Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes
Call For Papers: For our first session, we welcome proposals on the use of myth and myth theory in any area of biblical studies. We especially encourage papers that explore various theories of myth and what it means to utilize this category within biblical studies. We welcome participants from diverse specializations, including Hebrew Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, gospel studies, and Greco-Roman Religions. We aim to include studies covering a range of methodologies, critical theories, and types of data: textual and literary criticisms, philology, cognitive sciences, archaeology, art history, and social and anthropological theories.
Our second session will cover myth in polemical literature and heresiology. Much of biblical literature is also polemical literature, a genre that attempts to undermine and/or vilify opponents, categorizing perceived insiders as outsiders. One biblical writer accused his opponents of using “myths and endless genealogies” (1 Tim 1:4). Significantly, polemicists of all kinds also used myths to frame and defame their opponents; for instance myths of succession (fictive teacher-disciple relationships), myths of licentiousness (wild sexual acts under cover of night), fall myths attacking the putative founder of a movement (e.g., the founder falls from grace due to lust, jealousy, or for failing to obtain a leadership position), and so on. For this session, accordingly, we invite papers that reflect on myth employed for polemical or heresiological purposes. We encourage, that is, reflection on polemicists themselves as prolific and creative mythmakers, to theorize specifically what it meant for them to weaponize myth and why (or why not) it proved effective.
Program Unit Chairs
|