Like Bread from One's Mouth: Emmanuel Levinas and Reading Scripture with the Other

Abstract

Discussions of alterity in biblical hermeneutics wrestle with paradox. While attempts to “speak for” the other frequently reduce to the same, interpretive approaches safeguarding difference are often unable to respond to concrete needs of actual others. Emmanuel Levinas's efforts to negotiate this paradox serve biblical hermeneutics well, challenging interpreters to recognise the call to responsibility encountered in the face of the other. Levinas himself is not without his others, and conversation with christology and Eucharistic ecclesiology (represented here by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Miroslav Volf, and John Zizioulas) challenges him toward more coherent accounts of transcendence in the human other, and of the communal obligations of the church toward the other. With these cautions in view, this article commends Levinas as a guide for breaking the bread of Scripture with others, even — and especially — when this demands “the bread from one's mouth”.