Thesis ID: CBB001567633

The Erotic Life of Manuscripts: A History of New Testament Textual Criticism and the Biological Sciences (2014)

unapi

Lin, Yii-Jan Chen (Author)


Yale University
Martin, Dale B


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Advisor: Martin, Dale B.
Physical Details: 223 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation focuses on the relationship the field of New Testament textual criticism has formed with the biological sciences, starting from the eighteenth century and continuing to the present. The first chapter covers the use of taxonomy to distinguish different text types and how this classification employs contemporary racial descriptors from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second chapter discusses the tracing of textual genealogies in order to reach the "original text" of the New Testament and how this goal and its methodologies reflect European anxieties of the nineteenth century over racial impurity, corruption, and degeneration. As Darwin's theory of evolution gained dominance in the twentieth century, New Testament textual criticism saw the rise of "narrative textual criticism," which chapter three focuses on. Narrative textual criticism, unlike traditional philology, considers variant readings as important, in and of themselves, as part of the evolving, adapting, and "living" text of the New Testament. Finally, chapter four discusses the affinities between genomics/phylogenetics and current traditional textual criticism methods, particularly the Coherence Based Genealogical Method, used to create the most popular scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament. The aim of this project is to show how biological metaphors and methods, though dynamic, have limited the field of New Testament criticism and created an ever-widening gap between it and literary interpretation and theory in biblical studies. The conclusion suggests new theoretical possibilities for the field.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/09(E), Mar 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1542117001.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567633/

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Authors & Contributors
Mandelbrote, Scott
Jin, Xiaoxing
Prinster, Scott Gerard
Renate Dürr
Silva, Ignacio Alberto
Yegge, John G.
Concepts
Bible
Science and religion
Evolution
Darwinism
Hermeneutics
Theology
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
17th century
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Europe
Great Britain
Netherlands
Australia
England
Institutions
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
Cambridge University
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