Original Audience Research Articles

Matthew’s Mission and Supersessionism

Abstract Who was Matthew trying to reach with his particular version of the message of Jesus of Nazareth? When examining the question of Matthew’s social setting, scholars tend to focus either on the evangelist’s socioreligious orientation or that of his original audience. An overlooked entry point into this monumental debate is Matthew’s mission field: those people outside of the Jesus movement but living in relationship to Matthew and his communities, whom they were seeking to reach with their brand of the gospel of the kingdom. Although Matthew wrote his Gospel to address Christ-believing communities, he did so within the wider social context of instructing his people in their mission to “make disciples of all the nations.” The evangelist, then, would have crafted his story of Jesus to fit with his mission. The socioreligious orientation of the group best suited to hear and receive his message would represent his mission field. This study seeks to demonstrate that the evangelist’s attitude toward Jews and gentiles in his Gospel reveals that Matthew sought to address his fellow Jews, and in a way that reveals a non-supersessionist perspective.

Jesus’s Origins (Matthew 1–2) as Cultural Trauma

Jeffrey Alexander’s social theory about trauma provides a theoretical framework to explore Matthew’s Gospel’s two first chapters as a trauma narrative that wrestles in a creative way with at least two significant issues for its original audience: (1) How can Jesus be the Christ/Messiah and yet undergo a shameful and violent death? (2) What are the national and theological implications of the destruction of the Temple in AD 70? Alexander’s four dimensions of representations of cultural trauma (the nature of the pain; the nature of the victim; the relation of the trauma victim to a wider audience; and the attribution of responsibility) guide the analysis. Matthew 1–2, as a trauma narrative, processes past trauma to encourage resilience against future traumatization. This can be a powerful tool to shape identity and promote solidarity by opening new avenues for understanding violent imagery.

Scribal interpretation of problematic passages in Old English poetry: Insights from theories of textual difficulty

ABSTRACT This essay examines how early scribes understood and interpreted Old English poetic texts, which often contain passages that are challenging for modern readers. Focusing especially on cases where Old English poetic texts exist in multiple copies, it explores the differences between versions and what they reveal about the ease or difficulty of comprehension among early scribes and audiences. The essay analyzes examples of difficult passages from Beowulf, several Exeter Book riddles, and Cædmon’s Hymn, and how they were copied and modified over time. It considers what the different versions of these texts might suggest about the varying degrees of understanding among these scribes and readers. The essay suggests that early audiences faced difficulties not unlike those faced by modern readers, especially relating to the interpretation of structure, redundancy, and cohesion. The essay aims to enhance our empathy for original audiences and for our students as we teach and study Old English texts.

Song 7:2–6 [Eng: 1–5] as a Symphony of Poetry, Metaphor, and Passion

Song 7:2–6 is (in)famous for how the man describes his beloved, from feet to head, with one seemingly ridiculous metaphor after another. While the aesthetic sense of these metaphors may seem odd to westerners, it was highly unlikely to be such for its original audiences. Thus, the fundamental question for biblical scholars, especially those concerned with metaphor is: How does the poet employ the visual similarities in the metaphorical imagery to allow readers/hearers access to how the man both perceives and conceptualises the physical beauty of his beloved? In other words, how can we as readers take the metaphors seriously without obliterating the metaphorical imagery? This article seeks to answer this question by employing a complexity approach which integrates poetic rhythm (additionally borrowing the concept of deceptive cadence from music), linguistic approaches to poetic parallelism, the use of emotion in lyric poetry, and metaphor analyses. This symphony of analyses hopes to explain how the metaphors function as a unity within the poetry’s rhythm, building toward a peak to express the man’s desire and excitement for his beloved. It concludes by offering an interpretation of the final verse’s interpretively difficult description of the woman’s hair as crimson, explaining how the woman’s head as Mount Carmel during a fiery sunset serves as a fitting conclusion to the poem that provides a befitting climactic closure for conveying the man’s desire for his beloved.

