Body Language
Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible
by Jacqueline Vayntrub
(Yale University Press, 2026)
Performance, transmission, and corporeality were essential to ancient understandings of textuality. Far more than an aide-mémoire, written text constituted a powerful mechanism for capturing and transmitting embodied vocal presence. In this bold and provocative book, Jacqueline Vayntrub demonstrates how embedded concepts of embodied speechmaking shaped a tradition of aesthetics and interpretation in the Hebrew Bible.
For authors and readers alike, biblical texts functioned as vessels containing voices for posterity, preserving otherwise fleeting moments of performance and transporting audiences into an idealized or stylized past. Through incisive readings of passages from diverse genres and examinations of the social and material dimensions of speech in the ancient Near East, Vayntrub offers a striking reconceptualization of the biblical authors’ understanding of literary craft.
Persuasion and Performance
Cultural Immersions
Edited by Peter S. Perry and U-Wen Low
(Cascade 2026)
Rhetorical criticism and biblical performance criticism are natural partners in understanding communication of biblical texts. This collection of essays brings a diversity of scholars of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament together to orient graduate students and scholars interested in rhetorical and performance criticism to current methods and resources, including those offered by material remains, ritual, rhetorical handbooks, and ancient speeches and dramas. Each contribution immerses the reader into a cultural world rich with persuasion and performance.
“This collection convincingly repositions biblical performance criticism at the intersection of historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, ritual theory, and book history. It will be required reading for advancing biblical studies through any and all of these approaches.” -James W. Watts, Professor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University
Expanding Approaches to Bible Translation
Multimodal Perspectives
Edited by James A. Maxey
(Cascade, 2025)
The assertion in this book is that translation is as fundamental to biblical material as performance--both in its history as well as in its research approaches. Translation in this sense is more than a transferal of meaning from one linguistic system to another. Bible translation highlights innovative connections and conceptions to biblical texts, in their promulgation, reception, and ever-changing nature. A predominant theory used throughout this book is social semiotic multimodality. This communication theory informs an approach to translation that expands beyond words to other semiotic resources. Sign Language, embodied performance, social media, theater, materiality, and many other types of multimodal communications inform translation. It is important to understand that the Bible is a translated experience. Translation reflects the various ways in which the Bible has been mediated and appropriated throughout history. It follows, therefore, that Bible translation, as a global activity, has been and continues to be influenced by the political and economic flows of history. Race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and other elements of our social locations directly influence the enterprise and results of Bible translation.