Inter- & intra-textuality

INTRATEXTUALITY

Exploring the Unconscious of the Text

– Kent D. Palmer, Ph.D.

Intratextuality is opposed to Intertextuality. Intertextuality is the playing off of each other of various texts to produce a rich interpretive environment for our hermeneutic escapades. Intra-textuality on the other hand is the treating the given text or set of texts as a fractal landscape which we explore in detail with a full realization of their overlapping and interpenetrating internal contexts and signs that express concepts and archetypal motifs. What haunts these contextual niches and the signs that inhabit them is the unconscious of the text itself, not our unconscious, but the unconscious of the otherness of the text that comes from the dimensions of the artifact that are not fully controlled consciously by the author nor fully interpreted by the critic. This unconscious of the text may be referred to as its intratextuality in which the text itself becomes a general economy of contexts, situations, milieus, and in general metasystems of signification and meaning beyond the intent of  the author and beyond the interpretative capabilities of the critic who deal with the text in conventional ways, by writing and reading.

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– Luke Stamps

One of the most useful skills or habits that we can develop as interpreters of Holy Scripture is the ability to discern what biblical scholars call “intertextual” and “intratextual” connections. Behind both of these concepts is the observation that biblical passages not only directly quote but also allude toand echo other biblical passages.

Intertextuality is the biblical authors’ practice of quoting, alluding to, or echoing previous biblical revelation.  For example, Matthew creates an intertexual connection when he interprets the Holy Family’s departure from Egypt in the light of Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt I called my son,” Matthew 2:15).  He does the same thing when he echoes the eschatological promise of Ezekiel 36:23 (“I will vindicate the holiness of my great name”) in the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer (“May your name be hallowed/sanctified/vindicated as holy,” Matthew 6:9).  By making use of these verbal parallels, Matthew intends for his readers to understand the story of Jesus in the light of its Old Testament background.

Intratextuality is a biblical author’s practice of alluding to, echoing or foreshadowing passages within his own book. For example, Matthew’s version of the Last Supper seems to deliberately echo his account of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus performs the same actions—even in the same order—in both accounts: he takes the bread, says a blessing, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples (Matthew 14:19-20; 26:26; cf. Luke 24:30-31).  Matthew seems to want his readers to think of these two stories together: the same Jesus who miraculously met the physical needs of the five thousand (which itself involves an intertextual connection back to the provision of manna in the wilderness) is now giving his own body for the spiritual nourishment of his people.

So what is the point of these connections? Are they merely fun little discoveries for literarily-minded readers? To be sure, there is a real danger for those who have been exposed to the rich resources of biblical theology: we can tempted to read the Bible less as a direct word from the Risen Christ to his church and more as an intellectual puzzle to be solved by the astute interpreter.  But if we are reading Scripture with the appropriate spiritual “posture,” we can see these inter/intra-textual relations for what they are: divinely inspired spotlights onto the theological meaning of God’s redemptive acts.