From Plato to Adam: the biblical exegesis of Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin finds the Bible a slippery text. For all his interest over a number of writings, especially ‘The Task of the Translator’, ‘On Language as Such and the Language of Man’ and The Origin of German Tragic Drama , and for all the efforts to develop a theory of history deeply indebted to the Bible, the biblical text trips him up, refusing to provide what he wishes to find. This article traces those difficulties.