Antiquitopia

A Petihta is a particular form of an ancient Jewish homily. It consists of a launching verse, usually from the Prophets or Writings, and a target verse from the Torah. According to many commentators, the more distinct and apparently unrelated the two verses are the better. Already knowing the end of the homily (the target verse), the pleasure for the audience/reader is to see how the interpreter, through exegetical virtuosity, will get from one to the other--the more disparate the verses then demonstrates a much higher level of interpretive ability and may make a further point: all scripture contains an underlying unity. Consider then this description of modern practices of interpretation: What are commonly seen as "schools" of literary criticism or theoretical "approaches" to literature are, from the point of view of hermeneutics, dispositions to give particular kinds of answers to the question of what a work is ultimately "about": "the class s...

I have finally reached the final segment in my review of Bauckham's first chapter of Jesus and the God of Israel . Only seven chapters to go....this is going to take forever to finish. You can catch my riveting earlier segments here: Introduction Chapter 1A (Monotheism) Chapter 1B (Monotheistic Christology) Chapter 1C (God Crucified) Bauckham ends this chapter charting some consistencies and novelties from second temple Judaism to NT Christology as well as “evaluating” later theological traditions in light of his discoveries. Bauckham finds considerable consistency in the characterization of God in terms of God being creator and sovereign, characteristics that distinguish God from all other reality (in my opinion, the true key to Bauckham’s “monotheism”). Bauckham recognizes that this is a minimal portrayal; other characteristics flesh out the character of God in God’s relationship to all creation and his relationship to Israel—such as God’s more particular interactions with ...

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. (Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation") This is to give a conclusion before the premise. Part of the problem for Sontage is the artificial, illusory separation of form and content, especially the privileging of content over form: And it is the defense of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learend to call "form" is separated off from something we have learned to call "content," and to the well-intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory. (ibid.) This illusory separation of form and content seems to be an act of violence whereby the critic creates a fissure in the work of art. It is in this violent tearing apart that space is made for interpretation, itself an act that sustains the illusion that makes it possible: ...it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as t...

The first quote is inspired by the comment in the last post: And those men who think they can lessen and check our disputes by referring us to the actual words of the Bible are deluding themselves, since our mind finds just as wide a field for controverting other men's meanings as for delivering its own. (Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience," Essays 3.13; trans. J.M. Cohen) This is a broad-side attack on the entire early Protestant mentality coined by Luther, sola scriptura . And Montaigne has been proven right--there are just as many readings of the biblical text as there are readers. It leads not to agreement, but to fragmentation. Perhaps that is partly beneficial and partly problematic. The problem in Montaigne's day was at a high pitch, since he lived during the wars of religion. He also gave a nice broadside attack on traditional commentary--commentaries of commentaries of commentaries of a text. There is more trouble in interpreting interpretations than i...

The Master said, "Unless a man has the spirit of the rites, in being respectful he will wear himself out, in being careful he will become timid, in having courage he will become unruly, and in being forthright he will become intolerant." (Confucius, Analects 8.2a; trans. Lau) It sounds a bit like Paul in 2 Cor. 3:6: "For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life." The hallmark verse, at least for Augustine, for his "spiritual" hermeneutics that he learned from Ambrose (Confessions V.xiv (24)): Above all, I heard first one, then another, then many difficult passages in the Old Testament scriptures figuratively interpreted, wehre I, by taking them literally, had found them to kill. This was while listening to Ambrose's sermons. And then reading on his own: I was also pleased that when the old writings of the Law and the Prophets came before me, they were no longer read with an eye to which they had previously looked absured, when I used to attack yo...

I just watched this clip posted by James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix , but I thought it raised some really important issues, and, therefore, should be reposted by any readers I may have that he does not (although he attracts far more readers than I do). I might take issue with the unexamined overuse of the term "fundamentalist," although I was happy for the note that you can find Pentecostals throughout the spectrum of social and political issues--they are not just "fundamentalists" and the religious right. What clip failed to note, however, is that the Assemblies of God, which as a whole is quite conservative (although you will find more left-leaning folk at least among the laity here and there) is (or at least it used to be) the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world. It is a somewhat decentralized denomination (technically it is called a "cooperative fellowship"), but its decentralization creates a degree of flexibility that, in fact, works t...

I started reading Umberto Eco's On Literature today, and found some interesting snippets in his opening essay entitled, "On Some Functions of Literature." He discusses many issues, such as the formative influence of literature on language (like Dante's on Italian, Luther's on German, Homer's on Greek, etc.). The combination of different literatures and languages, in turn, shapes individual and communal identities. He discusses freedom and fidelity of interpretation. He has this to say about the relationship between the text and interpreter: "The world of literature is a universe in which it is possible to establish whether a reader has a sense of reality or is the victim of his own hallucinations." He also discusses how certain things are established in literature and cannot be changed because they have entered collective knowledge or can be directly looked up (like the identity of Superman as Clark Kent--Eco loves this example, interestingly en...