Intertextualität als Konzept neutestamentlicher Wissenschaft

In his collected essays on international biblical intertextuality research, Stefan Alkier demonstrates what distinguishes the concept of intertextuality when both components - the spatial "inter" and the theoretical "textuality" - are taken at face value. In doing so, he highlights the innovative and productive contributions this concept makes to the exegesis of biblical texts. At the center is a decentralizing concept of meaning generation that takes into account the semiotic dynamics, performativity, complexity, and limitations of interpretive processes, as well as the inexhaustible richness of biblical texts in their intertextual and intermedial relationships and respective communicative contexts. Through concepts from intertextuality research, fundamental questions of human communication are thus brought into discussion: What can be meant by the "meaning" of a text, where and how is this meaning to be sought or constructed, and what characterizes the sign structure of a text? While the hermeneutic tradition of historical-critical exegesis is oriented toward the preposition "in" and presupposes a fixable locus of meaning, the preposition "inter" replaces the notion of a singular locus of meaning with a dynamic space of textual relationships that are constantly re-performed through the creative work of text producers and text recipients. The essays included in this volume offer a representative selection of Stefan Alkier's contributions to international intertextuality research over the past 25 years. The epilogue features an annotated bibliography looking back on 40 years of intertextuality research, as well as a previously unpublished in-depth interview with Richard B. Hays, the founder of New Testament intertextuality research, who passed away in 2025.