Society of Biblical Literature Annual National Conference, San Antonio, Texas, United States, November 17–21, 2023

Utopian literature constructs a new world governed by alternative temporalities and laws that envisions a better future.1 The literary structure of utopia varies, so too does the hermeneutical perspective of its readers, as Kenneth M. Roemer argues.2 Utopias invite readers to imagine a different set of circumstances as a challenge to their present reality; however, interpreting Utopia, especially Utopia in ancient literature, is a fraught task. Lyman Tower Sargent explains that the difficulty arises not only in the chronological and conceptual distance between the modern reader and the ancient text, but also in a reductionist impulse to apply a one-dimensional definition of Utopia to a multidimensional text.3 Over the course of three sessions—which featured scholarly papers, respondents, and hearty discussions—the Utopian Studies Unit at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Conference (SBL) sought to engage these frameworks for understanding Utopia by addressing the literary strategies involved in biblical utopias as well as the ways in which communities have used this literature in their own reception and construction of utopian projects.4 Not only did these sessions tread previously lightly worn ground but also they introduced a number of critical questions regarding the terms we use and the significance of our research as biblical scholars.“Utopian temporality is an important, yet largely underdeveloped topic within utopian studies,” Jonathan Kaplan (University of Texas at Austin) contended in the first session. As he sees it, the temporality at work within a piece of utopian literature not only gives texture to the portrayal of utopia but also signals the aspirational character of the utopia to its interpreters. In other words, utopian literature can employ temporality as a way to “speak of values, revealing an ethical and religious stance” which imposes itself upon the reader and invites them to consider its new-world vision.5 Kaplan picks up on how some Second Temple Judaic texts (e.g., Jubilees, Daniel, 11QMelchizedek, Testament of Levi 17, and 4QJeremiah Apocryphon) receive the chronology of Leviticus 25’s utopian vision in the service of constructing new utopian visions for their contexts. The sabbath-jubilee cycle found in Leviticus (seven-, forty-nine-, and fifty-year periods) is reemployed within these texts either as a utopian chronotope—understood in Bakhtinian terms as a constitutive category of literature6—or as a literary device indicating imminent social transformation. So, too, Kaplan argued, the authors of these texts use the Levitical jubilee cycle, of which temporality is part and parcel, both to construct a utopian temporal structure and to frame their own discourse. It is for this reason that Kaplan suggests these texts engage in “nostalgic temporality.”This nostalgic impulse—reaching back to the past and reusing older temporal structures in order to signal utopian interpretive protocols—relates to what Gary Wilder has described as an “immanent critique of the untimely present.”7 Although Wilder develops this notion in his description of early Marxist utopianism that rejected an idealized past yet drew upon precapitalist notions in order to generate critique of the capitalist present, Matthias Henze (Rice University), in his presentation for this session, proposed a similar framing for early Jewish apocalyptic texts. In 2 Baruch, Henze argues, the past is reimagined—not remembered—and this past is reconstructed to serve the utopian ideals of the writer in the present. Paying attention to the temporality within 2 Baruch, Henze argues, attunes us to an important aspect of early Jewish apocalypse that might be missed otherwise; namely, that apocalyptic writers engaged in creative uses of temporality to reconstruct an imagined past that can serve as a bridge for the present into a “futurable future.”8Utopian literature reemploys temporal structures, re-presents the past as a means of critiquing the present. Moreover, as Sophia R. C. Johnson (Cambridge University) argued in the case of the book of Deuteronomy, utopian literature can also blend the past, present, and future to present the narrative as a “uchronia” (literally, “no time”), both within and without history, to ensure that the Deuteronomic law remains a timeless ideal for its audiences. Deuteronomy 4 presents the giving of the law through Moses as a liminal moment, past yet present, which invites the audience to reimagine and rewrite the future of Deuteronomy’s Israel.These perspectives demonstrate the significance that temporality can have for utopian hermeneutical frameworks. But do utopias envision “utopian time”—that is, an unreal yet ideal world in which time itself functions ideally—or do they employ temporal notions as a rhetorical strategy to promote their ideal future? Blending the past and present, or reimagining the past, to promote an idealized future would seem to fall in the latter category, whereas Kaplan’s “nostalgic temporality” would seem to engage in the former. Distinguishing a utopian texts’ rhetorical use of time from its portrayal of how time might operate in its utopian vision seems to be an important aspect of this discussion, and a topic that this session only began to broach.The primary focus of the papers and discussion in the second session revolved around the question of whether Deuteronomy can be read as a utopia and, if so, what are the contours of