Happy Almost Thanksgiving
Dear wife is in bed, I am sitting up with a headcold, looking forward to my second night on the couch. I have not been exiled of course; it's just that I can't sleep normally when I am sick, and I sleep better alone, out here, off and on, blowing my nose and propping my head up. I am looking forward to more reading as soon as I finish this. I am burning through Luke Johnson's Intro to the NT (actually something like, The Writings of the NT, an Interpretation). It is a good introductory text, fluently written, one I wish I had consulted earlier as I awkwardly continue to self-educate.
Some thoughts on blog:
It's good to be back. I was trying to think of a metaphor for my blog, and what I came up with was this: this blog is like being not quite ready for a dinner party, and the guests come early anyway. My t shirt is wet from the navel down, there is flour on my right jean leg, and I haven't shaved. But the food is mostly cooking, and the wine comes out, and everything ends up warm and comfortable regardless. That sounds over optimistic, considering how much I used to stress over my lack of prep time for my posts and the general lack of comments...but I think there is truth to that metaphor. Getting caught in the open as who I am. I have shared much of that here. What a journey. I have said some very meaningful things and some very silly things. Thinking back go my oldest posts, I see growth.
I am drafting yet another post, one I hope actually makes it here, something which mixes the reflective and the theological (or at least, addresses my personal struggles with an issue in the NT). I know that I cannot crack the puzzle of the NT and find the concrete phenomenon beneath. It does not work like that. Some study the texts deeply and lose faith, like Ehrman, or never really find faith at all. Some study the NT closely and their faith grows, morphs into something dynamic; I can name many scholars in this camp. Frankly, it is a difficult and at times stressful journey. And yet I must look. I have to. I am driven to do so, and hope at the end that my own faith survives in some orthodox fashion (and for me, orthodox pretty much requires belief in the resurrection in some form; belief that a Creator God acted dynamically through Jesus of Nazareth in history; that may not be full orthodoxy, but it is enough these days).
For scholars do and say strange things when they look up from reading the NT over years. I have long found some of the arguments for innerrancy remarkably strained (no, there were two demon possessed men really and one acted as spokesperson for the other); likewise (since Professor Ehrman's name has already appeared) Bart Ehrman's comparison of Apollonius of Tyana, Honi the Circle Drawer, and Jesus, I find equally strained. I struggled manfully through Philostratus' account of Apollonius, or most of it, certainly the parts where the 'miraculous' appears. Read it, friends; then go read the first few chapters of Mark. The first two chapters is enough. I see more difference than similarity.
What is it about the NT that affects people with such radical variance? Why does the impact of the gospels on a person change even over some person's lifetimes? These are potent questions that lie outside the realm of critical historical inquiry.
For me, entering the historical critical fray, I know there will be things I must bracket. That will be hard to do though I have done some of this already. Although I am willing to suspend judgement rather than take a position on historicity (and even that term is complex) when there is insufficient information. But even I will have presuppositions working in me. I am quite willing to believe a man was healed who had a withered hand; but demons rushing into pigs! Demons aren't real; they don't inhabit beings...do they? Certainly not in my experience. That is certainly embellished. You see, as is true for everyone, I arrive at the door of the gospels with plenty of luggage.
My plan is to read all of Johnson's intro and the respective NT books in the order he covers them. Sure I've read most if not all the NT at some point, but this will be more systematic and guided. The fact is, I love to do it. And the struggle rises in me once again: I am a good English teacher, though my campus activities, or service, could perhaps be more than they are lately (wife in grad school and distance from the campus, mostly). But the amount of free time I spent on my avocation, my NT self-education...well, it is looming large again. I would get much more done if my family didn't like to watch so much tv, but hey, I'm not going to lock myself in a room when they're home. That would be too much like a real scholar :) But how odd, that I finally have the tenured English position, and I spend more time reading NT studies than anything in literature. Well, at least the last couple of years. I suppose that is one of the luxuries of my job...intellectual variety.
