Joining the Club:
A Suggestion about Genre in Early Jewish
Texts
This journal seemed an
odd choice, but religion fascinates me so I thought I’d give it a read. What’s
interesting is that the author makes references to what we read about Genre
Theory in class. That they were dynamic, changing, and rely on a social
communication with the language. The author, Benjamin G. Wright 3rd,
wrote the paper with the goal of defining Wisdom and Apocryphal genres through
the prototype theory. The prototype theory is a more abstract way of defining
genres and is a big move from how wisdom genres were typically formed in the
past by biblical scholars. An example is probably the best way to look at what prototype
theory. Imagine yourself seeing a new animal for the first time. Most humans
wouldn’t make a mental list of the parts that this creature has. They would
make the connection based off of other animals that they have seen. If the said
animal was say a bird, we’d classify it as a bird because it looks like animals
we’ve already classify as birds. Most wouldn’t make a mental checklist of the
parts that the animal has or doesn’t have. The prototype theory works in a
similar fashion. It doesn’t describe a set of characteristics that make a genre
a genre, but has examples that define the genre and radiates from that. By
making the connections between texts you get an expanding genre that goes from
the “best” examples to the “fringe” examples that begin to encroach on the
territory of other genres. Biblical scholars in the past tended to create
genres based on classification, definition, and on a list of features. But,
according to Wright, this is limiting because it creates exclusionary
categories that make it so either a piece fits in a genre or it doesn’t. It’s
also limiting because it fails, in the authors opinion, to make connections
between different texts which is the overall goal of his paper, to make
connections of wisdom and apocalypse genres to the spectrum of Early Jewish
Literature.
1. I feel that i understand the idea of this article pretty well. The idea is that genre is ever changing and is open to interpretation by anyone who chooses to do so.
ReplyDelete2. Article is well summarized. You assessed the information and also gave your own reflection. There could be a little more in depth summarizing to bring in the connection to the Jewish Literature aspect.
3. "They say, I say" Use more "educated" forms of transitions and what not.
4. No MLA citation. But thats easy to fix.