This project is a rhetorical-intertextual study of Psalm 90. It is also a study of the act of reading as a recursive, self-reflexive, self-organizing, and emergent process. The language of Psalm 90 forms a content chiasm, which can be read as a two-part structure or as a triptych organized around human experiences of divine wrath and compassion. Unique allusion to Moses in the psalms superscription and shared language with Exod 32:12 evoke a reading of this poetic structure in the shape of a mountain: a reinscribed Sinai. As the mountain of God, Psalm 90 becomes a space to be traversed. Beginning and ending in the open-endedness of God, reading ascends through a lament on themes of temporality and transience, life and death; passes through figurations of divine burning; and descends into an imperative world sated in the moment at hand by God. To read Psalm 90 in this way is to returnwith a difference. The readerly move brings other Sinai passages into play, elaborating a text more evocatively associated with the figure of Moses. It addresses a complex text with a reading process that is mobile, mutable, and relational in every sense. It provides for a reading of structure that enacts the change Psalm 90 reckons as wisdom while also suggesting a model for the linguistic construction of meaning.
Recursion, a concept of non-identical repetition borrowed from complexity theory, generates the methodology and shape of this study. Seven chapters map the recursion in Psalm 90. Five chapter tropes outline its order: mountain, law, fire, veil, and words. These signs oversee a reading of the Psalter in the shape of Psalm 90 and of Exodus 32 as a paradigm for the law(s) given on that mountain; a reading of the peak of Psalm 90 as the burning of the Holocaust and as the death of self figured in the language of Zen; a reading of Moses final descent from Sinai in Exod 34:29-35 in relation to the descent from Psalm 90; and a critical inquiry into a postmodern rhetorical criticism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-07172007-084045 |
| Date | 17 July 2007 |
| Creators | Pettys, Valerie Forstman |
| Contributors | Toni Craven |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/msword, application/octet-stream |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-07172007-084045/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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