Be well all. I am pooping out, sick boy that I am (echoes of the old social d. song). More to come, surely :) God be with all.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! Wife is working and son is at his dad's....I'll be home on the couch blowing my nose and watching the green bay packers......love Favre to death.
:)
Some thoughts on blog:
It's good to be back. I was trying to think of a metaphor for my blog, and what I came up with was this: this blog is like being not quite ready for a dinner party, and the guests come early anyway. My t shirt is wet from the navel down, there is flour on my right jean leg, and I haven't shaved. But the food is mostly cooking, and the wine comes out, and everything ends up warm and comfortable regardless. That sounds over optimistic, considering how much I used to stress over my lack of prep time for my posts and the general lack of comments...but I think there is truth to that metaphor. Getting caught in the open as who I am. I have shared much of that here. What a journey. I have said some very meaningful things and some very silly things. Thinking back go my oldest posts, I see growth.
I am drafting yet another post, one I hope actually makes it here, something which mixes the reflective and the theological (or at least, addresses my personal struggles with an issue in the NT). I know that I cannot crack the puzzle of the NT and find the concrete phenomenon beneath. It does not work like that. Some study the texts deeply and lose faith, like Ehrman, or never really find faith at all. Some study the NT closely and their faith grows, morphs into something dynamic; I can name many scholars in this camp. Frankly, it is a difficult and at times stressful journey. And yet I must look. I have to. I am driven to do so, and hope at the end that my own faith survives in some orthodox fashion (and for me, orthodox pretty much requires belief in the resurrection in some form; belief that a Creator God acted dynamically through Jesus of Nazareth in history; that may not be full orthodoxy, but it is enough these days).
For scholars do and say strange things when they look up from reading the NT over years. I have long found some of the arguments for innerrancy remarkably strained (no, there were two demon possessed men really and one acted as spokesperson for the other); likewise (since Professor Ehrman's name has already appeared) Bart Ehrman's comparison of Apollonius of Tyana, Honi the Circle Drawer, and Jesus, I find equally strained. I struggled manfully through Philostratus' account of Apollonius, or most of it, certainly the parts where the 'miraculous' appears. Read it, friends; then go read the first few chapters of Mark. The first two chapters is enough. I see more difference than similarity.
What is it about the NT that affects people with such radical variance? Why does the impact of the gospels on a person change even over some person's lifetimes? These are potent questions that lie outside the realm of critical historical inquiry.
For me, entering the historical critical fray, I know there will be things I must bracket. That will be hard to do though I have done some of this already. Although I am willing to suspend judgement rather than take a position on historicity (and even that term is complex) when there is insufficient information. But even I will have presuppositions working in me. I am quite willing to believe a man was healed who had a withered hand; but demons rushing into pigs! Demons aren't real; they don't inhabit beings...do they? Certainly not in my experience. That is certainly embellished. You see, as is true for everyone, I arrive at the door of the gospels with plenty of luggage.
My plan is to read all of Johnson's intro and the respective NT books in the order he covers them. Sure I've read most if not all the NT at some point, but this will be more systematic and guided. The fact is, I love to do it. And the struggle rises in me once again: I am a good English teacher, though my campus activities, or service, could perhaps be more than they are lately (wife in grad school and distance from the campus, mostly). But the amount of free time I spent on my avocation, my NT self-education...well, it is looming large again. I would get much more done if my family didn't like to watch so much tv, but hey, I'm not going to lock myself in a room when they're home. That would be too much like a real scholar :) But how odd, that I finally have the tenured English position, and I spend more time reading NT studies than anything in literature. Well, at least the last couple of years. I suppose that is one of the luxuries of my job...intellectual variety.
Be well all. I am pooping out, sick boy that I am (echoes of the old social d. song). More to come, surely :) God be with all.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! Wife is working and son is at his dad's....I'll be home on the couch blowing my nose and watching the green bay packers......love Favre to death.
:)
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