Open Access

Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher

• For centuries, biblical texts have inspired artists to create and shape their own works. Biblical stories and characters have been retold, depicted, and staged countless times in Christian, Jewish, and also Islamic traditions. This creative process modifies the biblical images, for example, by changing the features of the figures or adding new episodes to the narratives. Hence, the tradition develops and broadens the motives and facets attached to biblical stories and characters. Such transformations are well-known from legends, but the arts also continue this process. That is why the under- standing of biblical stories and in particular the characteristics of biblical figures change over the centuries. This special literary environment also affects the question of an intertextual relecture as it is not limited to two, nor even to any limited number of specified texts. The possible pretexts are countless and often not even identifiable. In the same way, dependencies become gradually blurred as it is no longer possible to ascertain the source of information for a specific reading. Nonetheless, an intertextual reading of literary adaptations of biblical texts is still able to produce important insights and to point to mutual influences between reading biblical and literary texts.