Biblical words transmitted by lyric poetry

In our western culture the Bible is one of the most - or even the most popular book. It`s themes, motives and images influenced the arts in many ways, literature, pictural art as well as music. These artistic works show a history of the interpretation of the bible since every actualisation of biblical texts makes evident how the artist understood them. Although nowadays the widespread familiarity with the Bible is decreasing, biblical references frequently may be found within our cultural life. The scientific discussion of the history of biblical reception within modern Literature helps to understand the tradition of our Christian culture and the importance of the Bible therein. It is the aim of this project to analyse the various forms of references to biblical texts within modern, German lyric poetry and to interpret them focusing on the biblical reception as well as on the understanding of the lyrical poetry itself. Thereby priority is given to the book of psalms, which has been on of the most popular of biblical books throughout Christian history. During all centuries psalms have been translated and reformulated according to the contemporary guidelines of poetry. Many modern poems also indicate that the biblical psalms are still of great interest. Concerning the methodology the task of comparing biblical and literary texts requires an interdisciplinary procedure. Exegesis, theology and the science of literature can offer valuable contributions to this discussion. Starting with the hermeneutical concept of intertextuality a model for a text analysis is developed that makes it possible to trace the references between the texts. Working with text-corpora the problem of handling the large amount of data occurs. To guarantee a detailed text analysis the comparison of the texts is done with the help of computer programs. This allows to sort and to compare even large amount of data within a reasonable amount of time. The results offer a choice of references that may be evaluated for the lyric and the biblical texts. They encourage interpretations focusing on different aspects of the texts and subsequently these results could lead to an improved understanding of the ways the long tradition of Bible reception in literature is continued within modern lyric poetry.