AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Political Perplexity

Without suggesting any particular enthusiasm for John Kerry, I’m at a loss to understand how this presidential election is even close. The Bush administration has taken on a calamitous and unnecessary war in a remote country (arguably two unnecessary wars — but I’ll opt not to contest Afghanistan, despite my conviction that even that invasion was misguided), has thrown the budget from great health to staggering deficits, has lied to the world and the U.S. people, and has responded to challenges by claiming a sort of sovereign immunity to criticism. And that’s just a sampling; his flip-flop-flip on whether we can win the war on terror bespeaks a pretty shabby platform from which to throw stones at Kerry. Why would anyone vote for more of this?

And for some [admittedly mild] bipartisan carping, why is it so hard to ascertain which state Granny D is campaigning to represent in the Senate? One might think that the New Hampshire-osity of her campaign came in as an afterthought to her progressive politics.

Moreover

Dorothea rightly notes, “Somebody out there is always worse at what you do than you are” — but she omits the vexing corollary, “and she or he probably gets stronger organizational support, better working conditions, and is paid more than you, too.”

Technology Inquiry

Back in ancient times, when I was in college (or, more precisely, when I was transcribing what Thomas of Aquino dictated to a mob of us novices), I resolved the book storage dilemma with what was at the time a hip, inexpensive, and semiotically-appropriate solution: boards and cinderblocks.

Since someone I love is presently facing the age-old book storage dilemma herself, I’m wondering if any of my generous and technologically up-to-the-moment readers knows of a book repository that's (a) cheap, (b) not cumbersome (it's a small apartment in which Margaret won’t be living too long, deo volente); and (c) somewhat more advanced than the ol’ bricks-and-boards. Anyone?

Two Heathers

Our nearest Heather is now a priest; I couldn’t wrench myself into yet another kink in the Adam Family Summer Tour to go, but Si held up the family colors. Lots of cheers and neighborly well-wishing to her, the new interim Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern.

Further away, Heather “Dooce” Armstrong has won our admiration and our hearts for her wit, her writing, and for her family life. One of the last things I read before the I closed my TiBook on the portico of the Atheneum Friday was her message that she was going to check into the psychiatric ward of a nearby hospital. We (and lots of other people) have been aching with her and praying for her, and this morning I caught an update that she passed on to Jon. Things are getting better, for which we offer up cheers and well-wishes to her too, and to Jon and Leta and Chuck.

We’re Ba-a-a-ack

We arrived in Evanston at about 7:00 CDT, after a jolly twelve-plus hours on the road (Pippa and I actually started Saturday morning at 7:30 Eastern, counting the packing and clean-up; Si spent roughly 24 hours on trains coming east to meet us, but his travel streak was interrupted by a delightful sojourn with a gifted artist and one of the leading undiscovered novelists writing in the English language.

The house is standing, and in no worse condition than when we left (apart from the baby chipmunk, and I’ll let Si blog about that); the car had not been pillaged during the fortnight we left it parked in Barnstable; moreover, the car started right up when I turned the key in the ignition. These may seem like no big deal to you, but my neuroses had a lot invested in some sort of catastrophe having struck in my absence. Now, they’re going to have to choose among the chipmunk, the hotel whereat we stayed last night, and a slightly slow-leak-prone back tire.

Worse things happen at sea. Take my word for it.

He Noticed

Jordon appositely asks, “Has anyone else ever noticed how all denominational websites are all the same and yet so many are frustrated with how little impact they are making and how so few people care about them?” (The rest of his observations merit your attention, too.) Well, yes — but the pertinent question (as Jordon himself observes) isn’t whether we have noticed, but whether they have noticed. I don’t see enough signs that they have, sadly.

Postcard To Everyone

Wrote productively.
Blogged controversially.
Visited Familial-ly.
Missed Margaret awfully.

If you’d been here, it would have been even greater — so long as you didn’t bring an SUV.

Grace and peace,
AKMA

Fast Two Weeks

The other day, I thought I heard Dr. Weinberger; must have been favorable acoustic conditions from the west. And it doesn’t take glasses to see Halley, even when she’s up on the Cape. (Hope he’s feeling better, Halley.)

