Paratext and Megatext As Channels of Jewish and Christian Traditions ― The Textual Markers of Contextualization

Paratext refers to verbal elements that frame the text itself, such as title, preface, notes by a translator, and exclamation marks scribbled in the margins by previous readers. Megatext refers to all textual artifacts that, textually, help make sense of the text; here the emphasis is on texts that function in tandem with another text, and cannot be understood without it. The eight essays sample how the phenomena are manifest in Jewish and Christian religious literature, discussing such issues as the arrangement of textual blocks in the Hebrew Bible, and how paratextual elements influenced the Index Librorum Prohibitorum concerning 16th-century Bibles. No information is provided about the contributors. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A.A. den Hollander, Ph.D., is Professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Lecturer at the Free University, the Netherlands. He is the author of De Nederlandse Bijbelvertalingen/Dutch Translations of the Bible 1522-1545 (De Graaf Publishers, 1997).U.B. Schmid, Ph.D., is Post-doc at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and Post-doc at the Free University, the Netherlands. He is the author of Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe (De Gruyter, 1995).W.F. Smelik, is Lecturer at University College London, London, United Kingdom. He is the author of The Targum of Judges (Brill, 1995).