tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post4500948443002587555..comments2024-03-07T12:57:35.296-05:00Comments on Varieties of Unreligious Experience: The rhythm of responseConrad H. Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-40664083716426096682007-04-12T07:32:00.000-04:002007-04-12T07:32:00.000-04:00so many thoughts....the easist to type here is an ...so many thoughts....<BR/><BR/>the easist to type here is an observation about how odd it is that certain certain words appear more and less frequently in daily life... a rhythm of occurance.<BR/><BR/>Just last night I finished reading:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0734-6018(199724)57%3C90%3AIFPM(D%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7" REL="nofollow">Imagining Flowers:</A> <BR/>Perceptual Mimesis <BR/>(Particularly Delphinium) <BR/><BR/>by Elaine Scarry<BR/><BR/>(Interesting)<BR/><BR/>-<BR/><BR/>MimesisAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-62043480484197203132007-04-11T21:29:00.000-04:002007-04-11T21:29:00.000-04:00This is an interesting line of development, and wo...This is an interesting line of development, and would require another essay; I think broadly that the typological analysis of the OT creates a new level of 'calls' to which the NT can respond, and does introduce some dynamism (though not a <EM>dramatic</EM> one) between what is essentially the mythical past of the OT (the Viconian age of heroes), and the realist present depicted in the NT (the age of men).<BR/><BR/>Perhaps it would be worthwhile to bring in a discussion of meaning generated out of repetition, like that of Kierkegaard's (to return to him again). Maybe you should write something on these themes?Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-46486945540168896862007-04-11T15:07:00.000-04:002007-04-11T15:07:00.000-04:00Excellent post. As happens so often with this blog...Excellent post. As happens so often with this blog, I have found that whatever connections occured to me as I read were already covered or touched upon by your ranging gaze by the time I reached the end of the post. <BR/><BR/>It seems to me that you say about the ‘call-response’ rhythms in the style of the Bible can also be predicated of the overall dynamic of interpretation, Auerbach’s <I>figura</I>. Is that what you were driving at, or have I missed the mark? The early-Christian chruch making of the Jewish tradition a series of figures that pre-echoed the coming of Christ. That retroactive figural reading introduces a new dynamism into the ‘static’ style of the OT – and allows for an opening out of the say-do relationship between man and God. Or is it rather that ‘figura’ as the intellectual force that connects past to present and makes meaning out of narrative is essentially a matter of forcing the bare call-response style of the OT into a ‘dramatic’ framework?Raminagrobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12008850757226541475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-85454392495781841152007-04-10T16:22:00.000-04:002007-04-10T16:22:00.000-04:00Chris: I mentioned this film in a New Testament ro...Chris: I mentioned this film in a New Testament round-up <A HREF="http://vunex.blogspot.com/2006/05/lives-of-jesus-films.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>. I agree that this is easily the closest thing I have seen to dramalessness. Sadly, however, I have no Hebrew (except a few isolated 'key words' from the Bible), and no knowledge of the Talmud or Midrash--so Rabbidom would have to wait.<BR/><BR/>John: I grant your point, but think about how the stories of Moses and David are <EM>told</EM>. David sins twice--first he kills Uriah to marry Bathsheba, then he takes the census. In the first instance, David does the dirty (2 Samuel 11), and Nathan calmly tells him what will happen--which then does happen (2 Samuel 12:1-19). Same with the census (2 Sam 24), when God calmly gives David three choices for his punishment. The deaths of 70,000 people by plague are calmly stated in a few words. What could be less dramatic? The closest we get to drama in this book is 2 Sam 18:33, David's lament ("O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom...!") but this is entirely self-contained and outside of the action (David "went up to the chamber of the gate"). David's sins are not forces which rise out of him, to be met by an opposing force; they are forces which rise up and then fall limply to the ground. This is why there is no sense of violence in his punishments, only justice being coolly done.<BR/><BR/>As for Moses, just for one example consider how unexpected is God's command for him to die in Deut. 32:48-52: "Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah". The reasoning is so opague that scholars disagree about just what Moses did wrong (Numbers 20:11). There is a coldness everywhere in the telling, a total lack of drama.