Additional praise for Derrida’s Bible: “This valuable volume represents a helpful shift of focus of current discussions of ‘Derrida and religion’ to ‘Derrida and the Bible,’ to the way in which this scrupu- lously close micro-reader of texts reads and helps us read Biblical texts, the assembled conglomerate of which is what is meant by ‘Derrida’s Bible.’ The collection shows superbly how ‘the Bible’ (like ‘Plato’), as a single overarching theological unity or an enabling ecclesiastical authorization, is exploded by a close—even ‘literalist’— reading which releases an avalanche of metaphors, puns, competing theologies, het- erogeneities, multiple layers of cut and paste authorship, good news and bad, awash in problems of interpretation and translation—in short, everything that Derrida predicts a ‘text’ (a ‘scripture’) would be. Yvonne Sherwood has produced an impor- tant collection for which everyone, readers of Derrida and readers of the Bible, will be grateful.” —John D. Caputo, Watson Professor of Religion, Syracuse University “Readers who imagine they already know what ‘Derrida’s Bible’ amounts to—a transcendental signified cast down to earth, Lucifer-like, here; gleeful greasing of the higher rungs of a Jacob’s ladder there—will be pleasantly surprised by this collection. The Derrida of the title is, for the most part, ‘later’ Derrida, increasingly irreducible to deconstruction, and certainly to deconstruction-by-numbers; and the readings of biblical texts showcased within are, at their best, correspondingly nuanced, surpris- ing, and consequential.” —Stephen D. Moore, author of Mark and Luke in Poststructuralist Perspectives: Jesus Begins to Write and Poststructuralism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross RELIGION/CULTURE/CRITIQUE Series editor: Elizabeth A. Castelli How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film Edited by Eric Runions (2003) Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India Edited by Anne Feldhaus (2003) Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making Edited by Brent S. Plate (2003) Derrida’s Bible (Reading a Page of Scripture with a Little Help from Derrida) Edited by Yvonne Sherwood (2004) Derrida’s Bible (Reading a Page of Scripture with a Little Help from Derrida) Edited by YVONNE SHERWOOD DERRIDA’SBIBLE © Yvonne Sherwood 2004. All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 and Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire,England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-6663-6 ISBN 978-1-137-09037-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-09037-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India. First edition:November 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2011 For Jacques Derrida Contents Series Editor’s Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Contributors xiii Introduction: Derrida’s Bible 1 Yvonne Sherwood beginnings 21 1. Between Genealogy and Virgin Birth: Origin and Originality in Matthew 23 Lee Danes writing, posting, erasing 37 2. Of Secretaries, Secrets, and Scrolls: Jeremiah 36 and the Irritating Word of God 39 Mark Brummitt 3. Postcards from the (Canon’s) Edge: The Pastoral Epistles and Derrida’s The Post Card 49 Robert Paul Seesengood 4. Erasing Amalek: Remembering to Forget with Derrida and Biblical Tradition 61 Brian M. Britt specters and messiahs 79 5. The Missing/Mystical Messiah: Melchizedek Among the Specters of Genesis 14 81 Alastair G. Hunter 6. Jerusalem and Memory: On a Long Parenthesis in Derrida’s Specters of Marx 99 David Jobling boundaries/hyphens/identity-markers 117 7. Shibboleth and the Ma(r)king of Culture: Judges 12 and the Monolingualism of the Other 119 Frank M. Yamada viii Contents 8. The Book of Esther: The Making and Unmaking of Jewish Identity 135 Dmitri M. Slivniak responsibilities, secrets, gifts 149 9. Triangulating Responsibility: How and Why Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael Offer and Refuse the Gift of Death, and to/from Whom 151 R. Christopher Heard 10. Preferring or not Preferring: Derrida on Bartleby as Kierkegaard’s Abraham 167 Oona Eisenstadt 11. Justice as Gift: Thinking Grace with the Help of Derrida 181 Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. 