If one of the many ways out of trauma's impact is through words, then why not use a theory closely attached to words and their impact alongside current trauma theories in understanding historical narratives? In Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible: Speech Act Theory and Trauma Hermeneutics, Alexiana Fry utilizes a diverse methodology of speech act theory and trauma hermeneutics to argue for a more fluid and holistic approach in re-interpreting narratives in the Hebrew Bible. Examining a more dissociative "objective" manner in reading, each chapter asks the question of "what about our own bodies?" Purposely provoking attunement with oneself to embrace "empathic unsettlement," the book refuses to give any semblance of finality. Through the many types of performative utterances and traumas both individual and collective-Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Ecclesiastes, and Hosea-Fry investigates the varied layers that constitute their many meanings. The reader is invited into an awareness and openness that is the human experience in biblical studies.
Alexiana Fry is postdoc scholar at the University of Copenhagen.
Acknowledgments Introduction: Standing on Chicken Legs Chapter One: An In-Between Hermeneutics: Fluid Methods for Polyvalent Passages Chapter Two: Hashtag Does Her Body (Still) Speak: Judges 19 and Hosea Chapter Three: Moral Injury, YHWH, Saul, and a Witch: 1 Samuel 28 Chapter Four: Qoheleth's Coping Cries as Instruction: Ecclesiastes 7 Chapter Five: We are All Witnesses: Joshua 24 Conclusion: Evolving Together Appendix Bibliography About the Author
Fry's work reminds us that trauma reveals itself in category-defying ways throughout all parts of the Hebrew Bible. With Fry's transdisciplinary blend of literary criticism, trauma study, speech act theory, and modern novels and films, troubling texts such as the Levite's concubine, Gomer's violent marriage, and King Saul's fate show the ethical complexity of traumatic texts and the ways that these biblical texts affect their readers and call them to act in response to traumas both past and present. Brad E. Kelle, Point Loma Nazarene University, author of The Bible and Moral Injury: Reading Scripture Alongside War's Unseen Wounds (Abingdon, 2020) -- Brad E. Kelle, Point Loma Nazarene University; author of The Bible and Moral Injury: Reading Scripture Alongside War's Unseen Wounds
