Class notes - Weds, 14.9.05
Notes from Wednesday's class (in no particular order):-Isaiah 63
-"composed," not written, which would imply a single author
-Revelation 14
-powerful, grotesque, suggests a similarity between the juice of grapes and the blood of man
-And something I had suspected all along: most prophets from the Old Testament were "mentally ill" or similar
-Vocabulary: Misprison
-means hearing something the wrong way; a mistake
-some examples:
1. The Hebrew word for "radiant" sounded like "horns" when translated (or something to that effect - correct me if I'm
wrong), hence Michaelangelo's painting with the depiction of God with horns
2. "Joseph's coat of many colors" was a misprison that first showed up in the King James Bible (again, not sure about this?)
3. And my personal favorite, that of Calvin (not the religious zealot) from the comic strip, misquoting (probably
intentionally) the US Pledge of Alliegance: "I pledge alliegance, to Queen Frag, and to her mighty state of hysteria."
(always wanted to try that one back in school when they forced the whole pledge thing down our throats...)
-More vocab: Prolix - means "abundant"
-Metaphor v. Simile: Both are comparisons between two unlikely things, but a simile makes the comparison using the words
"like" or "and" whereas a metaphor does without, eg. "Joseph is a fruitful bough" (Genesis 49:22).
-And finally, our homework:
-Google (is that really a verb? sigh...) "Biblical Literalism" - my findings:
-So, like, there's this dude named Conrad Hyers, and like (sorry, I'm done), in his excerpt called "Biblical Literalism:
Constricting the Cosmic Dance," he makes some interesting points. Basically, he argues that literalism pervades
contemporary culture, thanks in part to worthless TV broadcasts, and that people find it harder and harder to express
themselves symbolically as a result. Biblical literalism isn't conservative as its proponents would suggest; rather, it's
quite modern and simplistic as a result. Hyers continues, arguing that during its time, Genesis was centered squarely
amidst the polytheism vs. monotheism debate, and was intended to posit God as the one true ruler and creator. Hyers
puts it well in the following quote:
"The fundamental question at stake, then, could not have been the scientific question of how things achieved their present form and by what processes, nor even the historical question about time periods and chronological order. The issue was idolatry, not science; syncretism, not natural history; theology, not chronology; affirmation of faith in one transcendent God, not creationist or evolutionist theories of origin. Attempting to be loyal to the Bible by turning the creation accounts into a kind of science or history is like trying to be loyal to the teachings of Jesus by arguing that the parables are actual historical events, and only reliable and trustworthy when taken literally as such."
I couldn't agree more. And as Hyers says, some things can't be expressed in words, or at least my words (I haven't got a knack for "words with power"), so with that, I'm going to end this post and let all of you ponder all of my amazing thoughts that are just too deep for this lousy blog - indeed, I absolutely hate the way text scrolls on this thing; the tab button doesn't function like I'd expect, thus rendering indentations (which I use with great zeal) unnecessarily complicated. But that's a rant that I don't need to start here...
posted by Bryan Kelly @ 9:58 PM
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