Re: The importance of concordism

From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Fri Jan 14 2000 - 13:35:23 EST

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    > glenn morton wrote:
    > >
    > > At 11:56 AM 1/13/00 -0500, George Andrews wrote:
    > > >
    > > >Mostly unborn; and could you define eisegetism for me (Thanks for the
    > > >compliment?). But to the point: I do not consider "rocks fall toward
    > > earth" as a
    > > >scientific description of gravity; likewise, I do not consider "God
    > > created earth
    > > >wind and fire" as a description of HOW creation came into being.
    > >
    > > Actually eisegetism is something I am often accused of so it was fun
    > > getting to accuse someone esle. :-) Basically it means reading modern
    > > views into the ancient texts. And since the entire concept of old earth
    > > and Genesis
    > > 1-as-merely-meaning-G0d-created-the-heavens-and-earth-and-little-else view
    > > is fully modern, that is eisegesis.
    >
    > More generally, eisegesis is reading any meaning _into_ a text, as distinguished
    > from exegesis, getting meaning _from_ the text, which is what we're supposed to do - at
    > least to begin with. Thus e.g. the practice of some concordists of trying to make the
    > creation of the heavenly bodies on the 4th day "really" their becoming visible on earth
    > is eisegesis. But it is NOT reading a foreign meaning into the texts to say that Gen.1
    > & 2 are theological statements which are expressed in terms of the understanding of the
    > physical world of people of the ancient near east, and that one of our tasks is to
    > communicate that theological meaning in terms of the scientific understanding of the
    > world of today.
    > & that does NOT mean that we just throw out the text of Genesis as it stands.
    > We still read it, respond to its imagery, & keep on returning to it to discover its
    > theological significance more fully - which involves in part trying to discern more
    > clearly what its original authors & redactors meant. If I went to the Easter Vigil &
    > the first reading wasn't Gen.1 but some pop paraphrase of it in terms of the microwave
    > background and prebiotic soup, I'd probably walk out.
    > Shalom,
    > George
    >
    > George L. Murphy
    > gmurphy@raex.com
    > http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

    -- 
    George L. Murphy
    gmurphy@raex.com
    http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
    



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