05_AN_Krause_416_co_416-427 30/10/15 13:13 Pagina 416 ANIMADVERSIONES Aesthetics of Production and Aesthetics of Reception in Analyzing Intertextuality: Illustrated with Joshua 2* Intertextuality has become a veritable vogue word in Hebrew Bible scholarship. The notion that texts refer to each other and that neglect of such references leads to an imperfect understanding of a given text is in- creasingly taken into account, and rightly so. Indeed, the potential of this perspective for our purpose is immense, especially in light of the major impact of phenomena like redactional rearrangement, inner-biblical in- terpretation, and ‘Fortschreibung’. At the same time, applying the per- spective of intertextuality as developed in the study of modern literatures to Hebrew Bible studies necessitates a thorough methodological reflection 1. For this purpose, two competing claims regarding an intertextual relation- ship of Joshua 2 are singled out for discussion in this paper. I. Intertextuality and the Study of the Hebrew Bible For quite a few, the very term raises red flags. When hearing ‘inter- textuality’, they think of post-structuralist or deconstructionist concepts 2. These concepts feature, roughly speaking, the following three theoretical presuppositions: first, everything is a text, or at least every cultural system is; second, it is the reader, not the author, who determines what is in a text; third, as it is the reception of a text that matters, the historical cir- cumstances of its production become meaningless. Because of these pre- suppositions, the said concepts are of little help when it comes to concrete textual analysis — and indeed textual analysis is not their goal. Derrida was a philosopher, not a philologist. Intertextuality, however, is not synonymous with deconstructionism. From the seminal impetus of Julia Kristeva, yet another set of concepts * Thanks are due to Walter Bührer (Bochum) and Chris Thomson (Cam- bridge) for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1 Most recently, see R.L. MEEK, “Intertextuality, Inner-Biblical Exegesis, and Inner-Biblical Allusion. The Ethics of a Methodology”, Bib 95 (2014) 280-291. But see below, n. 3, on his argument. 2 For an introduction, see M. PFISTER, “Konzepte der Intertextualität”, In- tertextualität. Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien (eds. U. BROICH – M. PFISTER) (Tübingen 1985); for a discussion and full bibliography, see J.J. KRAUSE, Exodus und Eisodus. Komposition und Theologie von Josua 1–5 (VTS 161; Leiden – Boston, MA 2014) 37-45. BIBLICA 96.3 (2015) 416-427