I rather coarsely carped about Nantucket’s congestion on my first day here, and then there was the info-highwayman fiasco. I’ve hardly set foot outdoors all fortnight, although despite my best efforts I’m getting a splint-tan. I have no notion what to do about guest-y/host-y gifts. So at the end of the visit, I’m feeling a little like a horrible cranky old greybeard, for whom nothing’s good enough and who hasn’t a kind gesture for anyone, and I’m awfully sorry for that.

The island still is lovely, and my family has sheltered Pippa and Jennifer (and Bea) and me with overwhelming hospitality. Pippa’s Princeton friends have given vast amounts of visiting time, and through everyone else’s generosity I’ve drawn near the end of the rough draft of my exegetical labors.

So it behooves me to thank everyone involved, whole-heartedly, and to apologize if I’ve given offense, and if that chartreuse tea cozy with a tired joke about fishermen doesn’t go with the rest of the décor — well, at least I passed by the tie-dyed one.

Now, to connect with Josiah in Quincy and pull the marathon drive to Evanston. Back to work. . . .

Spooky

Maybe it’s the Philip Glass lover in me, but the rough composition by DJ Spooky over at Radio Babylon sounds terrific to me. Disclaimer: DJ Spooky went to Bowdoin, I know little else about him, but I was keeping my eyes open after an almost unctuous promotional article in the alumni magazine (“Hey, we’re an alumni magazine, but we know about hip-hop, remix culture too! Isn’t that groovy, like, man?”).

James 1:21 (actually, more about 3:15)

I will get back to the comments you’ve offered on previous James posts; my online time comes in intervals, but I’ll be back online freely next week. I appreciate the fact that people are bothering to read and think about these entries, and I’ll try to make it more of a dialogue as soon as I can.

So last time, I mentioned that I might take up the psuche/pneuma problem in Jacobean anthropology. It’s a problem not different in kind from the comparable problem in Pauline anthropology, and both are complicated by the ambiguity of contemporary English discourses of non-material anthropology.

Here’s a rough sketch of the problem. Our ancient forebears seem to have believed that human beings subsist not simply as material beings, but also with various degrees of other-than-flesh vitality and depth. In the New Testament, this plays out in a distinction between psuche and pneuma, both of which can be rendered in English as either “soul” and “spirit,” depending on the work they’re doing.

James and Paul, among others (and here I won’t go over the ancient background) discuss humanity as involving not simply (as colloquial anthropology generally assumes) one body plus one soul, but as a body plus a pneuma plus a psuche, a “spirit” and a “soul,” if we rely on conventional superficial translations.

The problem emerges when we try to communicate this in English. For instance, English-speakers generally hold the “soul” in high esteem; but in both James and Paul we find psuchikos used as an adjective for a certain not-so-great dimension of human existence. In 1 Corinthians 2:14, for the clearest possible example, Paul says that people who are psuchikos do not receive God’s gifts, because such gifts are properly discerned pneumatikos. In other words, psuchikos existence — which we might lazily translate as “soulful” — is only for people who are prepared to do without the gifts of God (reserved for pneumatikos, “spiritual” people). Likewise James, who in 3:15 categorizes “bitter envy and selfish ambition” as typifying “earthly, psuchikos, devilish” attitudes. While he doesn’t say much about pneuma (its absence leaves the body lifeless in 2:26, and in a difficult 4:5 a pneuma inhabits us), clearly the psuche comes out second best.

The NRSV translates psuchikos as “unspiritual,” to bring out this contrast. But that couches the term only in a negative context, where general usage shows psuchikos as “having to do with the ‘natural’ vital capacities,” “mental,” “animal,” all positive terms whose force is defined not as a negative contrast with “spiritual.” If one adopts one of these as the opposite number from pneumatikos, though, one risks understating the intended contrast between the lesser psuchikos and greater pneumatikos capacities.

