature: Misconceptions and New Directions; Teun Tieleman: Orality and Writing in Ancient Philosophy: Their Interrelationship and the Shaping of Literary Forms; Catherine Hezser: From Oral Conversations to Written Texts: Randomness in the Transmission of Rabbinic Traditions; Antoinette Clark Wire: Mark: News as Tradition; Werner Kelber: The History of the Closure of Biblical Texts
II. The Interface of the Orality and Writing Hearing in New Genres
John Foley: Plenitude and Diversity: Interactions between Orality and Writing; Kristina Dronsch: Transmissions from Scripturality to Orality: Hearing the Voice of Jesus in Mark 4:1–34; Ruben Zimmermann: Memory and Form Criticism: The Typicality of Memory as a Bridge between Orality and Literality in the Early Christian Remembering Process; Richard Horsley: The Gospel of Mark in the Interface of Orality and Writing; David Rhoads: Performance Events in Early Christianity: New Testament Writings in an Oral Context; David Trobisch: Performance Criticism as an Exegetical Method: A Story, Three Insights, and Two Jokes
III. The Interface of the Orality and Writing Seeing in New Genres
Kristina Dronsch/Annette Weissenrieder: A Theory of the Message for New Testament Writings or Communicating the Words of Jesus: From Angelos to Euangelion; David Balch: Women Prophets/Maenads Visually Represented in Two Roman Colonies: Pompeii and Corinth; Annette Weissenrieder: The Didactics of Images: The Fig-Tree in Mark 11:12−14 and 20−21
IV. The Interface of the Orality and Writing in New Genres
Annette Schellenberg: A “lying pen of the scribes” (Jer 8:8)? Orality and Writing in the Formation of Prophetic Books; Roger Nam: Writing Songs, Singing Songs: The Oral and the Written in the Commission of the Levitical Singers (1 Chr 25:1−6); Andreas Schuele: “Call on me in the day of trouble […]” From Oral Lament to Lament Psalms; Pieter J.J. Botha: “Publishing” a Gospel: Notes on Historical Constraints to Gospel Criticism; Daniel Boyarin: The Sovereignty of the Son of Man: Reading Mark; Robert Coote: Scripture and the Writer of Mark; Holly Hearon: Mapping Written and Spoken Word in the Gospel of Mark; Trevor Thompson: Writing in Character: Claudius Lysias to Felix as a Double-Pseudepigraphon (Acts 23:26–30)
