More to the point, what happens to those who criticize Lenin in Russia
in 1999? Chronicles was written when the Davidic dynasty was no longer in power
& the earlier Samuel-Kings was able to tell the story warts & all. You're just
talking in generalities rather than looking at the specific situation.
> >> I used to
> >> bluff my way through English classes by detecting symbolism. I could make
> >> stuff up out of novels that even the author didn't know was there. I kept
> >> getting A's until one class, English for non-English majors, where the Prof
> >> wanted Freudian analyses of the characters in Light in August by Faulkner.
> >> I had never taken Psych at the time, so I got a D in the class. THat was
> >> the last english class I took. But I will tell you I was quite good at
> >> making up motives and symbolisms for the various characters. All of which
> >> was bunk but useful bunk because it got me A's.
> >
> > Sure, there's a lot of BS in freshman lit & literary criticism in general
> >& it ought to be slapped down more by teachers. But if it's impossible to
> convey
> >any meaning at all by literature, which is what your claim amounts to,
> then there's no
> >point to writing anything which isn't historical narrative - which seems
> indeed be your
> >view. But it's a bit limited.
>
> Actually my claim is that one shouldn't set out to find the BS in
> literature and make things true that aren't true.
It sounds as if in practice your procedure is to assume that all literature
is BS & unable to convey any kind of truth.
>
> > What I've said about Chronicles doesn't require any arcane guesses about
> >Freudian symbolism &c. The "tendency" of a redacted history which
> systematically makes
> >one group all good & their enemies all bad is pretty obvious. You have a
> similar thing
> >with the Aeneid or Geoffery of Monmouth writing to legitimate & glorify
> the Augustan
> >empire or the Plantagenet dynasty. But from your standpoint you can't say
> that Vergil
> >was a great poet with a political agenda. He was just a credulous &
> sloppy historian.
>
> But Virgil and Geoffery aren't claimed to be divinely inspired. If they
> were, then there would be a different standard.
The fact that the Bible is inspired doesn't mean that it consists of entirely
different _types_ of literature from other materials. History, laws, liturgies,
myth, poetry, parables, legends, short stories &c are found in all kinds of literature
as well as the Bible, & one of the ways we can come to a better understanding of
Scripture is by recognizing those commonalities. That doesn't mean that we ignore the
unique aspects of Scripture. Recognizing that the general approach of Chronicles has
a lot in common with Virgil & Geoffery helps us to understand better what the writer
is doing &, inter alia, not to be contemptuous of the fact that he can sometimes be
rather casual with historical facts.
> > & if its impossible to discern the meaning of non-historical texts then its
> >equally impossible to see any _meaning_ or existential significance to
> historical texts.
> >Who cares if there was as flood in the Mediterranean 5+ million years ago
> or in
> >Mesopotamia 4000 years ago? It's just a fact about the ancient world, &
> for any
> >theological significance you can read from it I can read from it another.
>
> Who cares? I do, regardless of whether anyone else does, I do care. A
> religion can't be true if it is based upon a false history. period!
You've missed the point. According to your approach the flood may have happened
in one place or another but the texts are unable to convey any religious meaning of the
event to us.
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/