How to render psuche and psuchikos, then, in English? (Here I show the influence of James, who shows a marked propensity for elliptical constructions.) In 1:21 and 5:20, it’s pretty easy to stick with “soul” or “life ” for psuche. At I don’t want to use “unspiritual,” for the adjectival form psuchikos at 3:15, as it ascribes no color to psuchikos save anti-pneumatism (as it were). “Animal” is interesting, as it provides a comprehensible contrast to “spiritual,” but I’m a little too sensitive to the Latin connection of “animal” to anima, which gets us back into the anthropological terminology carousel again. “Mental” or “vital” won’t sound “unspiritual” to readers, I don’t think. Maybe “ordinary”? I’m still pondering this.

End Of Story

So, I’ll look into talking with the library and Information Bureau folks about the Nantucket Wifi Fiasco. For now, though, it’s just another “this could happen to you” story.

Thanks for the advice and feedback. As a final sidenote, I war-walked to the Nantucket Bake Shop (contending against Downyflake for Best Native Doughnuts on Nantucket), and hit about twenty access points between the studio and the bake shop. All were closed, which sample begins to suggest that Nantucketers know how to close access points that they want to keep closed, and how to leave open access points that they want to share.

Late-breaking news: The Atheneum has just now posted a policy stating that the wifi connection is available only between a half-hour after they open to a half-hour before they close, on days that they’re open. The stated reasonn is “for better maintenance and operation.” Case closed.

Carryover

I dreamt that someone surreptitiously injected me with a deadly bioweapon as part of a terrorist plan — and when I woke up this morning, I felt reluctant to leave the studio lest I spread the infection.

James Pause

I ground out the last verses of James 4 this morning, but I’m going to skip a day posting some of my reflections on the epistle so that I can more rapidly get back from the Atheneum to the studio, to begin tackling chapter 5. Thanks for the feedback, more to come.

Congratulations, Jordon!

Jordon announced today that Resonate — a conversation about the Gospel and culture in a Canadian context — has gone live. It looks terrific; this certainly bears watching. It exemplifies the kind of use that churches should have been making of the web all along. Great idea, great realization, Jordon.

James More

I’ll keep this short today; yesterday I didn’t finish chapter 4 as I’d hoped to, so I really must finish it this morning.

In 1:12, James-Jacob invokes the subject of peirasmos generally translated as “temptation” in Christian writings. Jeffrey Gibson has persuaded me, though, that the habit of reading peirasmos as “temptation” should be reassessed, if not outright abandoned, in light of evidence he amassed to suggest that it never bears the hostile valence of “tempting” up to its usage in the New Testament, where it might well simply continue the more ancient sense of “testing.” James 1:13 (“No one who is being tested/tempted should say, ‘I’m being tested/tempted by God’ ”) provides a difficult test case for that hypothesis; if the peirasmos is neutral, then why not ascribe it to God? It makes more sense to refuse to ascribe peirasmos to God if that peirasmos is seen as intrinsically hostile. I have more decision-making to do about this; James 1 seems like a very tough challenge for taking peirasmos as “testing,” especially the end of v 13 where James says, “[God] tests/tempts no one,” when Scripture is explicit about God testing Abraham, the whole people of Israel, Hezekiah, and Job, whose example Jacob/James will cite in chapter 5 (although the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, doesn’t use the word peirasmos or related terms). Moreover, God’s testing of people constitutes a major theme of wisdom literature — hmmm, maybe there’s an article in this, or maybe someone’s already written it up(I don’t have most of my reference books with me).

1:1X revisits the theme J/J opened in 1:5, wherein he characterizes God principally as the giver. J/J’s God “gives to all unstintingly,” and is the giver of “every good gift and perfect present,” just here in chapter 1. God’s identity as “giver” has been the subject of much discussion lately in light of analyses of “the gift” — don’t have time to open all that now, but James/Jacob provides a touchstone text in the New Testament for God and “the gift.”

Maybe next time I’ll take up the question of psyche and pneuma in Jacobean anthropology, but now I have a commentary to write. . . .

