Goethe und die Bibel (review)

The editors preface this volume of fifteen essays by Swiss, German, and North American scholars with the claim that, while the topic could seem old-fashioned, rightfully understood it contains “erhebliche Sprengkraft” (9). Given the tremendous shifts and metamorphoses that the Bible went through in its status as text in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, an explosive volcanic or tectonic metaphor seems not out of place. If the Bible serves as a “Substrat” (15) of Goethe’s work—or, one might add, of European literature in general—what happens to the whole cultural edifice when hermeneutic assumptions abruptly change, when divine scripture emerges as an historically contingent, composite text?

The conventional answer is that biblical meaning becomes secularized and absorbed into the Enlightenment project. But Anderegg and Kuhn argue—very much in line with recent historiography of religion—that the term “secularization” does not do justice to the complex status that the Bible not only retains but also attains in Goethe’s work (14–15). At the same time, the editors assert, the book is not concerned with Goethe’s “Religiosität” (12). To be clear: the agenda here is not religious apology.

So how do these contributors articulate Goethe’s relationship to the Bible in such a way that it falls neither into a one-way narrative of secularization nor into a speculative affirmation of belief? As a matter of fact, not all contributors do eschew these more conventional approaches. Thomas Tillmann advances a paradigmatic secularization thesis concerning Goethe’s representation of speaking in tongues in his essay “Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen.” He comes to the conclusion, “[Das Lallen löst] sich aus seiner Bindung an die Sphäre des Religiösen und wird als ästhetisch-individueller Selbstzweck der Säkularisation verfügbar” (33). Meanwhile Hans-Jürgen Schrader identifies in both Werther and the conclusion of Faust a theological message colored by radical Pietism: “die . . . Verkündigung der Allliebe Gottes, der endlichen Wiederbringung auch des Getrübten. . . .” (88).

But while not all the contributors share the editors’ interpretive framework, lively paradoxes and tensions in Goethe’s relationship with the Bible emerge here in great variety. A few examples will have to suffice. Anne Bohnenkamp, in her analysis of Goethe’s lifelong preoccupation with the Song of Songs, shows how he wrests the poetry from the allegorizing, redemptive-historical framework of Christian hermeneutics and brings it closer to the less dualistic outlook of ancient Judaism (and twentieth-century Jewish philosophy). Goethe thereby lends religious accents to the material, sensual, and erotic realm, a process Bohnenkamp calls, in contradistinction to “Säkularisierung,” “Sakralisierung” (94). Clark Muenzer’s essay on Job might suggest another name for it—“Spinozierung.” Goethe reads out of Job a paradoxical divinity, unbounded by human moral categories, manifesting itself as a dynamic, ever-creating and destroying nature. According to Muenzer, Goethe thus finds support in the Book of Job for a Spinozistic epistemology of nature and scientific ethos. Magrit Wyder also explores the link between the Bible and natural science in Goethe’s thinking. Despite his early rejection of the biblical account of the earth’s formation, Goethe returns throughout his career to the language and typologies of the Bible as he attempts to represent the earth’s earliest history or describe his own fascination with geological marvels. Distinctive patterns of intertextuality come to light in Johannes Anderegg’s analysis of Mephisto and the Bible. References to biblical episodes in the drama tend to serve as “erscheckende Kontrafaktur—derart, dass sie als eine Art Korrektur der Geschichte, auf die Bezug genommen wird, gelesen werden kann und das Vorbild als Schönfärberei entlarvt” (319–20). But if the drama repeatedly challenges the credibility of underlying biblical narratives, underlying biblical narratives also call into question the justice of Faust’s actions and any sense of achievement or progress. Jane Brown puts the impact of the Bible within the Wilhelm Meister novels even more strongly: like an all-powerful Mother Nature, it acts as the omnipresent and dangerous...