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Improvising Rules in the Book of Ruth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jan Wojcik
Jan Wojcik*
Affiliation:
Purdue UniversityWest Lafayette, Indiana
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Abstract

The biblical book of Ruth is a succinct, intricate love story powered by five intense dialogues. It is a story about language and literature as well as about love. The characters find all three as generously available as the grains of barley on which Boaz and Ruth pledge their troth. Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi draw on a rich common store of literary allusions and laws derived from Hebrew literary tradition to create a happy ending for the sterile stories of their individual pasts. The liberties they take with known biblical and Hebraic law have long puzzled scholars trying to place the story in its precise historical or cultural context. But I argue that the book was never intended to represent a time and place, that it celebrates the creative improvisations religious rules are meant to inspire in any time or place.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 2 , March 1985 , pp. 145 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

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References

Works Cited

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