Claire Clivaz

New Testament in a Digital Culture: A Biblaridion (Little Book) Lost in the Web?

The digital revolution makes one attentive to a “blind spot” of modernity, the influence of the material support of writing on ideas and concepts. Modernity has led us to “believe” in the existence of “works” and “ideas” independently of their concrete expressions in the supports of writing. Such beliefs have deeply influenced modern methodologies, and among them the biblical methodological approaches. The digital revolution reminds one to take a humble attitude to our ideas, and also to our attachment to literary “works”, paying attention to the texts as documents and objects. Starting from this general idea, this article considers first the impact of some modern beliefs on Classical studies. The second part of this article argues that digital culture can particularly help us to rediscover a culture with plural literacies. Finally, this article asks if the New Testament is becoming a biblaridion (Revelation 10: 2, 9-10) , a “very small booklet”, lost in the World Wide Web, losing more and more of its covers and becoming potentially a “liquid book”, as described by Jacques Derrida (Adema, 2012). To go beyond such a perception, I will consider other ways to deal with a Scripture that is going out of the Book.