The fundamental idea of Paul’s ‘I’ in Romans 7:14–25 and Christian spirituality as a lived experience

The idea of ‘I’ in Romans 7:14–25, used rhetorically, is written to have an impact on its reader and to reach into something readers have experienced: a spiritual reality. When Paul wrote the pericope, it was written in a specific context to and a specific group of people. They would have recognised what Paul’s fundamental idea was concerning ‘I’ and the law. That is, the struggling image of ‘I’ under the law, wanting to do what is right, but is unable to. However, the way the original audience would have received and understood the law and the tension would differ exponentially to the way the pericope is read today. But does that make Paul’s fundamental argument invalid for readers today? An initial reading of the text does evoke some kind of inner experience, relating or convicted by Paul’s ‘I’. This falls in the realm of spirituality as a lived experience. What makes it spiritual is the fact that the pericope is part of the Christian sacred text, and there is a certain initial stance or attitude taken when the text is read. The author is painting a mental picture using ‘I’ as a rhetoric device to lead the reader in participating in Paul’s argument. Thus, the text is experienced. There is no spirituality without experience. This participation leaves a lasting impact on the reader, and pointing the reader by the Spirit in a direction that moves from hopelessness to hopefulness found in Jesus Christ.Contribution: Firstly, the article adds to the body of work done on Romans 7:14–25, particularly the discussion referring to ‘I’. Secondly, there has been a large volume of work done on this specific pericope, especially on the interpretation of the text. However, a contribution can be made in respect of spirituality and the lived experience of the reader in relation to the text, because not much on the topic was found. The focus on the fundamental idea as a lived experience constitutes a specific angle to the text that may contribute to scholarly body of knowledge.

Female Figure and the Idea of Feminity Across Time

"The history of women’s struggle for equality during the last two centuries is relatively well documented; studies of women’s history often construct a meliorate narrative in which the progress women have made in recent times represents the final stage in a long upward trajectory. Women’s power and authority extended beyond the limits of their families. The example of the Tudor queens Mary and Elizabeth is well known, and the ‘anomaly’ of Elizabeth’s position has been endlessly noted; but they were not the only women who exercised political authority. Generations of women have found a source of their own empowerment in the power of Shakespeare’s writing and in the cultural authority it carried. In the recent years, as we have seen, the validity of these enthusiastic responses has been called into question by arguments that mobilize the authority of history to insist that the original productions of Shakespeare’s plays-written by a male author to be performed by an exclusively male company of players-expressed an overwhelmingly masculine point of view. The most compelling of these arguments rest on the fact that the presence of a male body beneath the costume of a female character was never far from the awareness of Shakespeare’s original audiences."

The Identified Legacy

This paper delves into the heritage preservation of the folk-art culture of the Tianqiao area in Beijing, known for its vibrant traditional drama. It argues that stamping a culture as ‘heritage’ suggests that it’s extinct, since it overlooks the continuous evolution of this culture. The concept of ‘heritagization’ is explored to illustrate the challenges and rewards of cultural preservation, suggesting that while it is crucial to preserve key aspects of culture, simplified representation or distortion must be avoided. As society modernizes, traditional art forms like the Tianqiao folk culture evolve and their original audience diminishes. This paper discusses the complex dynamics of culture, privilege, class, and socio-economic forces in contemporary society, arguing against the commodification of culture. It stresses the need for a recalibration of efforts towards preserving cultural heritage, bearing in mind the rapid pace of urbanization and economic development.

Mechanisms to detect and translate audiovisual intertextuality in the dubbing of animated productions into Spanish

ABSTRACT Intertextuality, which can be defined as the interrelationship between texts, can appear anywhere, from an informal conversation among friends to manifestations of literature or cinema. However, its use is normally intentional, and translators should have the tools to detect intertextuality and transfer these references so that the target audience and the original audience are on an equal footing. This article explores intertextuality in the dubbing of audiovisual productions, where references to other productions and characters are constant. Our research is based on the study of two seasons of the animated TV series Family Guy dubbed in Spain, as well as on previous research on this topic. We seek to both determine which intertextual signs (Hatim and Mason 1990, 174) may help audiovisual translators in the detection stage and to develop an integrated method to help them carry out the challenging translation process.

