Text-based potentials of identification in the psalms of the Hebrew Bible

The immediacy of the psalms of the Hebrew Bible is a phenomenon frequently mentioned during all periods of scientific psalm research but has never been operationalised with adequate methods nor analysed systematically. This desideratum in current psalm research and the fact that the psalms have kept touching people throughout the centuries, thus bridging more than 2000 years of time as well as space and different cultures, marks the starting point for the research project. Immediacy is based on the fact that readers can identify with the situations, experiences, emotions, characters and movements expressed in the texts. Therefore, the project aims to find answers to the following research questions: Which aspects of identification can be found in the psalms of the Hebrew Bible and how do they function? The identification-process is a complex reading-phenomenon depending on three factors: (1) reader, (2) context and (3) text. For the analysis of text-based potentials of identification an innovative methodological approach is developed within the framework of the aesthetics of reception, based on a definition of the term identification. In literary studies identification with narrative texts means the adoption of a textual constructed focus concerning both the concrete space as well as time. So while the readers identify with this special focus, they become part of the narrated fictional world. This definition of identification is part of the narrative aesthetic illusion- phenomenon which refers to the fact that one does not just watch the world narrated in a text from a distance, but has the impression of being present in this possible world and of experiencing it in a way similar to experiencing ones own life. Six general principles of illusion-making in literary fiction within the framework of narrative aesthetic illusion have already been established. To analyse text-based identification-potentials, these principles will be methodically operationalised in terms of adequate questions, combined with methods already established within the exegesis and then aligned with the psalms. Before that, reasons are given to apply the principles of narrative aesthetic illusion developed within the framework of narrative texts to lyrics such as the psalms. After a well-grounded selection of the psalms using the formal criterion of the dominant narrating voice and after the text-analysis, theological as well as interdisciplinary benefits can be expected: an innovative procedure of adopting narrative methods for the interpretation of lyric texts in order to enrich the analysis of poetry; an extended understanding of metaphors in biblical scriptures because of their identification-potentials; a broader knowledge concerning emotions in biblical texts, as identification has very much to do with emotions evoked by the text and expressed in the text, and finally a broader theological understanding of the psalms and a deeper understanding of their immediacy.

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