| Abstract
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Recurring themes and traditions within the biblical corpus have attracted much scholarship. This article uses P. T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) as a test case for the ways traditions may or may not interact, and what that means for ‘tradition history.’ While the film has many features which strike many viewers as biblical, the author-director denies prior knowledge of these connections. The film is analyzed in terms of structure, Anderson’s claimed sources, the American cultural context of the 1990s, and its biblical resonances. After assessing the import of these observations, the tradition history of Magnolia is compared to the tradition history of the exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Within the framework of attention to media contexts, the article concludes by noting the importance of authority, canon, and multiple lines of transmission. In so doing, our understanding of the transmission of traditions is problematized, and a broader, less text-centric paradigm is called for. Recurring themes and traditions within the biblical corpus have attracted much scholarship. This article uses P. T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) as a test case for the ways traditions may or may not interact, and what that means for ‘tradition history.’ While the film has many features which strike many viewers as biblical, the author-director denies prior knowledge of these connections. The film is analyzed in terms of structure, Anderson’s claimed sources, the American cultural context of the 1990s, and its biblical resonances. After assessing the import of these observations, the tradition history of Magnolia is compared to the tradition history of the exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Within the framework of attention to media contexts, the article concludes by noting the importance of authority, canon, and multiple lines of transmission. In so doing, our understanding of the transmission of traditions is problematized, and a broader, less text-centric paradigm is called for.
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