A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Written for Dr. James Duke
10-17-07
by
Nathan J. Barnes
Copyright by all rights reserved 2007
methodological reflections
Considering possible magnitude of such a journey, I have been putting off a detailed review of the philosophical assumptions of my methodology as long as possible. I believe that I have been able to avoid philosophical discussions about the definition and nature of history, philology, and interpretation by strictly limiting the scope and depth of any claims that I make in crafting the parameters of my explorations. That is, I simply made no historical claims but introduced possibilities. I used the results of philology and only used its methods in a very restricted fashion. Now, for better or worse, I will reveal and explore the assumptions which guide my thinking.
Since the course is the history of theological hermeneutics, I will explore my methodology in that order: my assumptions regarding the nature of history, my understanding of how I relate to the discipline of theology, and my hermeneutics. Obviously, due to the nature of the course, I will attempt to situate myself with a tradition with a particular history. And, of course I realize that my interpretative method can be reduced to my assumptions in my reading of anything, including that which shapes my thinking, hence the hermeneutical circle. I enter the circle in my very first step, realizing the interdependent nature of the disciplines which I access.
As a Biblical interpreter, I consider myself first and foremost a reader of the text. My reading is inter-disciplinary and my method is a historical-critical comparative literature. That is, I consider the studies of several disciplines to inform my deconstructive and reconstructive process of reading, but the method that I actually want to practice is comparing the biblical texts to other texts.
I do not assume that the text is intrinsically connected to anything: the mind of the author, the authors intentions, etc. All that we have to interpret is the text, and anything else that is added to the text is a hindrance to interpreting it. I believe that textual interpretation is a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, and the reconstruction is a product completely and utterly separate from the original construction by the author. This, of course leads to a problem: the text is the creation of the author, but what is the creation of the interpreter? More specifically problematic is the next question: if Paul is presenting Pauline Christianity, is it intellectually honest to call the interpreters reconstruction of it Pauline or Christianity?
In my opinion, interpretation is forever the product of the mind of the interpreter and not the author of the text. Once the words leave the mind of the author and are encoded into the language outside of her mind, there is no connection back to the source. There is even less connection between the mind of the author and the historical events he or she is attempting to give testimony to. The goal of my method of interpretation, in my opinion, is to reconstruct a text as close to the original as possible. I respect other interpretations and methods which derive meanings, but methods which are unsuccessful in deconstructing and reconstructing cannot make a historical claim.
Deconstruction is the process by which the text is analyzed and broken down into its simplest parts. This does not mean that it is a simple process, but requires an interdisciplinary approach which considers the contributions of many studies. Because I am attempting to interpret an ancient text, the first step in interpretation is textual criticism. I need to know the nature of the text before me. However, text criticism itself considers philological, grammatical, and syntactical studies. Textual criticism will help determine what words were most likely used together to express ideas. Added texts and redactions help convey minor and major differences in thought, telling us how early readers read and corrected the original author. From the text critical studies we determine which text we want to interpret. I choose the text which I think is most likely the authors.
Next comes language studies. Granted, textual critics use linguistic considerations to determine the most likely reading of the original text. However, I am not a text critic, but an interpreter attempting to understand the original text. So after the best text is selected, I apply a series of studies to it. I am concerned with the meaning of each individual word, the grammar and syntax, and the rhetoric of the passage. The meaning of individual words and their grammar/syntax depends on their usage in the history of the language generally, the usage of the words within the particular school of the author, and the use the style of the author. In this type of work, mysteries abound, and several of them remain unsolved. Nevertheless, rigorous philological study has been informing biblical interpretation for some time now with good results.
After the meanings of the words and grammatical problems are addressed, the text should be read and situated within some religious/philosophical context. Sometimes philology can identify the usage of technical philosophical terms in the biblical text, and historical relationships between philosophical movements and the text should be explored. This is the type of research that I particularly enjoy. I have written several papers on the history of various ideas in the New Testament as found in Greco-Roman philosophy. The text could interact with a cosmology, morality, or other philosophical concept which was either in popular culture or an obscure philosopher.