Looking Backward into the Future: Thoughts on the Study of the Past, Ritual, and Women’s Eucharistic Experiences in Byzantium

As a student of Christian visual production of the so-called medieval period (specializing in Byzantine culture), I have often marveled at the theological richness of seemingly simple narratives that could communicate a wealth of possible meanings in the eyes of their intended original audiences. The mundane act of Mary drawing water from a well or spinning purple thread at the time of her Annunciation (whether in verbal or visual forms of storytelling) could resonate with deep theological significance in the minds of cultural insiders who were familiar with the basic religious beliefs, symbols, scriptural sources, rituals, and other cultural practices of their tradition. Believing they lived in a universe created by their God and ruled by his laws and providence, Christians of the past were taught to seek deeper meaning and guidance in aspects of the material world, their daily experiences, and their communal history, as all these manifestations could reveal divine wisdom and God’s plan for human salvation. In this context, familiar and simple objects like water or thread could make complex theological concepts more relatable and understandable to the faithful.

Keeping Faith with Literature

Keeping Faith with Literature

Hamlet, Fortinbras, and the Time Value of Risk in Shakespeare’s Elsinore

Is it better to defend against or assault fortune? By weaving together the adventures of two princes—one who is “risk on” and the other “risk off”—Shakespeare explores the mysteries of risk. While tragic protagonists frequently perish because they take questionable risks (Macbeth committing regicide, Caesar ignoring warnings, or Lear dividing Britain), Shakespeare explores in Hamlet whether caution is risk free. Caution is a source of systemic risk because opportunity is a sliding door and a window. By choosing caution instead of action, the window of opportunity may close. Although both Hamlet and Fortinbras start from similar circumstances and backgrounds, they end up in different places. Fortinbras, by maximizing risk, restores his ancestral prerogatives. Hamlet, by taking a more prudent course, paradoxically fails. Because risk has a time value, Hamlet dramatizes how the greatest risk may be taking insufficient risk. In tragedy, a world where the only thing that can be expected is the unexpected, there are always unexpected ways to fail (or succeed) that cannot be foreseen, but are patently obvious afterwards. When audiences analyze Hamlet with hindsight, they sometimes forget that it was with foresight they enjoyed the play: this is an artifact of Hamlet being too famous. To original audiences, it was unclear until the last whether Fortinbras or Hamlet would prove most royal. Only after the play ends does hindsight become twenty-twenty. Until then, the question of whether to defend against or assault fortune hangs in the balance, fueling drama’s engines.

De geboorte van de auteur na zijn dood

In this paper I take a look at two lyric poems: fragment 31 of Sappho and fragment 130B of Alcaeus. The first-person speakers in these two poems were commonly identified with their authors in antiquity. I argue that this was not the case when the poems were first performed on Lesbos. For the original audience these first-person speakers were general and would not necessarily have been identified with either Sappho or Alcaeus. Other people on Lesbos who performed these poems as songs could identify with them as well. It was only when the poems left the island and were reperformed in cities like Athens that the gap between first-person speaker and performer became so great that the question arose who the first-person speaker might have been. He or she was then identified with Sappho and Alcaeus, and the author, as the autobiographical subject of his or her poetry, was born.

Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan by Laura Moretti

Reviewed by: Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan by Laura Moretti David J. Gundry (bio) Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan. By Laura Moretti. Columbia University Press, 2020. xvi, 416 pages. $140.00, cloth; $40.00, paper; $39.99, E-book. Encompassing histories of publishing, literacy, and letter-writing as well as close readings of a wide range of hitherto little-known texts, Laura Moretti's Pleasure in Profit is a must-read for students of Japanese literature and of great relevance to specialists in early modern Japanese history and religion. Moretti sets out to examine and evaluate the popular prose of Japan's first century of commercial publishing according to its own terms rather than to impose on it modern or Western conceptions of what constitutes the literary. In so doing, she seeks to expand the category of early Tokugawa literature to include, for example, letter-writing manuals and cookbooks. She argues [End Page 500] that such works of instructive prose, in addition to providing readers with knowledge that could potentially better their lives and help raise their social status, brought their original audience cognitive pleasures that rival those provided by less utilitarian texts. Moretti traces the exclusion in the English-speaking world of such works from the canon of seventeenth-century Japanese literature to a 1957 article by Richard Lane. Lane, Moretti writes: favored undisrupted narrative above other textual elements; considered the modern, realistic novel the telos toward which literature developed; and viewed prose works written in the vernacular between 1600 and the publication of Ihara Saikaku's (1642–93) Kōshoku ichidai otoko (The life of an amorous man, 1682) as "'a transitional form, bridging the gap between the medieval romance and the modern novel'" (p. 6). She credits Lane's article with motivating the translation into English of a small selection of fictional narrative works from this period that provide a skewed sample of what commercial publishing produced then. Moretti characterizes as belletristic, elitist, anachronistic, and Eurocentric the criteria used by Lane and his successors to exclude or neglect the texts she seeks to rehabilitate. She eschews teleological considerations and excludes even Saikaku's fiction from the category of the novelistic, let alone of the novel itself, writing in characteristically emphatic language that the period in question was "centuries before any hint of the novel breached the horizon" (p. 10). Moretti does so without defining the notoriously porous category of "the novel" or providing any close examination of any text by Saikaku. She convincingly justifies the absence of Saikaku's fiction from her already ambitious study as necessary for keeping her project to a manageable size, in part due to the vast amount of Saikaku scholarship she would have needed to engage with to include consideration of his works. Moretti also notes that Saikaku's fiction has already received considerable attention from scholars and translators writing in English and maintains that their work, while valuable, has the regrettable disadvantage of having created a Saikaku-centered view of the seventeenth-century literary market and popular prose. … Thinking of Saikaku's prose as the pinnacle of the seventeenth century is the norm. As should be clear by now, I strongly disagree with this notion. … What if we write a literary history of the seventeenth century that is not Saikaku centered? This is what my monograph aims to achieve. (p. 21) Upon reading the study that follows these assertions, one trained by the copious learned allusions of Saikaku's fiction to look out for the same when perusing the works of other authors might perceive in the void left by Saikaku's absence from Pleasure in Profit an erudite reference to the [End Page 501] empty center of Tokyo posited by Roland Barthes in his semiotic schema of the Japanese capital.1 It is difficult to convince one's readers that Saikaku's fiction does not constitute the pinnacle of seventeenth-century Japanese prose without extensively comparing his works to those foregrounded in Pleasure in Profit, and readers well-versed in Saikaku's fiction might find little in the synopses provided that rivals their favorite Saikaku narratives. Furthermore, Moretti's implied characterization of...

Male and Female in Distinction and Glory

Abstract Contemporary questions of sex, gender, and transgender identities are not addressed directly by any biblical text, and yet the church needs wisdom on these topics. This article examines the so-called head-coverings passage, 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, with an eye towards principles that could be applied today. While no reading of this text is untroubled, the dynamic tension that the Apostle Paul puts forward between the distinction of male and female, and their equality before the Lord, can shed important light. After exegetical engagement with the text, the article discusses relevant continuities and discontinuities between the original audience and the modern West, leading to recommendations for faithful presence. These include holding to God’s good design of humanity as male and female, while striving to be a community of compassion towards those who identify as transgender or who experience gender dysphoria.

Navigating Black Identity and White Desire: Seven-Eleven and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

Navigating Black Identity and White Desire: <i>Seven-Eleven</i> and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

Enemies

Enemies

THE LIMITS OF A LABEL: FRAMING EASTERN ASIA’S TERRITORIAL CONFLICTS FOR A U.S.-AMERICAN AUDIENCE

This article explores limits to the framing power of several important short terms and phrases typically used within eastern Asia’s international politics. It conceptualises these labels as terminological frames. As frames, these terms/phrases help to set agendas, categorise, emphasise certain perspectives while excluding others from view, and ultimately shape opinions about controversial issues within international politics. Yet, I argue, the limits of frames have been insufficiently explored, especially as frames are taken to new audiences whose understanding of the broader discourses associated with the issues are weaker than that of the original audience. Do these terms still produce framing effects outside of eastern Asia? The study relied on a short survey of 800 U.S.-Americans. Respondents answered differing versions of questions relating to eastern Asian maritime politics in order to ascertain whether the wording and labels used affect evaluation of political issues. Specifically, the survey sought to determine whether use of East Sea vs. Sea of Japan, Northern Territories vs. Southern Kurils, and South China Sea vs. East Sea affected views of maritime disputes and issues relating to Korea, Japan, Russia, China/Taiwan, and Vietnam. It also explored whether an increasingly central phrase in eastern Asia’s maritime territorial disputes—“inherent territory”—presented a stronger claim than other possible phrases claiming territory. Survey results showed no statistical difference through use of one term or label over another. Thus, a certain type of limit to the power of these terminological frames was found. Nevertheless, the survey additionally demonstrated that producing framing effects required only a slight addition to the terminology, confirming the ease of framing international political issues to partisan effect.

