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Document Details : Title: Giving Birth to Knowledge Subtitle: Creativity and Procreativity in Biblical Texts Author(s): JAMES, Elaine T. Journal: Biblica Volume: 104 Issue: 2 Date: 2023 Pages: 195-217 DOI: 10.2143/BIB.104.2.3292024 Abstract : This essay examines instances in the Hebrew Bible in which language of the womb and birth are used as metaphors for human intellective creativity. Informed by Christine Battersby’s classic work in feminist aesthetics, it argues that the female somatics of birth provides a conceptual motif for the cultural complex of human making, especially in moral censure, aesthetic contexts, and prophecy. After establishing the parameters of the metaphor, the essay reads Proverbs 8 with Hannah Arendt’s concept of 'natality', arguing that this poem about primordial wisdom offers a meditation on the emergence of thought itself. |
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