Also, as part of the process of deconstruction, the rhetoric of the text should be analyzed. This is done with the use of the tools of rhetorical criticism, which has seen some success. The method of rhetorical criticism is the comparison of the text with the rhetorical handbooks by Aristotle and Quintilian and the reflections of the rhetorical theorists like Cicero and Plutarch. Some significant progress in biblical interpretation has come from rhetorical criticism, most notably the epistle to the Romans. Rhetorical criticism identifies relationships between words that simple definitions cannot illuminate.
I also consider form criticism important in deconstructing a text. Form criticism helps us determine what type of text is being interpreted. An occasional letter, for example, is interpreted differently from a narrative. A parable may be different from a syllogism, and etc.
Redaction criticism would be important in the deconstruction process, but it is so unstable due to the lack of methodological reflection that it is virtually useless to me and everyone else. I do ascribe to a general theory of the redaction of the New Testament, but the precise process of redaction is a process of speculation in which I refuse to speculate. Sure, I admit that the text which I interpret may have passed through an untold number of hands before there is even evidence of it in textual criticism, but if so there is not enough evidence for it. Q research has seen its fair share of this type of speculation. Helmut Koester, for example, believes that Q is redacted, but bases this speculation based on his assumption that the smallest elements of scripture all have independent histories and not on any actual evidence. I have typically argued against redaction theories in my papers.
Historical studies also assist in the process of deconstruction. By historical I mean analyses of the culture as portrayed in ancient writers and archaeological evidence. I want to know as much as I can about the historical context because the text almost certainly interacts with its historical context in some way. Results from these writings help determine the meanings of words and concepts within the social and cultural structures in which the writing can be situated. I include social science studies and anthropological studies here, since they must rely on historical studies to apply their models.
I will repeat this process as the disciplines inform me. I may notice in my readings of the philosophers and other ancient writers that the philological studies which I have accessed for a particular author are incomplete for my purposes. I also regularly notice shortcomings in social science analyses where the scholar may have misread or ignored important archaeological or literary evidence. In any case, as I learn and read more about a particular text, I notice a self-correcting and self-refining trend which helps me to be more precise in my deconstruction.
The Process of Reconstruction
Reconstruction is the process which transfers the supposed meaning of the text in a way that conveys the dynamic equivalence of the text into a message which is understandable to modern readers. Not all interpretative methods can give light to each biblical text because each passage presents its own unique problems. Once the interpreter has the pre-knowledge of the text: clarity of word meanings, grammar, rhetoric (that which is probably meant as rhetoric only and that which may be another literary device), philosophical situation, and other historical contexts (maybe from social science, archaeology, or light from another ancient writing), the reader can begin to reconstruct what is being said in the original text. This process is inexact and subject to error at any step. It is more likely after all this reflection that the interpreter reproduce the authors thought imprecisely and riddled with errors than a clean reproduction. Indeed, the margin for error is so great that a clean reproduction is a hopeless endeavor. One must instead seek to reconstruct the text to the best of ones ability and hope for someone else to come along with something which further clarifies the reconstruction.
It is my assertion that we know more precisely what a text does not say than what it does. That is, the results of our many enquiries as to the nature of the text help set boundaries for the interpreter.
Theological Hermeneutics
As it may be indicated above, I see no logical connection between the text and its subjects, whether historical and divine. In this respect, I see no difference at all in interpreting the Bible and any other ancient text. Similarly, it is just as insane to apply any other ancient text as a rule for modern living as it is to do the same thing with the Bible. Ancient texts, at least in the period that I am familiar with, share the weakness of the Bible in assuming that a whole host of social structures are normative and conducive to healthy living. These social structures are conducive to homophobia, slavery, sexism, racism, mutually exclusive of libertarian freedoms and a free economy, and also are usually based on epistemological arguments which are patently false.[FONT="][1][/FONT] I do not want to assert that my culture is ipso facto superior, but we should recognize that the advances of the past two thousand years are indeed an improvement and we should not willingly impose a new Dark Age on either the church or encourage the rest of humanity to live in darkness.
The only connection with the divine, at least in the way that I understand the Christian message, is through faith. By faith I believe that God is the Creator of the universe, which guides all the rest of my thinking about God. If God is the Creator, as I believe God to be, then God exists independently from the text and is accessible only by faith. I do not understand God to be the abstract concept of rational thinking which is therefore accessible by the tools of logic and reason. God is also the Creator of the universe and not part of the universe and therefore inaccessible by the ways and means of evaluating, classifying, and relating to the universe. If God were discovered or accessible through reason, science, or technology, then humanitys relationship with God would be determined by humanity. However, since God discovered humanity by virtue of revelation - which is the only way we would know of Gods existence - then God chooses how humanity relates to God.
