Connotations 18.1-3 (2008/2009)

44
DAVID FISHELOV
(“Manoah the Judge”). The ending of this verse (“and his wife was
barren, and bare not”) encourages us to eliminate the imagined possibility
of “Manoah the Judge” (in case it was raised) and to focus on a
different frame (a story about the birth of a chosen character). 21 From
an abstract, static point of view, the core and suggested meanings of
the story can be described as representing but a small fraction of a
vast field of potential meanings, and every tiny bit of added information
also eliminates a number of theoretically possible meanings.
Thus, for example, the second clause of 13:2 (“of the family of the
Danites”) eliminates the possibility that the character was of the family
of Judea or of Benjamin, or of any other tribe; the third clause
(“whose name was Manoah”) further eliminates the possibility that
his name was Terach or Shiloah or any other. Note, however, that not
all theoretically possible meanings function in the reading process,
which requires the establishing of certain relevant coordinates. There
is an important difference between imagining (even hesitantly and
momentarily) that the character introduced in 13:2 is going to play the
role of protagonist in the unfolding story, and starting to imagine a
list of other theoretically possible names for that character: to imagine
the former is supported by reading conventions (introducing the
protagonist at the beginning of a story), the latter seems to be just a
theoretical exercise, detached from the psychological reality of the
reading process. And this minute example illustrates similar processes
that take place on larger and deeper levels of the story.
By the time we reach the end of the biblical story of Samson (Judges
16:31), a significant body of core and suggested meanings has been
accumulated. And these meanings are there also thanks to the mirrorlike
process of elimination of an even greater body of potential, logically
enabled meanings. Unlike roads-not-taken that may attract our
imagination (e.g. a reunion scene), most of the eliminated meanings
(e.g. that Manoah was of the family of Judea) do not even enter our
consciousness during the reading process, and if they do, they have
only a fleeting presence there.