tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post5077883167978990320..comments2024-02-19T04:50:58.170-08:00Comments on Shuck and Jive: The Bible: Word of God?John Shuckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00798753206614838161noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post-43910476087843650972007-02-18T15:16:00.000-08:002007-02-18T15:16:00.000-08:00"It will require us to be willing to smash our own..."It will require us to be willing to smash our own idols. The biggest idol of all, is the way we have been taught, drilled, hammered, brainwashed, browbeaten, and lied to, about what the Bible is." (John)<BR/><BR/>I have to agree here - we need to start seeing the truth behind these books, letters, and prose - and how they came about and why. I see the conservative agenda and their doctrinal 'law' and I shudder at the values they have gathered from this book - and I think a lot of it is worth questioning, even calling 'short-sighted'. I don't the teachings are there for a 'law' system but to show us a better way of living.SocietyVshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10892870801259282254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post-16404615672628354732007-02-18T14:22:00.000-08:002007-02-18T14:22:00.000-08:00Seeker and Brett,Good thoughts, both of you. I th...Seeker and Brett,<BR/><BR/>Good thoughts, both of you. I think that Robert Price says a similar thing regarding texts. The canon certainly has its own history. It is a collection, a library of books, and it could be placed in a library along other great works, the Bhagavad Gita, and those you mention, including the others that didn't make the canon. How we understand all of those and use them in communities is a challenge with which I wrestle. But my hunch as that experimentation, trial and error, will eventually work out a way.<BR/><BR/>Brett, as far as the story of myth that the community finds true is perhaps the best way I have heard it put yet. In our time in which we as Marcus Borg points out are "fact fundamentalists" what you said needs to be said.John Shuckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00798753206614838161noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post-67697867290148155082007-02-18T12:01:00.000-08:002007-02-18T12:01:00.000-08:00Great comment, MS. I'm not quite as open to non-c...Great comment, MS. I'm not quite as open to non-canonical texts as you may be, but your explanation of how we go about reading is very nice. <BR/><BR/>As for your question, John, I'd say that that story is true, although we can't know if it is factual. (Of course, our experience of the natural world and how it works would lead us to think that it is not factual.) I don't know what the precise literary genre for this story would be, but it falls into the category of myth for me. By myth, I mean stories that deal with a community's sense of what is true. Something about the metaphor of myth allows them to be more truthful than mere propositional statements. <BR/>Anyway, thanks for your posts and your openness to discussion.Brett Hendricksonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17010674430349695652noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post-56350953810113948052007-02-18T09:07:00.000-08:002007-02-18T09:07:00.000-08:00In my blog I recently wrote about my concerns over...In my blog I recently wrote about my concerns over the distinction between canonical and non-canonical. I think the Bible can be valued and respected, not because it is the Word of God (since I consider it to be the words of humans <I>about</I> God rather than the Word of God), but because its historical role has in and of itself given them as signs of the normative tradition from which Christianity emerged. I suppose that in that sense, the Bible has a sort of circular justification for itself--the Bible has value because it was decided to be valuable. So I am not necessarily in favor of completing erasing the boundary between the canon and the non-canonical so much as blurring it.<BR/><BR/>I think as long as we recognize the combination of arbitrariness and political agendas that went into the canonization process, and if we recognize that there is value and inspiration to be found within the Bible (while at the same time there are sometimes horribly violent, sexist, or tribalistic notions to be found in the Bible as well), then maybe we can move on to a level of mature appreciation of the Bible as a historical classic within the Christian tradition. Maybe the Bible can be Christianity's Beowolf and Shakespeare combined, while the Gospel of Thomas can be its Keats, and the poetry of Thomas Merton can be its David Mamet. Or something like that. :)Mystical Seekerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10828225180668865911noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post-39393598101923138402007-02-17T10:53:00.000-08:002007-02-17T10:53:00.000-08:00In one respect, of course, you are correct. Histo...In one respect, of course, you are correct. Histories themselves can be and in fact are, fictions created by the teller. Histories are spin. But that applies to all of life, not just the Bible. At the same time, in the practical living of life, we are constantly separating and in need of separating fact from fiction. Did this happen or did it not? Is this a legend, a story, a lie, a newspaper report, an imaginative fantasy, a wish-fulfillment, a scientific investigation or whatever. My simple point is that what we do in life or for any text should also be applied to the Bible. We know this text from Mark chapter 4:<BR/><BR/>35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ 36And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ 39He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ 41And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’<BR/><BR/>What kind of story is this? If history or fiction are too limiting, what typology would you use?<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the good words and the conversation!<BR/>johnJohn Shuckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00798753206614838161noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30648257.post-84680047946880546242007-02-17T09:37:00.000-08:002007-02-17T09:37:00.000-08:00With respect and admiration for your project, I th...With respect and admiration for your project, I think that you are mistaken when you:<BR/>1. make fiction the opposite of history;<BR/>2. provide only these two options for a biblical text. <BR/><BR/>What is "history"? To be consistent with the rest of your hermeneutic approach, you must argue that history is nothing more than a subjective, power-laden, interpretation of events. In other words, all histories contain elements of what would seem to call "fiction," i.e., that which didn't *actually* happen.Brett Hendricksonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17010674430349695652noreply@blogger.com