Gamera

It clear to me having a background in postmodern thought. It's moving the discourse of Christianity in the right direction, away from the certainties and absolutism of the Englightment (which whether you like it or not is defunct), and into a more meaningful relationship with how modern people actually live and relate to texts.

Gamera

Well, neither of us have read the book, but from the excerpt I understand that he is doing what make sense and that is to put the concept of historicity in the context of textuality. There is no history without texts. Historicity is not some positivistic way of knowing, in the same way I know that my wife exists. Texts do not bring the dead to life. Texts are what we mean by historicity. and text are never reality.

Once we get over that hurtle -- that history itself is literary and narrative in nature -- we can concentrate more on how communities produce texts about historical figures and why rather than making positivistic statements about who existed and who didn't, whatever that means, given we don't have time machines.

DCHindley

I was, of course, only passing on what Moore had stated.

Moore comments on the effect that Structuralism has had upon biblical exegesis, saying that "in its more ambitious forms, [it] attempts to analyze biblical texts as products of transhistorical and transcultural generative systems, bracketing historical considerations in order to do so. Less ambitious forms of biblical structuralism seek to analyze the text in terms of their 'surface' components (actions, characters, settings, etc.) - at which point they shade over into narrative criticism." (Moore, pg. 69).

A good overview of Structural Exegesis applied to the NT text is Daniel Patte's Structural Exegesis for New Testament Critics (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1990), which summarizes the meta-theory of A. J. Greimas into a six-step method: 1) defining complete discourse units, 2) identifying explicit oppositions of actions, 3) identification of convictions expressed by the subjects of opposed actions, 4) identification of the convictions expressed by the effects of opposed actions upon receivers, 5) identification of the pattern of the system of convictions being expressed, and 6) discerning the specific features of the discourse unit.

According to Moore, Narrative Criticism has been redefined by a number of recent biblical exegetes. This "new dispensation's" roots and trunk derive from Redaction Criticism, onto which have been grafted elements of Secular Narratology (the main form of literary Structuralism). Secular Narratology is the "conception of the literary text as a communication between an author and a reader conducted through a set of intermediary personae (implied author, narrator, narratee, implied reader), joined to a conception of the narrative text as an autonomous story whose basic elements are plot, characters, and settings, with a preoccupation with the rhetorical techniques used by the author to transmit the story to the reader." (Moore, pp. 67-68).

The closest parallel Moore can think of to Narrative Criticism's employment of holistic readings was the "New Criticism" of the 1930's - 50's "for which the literary work of art, preeminently the poem, was an autonomous, internally unified organism, the bearer of a meaning that had to be validated first and foremost by the context of the work itself , as opposed to its historical setting." (Moore, pg. 68).

Secular Narratology is appropriated, he says, in order "to analyze plot, character, point of view, setting, narrative time, and other features of Gospel narrative, including the intratextual reader (at which point it shades over to reader-response criticism)." However, "Narrative criticism has no precise analogue in nonbiblical literary criticism." (Moore, pg. 131).

Reader-Response Criticism, for its part, is described as a "spectrum of contrasting positions, some centered on the ways in which literary texts guide, educate, and manipulate their readers (New testament reader-response critics fall mainly into this category), others more interested in how readers actually read (which may have little to do with subtle textual promptings), and still others centered on the factors that enable and delimit reading in the first place (competence, cultural or institutional location, gender, etc.)." (Moore, pp. 131-132).

This new Narrative Criticism, Moore believes, is offset by a sub-movement within Post-Structuralism known as Deconstructionism. (Moore, pp. 115-117). Under Deconstructionism as defined by Derrida, aporias are examples of the "exclusions, omissions, and blind spots" which are of great interest to Deconstructionists. This is especially the case when aporias "can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition, but which, however, inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganizing it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics." (Derrida, Positions (or via: amazon.co.uk), pg. 43). According to de Man, aporias in texts betray a "residue of meaning that remains beyond the reach of the text's own logic." (De Man, Allegories of Reading (or via: amazon.co.uk), pg. 99). The text will "compel us to choose between two options 'while destroying the foundations of any choice' (De Man, pg. 245), each option being 'precisely the error denounced by the other.'" (De Man, pg. 12). (as quoted by Moore, pg. 72).

