Mike's musings

Exegesis seminar

Did I mention that I've got Google Maps running on my phone? Doesn't make sense to use it with 3G (cost) (or even, perish the thought, GPRS (speed)), but with wifi, it's brilliant. And I do mean Google Maps, and not just maps.google.com.

Had a seminar (last one of the year!) in Stowmarket today, on exegesis of the New Testament. I wasn't entirely happy with it, for two reasons which I'll try to elucidate. Neither of them is really a reflection on the course - and certainly not on the teaching - but more on me, and where I'm coming from.

1. the first reason comes down to the fact that I've got a bunch of languages that most of the people on the course don't have, just due to my academic background. The first, and most obvious in this context, is Koine - New Testament Greek. My first instinct is always to go back to the text - and as close to the original text as I can. So I really want to use the Greek where possible. An example from the pericope that we were looking at yesterday is that a Greek word in it is translated in all of the English versions at which looked as "lift out". In fact, this misses a huge amount of meaning of the story (Matthew 12:9-14, if you're interested), because the word used is closer in meaning to "raise". More importantly, it's a word which is very common in Matthew's gospel - the word (or versions of it) is used 36 times in all. So, anyone reading the sotry in Greek would have realised that an allusion was being made to Jesus' resurrection, because it's the same word used for that. But we really couldn't go into this. In the course notes, we're also advised not to use older translations of the Bible, mainly because the language has changed quite a lot from, for example, that used in the Authorised ("King James") Bible. But I know that language very well, so I think it's actually probably quite a good place to come from. The same goes for the Latin (the Vulgate Bible): my Latin is good enough to follow it pretty well, and it might be able help to tease out some of the issues around the Greek on occasion, or just to provide a different view on how a passage is used from time to time. So, this isn't a complaint, just a commentary on the fact that there are areas of the formal process which I should probably be adapting for me.
2. the second reason is rather different. I was trained at university - particularly during my time reading English at King's - to take a very particular view of text, and to be very aware of how we read texts, and how they affect us. A lot of the approach that we tend to take when doing exegesis is very modern - or should I say, is firmly rooted within a modernist agenda - and I tend to espouse a more postmodernist approach. I'm unhappy lending too much weight to authorial intention or capability, and more aware than most, I guess, that we face real dangers if we try to impose our cultural expectations on the texts that we're reading - or if we do so un-selfconsiously, at least. This is all fine, but I need to try to work my way through it. Interesting.

# posted by MikeCamel @ 3:24 pm