tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16959378.post4713746352960874156..comments2023-10-16T04:58:53.689-04:00Comments on Verily Verily: a second point in third placeRafaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16959378.post-65430145230403209532011-08-04T21:00:07.155-04:002011-08-04T21:00:07.155-04:00Hello Rafael,
My first post here. My first view...Hello Rafael, <br /><br />My first post here. My first view. <br /><br />I’m not up to full speed on the back and forth between you and McGrath. <br /><br />I have some criticisms of McGrath. Not worth floating here. Except as they might overlap with questions for you. Next.<br /><br />I’ll cut right to the chase.<br /><br />Liminalia? Spectral evidence? <br /><br />Those questions might sound crazy. Or unintelligible. Not parts of the standard terminological tumbler for NT studies. My general sensibility for these questions derives from how liminalia and spectral evidence (dreams) emerge ubiquitously as one engine which drives science. Or legal hermeneutics. See Kekule’s dream. The steps in scientific method after such initial liminal insights are exactly one reason why we invented science. To test hunches for trustworthiness. So too with legal hermeneutical-imagination. To which we apply sociology of laws. And common sense. I’m not trying to use non-standard nuances to define liminalia. Or spectral evidence. Dictionary definitions should do. <br /><br />I’m chewing on a decision to republish some post-grad research under this skew. <br /><br />I confess a charismatic bias. More in the Eliade tradition of encyclopedism. In this context. I wonder whether McGrath is oblivious to Pentecostalism. Or just deliberately non-saying in respect for it (perhaps contempt?). I don’t know. Open questions. My post-grad research focused some on these questions. Not expressly on redaction. My question for you is a baby-step. Infantile. Maybe way off-target in the range of redactional studies. Or perhaps an ally for your sensibility. There’s something in your sense of the redaction problems which feels right to me. <br /><br />I wonder whether the critical bias of scholarship is fastidiously exorcizing of liminal insights from NT studies? The rationalism of criticism like a scalpel removing spectral evidence? If such subjective vectors of liminal and spectral influence (dreams) operated on bible writers (redactors, editors, or worms that ate the texts - a throwaway), then how would any critical reader discern a genuinely novel insight emerging from liminalia and distinguish that from a so-called deliberate and formal textual ‘redaction’? Why does the phenomena of chaotic interruptions to the texts get scuttled into ‘oral’ tradition? – when an equally powerful possibility involves the liminal voices in a single head? Take “Luke” - who writes texts upon texts about dreams upon dreams and more dreams. What if “Luke” dreamed? Like on the road to Macedonia? And so revised his texts? Sure, he studied the many sources too. I say more -- not less -- criticism. On the rational side of this critical question for me, see e.g., Margaret Somers on the quantification of narrative. Plural voices in a single communicative agent. Simultaneously. Quantifiable <br /><br />Please know that I’m not advocating a position. Nor coming from a fixed one. I feel these questions as open ones. I’m not quite sure what my position would be. I’m pretty resistant to generalizations. Except for play. Small stuff under a microscope or the minutiae of facts in a legal case feel closer to home for me than a lot of NT generalizations. But I’m ignorant of the field. Amateur at best. <br /><br />To the extent that I do have a sweeping general bias – much of the enterprise of critical NT studies strikes me as so ‘textual’ as to kill the ‘life.’ Liminal and spectral life. Probably my Quaker bias at full – ugly – bore. So throw that one away. <br /><br /><br />Cheers, <br /><br /><br />JimJimhttp://randomarrow.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16959378.post-31306495599258771302011-08-03T15:11:10.750-04:002011-08-03T15:11:10.750-04:00Challonge! :)<a href="http://www.patheos.com/community/exploringourmatrix/2011/08/03/a-rejoinder-in-song-to-rafael-rodriguezs-second-point-in-third-place-or-something-like-that/" rel="nofollow">Challonge!</a> :)James F. McGrathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02561146722461747647noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16959378.post-51442562508648241632011-08-03T11:48:30.532-04:002011-08-03T11:48:30.532-04:00I think I've stated this to you before, but it...I think I've stated this to you before, but it's worth re-stating:<br /><br />I think the major problem with the criteriological approach to Jesus historiography resides in its intrinsic decontextualization of Jesus tradition(s); once we strip a saying or a deed out of its context and juxtapose it with other "authenticated" material, we are unable to re-contextualize it--for the gospels are the only context we possess for those sayings. And, as common knowledge suggests, context determines meaning.<br /><br />I'm afraid if we use this "sifting" approach, it is inevitable that we are left with a sagacious Jesus, who spoke short-pithy maxims in a vacuum. <br /><br />Thus, I think Allison is correct when he concludes that we either know a lot (as historians) about Jesus, or we know hardly nothing at all.<br /><br />This, of course, isn't to say that such criteria have no value--they certainly prompt us to ask difficult questions--nor is it to suggest that we shouldn't ever invoke questions of historicity; rather, these criteria should not be used exclusively, nor primarily (or even secondarily!!), in our search for the historical Jesus.<br /><br />Nathan S.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com