Retellings: The Bible In Literature, Music, Art And Film

Retellings: e Bible in Literature, Music, Art and Film Retellings: e Bible in Literature, Music, Art and Film Edited by J. Cheryl Exum LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 Also published as Volume 15, No. 4-5 (2007) of Brill’s journal Biblical Interpretation. is book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-04-16572-4 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, e Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands F. Landy / Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007) 351-376 v Contents Editorial Preface ............................................................................. The Bible in Literature Francis Landy Noah’s Ark and Mrs. Monkey ................................................... Mikael Sjöberg Jephthah’s Daughter as Object of Desire or Feminist Icon ......... Anthony Swindell Latecomers: Four Novelists Rewrite the Bible ............................ The Bible in Music Peter McGrail Eroticism, Death and Redemption: e Operatic Construct of the Biblical Femme Fatale ....................................................... Helen Leneman Re-visioning a Biblical Story through Libretto and Music: Debora e Jaele by Ildebrando Pizzetti .......................................... Andrew Davies Oratorio as Exegesis: e Use of the Book of Isaiah in Handel’s Messiah ...................................................................................... vii 1 27 45 55 78 114 The Bible in Art and Film Martin O’Kane ‘e Bosom of Abraham’ (Luke 16:22): Father Abraham in the Visual Imagination ................................................................... Eric S. Christianson e Big Sleep: Strategic Ambiguity in Judges 4-5 and in Classic film noir ..................................................................................... 135 List of Contributors ....................................................................... 199 169 As the book and journal versions were printed concurrently, double page numbers were inserted. e page numbers in the above table of contents refer to the bracketed page numbers in the following pages. vi Editorial Preface Editorial Preface e Bible has played an inspirational role in the literature, music and art of Western culture for centuries, and the various treatments the Bible has received in literature, music and the visual arts have, in turn, influenced the way the Bible is read. From its earliest beginnings, film has entered the picture as another influential medium for bringing biblical stories and characters to life for millions of viewers, many of whom have little knowledge of the Bible itself. In recent years biblical scholars and students have become increasingly interested in studying retellings of biblical stories in the arts, not only for their relation to the biblical text but also for the ‘story’ they have to tell (or, if they are not strictly ‘retellings’, for the light they might shed on the biblical text). Analysing retellings based on biblical characters or stories is not a matter of l