Subverting Scriptures Critical Reflections on the Use of the Bible [Hardcover]

This collection seeks to fill the interdisciplinary space that addresses when, why, and how writers strategically reference the Bible for subversive or re-evaluative purposes. It explores the specific biblical pieces used this subversion, and why they are used, with reference to many contemporary sources.Introduction PART I: SETTING THE STAGE: WHAT IS SUBVERSIVE SCRIPTURE? Walking the (Damascus Road) Line: The Irony of Appropriation in Johnny Cash's Man in White; J.Twomey Refuse, Realism, and Retelling: Literal and Literary Takes on Noah's Ark; L.Cushing Literary Hijackings: Between the Book of Isaiah and The Handmaid's Tale; Q.Tan PART II: BETWEEN SPEECH AND SILENCE Face to Face: Biblical Traces in the Philosophy of Elie Wiesel; J.Roth Mother Tongue, Holy Tongue: On Translating and Not Translating Paul Celan; J.Felstiner PART III: REVOLUTION, REBELLION, LIBERATION Flight, Rapture, and Transcendence: Imagination and the Politics of Nostalgia in the African American Diaspora; L.James Exodus and Redemption in Toni Morrison's Paradise: a Magical Encounter with the Bible; A.Hartnell In the Beginning- Big Bang: The Issue of Violence in Ernesto Cardenal's Cosmic Canticle; E.Jimmerson PART IV: VIOLENCE, POWER, PROPHECY Babel Revisited: Kafka and Pinter Critique the Covenant; B.Hawkins Benedix Masters, Slaves, and the Implacable Deity of the Wilderness in Simone Zelitch's Moses in Sinai; R.Omer-Sherman The Modern Day Followers of the Lamb: The Rhetoric of Suffering and the Politics of Identity in The Left Behind Series; D.Hall Subversion as Return: Scripture, Dissent, and Renewal in Contemporary Judaism; S.Magid

This provides a new and convincing account of the strategic reception of the Bible in a wide range of writers and thinkers.That such a use can be truly subversive; that it can undermine the very meaning attached to biblical narratives by organized religion, is one of the surprising and exciting discoveries of this readable and intelligent book. - Sander L.lƒ*