A Biblical Text and its Afterlives
The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture

This book is concerned with how interpretation re-shapes Bible texts, specifically examining the book of Jonah.

Yvonne Sherwood (Author)

9780521795616, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 January 2001

356 pages, 16 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

'… one of the most stimulating works on any biblical text that I have read in years. it sets a new standard for the study of reception history … Sherwood writes so well. Every page provides entertainment as well as academically rigorous argument … A very exciting work from an outstanding specialist in Biblical Studies.' Journal of Jewish Studies

This book charts the mutations of a particularly buoyant sliver of Bible text - the book of Jonah - as it latches onto Christian and Jewish motifs and anxieties, passes through highbrow and lowbrow culture, and finally becomes something of a scavenger among the ruins, as, in its most resourceful move to date, it begins to live off the demise of faith. Written at a point between Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies, Literature and Art, this book is concerned with those versions of the biblical that escape proper disciplinary boundaries: it shifts the focus from 'Mainstream' to 'Backwater' interpretation. It is less a navigation of interpretative history and more an interrogation of larger political/cultural issues: anti-Judaism in Biblical Studies, the secularisation of the Bible, and the projection of the Bible as credulous ingenu, naive Other to our savvy post-Enlightenment selves.

Introduction
1. The Mainstream
(i) Jonah and the Fathers: Jonah and Jesus as typological twins
(ii) Jonah the Jew: the evolution of a biblical character
(iii) Divine Disciplinary Devices: or the book of Jonah and a tractate on producing docile disciple-bodies
(iv) Cataloguing the Monstrous: Jonah and the Cani Cacharis (or a concluding scientific postscript)
(v) Taking Stock: survivals, hauntings, Jonah and (Stanley) fish, and the Christian colonisation of the book of Jonah
2. Backwaters and Underbellies
(i) Jewish Interpretation
(ii) Popular Interpretation
(iii) On the Strained Relations Between the Backwaters and the Mainstream: or how Jewish and popular readings are prone to bring on a bout of scholarly dyspepsia
(iv) Of Survival, Memes and Life-After-Death: on Jonah's infinite regurgitation and endless survival
(v) Jonah on the Oncology Ward and the Beached-up Whale Carcass
or the strange secular afterlives of Biblical texts
3. Regurgitating Jonah
(i) Of 'Hot Chestnuts', 'Fluid Puddings' and 'Plots That Do Not Shelter Us': some ruminations on the salvific properties of 'the Bible' and 'literature'
(ii) Regurgitating Jonah
(iii) In conclusion … Recuperating Jonah: the book of Jonah as the quintessential story and the most typical of Bible texts
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Social theory [JHBA], Bibles [HRCF]