Friday, September 30, 2005

 

Tutorial

As well as the seminar on Tuesday, I've also had an academic tutorial this week. This was with Alan, my tutor for the year. Although we'd talked on the phone a few times, our first meeting was at his house on Wedndesday. We spent quite a lot of the tutorial getting to know each other, discussing the course, what we (both) hope to get out of the process and swapping some history (mainly mine to him, as he will be supervising me, but he very generously shared some very interesting information about himself and his family with me). I gave him the URL of this blog, so I hope he'll have a chance to glance at it from time to time (hi, Alan!). As thelogical reflection (see blogs passim) is an important part of the course, he was interested to know how I was trying to make that part of my life. It's supposed to be an important element of the assignments that I'll be doing for him, but there will only be six over the year, and it should be a more integral part of my life than that. I explained that I try to use this blog - at least a bit every week - for some theological reflection. He seemed to think it was a good idea, but now, of course, I need to make sure that I do.

One of the things we talked about (unsurprisingly, as the theme of this term is the Old Testament) was my views on the OT. Previously, I've not had a great interest: I've had a rather NT view of the world, which is maybe a classic close-minded protestant view. There have been sections for which I've had an affection - particularly the Psalms - but, overall, I've had the view that I could take it or leave it. That's theologically rather naive, and it's changing - and has been changing more recently, as I grow to appreciate more parts of the Old Testament. Apart from the mythological nature of much of the earlier books in particular, I think that I've seen the OT more as a way of understanding the historical context of Israel, and, ultimately, of Jesus, the disciples, Paul and other actors in the NT. The more I think about it, the more I understand that in the same way that our culture has been formed and informed by Christianity and the NT, so was the NT's by the OT, and, for that reason if no other, I need to take it more seriously, and study it more closely. The fact that I'm reading from it for evening prayer, which I try to say every day, and have been for well over a year now, means that I'm learning to know it better already.

The first tutorial was on source criticism (sometimes known as JEPD (J(Y)ahweh, Elohist, Deuteronomic and Priestly) or documentary cricitism). As a technique, this wasn't a struggle for me, as it was a methodology that we were acquainted with first for literary criticism in English literature (which I started off reading at university), and then for NT criticism (which was a module that I _did_ take when I switched to theology after two years). It made me think about my faith, and whether the acknowledgement (which is pretty much universal these days) that the OT isn't a single "given" text, but was put together but multiple people (or "redactors", though redaction criticism is subtly different from source criticism), over a long period of time, challenges my belief. In fact, it doesn't. Mainly since I'd already come to terms with the fact that even the NT books are, in places, a mishmash, and, for instance, a number of the Pauline letters were pretty definitely (and some probably) not written by Paul in the first place. One good example of a non-original passage in the gospels in the story of the woman caught in adultery, which appears in John's Gospel (was this gospel itself written by the apostle we know as John? Almost certainly not...). This passage probably wasn't in the original text, but it's clearly a consistent part of the received early Christian knowledge and tradition of Jesus that I have no problem accepting it as a part of the "authentic Christian gospel". Once you start accepting this type of text, you then need to start thinking very, very hard indeed about where you draw the line. Why, for instance, would you accept the views of those who set the NT Canon, several centuries after Jesus' death and the writing of all of its constituent parts? What does it mean to the "Word" alone should be your guiding hand (if that's your view)? All good questions, I'd say. And all to do with authority, and authorship, issues that fascinate me within the study of theology.

Music today


# posted by MikeCamel @ 2:58 pm
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