Now that we have covered the historical framework of Tanakh, we are going to begin to combine our study of the texts in their original contexts with the texts in our context. That is, we are going to begin to tie in modes other than written texts to our discussion of how people have texted God.
Our reading today is about how graphic artists are both readers and interpreters of the Bible, and how we play the same roles when viewing films and playing video games. It's important to become alert to the choices that cartoonists, animators, directors, and video game designers are making, because they are creating worlds and stories that shape us even while we configure meaning from them. The ideas we read today will help us analyze (rather than just passively view or listen to) The Action Bible, film clips, music and gesture. This will help you to build your repertoire for the various modes through which we communicate the sacred, which will help you to build skills for your final project for the course.
Here are some questions to focus on in the readings:
Alderman and Alderman discuss how three graphic artists make different interpretive choices when they render the biblical stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. Identify one choice of image or word that each artist makes in each retelling (Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel).
Pick a fairy tale, fantasy, comic book, or animated film that you're familiar with. Bring an image from it to class and be able to identify to other students one convention in the animation that stabilizes meaning for you (what does that convention mean, and how do you know? That is context knowledge). Some possible sources: Harry Potter films, Disney films, DC comics, etc.
Finally, from the Wagner reading, what does she mean when she says we "play" stories, and how are some readings more playful than others? What do these more playful readings have in common with video games?
Assigned Readings
Secondary: Isaac M. Alderman and Christina L. Alderman, "Graphically Depicted: Biblical Texts in Comic Form," Arts 22:4 (2011) 22-36; Wagner, Godwired chapter 2, pp. 16-33 (both on Camino); online class prep
Christina L. Alderman is the manager of Family Programming at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Isaac M. Alderman is a graduate student in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America and an adjunct instructor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Rachel Wagner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College in New York. Her courses and research center on the study of religion and culture, including religion and film and religion and virtual reality. She's published pieces in Halos and Avatars: Playing Games with God (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), God in the Details (2d ed.; Routledge, 2010), and Resisting the Place of Belonging: Uncanny Homecomings in Religion, Narrative and Art (Ashgate, forthcoming).
Further Reading
Assman, Jan. "Form as a Mnemonic Device: Cultural Texts and Cultural Memory." In Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark (ed. Richard A. Horsley, Jonathan A. Draper and John Miles Foley; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011) 67-82, notes 212-214.
Baetens, Jan and Hugo Freh. The Graphic Novel: An Introduction, Cambridge Introductions to Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Dalton, Russell W. Children's Bibles in America: A Reception History of the Story of Noah's Ark in U.S. Children's Bibles, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 614. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Gardner, Jared. Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling, Post*45. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012.
Kukkonen, Karin. Studying Comics and Graphic Novels. Malden, Massachusetts: John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
Postema, Barbara. Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, Comics Studies Monograph Series. Rochester, New York: RIT Press, 2013.
Early Christian Writings - one site Wagner mentions where you can read all the Christian apocrypha (books that didn't make it into the Bible—including the Nag Hammadi texts).
Noncanonical Literature - this site hosted by the Wesley Center Online preserves apocryphal writings not only for the Christian scriptures, but the Jewish ones as well.
Jews can tweet their prayers to Jerusalem to be printed and placed in cracks in the Kotel ("the wall"), the remains of the retaining wall of the Second Temple.
Now that we have covered the historical framework of Tanakh, we are going to begin to combine our study of the texts in their original contexts with the texts in our context. That is, we are going to begin to tie in modes other than written texts to our discussion of how people have texted God. 
