“Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World” arrived. George Mosse gets a citation, and Eric Idle, and of course Reichsbishop Ludwig Muller. There are perhaps fewer really big words than my headline use of the adjective “megagaltastic” might imply, but the use of commas is creative and permits a parsimonious approach to the use of end-stops, as witness:
If, however, we allow that no lode of meaning lies embedded in our texts, that we (and not texts) sponsor and permit interpretations, that communication and interpretation constitute phenomena of far greater intricacy than the verbal paradigm allows, and that we may honestly and fairly consider the possibility that a given expression may mean several different things — if we yield on these points, the guild of biblical scholars suspects that we will disrupt the exquisite architecture of human communication (and especially, of course, of God’s communication with humanity), rapidly declining into inarticulate grunts and brutality.
Flipping the pages I see that there’s a lot of food for thought in here… an opportunity to re-visit Luce Irigaray’s sense of feminine identity and difference, nuanced linguistics, Julia Kristeva… it’ll be cool. I’ll be glad for reading it. Will I find the power of an authentic universal connection, the wailing of trumpets of spirit and truth? I’ll tell you later.
In 1691, Cotton Mather, based on current events in the Ottoman Empire and on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France (1685) tentatively predicted the end of the world in 1697. In 1692 Mather proclaimed that “I am verily persuaded ‘The Judge is at the door;’ I do without any hesitation venture to say, ‘The Great Day of the Lord is near,’ it is near, and it hastens greatly.”
When the 1697 date passed in an uneventful manner, Mather determined that the world would end in 1736. Later he corrected that to 1716. He dramatically proclaimed, “All that has been foretold . . . as what must come to pass before the Coming . . . is, as far as we understand, Fulfilled: I say ALL FULFILLED!”
Girding my loins to do battle with the demons in AKMA (for surely he must be possessed by demons since I sense that we disagree)… christians, whose infinite variety is perhaps exceeded only by the speciation of insects have offered the following several quotes. Let google be my bibliography, and Cotton Mather be my guide:
Postmodernity can be defined in terms of Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals, which aims to show how moral meanings are the cultural creations of particular human wills. The Nietzschean project challenges conventional moral assumptions that mask and perpetuate the spiritual malaise of modernity. This essay seeks to show how John Howard Yoder’s eschatological genealogy of morals both affirms aspects of this postmodern project-especially by developing an engaged, dramatic reading of morality-and yet challenges other aspects by adverting to a fundamentally opposed vision of human cultural sickness and health-the slain Lamb versus the Dionysian drama. At stake is the question of how to understand the moral and ecclesial implications of the apocalyptic «war of the Lamb». Yoder’s genealogical critique of various forms of Constantinianism is helpful but too sharply separates Jewish and Greek Christianity, overlooking resources in the Platonic diaspora and dividing what the apostle Paul unites.
John writes Revelation to underscore that Christians must take the conflict with evil seriously, engage this conflict in the same manner as God does, and face the future with confidence in God’s strategy for victory. We have many questions for Revelation. John’s initial readers had many questions as well, but of a different sort. By the end of the first century, the situation for Christians was becoming quite ambiguous. For some it was becoming more difficult as their exclusive commitment to Christ required a measure of social and moral distance between believers and the surrounding culture. Others, however, had evidently found ways by which they could enjoy the benefits and advantages of their culture and, at least to their mind, not jeopardize their Christian identity. Either group of Christians might have had some important questions to ask: What price might I have to pay for my faith? Where is God in these difficult times? How am I to respond to the challenges of a wider culture that does not support my faith? Following Jesus doesn’t really have anything to do with politics or economics does it?
ουτοι μετα του αρνιου πολεμησουσιν και το αρνιον νικησει αυτους οτι κυριος κυριων εστιν και βασιλευς βασιλεων και οι μετ αυτου κλητοι και εκλεκτοι και πιστοι
It seems to me as if Christian proponents of gospel nonviolence must cautiously re-embrace Revelation and the language of apocalyptic, instead of simply leaving them to the war-mongering fanatics. Nonviolent ministers must do the hard work of preaching from Revelation, because only by teaching our people to read this book as a handbook of nonviolent patience for persecuted churches can we inoculate them against the virulent war-mad interpretations so popular in many U.S. Christian circles.
Who authored Revelations? What did he mean?
Although the traditional view still has many adherents, many modern scholars believe that John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, and John of Patmos refer to three separate individuals. Certain lines of evidence suggest that John of Patmos wrote only Revelation, not the Gospel of John nor the Epistles of John. For one, the author of Revelation identifies himself as “John” several times, but the author of the Gospel of John never identifies himself directly. While both works liken Jesus to a lamb, they consistently use different words for lamb when referring to him — the Gospel uses amnos, Revelation uses arnion.[3]. Lastly, the Gospel is written in nearly flawless Greek, but Revelation contains grammatical errors and stylistic abnormalities which indicate its author may not have been as familiar with the Greek language as the Gospel’s author. Proponents of the single-author view explain these differences in various ways, including but not limited to factoring in underlying motifs and purposes, authorial target audience and the author’s collaboration with and/or utilization of different scribes. A natural reading of the text would reveal that John is writing literally as he sees the vision (Rev 1:11; 10:4; 14:3; 19:9; 21:5) and that he is warned by an angel not to alter the text through a subsequent edit (Rev 22:18-19), in order to maintain the textual integrity of the book.
If you, like me, think of an elite core of winged messengers when you see the word “hermeneutics,” well, hold on there Newt. It’s not about “Hermes Nauts.” It’s easier than that. Think “interpretive.” Think “explanatory.” Think “just a professional buzzword in the world of scriptural scholarship.”