An Information Highwayman

Turn to Gary Turner for up-to-the-minute fair and balanced coverage of the Nantucket Wifi Bandit Scandal. . . . .

Ironies Never Cease

My mom gave me a copy of a local promotional magazine last night at dinner (with Holly, my sister, and Jennifer, who came over for a couple of days with Pip and me before her Ph.D. program begins — with Margaret’s Ph.D. studies at Duke, Jennifer’s at Union Seminary/NY, and Nate’s plans for advanced study in music, we’re a one-family faculty meeting, or unemployment line, depending on how dire the hiring situation is a few years from now).

Anyway, featured on the cover of N magazine (I can’t find reference to a web site for the print edition, though it gives a URI for its society pages — I don’t know any of the beautiful people I see there), nestled in with stories about why Bush should be re-elected to protect small businesses, on local painters, and on what Livingston Taylor is up to these days, is a story on — wardriving (without using that word). “Wi-fi Hotspots,” the cover announces, and the story narrates the author’s experience of wardriving the eastern end of the island and finding a hundred or so open APs, some of which he names.

The author — whom I will not name here, since he’s in grave danger of being identified not only as a felon himself, but as contributing to a crime wave of felonious Net surfing, observes,

In all, we discovered over 100 wireless access points. . . . We checked about half of them, and over 20 were open and accessible. I’ve included several secret hotspots in the sidebar. But not all of them. If I list all of my favorite wireless access points, the owners of those hotspots will get wise and shut them down. And then where will I be?

Well, maybe in federal prison, sir.

So, as I recapitulate the last two days’ events, I’ve been instructed by a uniformed police officer not to use my laptop at all within wireless range of the public library of which I am a card-holding member, at the same time an ultra-glossy tourist magazine promotes leeching the signals from private citizens and only mentions the library’s access point at the very bottom of the sidebar accompanying the article.

(I’ll leave out any questions about editors who let this writer get away with the sentence fragment in the middle of the paragraph, and the notion of printing the location of a “secret hotspot” in 18-point display type in a featured sidebar.)

At the same time, the article begins with a boldface caution: “Although some wi-fi networks are intended for public use, whether freely or with varying fees, unauthorized access to private networks [which is what the article to follow specifrically narrates] might be considered criminal theft akin to stealing signals from cable television connections [that comparison seems to be doing a lot of work in this discourse]. . . .”

So the magazine says, in effect, “Don’t do this — here’s how to do it, and where, and it’s fun and cool.” I feel like that turtle in the old cartoons, who stumbles into some mire of folly, and beseeches his magico-scientific wizard mentor to save him: “Help me, Prof. Lessig!”

For Clarity’s Sake

A) I’ve posted some images relative to my close encounter with a e-felony rap at flickr, of which I’ll link to a couple from here.

B) I’m in Nantucket, Massachusetts, not at my home in Illinois — and I don’t know whether Mass has different state law from Illinois (that’s one reason I asked). However you slice it, my police informant (so to speak) emphasized that this is a federal offense.

C) The library was closed at the time, or else I’d have gone ahead in to finish my surfing.

D) The signal was open. I did not use super-h4x0r powers to defeat any form of encryption, protection, or enclosure. If there’s a law against defeating security features, I would understand that. I might not support such a law, depending on how it was written; such a law sounds to me like ill-advised defensive anti-geek legislation, but I would absolutely understand the notion of a law saying that I ought not be permitted to circumvent the library’s security measures if they wanted to prevent me from using their wireless.

Might this be an obscure, malignant side effect of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention stipulations? Even though I wasn’t circumventing anything?

Three signals in my limited range (TiBooks have notoriously poor reception) has entirely open signals. One was the library’s. Moreover, the library staff evidently knew how to protect a signal, because they manage an encrypted, protected access point, too.

I didn’t hack. I opened my tiBook, and three happy lines appeared, Mail.app started checking my mail, and NetNewsWire posted my entries.

E) This is not a cause for which I’m ready to be a martyr. I’ve got one of those, but this isn’t it.

