The determination of intertextual relationships in films about Jesus of Nazareth as a key factor in their semiotic potential

Abstract

Feature films that narrate the life of Jesus are adaptations of literary texts nearly two millennia old, which themselves carry preceding Jewish textual traditions that are defining for their meanings. This study proposes a methodological tool to elucidate the symbolic-textual system underlying the discursive surface of films with New Testament themes, counting with criteria based on principles of intertextuality that allow the identification of three possible textual strata that can be articulated beneath the discursive surface of each film, as well as the citations, allusions, or echoes that connect these strata both to each other and to the film’s expressive units. In this way, it becomes possible to illuminate the network of semiotic systems underpinning the meanings articulated by the films, as well as the bidirectional processes of re-signification between the textual strata of the film and its inherent signifying potential.