Eine kleine Nachleben
Many Higgaion readers will recall (and the rest of you will now learn) that my current research project focuses on the use, influence, and impact of the book of Genesis in and on Western culture, broadly conceived. In the course of that study, I’ve encountered several scholars and sources that use the term Nachleben—roughly, “posthumous influence”—to describe biblical texts’ impact in the synagogue, church, and wider society. At least one excellent scholar, writing in English, has even used the term “afterlives” to name post-compositional uses of a biblical text.
I don’t like the term Nachleben, or the “life cycle” metaphor that controls it.
To speak of a text’s—any text’s—influence on generations after its author’s or authors’ lifetime(s) implies that texts “die” at just about the same time they are born. They gestate in the minds of their authors and “die” upon publication, just when they begin to see use. I suppose one could try to conceive of a text’s “lifetime” as the period during which it is being put to its originally intended use. Perhaps a newspaper “dies” when it is no longer read, but placed in a birdcage, for example. Then again, other copies of that same newspaper “live on” in libraries somewhere else. And we find it notoriously difficult to specify the “originally intended uses” of texts, biblical and otherwise, and certainly the early Christians put Jewish scriptures to different uses than their Jewish contemporaries. Were those scriptures “dead” by the time the gospels were written?

The construction of an automobile probably provides a better metaphor. A car’s parts may come from a wide variety of sources, all brought to a single manufacturing plant, where the car itself takes shape. The car rolls off the assembly line, someone buys it and takes delivery, and starts using it. Nobody would consider the car “dead” at that point—much less that particular model when considered in the abstract. As long as somebody’s using the car (or any instance of that model car), the car isn’t “dead.”
So I invite you to join me in preferring the word Wirkungsgeschichte—”history of effects”—to Nachleben—”posthumous influence”—when you need a German word to describe the influence and impact of a biblical text in any and all periods after its composition. Those of us who don’t feel like we need a German word can follow James Kugel’s lead and talk about the “career” of a text instead of its “afterlives.”
What do you say?
3 comments Christopher Heard | biblical interpretation (methods), writing
I can hardly believe that I’ve actually gone for almost two months without posting anything at all to Higgaion. I’ve not lost interest, but have simply found that my offline life—and my other online lives—have eaten up the time that I might once have used for blogging, and for reading other people’s blogs. Throughout May, I taught a Hebrew readings course, and then, immediately upon completing some committee work and a couple of long-overdue projects, I had to begin preparing for a professional conference and a family vacation. The word “busy” hardly seems adequate.