that utopian vision. Deuteronomy portrays Moses standing before the people of Israel, just prior to their entering the Promised Land, and delivering a new set of instructions that seem to represent an idealized vision of Israelite society, but the question remains: what kind of utopia is presented?Each scholar importantly made the distinction between utopia and perfection. The definition provided by Gerrie Snyman seems to capture best how the terms “utopia” and “utopian” were used throughout the session:A utopian vision levies its critique of the present via the representation of an alternative or constructed state of affairs, yet within that critique and alternative worldmaking we can see vestiges of the historical contexts in which they were composed. For example, Ehud Ben Zvi (University of Alberta) and Jonathan Kaplan both pointed out that within Deuteronomy’s utopian vision, the existence of debt-slavery—and perhaps even chattel slavery—persists. Though Deuteronomy envisions a world in which economic justice prevails, the mechanisms by which it articulates that vision involve economic systems that we might describe—and certainly enslaved persons would describe—as imperfect. This does not detract from Deuteronomy’s portrayal of utopia; however, it does mean that in its vision of an ideal society these mechanisms, including the shemiṭṭah (שׁמטה “release”) for debt-slaves after six years of service (Deut 15:1–6), remain. One might argue that such an inclusion excludes Deuteronomy from functioning as a utopia, because it includes injustice (slavery) in its idealized vision. How can an ideal world include aspects that allow harm or inequity?The decoupling of utopia from perfection does not entirely answer this question. Our understanding of “perfection” is just as contextually constructed as the ancients’ perspective, thus what we define as perfect or imperfect is irrelevant to how the ancients may have understood it. Rather, it is more helpful to consider this issue as a question of group identity and self-representation, to ask: this text is a utopia for whom? It may be that the utopian texts portray what the original authors intended to portray as a “perfect” world; nevertheless, what we encounter as moderns reading the text is not that original intention but rather the literary representation of a perfect world for a particular people. In the case of Deuteronomy, read as a utopia for ancient Israelites, an ideal world involves the subjugation of “outsiders” to slavery coupled with the perceived generosity of periodically releasing them.This issue of representation and perfection raises the question of “futurability.” To what extent does Deuteronomy expect its utopian vision to be enacted? This is a question Steven Schweitzer (Bethany Theological Seminary) sought to address, arguing that Deuteronomy itself seems to be self-referential in its presentation of an imminent yet unrealizable state of affairs. The future idyllic world remains an elusive future while imposing its values and calls to action upon the present reader.10 This would relate to Johnson’s earlier argument about uchronia in Deuteronomy—the ever elusive yet accessible future portrayed in Deuteronomy is facilitated by its blending of temporal markers within the text to create an abstracted, timeless ideal.In light of this discussion, the question of whether Deuteronomy represents a “high” or “low” utopia—that is, whether it intends its world to be enacted or not—seems to miss the literary function of temporality within its utopian framework. In other words, read through a critical utopian lens, Deuteronomy can be understood as imagining a future that is unrealizable yet presenting it in such a way as to be accessible and affective for later readers. In other words, it projects a perfect world to an imperfect situation to engage the imagination and inspire action in line with its moral and ethical vision.The historicity of Deuteronomy, and its significance with its historical context still lurks in the shadows. As presenter Madhavi Nevader (University of St. Andrews) quipped, “history may still need to bear its fangs.” Likewise, Nathan MacDonald (Cambridge), a respondent in the second session, argued that, because the biblical scholar is not afforded the precise historical context of Deuteronomy’s composition, historical reconstructions based on Deuteronomy are doubly fraught, due to both the uncertain provenance as well as its utopian framing of history.Employing literary and historically situated analysis, Jeffrey Stackert has recently called into question the real legal status of Deuteronomy’s law code. Stackert, drawing on the work of Barbara Herrnstein Smith, has argued that “[i]n their primary reference, then, literary works are not actual utterances of real beings in real historical situations with specific audiences; nor do they contain such utterances. Accordingly, they cannot be measured in direct relation to the real world.”11 Stackert’s point here is that the interpreter of a literary work, especially an ancient literary work, must distinguish between real and fictive discourse.12 Real discourse occurs in the material world with living beings in real time; fictive discourse—that which we find in literature—is representational in nature, and therefore historical reconstructions based on literature are fraught and must be conducted carefully.This distinction between real and fictive discourse is relevant for the discussion of Deuteronomy as utopia. Utopian literature is already highly creative and generative of