Critical spatial approaches — particularly those informed by the scholarship of Lefebvre, Foucault, and Soja — have significantly impacted biblical scholarship over the last twenty years. However, these spatial approaches have been limited due to the methodological challenges inherent in transposing the social-scientific approaches of the aforementioned scholars to the task of biblical interpretation. This volume adapts conceptual metaphor theory as a methodological bridge to address such constraints. The first half of the volume begins by surveying the field of critical spatiality in biblical studies, arguing for the need for fresh methodological development. Thereafter, the volume delineates a particular critical spatial approach, inspired by Lefebvre and Foucault, for which conceptual metaphor theory is proposed as a methodological bridge. The second half of the volume begins by proposing the Psalms of Ascents as a case study upon which the method could be applied. It is then argued that the proposed method – if efficacious – should provide insight on corpus’ ‘Zion theology’ and its so-called pilgrimage character. Using the proposed method in conjunction with conventional historical-grammatical tools of poetic analysis, each psalm is analysed with regard to its metaphor and spatiality. The volume concludes that the case study demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed methods by allowing a rich reading of each psalm, especially by explicating the spatial narratives and/or spatial metaphorical conceptualisations that underlie each text, and providing fresh insight on the collection as a whole.
About the author
Jennifer Knust is Professor of Religious Studies. She specializes in early Christian history and the religions of the ancient Mediterranean.
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