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Jordan W Jones, Lift Up Your Heads: Non-Verbal Communication and Related Bodily Imagery in the Bible. By John A. Davies, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 70, Issue 2, October 2019, Pages 739–741, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flz122
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John A. Davies’s recent volume on non-verbal communication (NVC) in the Old and New Testaments serves as a welcome exposure to the world of gesture, body idiom, dress, non-verbal emotional displays, and other forms of NVC in the Bible. His data is limited to the Protestant canon, though he admits the Apocrypha contains much useful material as well. The term ‘exposure’ is here preferred, rather than ‘introduction’, since Davies’s greatest contribution is to reveal the sheer volume of data that exists, not necessarily to go into detail on the meaning of the various types of NVC in the Bible. He states clearly that his intention is to make this information accessible to the general reader while leaving room for further research—this he does quite well.
In his introduction, Davies asks several research questions that are intended to expose the reader to the complicated nature of communication analysis. He argues that to abruptly label a gesture (thereby interpreting it) would probably prove an exercise in oversimplification, especially if the reader has ignored interpretative variables such as the gradation that exists between voluntary and involuntary actions, or between figurative speech (i.e. body idiom) and literal descriptions of human physiognomy. While this approach to texts is typical of careful exegesis, the deluge of questions related to contextual variables may inadvertently serve as a deterrent against assigning any meaning to instances of NVC. If one cannot say, for example, that a particular gesture was intentional (as opposed to unintentional) and literal (as opposed to figurative/idiomatic), then the meaning of the gesture is partly lost and its contribution to the passage equally lost. He defends his cautious approach by citing recent communications scholars who shy away from what they would consider hasty labels, preferring to see elements of NVC as residing along complex spectrum. While Davies’s stated methodology may err on the side of caution, in practice (when dealing with individual examples of NVC in the body of his book) he does attribute meaning more freely than expected.
