Like this cat, Biblical scholars feel cozy in the tangles they create.
If you’re not a Bible nerd, you can ignore this one…
Tim Bulkeley has a little gem about metadata and the Bible: Metadata and the identity crisis in biblical studies
Folks like Iyov have posited that all translations are commentaries. But Tim is ramping it up another notch and saying in essence that the Bible does not exist, only the commentaries or theological systems built around it. Ironically, Religion prof James McGrath has been mocking the Biblical studies dudes and dudette in a series of posts about the historical NT Wrong.
In a final note of intrigue, the URL for Tim’s post is “shemotexodus-134-8-from-modern-mikraot.htm.” One can only wonder what in the heck he started out to write before he was inspired to post this jewel.
has been mocking the Biblical studies dudes and dudette in a series of posts about the historical NT Wrong.
Um. who is the dudette? Clearly, no longer me.
It’s one of my standard lame jokes…
This just in… Tim contacted me by email to tell me I’m seriously confused. Ha! If he only knew.
Perhaps you meant “dudettes” in the plural. That way it could apply to many people. It was the singular that confused me. “There is only one?” I asked myself.
Singular as in not many out there…
I hope that I’m not (quite) “saying in essence that the Bible does not exist, only the commentaries or theological systems built around it.” Rather that how anyone understands the object “the Bible”, or any text from it, depends on the metadata with which one surronds it. Both the Bible and the various sets of metadata exist, and some sets of meatdata are more appropriate than others, both to a particular text and to particular contexts of reading.
But, I am saying that different metadata makes the Bible “work” differently. And implying that we are often less than clear with ourselves and each other which set(s) we choose to apply…
This is a great link, David. I think your interpretation of Tim goes a bit too far, but certainly the bible is a text that often reveals more about its readers intentions than about its authors.
How could you think my investigation into the identity of NT Wrong is anything but a serious scholarly enterprise? After so many hours of dedicated, painstaking research, I have determined beyond reasonable doubt that NT Wrong is almost certainly male or female, either gay or straight, and may or may not be a single individual. Such hard and fast conclusions are hard to come by in the scholarly world, and certainly not to be mocked!
That about clears it up.
I’m sure I overstated the situation. But isn’t that in essence what people are doing with application of the ancient text to modern context?
Yes, true. But there are certainly aspects of the text that cannot be brought to the text from the means of its interpretation.
Although on second thoughts, perhaps that applies only those with a particular intent to not bring anything…
I’m sure I overstated the situation. But isn’t that in essence what people are doing with application of the ancient text to modern context?