Reading the Bible with Style: A Case for Cognitive Stylistics as a Reading Guide

Lecture by Dr. Karolien Vermeulen (University of Antwerp)

The Bible has been interpreted in various ways and studied through a myriad of lenses. However, how we interpret its text depends, first and foremost, upon how we read that text. Cognitive stylistics is a discipline that focuses precisely on this reading process. Drawing on insights from linguistics and cognitive science it unravels what happens when a reader engages with a text, in this particular case the Bible text. The method considers both the individuality of a reader (with their own experiences, emotions, and knowledge) and the shared corporeality of readers (referred to with the term ‘embodiment’ in research). Both elements significantly affect the reading and interpretation process. Cognitive stylistics
allows for bridging the gap between those who originally composed the biblical text and its current-day readers. At the same time, reading is a fundamental part of many other methodologies in biblical studies, such that a cognitive-stylistic analysis is, by definition, complementary to the existing research paradigms while also simultaneously challenging them.
In this lecture, Karolien Vermeulen demonstrates with multiple examples from the Hebrew Bible how paying attention to reading and style offers insight into both the biblical text and its interpretation history. She furthermore presents a podcast episode that was made on the occasion of the forthcoming publication of the volume "How We Read the Bible: A
Guide to Scripture’s Style and Meaning", which she co-authored with Elizabeth Hayes (Eerdmans, 2022).

Karolien Vermeulen is FWO Postdoctoral Fellow (Research Foundation Flanders) at the Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp. Her research focuses on meaning construal in the Hebrew Bible and the role of various linguistic-stylistic elements in that process. She has published on the style of the biblical text, particularly on wordplay, metaphor, performative language, and spatial imagination. Recent publications include "Conceptualizing Biblical Cities: A Stylistic Study" (Palgrave McMillan 2020), “Sacred Texts,” in Analysing Religious Discourse (ed. Stephen Pihlaja; Cambridge University Press, 2021); and “Urban Metaphors: Conceptual and Literary Depictions of Cities in the Bible,” in Language in Place: Stylistic Perspectives on Landscape, Place and Environment (ed. Daniela F. Virdis, Elisabetta Zurru, and Ernestine Lahey; John Benjamins, 2021). She is currently preparing a monograph on home space as imagined and construed in the Hebrew Bible.