Bodies Booked and Books Bodied in the French Bible Moralisée

By means of historical and allegorical reading, the ark of wisdom is built inwardly; and by means of tropological reading, the edifice shows forth its beautiful coat of color. There is a presence in what is missing. The representation and reinterpretation of hospitality in Judges 19 invite analysis through multiple dimensions: linguistic and textual, religious and philosophical, social, political, and sexual. All these domains intersect and inevitably link together from the perspective of hospitality. When we follow the links, risks and possibilities come into view. “Lethal differences”3 arise, often to be subtly undermined, as we move around a circuit connecting books and bodies: from textual bodies, metaphorical bodies, and real bodies made of flesh and blood, to books open or closed, held high and falling down, scroll or codex on parchment skins scraped clean of flesh and blood. In Vienna 2554 bodies become books and books bodies. As we shall see, these biblical encounters cover the gamut of possibilities explored in previous chapters – opposition and conflict, dialogue and relationship, experience and contamination, all in play in the struggle between Judaism and Christianity, Jews and Christians. In this chapter, hosting quarrels continue, adding new dimensions to the contact zone, as Hebrew Tanakh meets Old Testament and New through translatio , and encounter as confrontation hides in the rivalry between Ecclesia and Synagoga.