The Land Without Promise

The Land Without Promise: The Roots and Afterlife of One Biblical Allusion

Dissertation Project 2012 – 2017

Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies

KU Leuven, Belgium

This book maps the development of the promised land motif, starting from its biblical roots and looking at its reception over the centuries until the present day. The corner stone of the present intellectual enterprise is Gadamer’s claim that there are two complementary paths towards understanding and knowledge: science and art. Thus, to be faithful to the creed of the great hermeneutist, the author of this study ventures into both science and art. While science sets out historical-critical analysis of the promised land motif in the Hebrew Bible and its later receptions, art enriches the interpretation with its literary illustrations. 

The American context is especially promising since the concept of the promised land is intertwined with American religious-political mythologies. The afterlife of the promised land motif in biblical scholarship crowns the interpretation of Walter Brueggemann, a Hebrew Bible scholar with both hermeneutical interests in art and thematical interests in the promised land. The artistic trajectory culminates with the American novelist John Steinbeck, whose works largely interpret symbolism of the promised land. Brueggemann shares the conviction that the eyes of the artist depict new insights which remain hidden to his own strict academic eyes. He creatively works with Steinbeck’s novels which put forward critical aspects of the promised land motif, something that became the subject of ideology critique in biblical scholarship only decades later. Hence, this book argues that artistic receptions of biblical motifs are crucial for biblical scholarship because they open new hermeneutical and thematical horizons.