Home as Space and Text in the Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible, among its other functions, relates the journey of a people looking for a home. In biblical studies this concept of home is inseparable from the notion of exile. Previous scholarship has extensively researched the exilic experience, relying on socio-historical frameworks as well as literary and postmodern theory. In the majority of these studies, home is generally represented by its absence; it is considered a social category evoked by the text but ultimately existing outside of it. Building upon these insights, the current project takes a different starting point: it considers the actual home space, rather than the lack thereof. It also proposes a different approach, i.e. Text World Theory, focusing on the textual-conceptual home generated by the biblical text rather than on text-external reality. By means of a cognitive-stylistic analysis the study aims to gain insight into the biblical home space both in non-exilic and in exilic situations. Three specific aims steer the project: i) to determine the linguistic-literary characteristics of the textual home in the Hebrew Bible; ii) to analyze the modifications to this notion of home in relation to changing physical circumstances; and iii) to shed light on the role of cities in establishing a home in the text. Contributions will be twofold: i) the project offers insight into 'textual homes' and 'texts as homes' in the Hebrew Bible; and ii) it develops a Text World Theory framework tailored to the biblical text.

Keywords:SEMANTIC CHANGE, PLACEMENT

Disciplines:Language studies, Linguistics, Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Theory and methodology of literary studies, Other languages and literary studies