An online place for some friends to get together and argue about what they care most about.

The "b" is silent.


At the seminar table:

Stephen Webb
Trevor Bechtel
Margaret Adam
Phil Kenneson
A. K. M. Adam



Comments, queries, feedback to: A K M Adam

I had been forgetting that the model of interpretation Steve has been articulating should be recognized as culturally-specific, if not culturally-determined. The Orthodox churches have typically interpreted the Bible on a oifferent basis altogether, following the practice of "reading Scripture through the Fathers." If someone wants to argue that Western (mostly Protestant) understandings of hermeneutics form an undebatable basis for legitimate biblical interpretation, she or he ought to give an account of the difference that premise bakes for evaluating the practices of Orthodox theological interpretation.

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posted by A K M Adam at 9:52 AM

Steve,

Relative to the "obviously," I wasn't aware that anyone contrued Matthew's vituperative rhetoric as directed anywhere but against Judaism (as though, perhaps, the Pharisees were a pasteboard stand-in for his real adversaries, a faction of Antiochene idolaters or something). If that's not an "obvious" conclusion for any of my readers, they will of course doubt the rest of what I say. That's okay with me; I'm not trying to persuade everyone in the world, and I'm willing to start with people who think it's obvious that Matthew has a bone to pick with some of his Jewish colleagues. I don't think that that's a *historical* advance; it's just a generally-held picture of the way to read Matthew. I don't need it to be "an advance in our historical understanding."

I'll stick with my claim of "impossibility" relative to reading back from an ancient text to its ideological interests," because I'm not acquainted with a way of ascertaining, especially from a bare text, what ideology drove its author. I appreciate your mention of the 1994 article, because one of my main points (having to do with Defoe's "Shortest-Way") argued exactly, from the reception of a text in its very own day, that Defoe's ideology wasn't immanent in the text; the ideology comes visible when we read "The Shortest-Way" in what we take to be its proper cultural setting, with a view toward Defoe's biography. How much more, when we have no significant biographical information about an author, when the "proper cultural setting" in question is usually derived hypothetically from the text that's being discussed, ought we to acknopwledge the tenuousness of our conclusions about texts' ideological entanglements. A priori impossible"? I might back down from "a priori," but the force of evidence (just who agrees about the ideology of the Book of Daniel? How do I know whom I should rely on?) pushes me awfully close to the brink.

Sorry, Steve, that technical difficulties contribute to our losing your voice in inter-academic conversation. Your responses have sometimes seemed harsh, but given your take on hermeneutics--that there is a meaning to texts, a meaning whose existence I wrong-headedly deny--I can see why you would be vexed by my resistance. One reason I adhere so fast to the take on hermeneutics from my side of the controversy is that my prespective enables me to explain why you and I might disagree, each of us thinking with strong justification that he is quite right, while enabling me to attribute our disagreement to more generous a basis than that one of us possesses superior insight or that the other is perverse, that one is sophisticated and the otehr ignorant.

Keep in touch.

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posted by steve webb at 4:20 PM

Interesting that in AKMA's article on Matthew in SBL Seminar Papers (1994), he argues that texts don't have ideological meaning precisely because historians cannot determine that meaning, i.e., interpretation is solely due to communal standards and practices. And yet he says: "Matthew obviously excoriates various Judean parties, but he does so from within Judaism--not over against Judaism." This seems to me to be a historical argument that proves that advances can be made in our historical understanding of texts (note the obviously there--the text's history was not obvious to previous generations, but it is obvious to us today thanks to historical scholarship). I was also interested in Akma's quote of Fowl where Fowl says "it is often very difficult to read back from an ancient text to its ideological interests..." and AKMA adds, parenthetically, he might as well say it is never possible. I am comfortable with Fowl's comment, but not AKMA's, precisely because the parenthetical aside turns what is no doubt a very difficult task into an a priori impossible one, and thus moves out of hermeneutics and into metaphysics. By the way, I thought this essay was brilliantly argued, even though I didn't agree with some of it; I have really benefited from reading AKMA's work, and now I must sign off from Blooger for good because 1) it keeps eating my messages, so that I have to write them several times, and end up summarizing what I remember having said in short, condensed ways, probably distorting my own meaning and 2) I have been told that my remarks are repulsive and embarrassing, and I fear I have lost friends over my argumentative style, for which I sincerely apologize.

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posted by steve webb at 9:09 AM

Eno's comments are typical of the cultural elite, who think everything is a product of social construction. Indeed, social constructionism is the dogma of the academy, but I think there are signs that it too has had its day, and there is a renewed interest in realism. It flatters academics to think that the world is a product of their own making.

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