F) This is what bothers me the most, I think. The officer in question requested — with a grim law-enforcement professional’s demeanor — that I not use my laptop in the vicinity of the library, since that opened the possibility that I might be connecting surreptitiously.

So although it’s legal to use a wifi-capable computer within 100 feet of an 802.11b access point (further for an 802.11g AP), the police feel free to discourage using a computer lest it might pick up an illicit packet. If you’re going to take that approach to alw enforcement, though, wouldn’t it be fairer and friendlier to put up “No Laptop Zone” signs? There might be other open wireless signals around town; am I not allowed to operate my laptop in range of any of them? Isn’t this a rather overblown, silly way of effecting the stated goal of protecting access-point owners from unwelcome intrusion and unjust liability?

G) My mom (a local year-rounder) thinks this all may be because John Kerry visits the island (Not an anti-Kerry sentiment, just an observation of the way the Secret Service population fluctuates).

James 1:2ff

OK, so last time I got all the way through the first verse. As with writing a commentary, this could take a while.

Here are some follow-through questions. First, James (Jacob) uses the vocative adelphoi for his readers. Ordinarily, and perhaps especially for ecclesiastical reading, one would translate this as "brothers and sisters," since adelphoi conventionally serves as a general address to a group of assorted gender; yet at one point, James specifically refers to adelphos e adelphe ("a brother or sister," 2:15) — suggesting at least the possibility that his vocative adelphoi are addressed to a male-only (or male-normative) group, a possibility reinforced by his periodic use of the male-specific term aner to indicate "a person" (1:8, 12, 20, 23; 2:2; 3:2). None of these uses requires its referent actually to be male. To give you an idea of how odd that is, James uses "man" six times in five chapters, always to refer to a person without specific contextual markers for gender; Paul uses the word forty-three times in the seven undisputed letters (adding up to, let’s see, sixty-one chapters), a quick scan suggesting that he always uses aner in contexts where the gender of the person is in question (or in quotations; and we can quibble about 1 Cor 13:11, but even if I concede that verse, the general point stands). Especially since James/Jacob’s usage of aner is heavily front-loaded to the first chapter (creating a “primacy effect”), I’m inclined to suspect that James envisions his audience as being men.

If that’s so — and I’m still not quite confident that it is — it seems more fitting to render the Jacobean adelphoi as “brothers,” the more precisely to communicate my understanding of his message.

Second, in 1:4, we find the first of a construction that seems downright bizarre to English-speakers: a third-person imperative. Translators typically adopt the stilted usage, “Let him [do X, Y Z],” even though nobody actually speaks that way any more. More colloquial substitutes would be “she should. . .” or (as my student Monique Ellison suggested) “she better. . . ,” though I’m not sure what I’ll do with these third-person imperatives when I get to the translation part of the commentary (I’m doing the grammatical and textual analysis first, then going back and working out a translation. lest I have a bright idea over in chapter 1, but forget about it by the time I hit chapter 5).

Last (for today), James/Jacob presents us with an interesting problem in his use of the verb diakrinw (twice in the middle voice, in 1:6, once in a passive-voice form in 2:4). The general Jacobean problem to which this verb points is a departure from the ideal of living haplws, with a unity of personality that aims always at just behavior; in this context, meden diakrinomenos in 1:6 seems to suggest something like “without ambivalence.” Bible translators prefer to translate diakrinw-words as having to do with “doubting,” but the normal sense for diakrinw in the middle voice, though, is “to get [a dispute] settled” (s.v. diakrinw, LSJ) (that’s the Liddell/Scott/Jones lexicon, the standard lexicon for classical-Hellenistic Greek; I lean somewhat more heavily on non-“biblical” reference tools to avoid the theological axes that people grind, even inadvertently, in their linguistic research; why grind their axes, when I have my own hatchets that need sharpening?), hence, something like “arrive at a distinction among alternatives.” “Doubting” entails an attitude of (as it were) positive incredulity, where I don’t see that in the lexical domain of diakrinomai or even in NT usage.

