Introduction: Recreating the Canon

Abstract

In the articles gathered here, scholars of Hebrew revisit modern literary works and cultural documents through the prism of their continuing discourse with the Hebraic master narrative, the Bible. These scholars identify twin patterns in modern Hebrew texts: one is of embedding biblical prototypes, dramatic or semantic, in modern writings, while often questioning, challenging, and reversing the ancient models; the other is recreating and foregrounding specific biblical characters, scenes, or images, yet endowing them with a contemporary consciousness or placing them within the current cultural attitudes or mindset. Several contemporary scholars understand this two-pronged pattern, revolutionary and deconstructive as it might seem, within the time-hallowed tradition of midrash. Some find the midrashic mode helpful in interpreting such texts as well as in providing a methodological framework to the critical discourse. Thus, Gershon Shaked suggests in his article that all modern texts displaying this pattern may be viewed as modern midrashim.