Abstract
This article discussed the use of the Bible in mystical texts by focusing on intertextuality as a literary approach which analyses the intersection of texts. It investigated how mystical texts, as phenotexts, relate to the Bible as archetext: firstly, the intertextual relations affect the surface of the text in a mono-causal way and secondly, they govern the production of meaning reciprocally. The article also discussed forms of intersection (quotations, collage, allusions and reproduction) before it analysed the three intertextual strategies producing meaning: participation, detachment and change or rearrangement. Finally, six functions and dimensions of meaning were delineated in the intertextual dynamic between the Bible and the mystical texts. In these the Bible serves as an authoritative framework for argumentation, as a guide and blueprint of the mystical way, as a vocabulary of mystical experience, as an initiation into the divine infinity, as the place of mystical transformation in love and as the articulation of transformation in glory.
Highlights
Reflection about the Bible in mystical texts is about entering the area of intertextuality
Intertextuality is understood as a literary approach focusing on the relations between texts
Intertextuality focuses on relations between the text from which the quotation, allusion, or echo is drawn and the new setting, in which the pre-text is received
Summary
Correspondence to: Kees Waaijman email: kees.waaijman@ titusbrandsmainstituut.nl. Postal address: Titus Brandsma Institute, Radboud University, Erasmusplein 1, 6525 HT Nijmegen, The Netherlands. How to cite this article: Waaijman, K., 2010, ‘Intertextuality: On the use of the Bible in mystical texts’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 66(1), Art. Note: This article was originally presented as a paper at a Conference organised by the Spirituality Association of South Africa (Spirasa) in Pretoria, April 2009. Kees Waaijman is a research fellow of Prof. Pieter G.R. de Villiers in the Department of Old and New Testament at the University of the Free State, South Arfrica
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