Sustaining Fictions: Intertextuality, Midrash, Translation, and the Literary Afterlife of the Bible (review)

Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 397 Reviews Hebrew an overlap in function occurred for some but not all infinitive construct and absolute forms. Altogether, these studies make important contributions to the Hebrew, employing a range of linguistic and philological methods over several periods of the language’s ancient history. For these and the rest of this outstanding volume, we must remain grateful. Naomi S. Jacobs Washington University St. Louis, MO 63130 naomi.jacobs@gmail.com SUSTAINING FICTIONS: INTERTEXTUALITY, MIDRASH, TRANSLATION, AND THE LITERARY AFTERLIFE OF THE BIBLE. By Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg. LHBOTS 486. Pp. xii + 240. New York: T & T Clark, 2008. Cloth, $140.00. In Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg’s recent book Sustaining Fictions, which appears to be a reworking of her 2003 dissertation of a similar name, she sets out to fill a lacuna in biblical scholarship by providing a working vocabulary for talking about “retellings” of the Bible—that is, texts (or other mediums such as music, film, etc.) which retell material from the biblical canon. Thus the biblical studies she envisions is that which is concerned with the “reception history” of the Bible or its “literary afterlife.” While acknowledging that this concern currently stands at the periphery of biblical studies, she argues that it must become a more central dimension in the future. In her first chapter, she sets forth what she views as the three central dimensions of retellings: approach, stance, and filter. Approach describes “the means by which the retelling gains entry to the telling” (p. 6). Stance describes the relationship of the retelling to the telling—what did the author of the retelling think about the text? Filter refers to the lens through which the retelling views the telling (e.g., Christianity, Feminism, Marxism, etc.). In her second chapter, Stahlberg surveys previous studies that have examined the “literary afterlife” of the Bible and finds that they lack a clear vocabulary to define the phenomenon. Therefore in her third chapter, she examines in detail the work of literary critics/theorists and the terms used to describe retelling. This chapter is more or less a survey of previous scholarship (as is much of the monograph) and includes numerous quotations from the works she surveys. She considers “imitation,” “intervention,” “influence,” and “intertextuality,” the latter of which is the most broadly used term. Stahlberg concludes that despite the popularity of the term Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 398 Reviews “intertexuality” to describe the central dimensions of retellings (approach, stance, and filter) in the end even this theoretical framework fails to adequately describe what takes place in a retelling. Chapter 4 looks at theories concerned with texts that “make deliberate appeal” (p. 58) to other texts. Again she surveys previous scholarship in an effort to either cull useful words from these studies or to critique their inarticulateness in this regard. She considers many terms (“quotation,” “plagiarism ,” “allusion,” etc.), weighing both their benefits and limitations. In the end, Stahlberg concludes that these literary critical studies can be useful in describing “approach” but offer little insight into the question of “stance.” That is, these terms are helpful for describing what one text does to the other, but not of what happens to the first text (i.e., the stance of the retelling to the telling). Stahlberg then leaves the arena of literary critics/theorists and enters the world of midrash. Her excellent discussion is extensive and considers how midrash has been defined, used, and transformed by literary critics and biblical scholars alike. She considers several definitions for midrash (noting that some definitions of midrash even include non-Jewish writers as midsrashists ), and focuses on how postmodern literary critics (Derrida, Hartman, etc.) have been drawn to midrash due to its tolerance of “multiple meanings” and “its focus on the interaction between reader and text” (p. 92). Thus her extensive study of midrash aims to test both her proffered definitions and the legitimacy of postmodern use of midrash in literary circles. Her investigation of midrash includes study of both halakah and haggadah , although she focuses most on the latter. She divides haggadah into two categories: “creative historiography,” which has an exegetical purpose, and “creative philology,” which attempts to draw out hidden meanings from the text. Stahlberg...