Adventures in Libraries

This essay recounts lessons learned over a career studying medieval manuscripts and the stories of those who made, used, and collected them. Medieval books long outlast their intended or original audiences and have fascinating cultural interactions that extend to the present. What this most pressingly throws up for me is ways of knowing things, and the epistemological value of memory. One needs to store away the little anomalies that one encounters — and be prepared for them to surface without bidding in some new context where they might prove generative. If humility might be a first perquisite of scholarly work, certainly memory would be a second. The essay originated as a lecture, delivered remotely in March 2021 for the Renaissance Studies Center at the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL.

Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England by Mary Kate Hurley

Reviewed by: Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England by Mary Kate Hurley Georgina Pitt Hurley, Mary Kate, Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture), Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 2021; hardcover; pp. 226; R.R.P. US$99.95 ISBN 9780814214718. ‘Translation effects’ is the term Mary Kate Hurley uses to characterize the observable traces of the translation process in medieval texts. Translation effects may lend authority to a translated work or imply cultural continuity across discrete peoples. The central premise of her argument is that the process of translation acts as a bridge between the original audience of the source text and the audience of the translated text, connecting old and new communities. The focus is not localized groups—but rather on communities anticipated within the translated text itself. The connections between these virtual or imagined communities could be deployed as powerful identity markers for the audience of the translated text. [End Page 248] Hurley argues that translation is inherently an act of interpretation. She suggests that: ‘if we approach translations as a negotiated series of interactions between humans and texts, we can better understand their temporal, textual, and community-oriented interests’ (p. 7). Hurley develops her argument in three stages. She examines literal translation in the Old English Orosius and Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, demonstrating how these texts expanded their imagined communities temporally and spatially. She traces the manuscript tradition of texts straddling the Norman Conquest (Ælfric’s homilies and the ‘Life of Constance’ in works by Nicholas Trevet, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower) to show how pre-Conquest texts were used post-Conquest to shape views of the past that facilitated emerging narratives of community in Middle English. In the final section, the focus returns to Old English: Hurley uses Beowulf to illuminate the role of narrative transmission in the construction of community within a text. Hurley’s work draws upon established scholarship on the complex nature of medieval translation by scholars such as Robert Stanton, Nicole Guenther Discenza, and Rebecca Stephenson. The analysis of Beowulf expands her argument beyond the traditional conception of translation as a movement between two texts, an identified source text and a version in a different (in this period, often vernacular) language. Hurley argues that Beowulf partakes of much of the same cultural logic as traditional translations. In Beowulf, metaphorical translation is used as a self-positioning device. The way that communities coalesce and disintegrate are demonstrated and explained through the telling and retelling of stories. In making her argument, Hurley explicitly departs from the position that medieval translators conceived of translations as a narrow form of linguistic transfer, essentially a paraphrase; or that their audiences expected the translator to remain invisible and neutral, a mere conduit. Elements of refashioning within a translated text may not be aberrations, attributable to scribal ineptitude. They may be deliberate and important expressions of the cultural values and aspirations of the community in which the translated text was intended to circulate. While Hurley’s case studies are of English texts, her argument has interesting implications for scholarly research into identity formation in a variety of communities and contexts across the medieval period. This is a well-written, easily absorbed text. It does not claim to be a comprehensive survey of medieval translations, nor to articulate a universal theory of translation applicable to the period. It offers a methodology for examining translations that is apt to bring into sharp focus the wider contemporary concerns of both translator and audience, to use the translated text itself to contextualize the circumstances of its production and reception. In particular, the study of translation effects may help scholars to better understand how a particular community understood their history and signalled their identity. [End Page 249] Georgina Pitt The University of Western Australia Copyright © 2022 Georgina Pitt

Narrative coherence inDigenes Akrites(G)

This article argues that coherence in medieval narratives was perceived differently than it is in modern literature, offering an analysis of coherence principles inDigenes Akriteswhich seem to have been more relevant for its original audiences. Drawing on contemporary narratology and recent research on comparable western works, the author does not search for one sole superordinate principle, but rather for so-called structures of mid-range coherence. The article contains some examples of such ‘centres of gravity’ – the schema, the scene and the meaning – in the G version.