Moore offers two Post-Structuralist interpretations of NT biblical texts: A Derridian interpretation of the pericope about the Samaritan woman in John 4 (with a side look at the piercing of Jesus' side in John 19), emphasizing the use of metaphysical oppositions and the use of tropes. (Moore, pp. 43-64); and a Foucaldian interpretation of statements about Jesus' crucifixion, atonement and Christian discipline, found in the Pauline epistles, by analyzing them in the context of power relationships between God and mankind. (Moore, pp. 85-112). He chooses these texts precisely because they contain aporias. Moore also notes that Barbara Johnson, starting about 1984, aporias are investigated for insights into issues related to gender and race. (Moore, pp. 73-74).

On the other hand, under the newer form of NT Narrative Criticism aporias are perceived as illusionary, as they would not be expected in a well edited text, and as a result, can (or should?) be explained as rhetorical devices. This is why I initially read George A. Kennedy's New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1984). To Kennedy, "[r]hetorical criticism can help fill a void which lies between form criticism [as practiced by historical critics?] on the one hand and literary criticism on the other." (Kennedy, pg. 3). "Rhetorical criticism takes the text as we have it, whether the work of a single author or the product of editing, and looks at it from the point of view of the author's or editor's intent, the unified results, and how it would be perceived by an audience of near contemporaries." (Kennedy, pg. 4).

Kennedy, as a classical rhetorician, is not unconcerned with the possible existence of sources. "Redaction criticism might be viewed as a special form of rhetorical criticism which deals with texts where the hand of a redactor, or editor, can be detected. It is concerned with the intent of that editor, and especially his theological intent, as revealed in his use of sources." (Kennedy, pg. 4). Personally, after reading his book I think Kennedy is much more in tune with both structuralism and historiography than are some of the NT Narrative critics who make use of rhetoric at the expense of historical and structural considerations.

This hodge-podge of approaches, linguistic and historical, has me in a quandary. Should we just give up on trying to discover a Historical Jesus and concentrate on the NT's Christ of faith, as suggested by L T Johnson? Where, then, does that put those of those of us who do not share that concept? I am not ready to give up on historical reconstruction, although I am perfectly willing to incorporate deconstructive perspective into my assessment of sources. How do others on this list feel about these issues? Can a path be found, and if so, at what cost?

DCH

aChristian

I would have to agree with Toto. I see a lot that is ‘off about this’. It is a way to believe something against all evidence and then try to make it sound rational.

There is history without texts. The fact that the sun came up today is an historical event whether or not anyone wrote a text about it. You should want evidence for believing anything, whether it is that your wife exists or that Jesus existed, died, rose from the dead, and ascended bodily into heaven. You should just judge the texts in an honest and logical manner to determine whether they accurately describe the historical events in the same way that a jury judges who is at fault in a traffic accident using the texts (reports or live testimony) to determine what happened (the history).

~M~

I do like my POMO.

DCHindley

Is that anything like "Malt-O-Meal"?

DCH

Gamera

Should we give up on trying to discover a Historical Jesus?

Not as scholars, no. More evidence may be out there that may illuminate the epistles or the surviving Gospel mss as history (and as long as we acknowledge that the "historical Jesus" is as much a construct of texts as the Christ of faith).

As Christians, yes. What does that historical empiricism have to do with the gospel as a narrative claimed, as Paul says, to have the power of salvation? Historicity is a pseudoproblem, especially in light of the fact that historicity is always a function of a narrative in any case.

But this is neither abandoning oneself to postmodernism. It's understanding that discourse isn't life. You're not going to meet the real Jesus in texts any more than you'll meet the real Socrates. What you got is texts, a narrative. But that's all we ever get with historicity.

Gamera

I think this is a form of reductionism. The issue for historicity is not whether the sun rose 10 years ago, but whether certain persons existed and did certain things claimed they did IN TEXTS.

That's what we mean by historicity, not the functioning of physical laws in the past.

Here's the problem you are avoiding: discourse is not life (as Foucault put it so well). Sitting accross a table and talking to a living person is not in the same category of experiences as reading a text about an historical person who had a conversation. Texts are text. They aren't reality. You can never get to real people through texts. It is a fiction. And thus historicity is an artifact of discourse, not a pointer to a living experience.

It's this dichotomy that positivists fail to take into consideration in discussing the historical texts we have in the Christian scriptures. They are in wierd way attempting to "resurrect" Jesus a second time. And discourse cannot do that.

spin

As we have basically put post-modernism in its more effete forms in the waste paper bin of raving loonies, what would post post modern christians claim?


spin

RareBird

It was burned up by the Industrial Revolution. We have a new "revolution" now (Information Technology Revolution) but unfortunately, it's in the hands of unenlightened burnouts of the Industrial Revolution.