The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible Rhetorical Strategies for Survival Levinson

The Death Wish in the Hebrew BibleRhetorical Strategies for Survival\nAuthor(s): Hanne Lland Levinson\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781108833653, 978-1108833653\nSynopsis\nThis is the first book to systematically investigate the texts in the Hebrew Bible in which a character expresses a wish to die. Contrary to previous scholarship on these texts that assumed these death wishes were simply a desire to escape suffering, Hanne Lland Levinson employs narrative criticism and conversation analysis, together with diachronic methods, to carefully hear each death-wish text in its literary context. She demonstrates that death wishes embody powerful, multi-faceted rhetorical strategies. Grouping the death-wish texts into four main rhetorical strategies of negotiation, expression of despair and anger, longing to undo one's existence, and wishing for a different reality, Lland Levinson portrays the complex.