Framing the Twelve
Paratexts, Prominence, and Parody
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Beschreibung
Andrew Meeson shows that Hosea and Malachi parody the same texts from outside the Twelve Prophets: the nation as unfaithful wife, the priest as fool, Israel as scheming Jacob. Read together, the two books frame the Twelve as a call to return to YHWH.
Andrew Meeson approaches the question of a frame for the Twelve Prophets in three ways. First, a 'frame' describes the boundary of a text. According to the documentary evidence for the Twelve, the paratextual presentation encourages its reception as a verbal entity bounded by Hosea and Malachi. Thus, in at least this sense, Hosea and Malachi can be described as a frame for the Twelve. A second approach to a 'frame' is investigating the exploitation of prominent peripheral positions of a text for hermeneutic potential. Comparative literature shows a marked propensity to use such framing devices in various types of texts with different compositional histories. In the Twelve, significant intertextual relationships link Hosea and Malachi, its peripheries. Both Hosea and Malachi parody the same texts from outside the Twelve to portray the object of their critique: the nation is an unfaithful wife urged to return to her first husband; the priest is a prototypical fool who must repent; Israel is scheming Jacob who must return to receive God's blessing as a gift. Such parodic intertextuality highlights a concept of a 'frame' for the Twelve, that is, a framework, or interpretive context, that shapes one's reading of the Twelve. The framing parodies heighten the Twelve's critique and encourage its reading within the framework of a call to return to YHWH. In all three senses, then, Hosea and Malachi form a deliberate frame for the Twelve.
Autor*in
Andrew Meeson
Born 1986; 2025 PhD from the University of St Andrews; Chaplain to the Bishop of Blackburn, UK.
Themen in »Framing the Twelve«
Book of the Twelve canon covenant framing hermeneutics Hosea intertextuality Israel Malachi Minor Prophets paratext parody prophetic literature reception history Twelve Prophets