Homotextuality v. Intertextuality, part 4

In his book, Figuring the Sacred (p.148), Paul Ricoeur describes ‘intertextuality’ as “the work of meaning through which one text in referring to another text both displaces this other text and receives from it an extension of meaning.” That means, for example, that when the gospels tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000 with a few fish and loaves, they use a lot of the language and plot and drama of the story of the manna in the wilderness in telling their story. So, the manna story gives impact and extends the meaning of the fish and loaves story. But, as Ricoeur says, it is not simply a ‘retelling’ of the old story. The fish and loaves story also ‘displaces’ the manna story by making a new point: Jesus is the ‘new Moses’ in this desert.

See what I mean by ‘intertextuality’? It is a way that one text draws on and furthers the meaning of another text. So, when it comes to the book of Daniel, there is certainly intertextuality at play. The thread goes roughly like this:

Joseph was under God’s care even during his terrible sojourn into slavery and service to the empire of Egypt. The evidence that God was working through him was his ability to read dreams. He was also exemplary in that he was faithful (see the incident with Potiphar’s oversexed wife! Young Joseph must have felt like Dustin Hoffman trapped in a room with Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate.” “Mrs. Potiphar, are you trying to seduce me?”)

The historical Daniel (described in chapters 1-6, circa 6 B.C.E.) was under God’s care even during that terrible sojourn into slavery and service to the empire of Babylon. The evidence that God was working through him was his ability to read dreams. He was also exemplary in that he was faithful (see the incident with the lion’s den. Young Daniel must have felt like Dustin Hoffman trapped in a room with Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate.” “Mrs. Lion, are you trying to sauté me?”)

Daniel’s visions (spoken in chapters 7-12, circa 2 B.C.E.) depict the beloved hero speaking to a people who are under God’s care, even during the terrible events that are happening during the Greek invasion. Other books from this era also speak of this awful event (especially the book of Maccabeus) and what faithfulness looks like under catastrophe. (Nothing about this period’s tragedy puts me in mind of Anne Bancroft.)

“Intertextuality” allows us to see how one text gets taken up and reinterpreted by another text. But here is the key point for the book of Daniel: The visions of chapters 7-12 were not “prophetic” in the sense that Daniel foreknew them four hundred years before the happened, or that Daniel foreknew them thousands of years before they are still waiting to happen. They were “prophetic” in the sense that they told the truth about the current tragedy facing the people of Israel and Judah, during the extreme tragedy of 2 B.C.E. The prophetic truth was that, despite all appearances, God was at work and would save them, just like God was at work in Joseph’s life and Daniel’s life. And the prophet calls for the right response of the people to be faithful in resisting the imposition of Greek gods, Greek militarism, and other practices that offended their way of living as God’s people- just like Daniel and Joseph maintained their faithfulness in trying times.

The final component of Ricoeur’s definition of “intertextuality” above is that the new story ‘displaces’ the older story. Tomorrow, we’ll see how the 2nd century B.C.E. was a period during which a new way of thinking about time started becoming predominant in Jewish theology, which gives the second half of Daniel (chapters 7-12) a different kind of twist than is found in either the Joseph or early Daniel stories (chapters 1-6).