E_muse

Your reply shows a misunderstanding to the post to which you are responding.

I don't have a Docetic interpretation of the text. I've already rejected it on the grounds that it involves reading into the text.

What I said, if you read more closely, is that you criticize me for not seeing the Docetic interpretation as equally valid to my own.

Saying that many interpretations are possible is not an arguement that all those interpretations are valid or based on the same line of reasoning.

Your statement that no interpretation can be demonstrated wrong leaves open the possibility that my interpretation may be right. Only an examination of the interprative methods involved will begin to bring an answer. What is yours?

<sigh>Sadly, this proves nothing Michael, except your own need to withdraw from the debate.

You are asserting that a large and finite number of interpretations of the Markan text are possible and equally valid. You are saying that no interpretation can be proven wrong.

However, your own interpretation, that the text cannot be fully understood, must be informed by your own a priori assumptions. If I accept your own line of reasoning, which reflects an interpretation of the text - albeit an non-commital one, then I have no rational basis for accepting your assertion as true. This is especially the case as you still haven't given your own rules for interpreting ancient texts for assessment.

To summarise:

You assert that there are many and equally valid interpretations of the text, none of which can be proved wrong or right.

This must include your own interpretation which is based upon your own a prior assumptions.

Conclusion, I cannot know that your assertion is right. The methods of interpretations themselves must be examined.

Please respond if you feel able to Michael.

Michael

Vorkosigan

Originally posted by E_muse:
You are asserting that a large and finite number of interpretations of the Markan text are possible and equally valid. You are saying that no interpretation can be proven wrong.

No, I am saying that many interpretations might be thought right. I am not saying that no interpretation can be proven wrong. As I have already said. Several times.

However, your own interpretation, that the text cannot be fully understood, must be informed by your own a priori assumptions.....

Bingo.

....If i accept your own line of reasoning, which reflects an interpretation of the text - albeit an non-commital one, then I have no rational basis for accepting your assertion as true.

No. a priori does not mean irrational. It just means "pre-existing."

This is especially the case as you still haven't given your own rules for interpreting ancient texts for assessment.

You must have missed my last post. See the one before yours.

You assert that there are many and equally valid interpretations of the text, none of which can be proved wrong or right.

No, I assert only that there are many interpretations of the text. "Right or wrong" do not apply in interpretation. "Supported or unsupported," maybe.


This must include your own interpretation which is based upon your own a prior assumptions.

Yep.

Conclusion, I cannot know that your assertion is right.

Wrong again. There is no "right" interpretation. "Right" exists only in the world of pre-existing values. We'd have to have some shared value to talk about "right."

please respond if you feel able to Michael.

I do. However, I need you to give up this concept that there is some "right" interpretation of what Mark meant by Jesus' resurrection. "Interpretations" by their nature are subjective. Do you think there is some "right" interpretation of what Melville meant by the whiteness of the whale? Do you think there is some "right" interpretation of Eliot meant by the Grail?

If you want to recover what Mark intended, that is a different story altogether, and does not fall into the realm of "interpretation," since it is potentially verifiable, as soon as someone invents a time machine......but the author's intentions are not necessarily the "right" way to interpret the text or its meaning.

Michael

James Still

Sorry for jumping right in but this caught my eye. Muse, your line of thought is suspiciously close to Pyrrhonian skepticism. In the process of claiming that interpretations are necessarily a priori assumptions, and that all assumptions cannot be right or wrong, you've just damned any possibility of ever being able to arrive at a consensus as to what a given text means. By throwing the baby out with the bathwater your own interpretations prove just as fickle as any other. What criteria would you have us use to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of a text?

E_muse

Michael, I suspect that you were getting angry and frustrated with me. Maybe more the latter.

However, if our beliefs are not worth getting passionate about then they're probably not worth believing in in the first place.

Get back to you later.

E_muse

Thank you for jumping in James

I haven't been around for a few days so apologies for the tardiness of my reply.

Your point is exactly the point I was trying to make to Michael.

Michael seemed to freely admit that his own conclusions regarding Biblical text are based upon his own a priori assumptions. He also seemed to suggest that no interpretation can be proved right and wrong. He also seemed to flit between different methods of interpretation.

This lead to me thinking that methods of interpretation must be compared and validated as workable methods in order to establish what an accurate translation might be.

I do think that it is possible to get to the heart of a text, but an agreed method of interpretation seems necessary.

Vorkosigan

Michael seemed to freely admit that his own conclusions regarding Biblical text are based upon his own a priori assumptions. He also seemed to suggest that no interpretation can be proved right and wrong. He also seemed to flit between different methods of interpretation.

This is about the hundredth time you have mischaracterized my position.

ALL interpretations are based on a priori assumptions, yours and mine. Some we share. Others we don't share; for example, you seem to think that there is some one "right interpretation" and all others are wrong.