<BR/><BR/>In terms of dramatic structure, the closest the OT comes to classical tragedy in my opinion is 1 Samuel, the story of Saul and David--Saul here being a muted version of a Greek tragic hero, hubris and all. The crucial difference is that the OT wants you to condemn Saul, whereas the Greek tragedy wants you to admire its hero, despite his downfall.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-87974557855885311082007-04-10T11:34:00.000-04:002007-04-10T11:34:00.000-04:00This is the one biblical film that might be an ex...<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_According_to_St._Matthew_(film)" REL="nofollow"> This </A> is the one biblical film that might be an exception.<BR/><BR/>Is it completely drama free ?<BR/><BR/>That's how it felt to me.<BR/><BR/>As I recall -- it had this stillness - sense of certainty - of "everything is happening as it has been written" <BR/><BR/>Today - yesterday - tomorrow --- it's all the same -- you only need to see it as such.<BR/><BR/>(maybe I lost my sense of time -- a long time ago)<BR/><BR/>BTW - Conrad -- you have been studying Hebrew, haven't you ?<BR/>If you ever need a job -- you could<BR/>probably work as a rabbi. (I'm told that most of them are atheists as well)chris millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09575033275184403015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-46030007640541777542007-04-10T09:33:00.000-04:002007-04-10T09:33:00.000-04:00There's much to think about here, but I wanted to ...There's much to think about here, but I wanted to throw in a few words about "drama" in the Old Testament. There are rare exceptions to your argument that it's absent from the OT: Moses is not shy about expressing either his own inadequacies or those of the Israelites to God. He does obey, but God has more than a little persuading to do. Its drama, if that's the right term, bears some similarities to that found in the <I>Aeneid</I> when Aeneas needs an occasional nudge from the gods to get a move on to get to the place that he's been destined to get to. And the story of David is nothing if not the story of a deeply-flawed man who loves God and knows the Law but whose baser impulses cause him not merely to disobey but to arrange to have people killed in order to have his way.<BR/><BR/>As for Job, his real beef is not with the Comforters but with God: He has been taught that obedience to God's will prospers a man; he's played by the rules, but look at him now. He rejects the Comforters' arguments--and so does God, for that matter--because they have no validity. They argue Job MUST have sinned for all this to have happened; Job (and we, because the narrator says so, too) knows he hasn't. So he wants an accounting from God--that is, a reasonable explanation. Job doesn't get that explanation, but he finds peace anyway because he realizes that he is obedient, ultimately, because he has faith (as he puts it earlier, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him"). The very definition of unreasonableness . . . but that's the nature of faith, after all. And though the Bible has literary elements, it's not literature, in the end. It seeks to do something else. None of this, I know, does anything to clear up Job's theological difficulties, but the problem of suffering is just that--a problem. Pat, one-size-fits-all answers simply don't exist, if we're being honest with ourselves. So, let's call Job the "problem play" of the OT.John B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06358811061653958120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-47844959671513958462007-04-09T14:06:00.000-04:002007-04-09T14:06:00.000-04:00Thanks, Z; yes, less drama would definitely be goo...Thanks, Z; yes, less drama would definitely be good for both of us.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-50261675675276936702007-04-09T12:38:00.000-04:002007-04-09T12:38:00.000-04:00This one feels like one of your longer post, but s...This one feels like one of your longer post, but something compelled me to read through it. Maybe it is my Monday morning work malaise. Who knows...<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I think that I would prefer much less drama in my life, at home and at work. It would be a treat to take people at their word, and know that within a certain degree of confidence that they would do what they would say. Here at work, I always have to be on the lookout for the posturing, subterfuge, backstabbing, and incompetence. Ugg, what I would do to work at a place where the people are a few standard deviations above the mean! Er, above what mean, you ask, well, hell, “any mean” really. --ZZumbashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06671770252215594772noreply@blogger.com