Translation and Performance
PC-BOAT sessions at SBL 2024 in San Diego
In her 2023 SBL Presidential Address, Musa Dube called for a scholarly focus on the Global Translated Bible. Consistent with that call, the Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts (PC-BOAT) has three sessions focused on Bible Translation and Performance and there is a Networking opportunity too! Read more below!
Translation Theory and Performance (S23-139)
Saturday 11/23/2024 9-11:30am
Room: 31A (Upper Level East) - Convention Center
James Maxey will help us to explore contemporary translation theories and performance criticism to facilitate synergy between these two approaches and to contribute to the advancement of both. Concrete examples in theory and practice of Bible translation will be discussed, which have an impact on Bible translation for various communities, academia, and church use. Gerald West will explore the relationship between translation and performance based on his research on community-based praxis. Two invited respondents will interact with these scholars. After a panel discussion, the whole audience will be invited to participate. To participate in this session by Zoom, register here.
Clifford Barbarick, Abilene Christian University, Presiding
James Maxey, Seed Company
Global Bible Translation Studies (30 min)
Kelly Iverson, Baylor University, Respondent (10 min)
Gerald West, University of KwaZulu-Natal (by Zoom)
Translation and/as Performance: The Poetic Cadence of Resistance (30 min)
Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Virginia Tech, Respondent (10 min)
Scribal Memory and Word Selection
Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
(SBL Press, 2023)
by Raymond F. Person, Jr.
A Review by Werner Kelber
15 June 2024
From the review:
In the most general sense, this book is about scribal practices reflected in texts that were leading up to and culminating in the Masoretic consolidation of the Hebrew Bible. More explicitly, it examines the work of scribes who were engaged in rewriting previously existing ancient Jewish manuscripts, undertaking “one of the most literate tasks in the ancient world: Vorlage-based copying” (299). When ancient scribes were copying manuscripts, what were the compositional, cognitive, and linguistic processes they were involved in? It stands to reason, therefore, that Person’s study concerns itself with compositional practices rather than recitational activities, and with the reproduction of manuscripts more than their transmission to hearers. In sum, the objective of this monograph is to reexamine rudimentary aspects of the ancient Jewish copying culture and, in considering the ramifications, to explore “what a new model for historical criticism might look like” (ix).
Download the full review by clicking here. Or:
Read more: Kelber on Person Scribal Memory and Word Selection
Performance Criticism, Cognition, and Embodiment
A Dialog between Performance Criticism, Cognitive Linguistics, and Islands, Islanders, and Scripture
Papers given at SBL 2023 in San Antonio
The human body is a significant link between ancient and modern performances of biblical traditions. Across time and cultures, readers, lectors, and performers of biblical texts gesture and use other signals with eyes, face, hands, arms, and legs that audiences blend with the sounds they hear to make meaning. In this joint session co-sponsored by Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts, Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation, and the Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures, three invited papers will explore how the human body and embodied cognition may provide a basis for comparing ancient and modern performances.
Click on the links below to watch the presentations on Vimeo:
Peter S. Perry, A Performance Criticism Point of View on Performance and Embodiment
Beth Currier, A Cognitive Linguistics Point of View on Performance and Embodiment
Althea Spencer-Miller, An Islander Point of View on Performance and Embodiment
Cultural Memory, Biblical Studies, and Jan Assmann (1938-2024)
by Werner Kelber
Download a PDF of this article here
Cultural memory has not been adequately appreciated in Anglo-American biblical scholarship, including Biblical Performance Criticism. The death of Jan Assman on February 19, 2024 offers an opportunity to focus renewed attention to his work on cultural memory and to the usefulness of the concept for the interpretation of biblical texts.
Read more: Kelber-Cultural Memory, Biblical Studies, and Jan Assmann
Gospel Media
Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions
(Eerdmans, 2024)
New Testament scholars have often relied on outdated assumptions for understanding the composition and circulation of the gospels. This scholarship has spread myths or misconceptions about how the ancients read, wrote, and published texts. Nicholas Elder updates our knowledge of the gospels’ media contexts in this myth-busting academic study. Carefully combing through Greco-Roman primary sources, he exposes what we take for granted about ancient reading cultures and offers new and better ways to understand the gospels. These myths include claims that ancients never read silently and that the canonical gospels were all the same type of text. Elder then sheds light on how early Christian communities used the gospels in diverse ways. Scholars of the gospels and classics alike will find Gospel Media an essential companion in understanding ancient media cultures.