Circles in the Stream

Index, Identification, and Intertext: Reading and Preaching the Story of Judah in Genesis 37–50

Paul E. Koptak

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666735321, 9781666792287
• eBook ISBN: 9781666792294
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Maybe we should read Genesis 37-50 as the story of Joseph and Judah. Both kept their families alive and received major blessings from their father Jacob. Like his brother Joseph, Judah knew how to use words to lead and persuade, primarily by appealing to common experience. His speeches model Kenneth Burke's rhetoric of identification, "inducing cooperation" by showing his listeners how they are consubstantial--that is, where they stand together. Preachers hope to do the same, making gospel connections between ancient texts and life today. Circles in the Stream shows that the connections are there in the Scripture text, freeing preachers from the pressure to find contemporary illustrations. Adapting Burke's literary-rhetorical approach to reading, Paul Koptak offers ever-widening circles of reading to that end. Indexing a passage and looking for identification there lead to the transformative purpose and life issue. Intertextual study, a combination of both, discovers these connections in the wider two-testament canon. Circles in the Stream offers both a distinct perspective for reading Scripture and practical steps for in-depth study. Its method can make sermon preparation more efficient and effective. More importantly, it leads to the life-issues that listeners want their preachers to address.

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Index

Judah and Tamar

I was leading an adult Sunday School discussion on the sale of Joseph in Genesis 37 when a man blurted out: “I really don’t like what I’m learning in this study. These are the patriarchs of Israel we are talking about, and we’re seeing what terrible people they were.” His body language and raised voice let us know that this was no intellectual problem for him—he was deeply troubled. Another class member jumped in and said: “Yes, but that’s what grace is all about, isn’t it?” We all quickly agreed, but over time I’ve come to believe that the man was on to something with his discomfort. We should sit for a while with disturbing Bible scenes so we can appreciate just what that “grace is all about.” It is especially true for the biblical portrait of Judah because it gets uglier before it gets better. In Genesis 38, Judah uses his authority as paterfamilias to deny his daughter-in-law Tamar her rights, effectively taking away her future.81 The better we understand the dynamics of this unsettling story, the more we appreciate the transformation of the major characters. And yes, our appreciation of God’s grace grows as we see life win out over death.82

As we venture into this story of Judah’s mistreatment of Tamar, we get a fuller picture of what Robert Alter called “Judah’s painful moral education.” With the publication in 1981 of The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter popularized the use of literary techniques for close reading in biblical interpretation. A professor of comparative literature, he believed that biblical scholars regularly overlooked the sophisticated artistry of the Hebrew Bible. He challenged historical-critical readings that gave more attention to how a text came to be than how it connected with readers.83

The Art of Biblical Narrative led off with this story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar. Critical biblical scholarship saw an awkward insertion of Genesis 38, proof that various oral and written traditions were stitched together haphazardly. Alter went back to an ancient reading tradition, the Midrash Rabbah (“Great Interpretation”). There the rabbis noted the repeated Hebrew words haker-nah (“recognize”) in 37:32 and 38:25 that connect Judah’s crimes against his brother and his daughter-in-law. “The Holy One, Praised be He, said to Judah, ‘You deceived your father with a kid. By your life, Tamar will deceive you with a kid. . . . You said to your father, haker-nah. By your life, Tamar will say to you, haker-nah.’”84 Biblical scholars, taking Alter’s cue, now read the insertion of Genesis 38 as an answer to Judah’s selling off his brother. Thomas Brodie sees Genesis 37 and 38 as two panels designed to be read together. Susan Niditch summarizes: “As Joseph was taken in ambush, so Judah is taken by deception and forced to do his duty by Tamar.”85

From Literary to Rhetorical Study

In the 1980s the work of Alter and his contemporaries, Adele Berlin and Meir Sternberg, offered biblical interpreters new paths into the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. Along with repetition and wordplay, they taught us to look closely at characterization, plot, and setting, and to look for significance in what is not there, in the gaps that readers are asked to fill. Two of the three called their work the study of poetics, defined by Berlin as looking “not only for what the text says, but also how it says it.”86 Their names made their way into preaching textbooks,87 yet it is generally agreed that preachers are not only interested in what texts say, or even how, but in their function: what is a given text supposed to do for those who listen to sermons?

To speak of the function of a text is to speak of its rhetoric. In the decade following these studies of biblical narrative, three works on rhetorical criticism of the Hebrew Bible emphasized its effect on a reading or listening audience. Just as James Muilenburg earlier called for a “rhetorical criticism” to identify compositional features and move “beyond form criticism,”88 these new works saw rhetorical analysis as a way to move beyond literary study and account for the impact of texts on their readers and hearers.

Alan Hauser spoke of rhetorical criticism as one color in the spectrum of literary approaches to Old Testament interpretation. He explained that “a rhetorical critic will basically do two things in studying a unit of text: analyze the literary features of a text to the maximum extent possible, from the perspective of literary style discernible in the works of ancient Israelite writers; and articulate the impact of the literary unit on its audience.”89 Phyllis Trible took her definition of rhetorical criticism from her teacher Muilenburg: “A proper articulation of form yields a proper articulation of meaning.” Her study of the book of Jonah also included a catalog of persuasive moves YHWH makes toward Jonah and the reading/listening audience: “In teaching rhetoric as the art of composition, the book of Jonah unfolds rhetoric as the art of persuasion.”90 Dale Patrick, another of Muilenburg’s students, and Allen Scult, a rhetorician, also claimed that rhetorical study must not be limited to matters of structure and style but should consider the intention of writers to influence audiences. They broadened the scope of study to include “the means by which a text establishes and manages its relationship to its audience in order to achieve a particular effect.”91

The inspiration for this view of rhetoric comes not only from Muilenburg and the ancient rhetorics of Aristotle...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Index: Judah and Tamar
• Chapter 2: Identification: Judah and Joseph
• Chapter 3: Intertext: Judah and His Brothers Receive Jacob’s Blessing
• Conclusion
• Bibliography