Language:
English
Year of publication:
2021
Titel der Quelle:
The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2021) 145-161
Keywords:
Bible. Influence
;
Creation
;
Popular culture
Abstract:
The biblical creation accounts have always held the interest of interpreters, but during the history of the United States, major social and scientific changes have framed and profoundly influenced interpretations. Study of the reception history of the early chapters of Genesis provides ample illustration of the mutual interplay of influence between scriptural text and culture, artist and consumer, science and society, in a tangled web whose threads help us to understand our history and ultimately ourselves, as well as hopefully the texts in Genesis. There is benefit to focusing on music, television, film, and visual art that engages with the text of Genesis as well as with controversies about those stories at the divergence between those sacred texts as traditionally understood and aspects of modern life including (but not limited to) the natural sciences. In doing so we can obtain a clearer picture of the cultural impact and importance of Genesis and issues surrounding its interpretation than is easily accessible through a direct look at debates about either the text or modern science. The controversies themselves are often so entangled and heated as to thwart attempts at analysis. The ripples of broader cultural impact on the arts, and in genres of storytelling such as science fiction, illuminate the bigger picture as well as clarifying what aspects of the interpretation of these texts persist in driving controversy and maintaining the attention of North American culture in particular.
DOI:
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190461416.013.9
URL:
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