Conference "My heart is astir with a good word" (Ps 45:2) - Towards an Aesthetic Reading of the Poetry of the Hebrew Bible", Spring 2024 in Berlin
Abstract
In his Old Testament Theology from 1957 (English edition 1962) Gerhard von Rad insightfully remarks that “no aesthetic of the Old Testament has yet been written.” Fifty years later, Helmut Utzschneider reiterated the observation of a severe lack of aesthetic theory and an aesthetic understanding of the Hebrew Bible. He demanded an aesthetic of the Hebrew Bible and delineated the fundamentals of such an endeavour. The conference titled “My heart is astir with a good word” (Ps 45:2) – Towards an Aesthetic Reading of the Poetry of the Hebrew Bible takes this desideratum as a starting point to explore an unsatisfied potential of Hebrew Bible scholarship. In this way, it intends to develop a new approach based on textual studies, conceptualising them as an aesthetic of the Hebrew Bible that “was never written” (see Elaine T. James and Sean R. Burt).
On the one hand, the proposed conference idea originated within the applicant’s research team and is to be located in the context of the applicant’s research on biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Literature with a particular focus on the relationship between biblical and Egyptian wisdom texts.
On the other hand, the conference is also situated against the backdrop of the ERC Advanced Grant “DEMBIB” (“From Texts to Literature”) and a dissertation project of a doctoral student of the applicant (Yannik Ehmer: “Discursive Wisdom?! New Perspectives on the Poetics and Composition of Prov 10:1–22:16.”)Thus, the concept of the planned conference was developed by the applicant and Yannik Ehmer.
Since an inquiry into the aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible is a vast project that cannot be addressed in its entirety within a three-day conference, we will narrow our engagement with the biblical texts down to the poetic material of the Hebrew Bible and its cognate traditions (Book of Proverbs, Book of Psalms, Song of Songs, Qumran, Ancient Egypt). There certainly is no explicit theory of art and beauty in general, and, in particular, of poetry in the context of the Hebrew Bible. In spite of this, this conference will look closely at the implicit second order thought about aesthetics expressed through the poetic forms and language we come across in the Hebrew Bible. Jan Dietrich has introduced this concept of second order thinking in biblical scholarship with regards to epistemological questions.7 Second order thinking “involves not only living a good life but also reflecting on how this good life can be achieved; it takes its own conditions, methods, and values into account.”8 Sapiential knowledge, hence, is not only based on experience (or traditions that are simply re-iterated), but it is also selfcritical and self-referential, discursive, and performative.
Principal investigators
Financer
Fritz Thyssen Foundation
Duration of project
Start date: 01/2024
End date: 12/2024