12. Trembling in the Dark: Derrida’s Mysterium Tremendumand the Gospel of Mark 199 Andrew P. Wilson 13. Death At the Gate: Who Let Him In?Responsibility for Death in the Wisdom of Solomon and Derrida 215 Marie Turner endings 229 14. The End of the World: Archive Fever, Qohelet 12:1–7, and Lamentations Rabbah 231 Francis Landy 15. Decomposing Qohelet 247 Jennifer L. Koosed 16. And Sarah Died 261 Yvonne Sherwood postscripts 293 17. Pardon Me... 295 Mary-Jane Rubenstein 18. Beliebigkeit 301 John Barton Appendix: Abstracts 305 Author Index 313 Reference Index 317 Series Editor’s Preface RELIGION/CULTURE/CRITIQUE is a series devoted to publishing work that addresses religion’s centrality to a wide range of settings and debates, both contemporary and historical, and that critically engages the category of “religion” itself. This series is conceived as a place where readers will be invited to explore how “religion”—whether embedded in texts, practices, communities, or ideologies—intersects with social and political interests, institutions, and identities. Derrida’s Bible (Reading a Page of Scripture with a Little Help from Derrida)brings together the work of scholars of religion, literature, philosophy, theology, and the Bible to explore two influential canons: the Bible and the oeuvreof Jacques Derrida. In the midst of continental philosophy’s famous (or, to some, notorious) turn toward religion, Derrida—as a reader of biblical texts, as the name most closely associated with the philosophical and literary practices of deconstruction, as a figure for “theory” as a whole—has inspired renewed attention among readers concerned with the place of religion, theology, and scripture in the current cultural situation. The title of this collection, Derrida’s Bible, invites us to consider both the character and nature of Derrida’s own Bible but also the shape of scriptural reading in a post-Derridean age. In the process of having produced their elegant readings attuned to (and sometimes in tension with) the writings of Jacques Derrida, the contributors to this book have both issued and answered invitations to engage in an ongoing conversation about theBible as a ghost in the machinery of contemporary culture. Derrida’s Bibleblurs the lines that so often separate different disciplinary enterprises, especially those lines that have (for ambivalent reasons) grown up between biblical studies and philosophy/theology. Thanks to Yvonne Sherwood’s deft conceptualizing and careful editorial work, Derrida’s Bible makes a compelling contribution to the project to which this series is dedicated. Elizabeth A. Castelli RELIGION/CULTURE/CRITIQUESeries Editor New York City May 2004 Acknowledgments The glimmer of the idea that became Derrida’s Bibleand the conference Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments(Toronto 2002) first occurred to me at a conference held at the University of Luton, England in 1995. (That conference was originally called, rather whimsically, Applied Derrida but was later changed, a little pink-facedly, to Applying to Derrida.) As the only representative of religion, let alone Bible, I was struck by unexpectedly enthusiastic responses to a little Bible study that Ipresented on Derrida and Hosea. I was particularly struck by the responses of the late Anthony Easthope (who I had never imagined as former attendee of Sunday School) and I remember with gratitude a bar conversation about the potential of Bible Study for Grown-Ups. Since then I have been deeply fortunate to find such a congenial set of colleagues and friends among whom to rethink what could be meant by ‘Bible’ and the act of inheriting Bible. To prevent the list sprawling inappropriately like some incontinent Oscar speech, I’ll confine myself on this occasion to the current members of the Reading, Theory and the Bible committee at the Society of Biblical Literature: Tim Beal, Deb Krause, Tod Linafelt, Stephen Moore, Hugh Pyper, Ken Stone. I am grateful to Elizabeth Castelli for ushering the book so painlessly into the Religion/Culture/Critique series and to Amanda Johnson, Laura Morrison, Erin Ivy, and Newgen for seeing it into print so efficiently. Above all, I want to express my gratitude to Richard Davie for his very underpaid and very patient sub-editing work. Without his assistance, Derrida’s Biblewould probably still be a pile of papers in my office, rather than the book you’re holding in your hand.