Original Research - Special Collection: Spirituality

Intertextuality: On the use of the Bible in mystical texts

Kees Waaijman
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 66, No 1 | a895 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v66i1.895 | © 2010 Kees Waaijman | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 10 June 2010 | Published: 05 November 2010

About the author(s)

Kees Waaijman, Radboud University University of the Free State, Netherlands

Abstract

This article discussed the use of the Bible in mystical texts by focusing on intertextuality as a literary approach which analyses the intersection of texts. It investigated how mystical texts, as phenotexts, relate to the Bible as archetext: firstly, the intertextual relations affect the surface of the text in a mono-causal way and secondly, they govern the production of meaning reciprocally. The article also discussed forms of intersection (quotations, collage, allusions and reproduction) before it analysed the three intertextual strategies producing meaning: participation, detachment and change or rearrangement. Finally, six functions and dimensions of meaning were delineated in the intertextual dynamic between the Bible and the mystical texts. In these the Bible serves as an authoritative framework for argumentation, as a guide and blueprint of the mystical way, as a vocabulary of mystical experience, as an initiation into the divine infinity, as the place of mystical transformation in love and as the articulation of transformation in glory.

Keywords

intertextuality; mystical texts; spirituality; quotations; collage; allusions; reproduction

Metrics

Total abstract views: 5542
Total article views: 10406

 

Crossref Citations

1. Malachi 4:4−6 (Heb 3:22−24) as a point of convergence in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible: A consideration of the intra and intertextual relationships
S.D. Snyman
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies  vol: 68  issue: 1  year: 2012  
doi: 10.4102/hts.v68i1.1195