alternative conceptions of the world, so reading Deuteronomy as utopian will further complicate any historical reconstructions we might attempt to make based on its contents. Frauke Uhlenbruch states, “[t]he first obvious problem is that the utopia does not usually give a realistic image of the writer’s society . . . historical reality is the blind spot behind the utopian text, visible to some extent but not in focus.”13 If the legal codes within Deuteronomy were not necessarily meant to be enacted at the societal level, it may also be the case that its utopian aspects were also included not to prescribe particular behavior but to inspire moral-ethical reflection upon the reader’s own present.Attempting to read Deuteronomy’s utopian framework historico-critically is difficult, but understanding it as a utopia may illuminate other aspects of its context while also complicating scholarly assumptions. For example, Nevader argued fairly straightforwardly that Deuteronomy is a utopia, as it satisfies most if not all the scholarly criteria that have been put forward for identifying a text as such; however, she argued that treating Deuteronomy as utopia helps to untether the text from common historical-critical positions—for example, that Deuteronomy is closely connected to Josiah (7th century BCE) or that Deuteronomy was composed as protest or polemical literature in reaction to Assyrian dominance—and opens space to consider the text in different historical contexts.14 In other words, reading Deuteronomy’s utopia as generative of moral-ethical reflection upon the present rather than prescription allows it to be engaged and employed in sociohistorical contexts that fall outside the purview of its original authors. History will still need to bear its fangs in the end, but reading Deuteronomy as utopia is a helpful step toward scholarly consideration of other alternatives.Moving away from utopia in Deuteronomy, the third session focused primarily on the notion of dystopia in biblical texts. Dorothea Erbele-Küster (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz) considered the contours of the book of Joel in light of apocalypso readings to illustrate a geocentric focus to Joel’s prophetic outlook.15 As Joel’s dystopia orients its audience to the locusts, the lowing of the cows, and even the lamenting of the earth itself, it challenges anthropocentric assumptions and draws readers toward its redemptive outlook. Kenneth Bergland (Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies), through an analysis of Isaiah 24, suggested that this prophetical book juxtaposes dystopic and utopic imagery as a literary device to convey a dialectic view of divine involvement and hiddenness in the world.Both presentations in this session helpfully raised questions regarding what we consider the literary function of dystopia in comparison to utopia. Is dystopian literature simply a paragon of horrific imagery set against the backdrop of a writer’s present circumstances as a harbinger of what’s to come? Should dystopia be understood primarily in relation to failed or “flawed” utopia?16 For Bergland, Emma Wasserman (Rutgers) argued, dystopia seems to be anti-utopia whereas Erbele-Küster suggested that dystopia can function to promote a “pantopia,” understood as a good place for all people, not simply a delimited group within a utopian framework.To this author, dystopia functions rather differently than utopia on a literary/rhetorical level. Utopia, on the one hand, presents an ideal future predicated on the changing of certain aspects of its present society. Dystopia, on the other hand, presents a horrific world predicated on aspects of present society not changing or becoming exacerbated. Dystopia, then, seems to function more as a fear-evoking genre to inspire reflection and action whereas utopia seems to play on affectations of hope or optimism.The idea that utopian elements are present within ancient biblical texts is not new. However, each session at SBL 2023 demonstrated clearly that there is still much work to be done. For example, what is the place of the disabled body within biblical utopian or dystopian imagery? When Deuteronomy 28:29, for example, threatens a dystopian future wherein the people will “grope about as blind,” to what extent does it present the view that disability is akin to being cursed by the divine? Similarly, when Isa 29:18 envisions an ideal future in which “the deaf shall hear and the eyes of the blind shall see,” is this a utopian vision that erases disability? What place, then, does the body have in these visions of the future?Second, how can utopias of this nature be “enacted” or “inspire action” for its readers? Visions of divine intervention to establish utopian systems seem to divorce the material situation from human activity and thus hamper human exercise in realizing the utopian vision. How human and divine activity are thought to relate in biblical utopian visions is an important topic raised by the sessions at SBL 2023 and deserves more attention from scholars moving forward. More than reductionistic portrayals of a golden age or a perfect world, as is sometimes imagined concerning biblical utopia, the outcome of these sessions was a deeply nuanced appreciation for the complexity and the contours of biblical utopias. For biblical scholars, it was perhaps a utopian glimpse into a burgeoning field that takes seriously the interpretive task and taking part in engaging all that the ancients have left behind for us.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.