This thinking pleases me in a few important ways. First, it excuses myself and all thinking people from belief in God. If God were accessible by logic, or revealed in nature and Gods existence and character confirmed by intersubjectively verifiable methods, then all rational people would have to assent to Gods existence.[FONT="][2][/FONT] Furthermore, if God were accessible through reason, the actual person of God would be subject to the passionate disquietude of scholarly thought, changing with whatever philosophy were prevalent in academia. Secondly, I believe that it excuses me from participating in theology myself.
[FONT="]
As a Christian scholar, the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture which I have adopted is something that I call incarnational inspiration. I draw my inspiration for this term from a doctrine of the incarnation of Christ which teaches that Christ is fully God and fully human. For the time being, I believe that God and humanity, for whatever reason, are both equally involved in the entire process which brings Scripture and its interpretation to us. This may be irrationally and hopelessly optimistic, given that there is no evidence for Gods existence in the first place, not to mention the awesome depravities of the biblical text and its even more diabolical interpretations. The biblical text, for example, is culpable for the deaths of millions of people. Granted, the text itself has killed no one, its interpreters have, but if the text were from a benevolent God, it could have been - and should have been - written in such a way that these interpretations could have been prevented. If that example is too extreme, then certainly someone could have had the foresight to address pederasty, the problem of slavery (and especially within this, the sexual availability of all slaves to their masters), and untold other social problems. It is with blind hope that I wish for God to have mercy on the interpreter and breathe new life into ongoing interpretation done by myself and other lovers of the New Testament and other religious literature.[/FONT]
[FONT="][1][/FONT] Aristotles doctrine of natural hierarchies come to mind, as it is especially obvious in the NT with the submission of women.
[FONT="][2][/FONT] Obviously, then, I disagree with theologians who consider theology to be science and the Bible or any other religious text to be "data" for logical constructs which "prove" Gods existence.
10-17-07
by
Nathan J. Barnes
Copyright by all rights reserved 2007
methodological reflections
Considering possible magnitude of such a journey, I have been putting off a detailed review of the philosophical assumptions of my methodology as long as possible. I believe that I have been able to avoid philosophical discussions about the definition and nature of history, philology, and interpretation by strictly limiting the scope and depth of any claims that I make in crafting the parameters of my explorations. That is, I simply made no historical claims but introduced possibilities. I used the results of philology and only used its methods in a very restricted fashion. Now, for better or worse, I will reveal and explore the assumptions which guide my thinking.
Since the course is the history of theological hermeneutics, I will explore my methodology in that order: my assumptions regarding the nature of history, my understanding of how I relate to the discipline of theology, and my hermeneutics. Obviously, due to the nature of the course, I will attempt to situate myself with a tradition with a particular history. And, of course I realize that my interpretative method can be reduced to my assumptions in my reading of anything, including that which shapes my thinking, hence the hermeneutical circle. I enter the circle in my very first step, realizing the interdependent nature of the disciplines which I access.
As a Biblical interpreter, I consider myself first and foremost a reader of the text. My reading is inter-disciplinary and my method is a historical-critical comparative literature. That is, I consider the studies of several disciplines to inform my deconstructive and reconstructive process of reading, but the method that I actually want to practice is comparing the biblical texts to other texts.
I do not assume that the text is intrinsically connected to anything: the mind of the author, the authors intentions, etc. All that we have to interpret is the text, and anything else that is added to the text is a hindrance to interpreting it. I believe that textual interpretation is a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, and the reconstruction is a product completely and utterly separate from the original construction by the author. This, of course leads to a problem: the text is the creation of the author, but what is the creation of the interpreter? More specifically problematic is the next question: if Paul is presenting Pauline Christianity, is it intellectually honest to call the interpreters reconstruction of it Pauline or Christianity?
In my opinion, interpretation is forever the product of the mind of the interpreter and not the author of the text. Once the words leave the mind of the author and are encoded into the language outside of her mind, there is no connection back to the source. There is even less connection between the mind of the author and the historical events he or she is attempting to give testimony to. The goal of my method of interpretation, in my opinion, is to reconstruct a text as close to the original as possible. I respect other interpretations and methods which derive meanings, but methods which are unsuccessful in deconstructing and reconstructing cannot make a historical claim.
