Trauma Theory and Biblical Studies

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, several scholars have explored the use of trauma theory as an interpretive lens to understand some of the most difficult and painful texts in the Bible. The use of trauma theory does not constitute a method of interpretation but a frame of reference that, when coupled with other methodologies (e.g., psychology, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, refugee studies, etc.), can yield innovative results. While trauma theory has proven useful in the study of exilic texts in particular, scholars have ventured beyond the narrower concern of exilic literature, investigating the use of trauma theory for other portions of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. The impact of trauma is a significant component of the human condition that lies beneath the production of a wide variety of biblical texts.

The Book of Jonah in Recent Research

“…Recent Jonah research has continued to produce extensive literature on its relationship to the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles and the authors' life under Persian rule, though grounded in broader theoretical disciplines like Postcolonial Studies provoked by thinkers like Edward Said and Homi Bhabha (Crowell 2009). Postcolonial Studies attend to the investigation of dominating colonial powers and their effects on colonized persons, often overlapping with feminist, liberation, and trauma approaches (Garber 2015). While previous scholarship often understood the book in relation to the Assyrian or Babylonian exile due to the narrative's focus on Nineveh, more recent scholarship has shifted towards the Persian and early Hellenistic periods.…”

Moral Injury and Biblical Studies: An Early Sampling of Research and Emerging Trends

“…The recent exploration of moral injury within biblical studies fits into the broader context of biblical criticism’s use of perspectives from psychology in general and trauma theory in particular (on psychological biblical criticism overall, see Kille 2001). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, biblical scholars studying the experience of the Babylonian exile and the materials resulting from or shaped by it in the Hebrew Bible began to apply insights from trauma theory to yield new interpretations (for a survey of research on trauma theory and biblical studies, see Garber 2015; for a critical review of biblical scholarship’s use of trauma theory, see Janzen 2019a). Some key works focus on the dynamics of trauma in relationship to the experience of the exile and the formation of biblical texts generally (Smith-Christopher 1997, 2002; Carr 2014; Janzen 2013, 2019b).…”

Engaging Westermann and the Assumptive World

“…4. For a discussion of the utility of trauma as a hermeneutical lens for biblical studies, see Frechette and Boase (2016) and Garber (2015). There is an emerging debate as to the efficacy of utilising different frameworks within the field, especially as it relates to models drawn from literary and cultural studies and those from within a sociological framework.…”