"Interpretation" is necessarily subjective and there is no "right" one. What is the "right" way to conduct Mahler's Second Symphony? What is the one correct meaning of the Grail in the Eliot's The Wasteland? How should we interpret "Virgil Brigman" in The Abyss, knowing that Virgil took Dante through hell, and a "brig" is a prison?

The ending of Mark is clearly ambiguous as to the final disposition of Jesus' body. Nowhere in Mark is it clearly stated where the body is. If it were, you could just tell me. Thus, Jesus could be meeting the women in Galilee with or without it. From Mark, we cannot know. Therefore, any statement you make about its final disposition is an "interpretation" based on some outside assumption that you bring to Mark.

The Docetic and anti-Docetic viewpoints on Mark are interpretations based on a priori assumptions. Either can fit the text.

I have not "flitted" between different methods of interpretation. Rather, I recognize that many might be acceptable. Mark can suit a number of positions. Marxists, Gnostics, mythologists, Protestants and Roman Catholics may all have different interpretations of the Gospel of Mark, because each will have her own interpretive framework through which to view Mark. None of these is the "right" interpretation, they are just different ways of looking at the same material.

What I do not understand is why this is so difficult for you to grasp. Every freshman lit major knows that texts may be interpreted in a variety of ways by readers. Most people rejoice in that conclusion.

Michael

hedonologist

Here are some hypotheses. That the author of this part of Mark…:
1) …were (possibly) a Docetic who had no intention of conveying a “bodily” resurrection.
2) …were (possibly) trying to write a story that would appeal to both Docetics and those believing in the “bodily” resurrection.

1. About the author being a Docetic:

Would a Docetic make up the story of the empty tomb? If so, why? What would be his theological purpose of an empty tomb?

If the Docetic author heard the part about the empty tomb and believed that part, then wouldn’t he have to believe the body were stolen, moved, that the witnesses were at the wrong tomb, etc? If so, did he make up the young man in the white robe?

If he did not make up the young man, and if the author didn’t think this man were a hallucination, would the author think the man in white were trying to deceive the witnesses by not also telling them the dead body were somewhere else?

2. About the author trying to make the story appeal to both Docetics and those believing in the “bodily” resurrection:

It would seem that if the author wanted to make the story ambiguous, he wouldn’t make up an empty tomb, he would rather talk about certain types of experiences with “Jesus”, which is what GMark leaves out(, if it always ended at verse 8. It is also possible there was a different ending that was purposefully deleted, changed or missing. One manuscript seems to show evidence of a longer ending.) Probably experiences where Jesus were not eating or touching anyone-- those seem to be anti-docetic. Maybe stories of people not recognizing Jesus like Mary M in John, or Cephas in Luke on the road to Emmaus (these seem relatively more like mistaken [bodily] identity). Making up an empty tomb would seem to be more anti-docetic than making up stories of Jesus touching, eating, or ascending, so Mark looks no less ambiguous than any of the gospels.

If he didn’t make up the empty tomb and the man in white, it seems that an anti-docetic story were given to him and he couldn’t make it more ambiguous to allow the docetic interpretation.

[ August 29, 2001: Message edited by: hedonologist ]

E_muse

I was merely giving James Still the thinking behind my previous posts, which involved repetition.

My reference to flitting between interpretations involved your statement that regarded the missing corpse as a fact - and possibly non docetic - and yet failed to apply an equally straightforward interpretation throughout the text.

E_muse

Michael,

I do intend to respond more fully to your most recent posts but time has been against me in this matter.

Apologies.

E_muse

Michael has said that there are varying interpretations which are placed upon the Markan text. However, he doesn't want this to be taken as saying that all those interpretations are equally valid. With this I can fully agree

However, I disagree that the text supports these varying interpretations or beliefs in the sense that no-one reading the text could derive such beliefs from the text itself.

The text, in this case, is used to support certain prior existent beliefs.

I personally would want to begin to make certain conclusions about the risen Jesus from the text, not by reading certain theological assumptions into the text.

I would then have to suggest that the Markan text cannot then be used to draw any conclusions about the nature of the risen Jesus, whether he is physical or not, and the fact that certain factions within early Christianity seemed to claim that Mark was supporting their view proves nothing, only that they were making those claims. We cannot even use this (IMHO) as evidence that Mark was being deliberately ambiguous but simply that many different theological thinkers are able to twist the text to suit their a priori assumptions.

However, the text itself does not allow us to separate the risen Jesus from his physical body - that conclusion must come from outside the Markan text.

Throughout Mark, Jesus is clearly demonstrated as physical and at no point are we given any room to divorce the person of Jesus from his physical, geographical location. Even the famous comment from the cross, "Into your hands I commit my spirit", is not included.

Lastly, in general, Mark seems to summarise Jesus' life and generally avoids certain details included in other Gospels. His Gospel seems faster paced and more generalized than the others. Jesus baptism and temptation in the wilderness are dealt with in three verses!