Deconstruction is the process by which the text is analyzed and broken down into its simplest parts. This does not mean that it is a simple process, but requires an interdisciplinary approach which considers the contributions of many studies. Because I am attempting to interpret an ancient text, the first step in interpretation is textual criticism. I need to know the nature of the text before me. However, text criticism itself considers philological, grammatical, and syntactical studies. Textual criticism will help determine what words were most likely used together to express ideas. Added texts and redactions help convey minor and major differences in thought, telling us how early readers read and corrected the original author. From the text critical studies we determine which text we want to interpret. I choose the text which I think is most likely the authors.
Next comes language studies. Granted, textual critics use linguistic considerations to determine the most likely reading of the original text. However, I am not a text critic, but an interpreter attempting to understand the original text. So after the best text is selected, I apply a series of studies to it. I am concerned with the meaning of each individual word, the grammar and syntax, and the rhetoric of the passage. The meaning of individual words and their grammar/syntax depends on their usage in the history of the language generally, the usage of the words within the particular school of the author, and the use the style of the author. In this type of work, mysteries abound, and several of them remain unsolved. Nevertheless, rigorous philological study has been informing biblical interpretation for some time now with good results.
After the meanings of the words and grammatical problems are addressed, the text should be read and situated within some religious/philosophical context. Sometimes philology can identify the usage of technical philosophical terms in the biblical text, and historical relationships between philosophical movements and the text should be explored. This is the type of research that I particularly enjoy. I have written several papers on the history of various ideas in the New Testament as found in Greco-Roman philosophy. The text could interact with a cosmology, morality, or other philosophical concept which was either in popular culture or an obscure philosopher.
Also, as part of the process of deconstruction, the rhetoric of the text should be analyzed. This is done with the use of the tools of rhetorical criticism, which has seen some success. The method of rhetorical criticism is the comparison of the text with the rhetorical handbooks by Aristotle and Quintilian and the reflections of the rhetorical theorists like Cicero and Plutarch. Some significant progress in biblical interpretation has come from rhetorical criticism, most notably the epistle to the Romans. Rhetorical criticism identifies relationships between words that simple definitions cannot illuminate.
I also consider form criticism important in deconstructing a text. Form criticism helps us determine what type of text is being interpreted. An occasional letter, for example, is interpreted differently from a narrative. A parable may be different from a syllogism, and etc.
Redaction criticism would be important in the deconstruction process, but it is so unstable due to the lack of methodological reflection that it is virtually useless to me and everyone else. I do ascribe to a general theory of the redaction of the New Testament, but the precise process of redaction is a process of speculation in which I refuse to speculate. Sure, I admit that the text which I interpret may have passed through an untold number of hands before there is even evidence of it in textual criticism, but if so there is not enough evidence for it. Q research has seen its fair share of this type of speculation. Helmut Koester, for example, believes that Q is redacted, but bases this speculation based on his assumption that the smallest elements of scripture all have independent histories and not on any actual evidence. I have typically argued against redaction theories in my papers.
Historical studies also assist in the process of deconstruction. By historical I mean analyses of the culture as portrayed in ancient writers and archaeological evidence. I want to know as much as I can about the historical context because the text almost certainly interacts with its historical context in some way. Results from these writings help determine the meanings of words and concepts within the social and cultural structures in which the writing can be situated. I include social science studies and anthropological studies here, since they must rely on historical studies to apply their models.
I will repeat this process as the disciplines inform me. I may notice in my readings of the philosophers and other ancient writers that the philological studies which I have accessed for a particular author are incomplete for my purposes. I also regularly notice shortcomings in social science analyses where the scholar may have misread or ignored important archaeological or literary evidence. In any case, as I learn and read more about a particular text, I notice a self-correcting and self-refining trend which helps me to be more precise in my deconstruction.
