Levinas Faces Biblical Figures
Contributions by Ephraim Meir, Edna Langenthal, Gary D. Mole, Elisabeth Goldwyn, Catherine Chalier, Eli Schonfeld, Michal Ben-Naftali, Richard A. Cohen, Hanoch Ben-Pazi, Tamar Abramov Edited by Yael Lin
Publication date:
20 March 2014Length of book:
228 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739182826
This collection of essays is an attempt to capture the drama of the encounter, of the 'facing' of Levinas and the biblical text. It seeks to link Jewish experience and Levinasian themes such as responsibility, substitution, hospitality, suffering and forgiveness, and at the same time make the biblical text accessible in a new way.
The book offers new insights on the opening up of Levinas's thought and biblical stories to one another; it considers the ways in which Levinas can open up the biblical text to requestioning, and how the biblical text can inform our reading of Levinas. Setting up in dialogue the heteronomic texts – the narrative texts of the bible and Levinas's philosophical texts – allows an enforced and renewed understanding of both. The examination of these issues is pursued from diverse perspectives and disciplines, probing the role biblical figures play in Levinas's thought and the manner by which to approach them. Do the biblical allusions serve in Levinas's thought merely as a rhetorical and literary device, as illustrations of his ideas, or perhaps they have a deeper philosophical meaning, which contributes to his project in general? Do the references to biblical figures work in Levinas's philosophy in a way that other literary figures are incapable of, and how do these references comply with his conflicted attitude towards literature?
The book offers new insights on the opening up of Levinas's thought and biblical stories to one another; it considers the ways in which Levinas can open up the biblical text to requestioning, and how the biblical text can inform our reading of Levinas. Setting up in dialogue the heteronomic texts – the narrative texts of the bible and Levinas's philosophical texts – allows an enforced and renewed understanding of both. The examination of these issues is pursued from diverse perspectives and disciplines, probing the role biblical figures play in Levinas's thought and the manner by which to approach them. Do the biblical allusions serve in Levinas's thought merely as a rhetorical and literary device, as illustrations of his ideas, or perhaps they have a deeper philosophical meaning, which contributes to his project in general? Do the references to biblical figures work in Levinas's philosophy in a way that other literary figures are incapable of, and how do these references comply with his conflicted attitude towards literature?
In [the book] the reader is presented with a rich variety of analyses of Levinas’s readings of biblical figures, events, and notions. . . .Of particular note is Eli Schonfeld’s piece on Jonah, which analyzes not only a specific biblical moment, but also attempts to articulate the hermeneutics at play in Levinas’s biblical references in general in order to clarify their role in his larger philosophical project. Alongside addressing a somewhat neglected topic in the study of Levinas, the uniqueness of this volume resides in the essays that use Levinas’s philosophy as a background and inspiration for putting forth intriguing and original readings of the Bible, thereby exhibiting the exegetical productivity a Levinasian prism could offer.This is an insightful contribution to the ever-growing scholarship on Levinas and Judaism. Moreover, it provides support for those who seek to blur the typical distinction made between his philosophical and Jewish writings. Most of the essays assume prior philosophical knowledge and familiarity with Levinas’s corpus, and as such is particularly recommended to graduate students and scholars of philosophy and Jewish studies.