Gadfly, you asked a lot of questions. I will not attempt to answer them all because it is just too much. I assume even if I answered them you would just ask another 20 or 30. But I do wish to dialogue so I will ask you a question. What does the quotation below mean?
What does the quotation below mean? Within the confines of acceptable literary analysis it will mean whatever you want it to mean. Unless, of course, one is a biblical literalist/fundamentalist then it can only mean one thing. And something else to all the other fundamentalist/literalist sects....
Perham1, acceptable literary analysis is called exegesis and it is the attempt to extract the intended meaning of a piece of writing with regardless to historical, grammatical, and cultural context. Try again.
...acceptable literary analysis is called exegesis and it is the attempt to extract the intended meaning of a piece of writing with regardless to historical, grammatical, and cultural context. I think it is you who needs to try again. "with regardless"? Just what are you exactly trying to say? Once you clear that up I can being my exegesis, or as I like to say, exajesus.
Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but is "exegesis" the process by which some faithful claim that man co-existed with dinosaurs? Lying for Jesus
meant 'with regards", if you had any capability exegeting you could have looked at the immediate context and figured that out. Exegesis has nothing to do with dinosaurs.The Link
'Exegesis has nothing to do with dinosaurs."Not quite correct. But, like many fundamentalists, your definition/interpretation of exegesis may differ markedly from others'. Biblical exegesis Young earth creationism holds that the book of Genesis is historical in nature and that Bible exegesis warrants a six-day creation with each day being 24 hours.[19][20][21] Andrew Kulikovsky describes it as follows: The hermeneutic employed by most YECs is best described as the historical-grammatical method in which historical narrative (such as the book of Genesis) is interpreted as literal history, prophecy is interpreted as prophecy, poetry is interpreted as poetry, etc. [22] Historical-grammatical exegesis involves a systematic approach to analyzing in detail the historical situation, events and circumstances surrounding the text, and the semantics and syntactical relationships of the words which comprise the text.[23] Link
Exegesis is a process. It's not about dinosaurs. So if one shouldn't interpret literature taking history, culture and grammar into account, then how is one supposed to interpret anything?
When I asked if it was "about dinosaurs" I really meant was could the process of exegesis be used to support and justify the ideas that man and dinos co-existed and that creationism is real. Since you apparently didn't get that (was it really that difficult?) let's just let sleeping Dinos lie. But here, let me explain my larger point, since I'm pretty sure it won't be unearthed on its own. You mention "exegesis" when asking for how to interpret the above bible passage. As if "exegesis" will provide any sort of definitive answer, any sort of interpretation more valid than, say, a grad class seminar on how to interpret a line from The Mayor of Casterbridge. As if exegesis will lend validity to the concept of the Trinity. But, as a way to show this, I brought up exegesis and the interpretation of Genesis which allows the fundamentalist to seriously state that creationism, dinos and man, dinos on Noah's Ark, are all real. So... where does this lead us? You have shown that your exegesis can tell you anything you want it to, notwithstanding the mountains of evidence that contradicts it. That mountain of evidence is science, btw. You use exegesis to "prove" creationism. As others before you did to "prove" geocentrism.
No Perham. How do you interpret literature? Any grad school seminar will use exegesis to interpret literature. Sometimes there is value in a more subjective treating of some subject matter, but the basis of any real understanding is an objective treatment using some sort of exegesis. If you didn't read the link I offered, please do. It shows that the subject is much wider than interpreting the bible. To address the issue of people using exegesis to prove that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, some people do and some people don't. But it is certainly irrelevant to the request I made of Gadfly. If you understood how to exegete a passage of any literature you would know that one decision that has to be made is what type of literature the writing being studied is. Is it history, fiction, personal letter, newspaper article, poem, joke, code of law, allegory, analogy, etc... You can exegete any of these types based on historical, cultural, grammatical context but it will be different.
Dionysius, scholars disagree with you, ones who believe it is miraculous and those who don't, together.
Sometimes there is value in a more subjective treating of some subject matter, but the basis of any real understanding is an objective treatment using some sort of exegesis. Um, not really. Sometimes, some ways, but not for all "real understanding". I am showing the conflict that your "exegesis" has with science: specifically creationism vs. evolution. The fatal error of biblical fundamentalists/literalists is applying an "exegesis" to Genesis and putting that knowledge on par with science when it has to do with science. I don't know if you'll ever get that point, for you to get it, you'd necessarily have to accept science, imo. As far as interpreting the bible as a work of literature? I'm all for it! Interpreting it as a science text - not so much. And as far as your link, to Wikipedia, I did read it. It does not support your argument as much as you think. The link that I provided was quite telling, imo, on how the blibical fundamentalist hangs his hat on "exegesis" to equate the bible (received knowledge) on par with science. I'm all for a historical-critical approach to the bible. Iirc, that's what Marc Brettler does and explains in his quite good book, How to Read the Bible. You should read it. The culture of the time must be taken into account when examining the bible. Otherwise people may get the mistaken impression that God really wrote it or "divinely inspired" it.
Perham, you're so funny. You concede my point as long as the observer comes to conclusions you agree with. So they can exegete as long as they agree with you. That's fun. And I would agree that with exegesis, scientific context should also be considered. Of course people weigh the different components of context differently. My main concern is the process the observer uses, how consistently and logically they use it. People will differ in their beliefs but beliefs can be understood and accepted by others if the process is good and it is applied well.
Religious texts are held to a more critical standard precisely because of the most extraordinary and implausible claims they make: divine origins, supernaturalism, miracles, resurrection, etc.
There's a recent biography on The Mahatma: Great Soul. The reviews have been good. But, imo, to brand Gandhi as a racist pervert is just as misleading (and probably as ignorant) as thinking that he was justice personified. People who do that are merely using Gandhi to fulfill their own ends. But the recent discussions of hell were, iirc, generated by the whole "news flash, Gandhi is in hell" comment.
That book is a mess from an organizational standpoint.... The book may be difficult for some to follow, and one of the reviews acknowledges that: This is not a full-scale biography. Nor is it for beginners. Lelyveld assumes his readers are familiar with the basic outlines of Gandhi’s life, and while the book includes a bare-bones chronology and is helpfully divided into South African and Indian sections, it moves backward and forward so often, it’s sometimes harder than it should be to follow the shifting course of Gandhi’s thought. But “Great Soul” is a noteworthy book, nonetheless, vivid, nuanced and cleareyed. The two decades Gandhi spent in South Africa are too often seen merely as prelude. Lelyveld treats them with the seriousness they deserve. “I believe implicitly that all men are born equal,” Gandhi once wrote in the midst of one of his campaigns against untouchability. “I have fought this doctrine of superiority in South Africa inch by inch.”
