Interliterary Allusion as Figure: a Core Bibliography

This is a "starter" set on interliterary allusion, defined as a figure akin to metaphor generated between two texts by the design of the alluding text. A good idea is to start with Ben-Porat, then work through the remaining set chronologically. There is much else out there on allusion, but I would say that this core bibliography serves as excellent preparation even to works that precede Ben-Porat.

Ben-Porat, Ziva. "The Poetics of Literary Allusion." PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (1976):105-128.

Conte, Gian Biagio, and Charles Segal. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets Cornell Studies in Classical Philology; V. 44. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 [original 1974].

Garner, Richard. From Homer to Tragedy: The Art of Allusion in Greek Poetry. London; New York: Routledge, 1990.

Johnson, Anthony L. "Allusion in Poetry." PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (1976):579-587.

Kronfeld, Chana. "Allusion: An Israeli Perspective." Prooftexts 5 (1985):137-163.

Perri, Carmela. "On Alluding." Poetics 7 (1978):289-307.

Sommer, Benjamin D. A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998.

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[Interliterary Allusion as Figure: a Core Bibliography was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/11/19. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Literary Allusion in the Bible (Book of Daniel): SBL/AAR 2012

One of my two proposals to SBL/AAR 2012 has been accepted, with the other still unreported. "SBL/AAR" is the annual meeting of two societies, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.

I will be presenting in the Book of Daniel consultation on "Allusion to Isaiah in Daniel 7-12, in Light of 35 Years of Allusion Criticism." The pitch is to look at the methodological disarray that characterizes the study of literary allusion in the Bible, and demonstrate how a commitment to greater clarity yields better readings and opportunity for more productive exchanges between scholars.

I see that Chris Jones has reawakened the Twitter hashtag #SBLAAR for reporting acceptances. What will you be doing in Chicago this November at SBL/AAR? And is anyone else still waiting for word on any of your proposals?

Poetics of Scribal Culture in Inner-Biblical Oralities of Allusive Redaction-Echoes, and Stuff

My main research focus, when I can get to it, concerns literary allusion in the Bible (also called "inner-biblical interpretation," or "inner-biblical exegesis").

Insofar as I have a Big Idea, it mostly involves running around like Chicken Little and yelling that the field of biblical studies isn't producing a coherent conversation about "inner-biblical allusion" because we quarantine ourselves (as we so often do) from the secular ancillary scholarship (in this case, on the poetics of literary allusion).

What disturbs and intrigues me recently is, I think that there is another scholarly context to which I'll need to tether my continuing work in biblical allusion. You know it well, and most recently, it looks something like this.

Upside: maybe I get to blow the dust off my Akkadian again. Downside: Hier werden deutsche.

[Poetics of Scribal Culture in Inner-Biblical Oralities of Allusive Redaction-Echoes, and Stuff was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/01/16. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

"Good Morning, Eager Young Minds."

This is the first day of the new term. My classes this time around are:

• “Introduction to the Old Testament”: yes, we are reading backwards again. We’ll also continue with viewing lectures as pre-recorded downloads outside of class. New this term is the Wikipedia assignment, in which students will make a series of course-related edits to relevant Wikipedia articles. Also new is a plan to prepare for in-class discussion with threaded, asynchronous, online discussion between sessions.


• “Elementary Hebrew 1”: as in recent years, we’ll be starting with about ten hours of oral/aural exercises, using no texts of any kind. I’ve got a small surprise planned for today, if I can manage to walk to a store between classes.


• “The Old Testament in the New Testament”: a new seminar, beginning in tee minus 150 minutes. The meat and potatoes of the course will be student presentations, with each student presenting a “method” article on some aspect of literary allusion as well as a “content” article on NT allusions to the OT. Something new: all presentations will be offered from a standing position and must have some A/V (multimedia) component. The idea is to raise the energy level up from “somnambulant rap session” to…I don’t know, something where blood continues to flow to brains.

And, yes, each of these meets today! The seminar meets once each week, the Intro course twice, and Hebrew thrice, so Tuesday is the big day of the week this term.

How about you (both profs and students): what’s on the menu for Fall 2010? What’s new, and what’s old?

["Good Morning, Eager Young Minds." was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/09/07. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Little Help: The Old Testament in the New Testament

Do you have any favorite resources concerning allusion to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament? It could be books, essays, or articles.

I’m thinking of things like Richard Hays’ Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (Yale, 1989) or J. Ross Wagner’s Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul ‘in Concert’ in the Letter to the Romans (Brill, 2002), or Thomas R. Hatina’s In Search of a Context: The Function of Scripture in Mark’s Narrative (Sheffield, 2002).

Do you have any favorites about the OT in the NT? And if so, what makes them good?

Random Bullets of Research

It’s piled noticeably higher and deeper around here. Currently in the hopper are:

• Deciding on bibliography for a course on “The Old Testament in the New Testament (Allusion and Influence)”;


• Learning our institutional options and guidelines regarding creating course-packs, for above;


• Bringing my dissertation’s bibliography (late 2007) up to date, for revision;


• Inquiry into what “community” is, how we recognize it in a group of learners, and where it is found in the first sixteen years or so of internet-based online education (presentation for SBL 2010).


• Bread in the Bible and the ANE, baby.

Fortunately, I took the precaution of earning a research degree. Otherwise, I’d be worried.

[Random Bullets of Research was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/06. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

New Course: The OT in the NT

In Fall 2010, I will be teaching a new course: “The Old Testament in the New Testament.” Students will learn about literary allusion, and examine select examples of allusion to the Hebrew Bible in the Christian New Testament.

As part of assessing the case for specific examples of allusion, students will develop claims about

• what the OT source text means in its literary and social/historical context, and


• how this allusion in the NT alluding text functions as a rhetorical trope in its own literary and social/historical context.

I will be allowing students to take the course either for OT credit or for NT credit, shaping their final exegesis papers accordingly.

Besides the usual run of Masters students (mostly M.Div or MTS), the course will also be open to doctoral students, who will have to meet an appropriately higher bar in the course work.

My dissertation—“Daniel Evokes Isaiah: The Rule of the Nations in Apocalyptic Allusion-Narrative”—involved allusion to Isaiah in the book of Daniel, and I have looked forward to the opportunity to teach allusion to my students in Bible.

If you have any interest in literary allusion generally, or in “the OT in the NT,” what would your wish list be for select topics? (I have a handful of my own ideas, of course.) What related issues would you want to see treated?

[New Course: The OT in the NT was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/12. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Word Cloud: “Daniel Evokes Isaiah”

It’s over a year and a half since I defended my dissertation. Is it weird, then, that it was still the first thing that popped into my head when I learned about Wordle.net?

(A heads-up on Wordle.net: I find its implementation of Java to be tediously picky: some browsers work, some do not; I used to be able to print from the Applet, not I cannot; bah.)

[Later: also, I am not crazy about their copyright policy: if you upload a cloud to their gallery, then 1) the image belongs to them, not you; 2) you cannot remove it, since they do not verify accounts; 3) they and anyone else are free to use the cloud image, including commercial use. So, you may prefer to print your image to PDF and save it to your own computer instead of saving it to their gallery.]

The dissertation was titled, “Daniel Evokes Isaiah: The Rule of the Nations in Apocalyptic Allusion-Narrative.” My thesis was that allusions to Isaiah in Daniel contribute decisively and uniquely to the latter’s narrative depiction of the rule of the foreign nations over the people Israel. So, without further ado:



Have you used Wordle.net? What do you want to make a word cloud of?