The Hebrew Bible in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry

This book discusses 20th- and 21st-centuries’ literary retellings of biblical texts, focusing on how fiction and poetry fill the extant narrative gaps present in the often-sparse biblical accounts and align the narratives with theological and/or cultural expectations of modern interpreting communities.

The chapters, written by an international group of scholars, explore biblical retellings in a variety of modern languages, ranging from Korean and Chinese to Hebrew and Arabic. Most of the contributions deal with retellings of the narrative books (Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, Daniel), but a few are devoted to prophetic (Hosea) and poetic (Psalms) ones. Another set of articles looks beyond specific biblical books and instead analyses how the Bible has been retold in different literary genres (Children and YA literature, sci-fi and fantasy, Christian Inspiration fiction) and in modern political discourse (North and South Korea). All the chapters further highlight how literary retellings of the Bible form two-way movements. They reveal the often-subversive quality of literary retellings: retellings not only emphasise those nuances in the biblical texts that create unease but also problematise their standpoint and question their moral and theological message.

The Hebrew Bible in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry is suitable for students and scholars of biblical studies working on intertextuality and reception history. It is also of interest to those working on comparative literature, particularly with regards to the Hebrew Bible in popular culture and literature.

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer is Professor in Old Testament Exegesis at ALT School of Theology, Sweden, and Research Associate at the Department of Old Testament and Hebrew Scripture, University of Pretoria, South Africa. She has published several monographs and edited volumes on Isaiah and Zechariah, a reception-historical commentary on Jonah (Jonah through the Centuries, 2021), as well as a monograph devoted to Jonathan in modern literature (In Search of Jonathan, 2022).