The Process of Reconstruction and the Contextual Functions of Biblical Inserts in the Old Romanian Texts

The process of reconstruction illustrates how Holy Writ is received in the literature and can be defined as a technique of using the biblical inserts according to the original meaning of the biblical context, which through interpretation and processing is enriched with new senses to convey a particular message to the receiver. Therefore, the Bible offers the possibility for the psalm to become a secular species, the myth of the first biblical fratricide can be exploited by the literature of different spaces and eras, and the biblical parable becomes the main instrument for spreading Christian teaching. The use of biblical inserts and their expressive effects, as well as the discursive functions they perform, contribute to the process. Both the cultural general functions of the Bible (authoritative, normative, evidential, and confirmatory, illustrative) and the contextually discursive functions of the biblical inserts (hermeneutic, illustrative, argumentative, didactic, moralizing, doxological, and ornamental function) are closely related to this process and reflect the stylistic effects of biblical elements in literature. In the old Romanian texts, the functions of the biblical inserts coexist and intertwine, so that the reconstruction is carried out in different forms even in texts by the same author or by different authors. Even if the biblical sequences underlying the reconstruction are the same, the ways in which these sequences are processed and enriched with new meanings differ according to the author’s purpose. Through reconstruction, the biblical elements do not lose their original meaning.