Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Vorkosigan · 12-26-2005, 07:21 AM

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Originally Posted by praxeus

I would like to begin by repeating something I said elsewhere: Things like choices of words should be disregarded forevermore as a determination of authorship. Over the years I have seen many NT and Bible scholars (on all sides) make outrageously absurd statements about literature that would send a literary symposium into fits of giggles. Word choice and writing style are NOT suitable criteria for saying that a person did or did not write a particular piece of literature - especially when we are dealing with writing samples as small as the Pastorals! In this regard, conservative scholars rightly cite the work of Yule [Knig.PE, 39; Oden.12TT, 13], who notes that samples of at least 10,000 words are needed to make such determinations - and the Pastorals are rather short of that mark! To put it bluntly, quoting one commentator who has a modicum of literary sense: "...literary art cannot be reduced to a mathematical equation." [Guth.PE, 214]

Why? It's just the usual out of context quoting and bad scholarship we already know from Holding.

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Beyond that, critics need to test their theories more broadly before they make outrageous statements like the above. I have yet to see these sort of guidelines applied to other literary works and authors as a guide, and the same sort of conclusions reached; for example, Plato's later works show a broader range of vocabulary that his earlier ones, and Hamlet has more unique words than any other Shakespearian play - yet no one denies Shakespeare its authorship!....

Here is Holding admitting that he doesn't understand statistical analysis. Prax, why do you even bother with this crap?

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I just dealt with this junque from another. Vork, I came TO my views on the Bible step-by-step, and they are part of an integrated scholastic and spiritual view. It is actually a very dubious tactic to accuse me otherwise.

I didn't say a word about how you came to your views, Steven. Only that your scholarly conclusions are determined by your religious positions.

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The 'ruthlessness' of much modern scholarship is a mask hiding an animus to the Creator of the universe, and our accountability before Him. You, sadly, despite good smarts, given to you as a potential blessing and gift, have joined Nietzsche in that morass of animus.

The vast majority of NT scholars, including most of the ones I cite, are all believing Christians. It's like I said before, Prax -- as long as you give yourself the choice between "truth" or "conspiracy" you'll never really understand anything. You haven't mastered techniques of scholarship, prax, but instead you've developed ever more elaborated labyrinths of belief to hold reality at bay. You can't separate your social identity from your scholarship. And ultimately, because of that, you will render the latter sterile, and the former brittle.

The fact is that you're not defending your"Creator" but a particular interpretation of a particular set of texts. Do you really that the Creator who wrought 250 million galaxies each with 100 trillion stars really gives a damn whether Paul wrote the Pastorals or not? Do you think that he wants all the Minds He made in lockstep, like Roman legions parading in review past an Emperor, hand outstretched? What kind of nightmare world is that?

All of us outside conservative scholarship are constantly struck by the same thing, articulated by Lemche the other day on the Bib Studies list: how sterile conservative scholarship is. How uncreative it is. How lacking in insight. How methodologically vapid it is. You people build walls instead of planting gardens, and as a result, your ideas bear no fruit. You have that same habit that all conservatives do, Steven -- you're incredibly erudite but in a very narrow way, and you guys make a fetish of erudition precisely because your scholarship holds out so little hope of actually going anywhere.

But it doesn't have to be that way, prax. Thousands of believing scholars do good work -- creative work -- work that puts all that erudition in service of their fellow beings -- without giving up their belief in God, and without any need to defend any particular interpretation of the texts. Except for specialists in history, nobody now remembers the thousands of conservatives who populated the ranks of pre-war Bible scholarship. Their work bore no fruit, and left no posterity. Their names are gone. The people remembered are those who did not engage in Bible-idolatry -- who did not imagine that their interpretation of the texts was greater than the texts themselves. They were ones who conducted a dialog with the text, who listened to the text when it spoke to them. Who pushed us all one more little step forward towards understanding the text.

You have the knowledge, and the wit, and the erudition, prax, to really achieve something. To bear fruit. But these walls you're buiilding, prax -- they're not keeping the world out -- they're just penning you in. Time to leave them behind.

Vorkosigan

Steven Avery · 12-26-2005, 07:41 AM