The Process of Reconstruction
Reconstruction is the process which transfers the supposed meaning of the text in a way that conveys the dynamic equivalence of the text into a message which is understandable to modern readers. Not all interpretative methods can give light to each biblical text because each passage presents its own unique problems. Once the interpreter has the pre-knowledge of the text: clarity of word meanings, grammar, rhetoric (that which is probably meant as rhetoric only and that which may be another literary device), philosophical situation, and other historical contexts (maybe from social science, archaeology, or light from another ancient writing), the reader can begin to reconstruct what is being said in the original text. This process is inexact and subject to error at any step. It is more likely after all this reflection that the interpreter reproduce the authors thought imprecisely and riddled with errors than a clean reproduction. Indeed, the margin for error is so great that a clean reproduction is a hopeless endeavor. One must instead seek to reconstruct the text to the best of ones ability and hope for someone else to come along with something which further clarifies the reconstruction.
It is my assertion that we know more precisely what a text does not say than what it does. That is, the results of our many enquiries as to the nature of the text help set boundaries for the interpreter.
Theological Hermeneutics
As it may be indicated above, I see no logical connection between the text and its subjects, whether historical and divine. In this respect, I see no difference at all in interpreting the Bible and any other ancient text. Similarly, it is just as insane to apply any other ancient text as a rule for modern living as it is to do the same thing with the Bible. Ancient texts, at least in the period that I am familiar with, share the weakness of the Bible in assuming that a whole host of social structures are normative and conducive to healthy living. These social structures are conducive to homophobia, slavery, sexism, racism, mutually exclusive of libertarian freedoms and a free economy, and also are usually based on epistemological arguments which are patently false.[FONT="][1][/FONT] I do not want to assert that my culture is ipso facto superior, but we should recognize that the advances of the past two thousand years are indeed an improvement and we should not willingly impose a new Dark Age on either the church or encourage the rest of humanity to live in darkness.
The only connection with the divine, at least in the way that I understand the Christian message, is through faith. By faith I believe that God is the Creator of the universe, which guides all the rest of my thinking about God. If God is the Creator, as I believe God to be, then God exists independently from the text and is accessible only by faith. I do not understand God to be the abstract concept of rational thinking which is therefore accessible by the tools of logic and reason. God is also the Creator of the universe and not part of the universe and therefore inaccessible by the ways and means of evaluating, classifying, and relating to the universe. If God were discovered or accessible through reason, science, or technology, then humanitys relationship with God would be determined by humanity. However, since God discovered humanity by virtue of revelation - which is the only way we would know of Gods existence - then God chooses how humanity relates to God.
This thinking pleases me in a few important ways. First, it excuses myself and all thinking people from belief in God. If God were accessible by logic, or revealed in nature and Gods existence and character confirmed by intersubjectively verifiable methods, then all rational people would have to assent to Gods existence.[FONT="][2][/FONT] Furthermore, if God were accessible through reason, the actual person of God would be subject to the passionate disquietude of scholarly thought, changing with whatever philosophy were prevalent in academia. Secondly, I believe that it excuses me from participating in theology myself.
[FONT="]
As a Christian scholar, the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture which I have adopted is something that I call incarnational inspiration. I draw my inspiration for this term from a doctrine of the incarnation of Christ which teaches that Christ is fully God and fully human. For the time being, I believe that God and humanity, for whatever reason, are both equally involved in the entire process which brings Scripture and its interpretation to us. This may be irrationally and hopelessly optimistic, given that there is no evidence for Gods existence in the first place, not to mention the awesome depravities of the biblical text and its even more diabolical interpretations. The biblical text, for example, is culpable for the deaths of millions of people. Granted, the text itself has killed no one, its interpreters have, but if the text were from a benevolent God, it could have been - and should have been - written in such a way that these interpretations could have been prevented. If that example is too extreme, then certainly someone could have had the foresight to address pederasty, the problem of slavery (and especially within this, the sexual availability of all slaves to their masters), and untold other social problems. It is with blind hope that I wish for God to have mercy on the interpreter and breathe new life into ongoing interpretation done by myself and other lovers of the New Testament and other religious literature.[/FONT]
[FONT="][1][/FONT] Aristotles doctrine of natural hierarchies come to mind, as it is especially obvious in the NT with the submission of women.
[FONT="][2][/FONT] Obviously, then, I disagree with theologians who consider theology to be science and the Bible or any other religious text to be "data" for logical constructs which "prove" Gods existence.
and no response is necessary. Hope I haven't wasted your time.