Treating Traum(a): Examples in the Tanakh that Mirror Events during the Life of Bonhoeffer and Crimes of the Ian Rankin Novel Knots and Crosses

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) contains a wealth of stories reflecting life in the ancient world including struggles and wars that prove(d) traumatic. It is shown time and again that history repeats itself, and the stories of the Bible reappear in the modern world, both real and (crime) fictional. In this paper, traumatic experiences associated with the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as the fictional character DI John Rebus created by the crime writer Ian Rankin, are linked with similar incidents recorded in the Tanakh. The first novel in the Rebus series, Knots and Crosses, also forms the basis for demonstrating the trauma suffered by the protagonist. As an adjunct, the German word for dream, Traum, is taken out of “Trauma” and treated in the Joseph novella of Genesis. Finally, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech is used as a point of convergence for the different strands capture.