Job 28: Cognition in Context (Biblical Interpretation Series)
by: Ellen J. Van Wolde
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year: 2003
pages: 390
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This volume deals with the song of wisdom in Job 28 as it is analysed by scholars in biblical exegesis, Hebrew lexicography and cognitive linguistics. A colloquium (organised by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam 2002) of experts in these three disciplines showed that exploring the common ground is worthwhile. The proceedings of this conference presented here, under the title ‘Job 28. Cognition in Context’ not only indicate the possibilities of Hebrew semantics and cognitive approaches to the Hebrew Bible but rather severely expose the unsatisfactory simplicity with which the bifurcation of so-called "historical" and "literary" approaches to or readings of the biblical text is still regarded in the exegetical disciplines.
Review:
SUMMARY
This book collects together papers presented at a colloquium where scholars in the fields of biblical exegesis, Hebrew lexicography and cognitive linguistics reflected on the wisdom poem in Job 28, Some of the contributions are fairly standard approaches to the biblical text (though no less valuable for that!) by well-known biblical scholars; others are rather technical linguistic studies with little or no explicit connection to Job 28, written by eminent linguists, A number of chapters - by both biblical scholars and linguists - are explicitly inter-disciplinary. Overall the book belps those of us engaged in Biblical Studies to engage with cognitive linguistics and demonstrates something of the value of such inter-disciplinary work for better understanding of how biblical texts 'work' as well as what they 'mean'. This is a valuable volume, but is rather heavy going at times for those not well acquainted with cognitive linguistics,
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Dieses Buch ist eine Sammlung von Vortragen, die auf einem Kolloquium gehalten wurden, auf dem Gelehrte aus den Gebieten der biblischen Exegese, der hebräiscben Lexikographie und der kognitiven Linguistik über das Weisheitsgedicht aus Hiob 28 reflektierten. Einige der Beitrage bringen gewohnte Ansätze zum biblischen Text aus der Feder bekannter Exegeten (sind aber desbalb nicht weniger wert!), andere sind ziemlich technische linguistische Studien mit wenig oder keiner expliziten Verbindung zu Hiob 28 aus der Feder bervorragender Linguisten. Mehrere Kapitel - sowohl von Exegeten als auch von Linguisten - sind explizit interdisziplinar. Insgesamt hilft das Buch denjenigen unter uns, die sich mit den Bibelwissenscbaften beschaftigen, sich mit der kognitiven Linguistik auseinanderzusetzen, und es zeigt etwas von dem Wert interdisziplinarer Arbeit fur ein besseres Verständnis davon, wie biblische Texte ,,funktionieren" und was sie ,,bedeuten". Es ist ein wertvoller Band, aber zeitweise schwere Lektüre für denjenigen, der mit kognitiver Linguistik nicht gut vertraut ist.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet ouvrage reprend des exposés présentés lors d'un colloque où des spécialistes de I'exégèse biblique, de la lexicographie hébraïque et de la linguistique cognitive ont réfléchi sur le poème traitant de la sagesse en Job 28. Certaines contributions de biblistes bien connus suivent les approches habituelles du texte biblique (ce qui ne les dépouille pas pour autant de valeur). D'autres, émanant de linguistes éminents, constituent des études linguistiques plutôt techniques presentant peu de rapport, ou pas de liens explicites, avec Job 28. Plusieurs chapitres rédigés à la fois par des biblistes et des linguistes se veulent interdisciplinaires. Dans I'ensemble, cet ouvrage aide les biblistes à tirer profit de la linguistique cognitive et démontre qu'il y à quelque utilité à ce genre de travail interdisciplinaire pour une meilleure comprehension de la manière dont les textes bibliques « fonctionnent » en même temps que de ce qu'ils « signifient ». L'ouvrage reste cependant parfois difficile pour quelqu'un qui n'est pas familiarise avec la linguistique cognitive.
