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August 21, 2009
Enjoy the best of Hebrew U.
Prof. explores "most incredible collections of texts ever created."
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
On Sept. 12 and 13, the best of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem comes to Vancouver. Among the featured speakers at the Stretch Your Mind series is Dr. Nili Wazana.
Wazana has studied many aspects of the Bible, including texts on geographical boundaries, cultural divisions, war laws, immigrants, the evil eye and magic.
"The Bible was not created ex nihilo – it is a product of its time and place," Wazana told the Independent in an e-mail interview. "In order to better understand it, its message and meaning, it is helpful to learn more about the world in which biblical authors lived and worked – what they carried as their cultural heritage, what they adopted and what was adapted, etc. Whenever I read a biblical text, I know I have only a piece of the picture, and if I can shed more light on it from extra-biblical sources, it adds more pieces to the 'puzzle.'"
She said, "Content wise, what interests me is the ideological and cultural aspects of the society which created these texts: what were their most important issues, what they had thought was significant for their lives. Ideological history is the common thread."
She added that she is also interested in "methodology: it is the feeling that the text is but a part of the whole (picture – I am again thinking of the puzzle metaphor) and that there is a way of adding more pieces to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Those gaps may be filled by sources from other contemporary societies or from later sources (i.e. rabbinical) which reveal some more of the message of the text."
While some of Wazana's research links the past with the present, she said, in reference to the topic of boundaries, about which she will speak when she is in Vancouver: "I am very careful with implications that the biblical texts have on contemporary conflicts. I think the Bible speaks in many voices, and almost any idea can find support in one or more of its texts. I do, however, hope that when people realize just how varied it is – reflecting the voices of Israelite society back then – they will be more open to a possibility of coexistence of many concepts and ideologies today."
Wazana describes the Bible as "a text which promises and fulfills – the more I learn it, the more I know that I am dedicating my life to one of the most incredible collections of texts ever created. Partly it is because of the religious role of the Bible in Jewish, Christian and Muslim societies, but mostly it is the text itself, which keeps surprising me with its originality and multi-layers of meaning and sophistication. It can (and does) contribute to almost all areas of study in the humanities: literature, language (think of the influence the translations of the Bible had on it), politics, history and more – they all touch on the Bible."
A religious person, Wazana explained that, paradoxically, "it is despite the fact that I am a religious person that I deal with the Bible as a text. I do not have any restrictions (religious or other) in the questions I ask the text: I do not assume in advance that it was written by a specific person or during a certain time as explicitly stated by the text itself (for example: Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] was definitely not written by King Solomon, opposite to the information given in the 'title' of the book), or transmitted by the rabbis.
"I am hugely interested in everything that is in it ... especially in what it has to teach us about the people who created it and for whom it was created."
When asked for a few of the lessons that readers should be taking from the Bible, Wazana said, "I do not consider myself a preacher or even an educator – I am very careful when stating lessons of 'right' or 'wrong.' Again, too many times in the past the Bible was used to back up various ideologies, some of which were extremely racist or misogynic or abusing.
"I think that if there is a lesson I can endorse, it is that there is no such thing as 'the Bible says X' – while that may be true, it is always not the whole truth. The Bible always says also much more on any given subject, so there rarely is one 'biblical' point of view on one subject."
To register for the Stretch Your Mind series, visit cfhu.org.
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