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This book collects together papers presented at a colloquium in Amsterdam in April 2002 at which scholars in the fields of biblical exegesis, Hebrew lexicography and cognitive linguistics reflected on the wisdom poem in Job 28. Because of the inter-disciplinary nature of the colloquium and the resulting volume, for those of us engaged in Biblical Studies some of the material tackles questions with which we are already familiar and employs the kinds of methodologies we use ourselves. Other contributions, however, I found much more challenging because the methodology was alien and some of the concepts quite strange to me. At times this made the book very hard work; at other times it was exhilarating as I found myself looking at Job 28 (and thinking about other biblical texts) in new ways. In particular, it was exciting to stretch my rather meagre understanding of linguistics by engaging with the field of cognitive linguistics and seeing how such study can make significant contributions to our understanding of how biblical texts 'work'. Indeed, I have become increasingly interested ot simply in the question of what a text 'means', but about how it 'works' or what it 'does' to a reader, and this volume has certainly given me fresh material to work with and some new concepts to explore further.
The volume opens with a chapter from the editor; Ellen van Wolde, in which she engages in 'A Non-Cognitive and Cognitive Study of Job 28:1-11'. This chapter helpfully draws together more familiar approaches to the text (semantic and historical), with a cognitive approach and seeks 'to explain the usefulness of such cognitive study for biblical studies'. Van Wolde explains that 'cognitive linguists consider language as an expression of cognition and aim to describe the relation between language and human cognition'. Having laid the semantic and historical foundation in the first half of the chapter, she then goes on to show how Job 28:1-11 'represent a conceptualization or cognitive processing of the experienced world in the second half of the first millennium BCE'. This, she claims, forms 'the setting in which this text can be understood'. The result.' Van Wolde concludes that 'Job 28 is not only about "the place of wisdom"; it invites us to take up a new position. And the question of who can find wisdom, can be provisionally answered with: those who are able to give up their fixed point of view, their own categories and their limited concepts'. This is hardly startling, but it does nonetheless demonstrate how cognitive linguistics can be employed as an extra methodological tool in conjunction with other tools to refine our understanding of biblical texts.
The following chapters are a variety of more traditional biblical studies, by such well-known writers as David Clines, Takamitsu Muraoka, Edward Greenstein, Norman Habel and Carol Newsom and some linguistic studies whose immediate relevance to Job 28 is not always so obvious. Thus, for example, John Taylor (author of the recent OUP introduction to Cognitive Grammar) contributes a chapter on 'Categories and Concepts', in which he explores the difference between a conceptual approach to semantics as opposed to a 'dictionary'-type approach. For those interested in semantics (as I am!), this is a very interesting study, but its application to Job 28 is left to the reader to work out (though some applications sprung readily enough to my mind). The prolific writer on cognitive linguistics (e.g., the two volume, Foundatims of Cognitive Grammar), Ronald Langacker, produced a long chapter (the longest in the book!) entitled 'Context, Cognition, and Semantics: A Unified Dynamic Approach', in which he explores in great detail how the sentence 'The cat is on the mat' functions! Again, there is no direct application to Job 28. However, the following chapter by Arie Verhagen, 'Semantics, Inferential Cognition, and Understanding Text,' which complements Langacker's very well, consists of about two thirds theory and one third of application to Job 28. Other chapters make more of an effort to be cross-disciplinary: the chapters entitled 'Caught in a Web of Irony: Job and His Embarrassed God', by the linguist Dirk Geeraerts and 'World Building in Job 28: A Case of Conceptual Logic' by the biblical scholar Albert Kamp provide two good examples.
The volume concludes with two helpful and thoughtprovoking chapters. The first is by the biblical scholar James Loader who assesses the contribution of such interdisciplinary study for Biblical Studies, and Leo Noordman who does the same from the perspective of a linguist. In both cases the response is a positive one (though one suspects with Loader that the benefits may be great for biblical scholars than for linguists) and the value of drawing together Biblical and Hebrew Studies and Linguistics is affirmed. However, the warning is issued that few are likely to be competent across the disciplines which means there is a need for greater co-operation between the disciplines so that each can benefit from the work of the other.
Doug Ingram, Nottingham, Englan