Let’s look at what’s going on in the few diakrinomai passages of the NT. In Acts 10:20, Peter gets an emphatic command from the Holy Spirit, who urges him to get up and find three strangers whom the Spirit has sent; he is to go meden diakrinomenos, which the NRSV translates as “without hesitation,” good enough if one sees the hesitation as a matter of volition rather than time — but I’d say (again) “without ambivalence” may communicate that better. In Acts 11:2, circumcised colleagues diekrinonto Peter (for eating with Gentiles), which the NRSV renders “criticized.” That sounds fair for the context, though it seems a little odd for diakrinomai; it seems to be working in the sense of “observe a distinction,” with a negative valence in this situation. In Romans 14:23, Paul talks about people with dietary scruples; the NRSV identifies them as “those who have doubts,” but I think it much more to the point to say that they make distinctions among foods, some to be eaten, others to be avoided. Jude v 9 has Michael diakrinomenos with the Devil about the fate of Moses’ body; that looks like the classical “settling a dispute” to me. And in v 22, the letter adjures its reader to have mercy on the diakrinomenous, which the NRSV apositely renders “wavering.”

Now, in James 1:6, it looks a lot more like a case of “wavering” or being ambivalent than it looks like doubting, to me. And in 2:4, the passive form ou diekrithete en eautois seems to convey “aren't you being divided among youselves,” a sort of form of group ambivalence. But I’ve spent too much time on blogging already this morning, I’m arguing too loosely in a public forum, and PIppa is awake, Jennifer’s coming to visit, and I have to walk the dog. I will be sure to post this entry, though, from within the library precincts.

Next Step, Wiki

Mark Goodacre has a helpful entry on online glossaries of biblical-critical terms, in which he names several such sites and runs a quick check on them (he uses “the Synoptic Problem” as a reference test, I usually use “postmodern criticism” or some variant on that expression). Thanks, Mark, for collecting these and providing the links.

These are good, but it looks to me as though the natural next step is a glossary wiki. Imagine how much smoother and more helpful a glossary could be, if Mark had been able just to make the emendations he noted, instead of calling attention to them and waiting to see whether the site maintainers adopt the changes.

So Weirdly Wrong

A few minutes ago, a police officer passed the bench where I was sitting outside the [edit: Nantucket] Atheneum, enjoying the mild temperature and the wifi signal, and he said, “Sir, you can’t use the Internet outside the library.”

I said, “What?” (I’m pretty clever under pressure.)

The officer in question (whose conduct was entirely professional, firm, and calm behind those mirrored shades) solemnly assured me that in order to use the library’s open wireless signal, I had to be seated within the library. The officer then wandered on back to the nearby police station.

I dutifully, if reluctantly, turned off the power to my Airport card and, since I had only been on the bench a few minutes, began working — offline — on what turns out to be this post. I had noticed two other weak but open signals in the area, and I figured that I could post this perplexing moment via one of the other open signals, then scuttle back to the studio. As I was writing, the officer returned and — as the officer walked straight for me — I held up my TiBook, pointing to the zero lines in the Airport icon, and showed the officer that my card was off.

“Why don’t you just close that up, sir, or use your computer elsewhere?’

I closed the computer in order not to constitute a threat to established order, but engaged this peace officer in a discussion of the complexities of the topic. “I did notice several other open signals in the area — am I allowed to connect to them?”

“Maybe if you had permission it would be all right, but it’s a new law, sir; ‘theft of signal.’ It would be like if you stole someone’s cable TV connection.”

I responded, “But this is a radio signal thing — it’s not like a cable connection, it’s like someone has a porch light on and I’m sitting on the bench, reading a book by their light. I’m not stealing their light.”

“It’s a law, sir; if someone comes along and downloads child photography (that wasn’t the exact word the officer used) and it goes through their [sc., the access point owner’s] connection, that’s a violation and we’ve had cases of that. That’s a felony.”

(I skip the question of whether it’s less a problem if someone downloads such photos while sitting in the library. Since I’ve already been categorized, however politely, with felons, I thought discretion should prevail at this point.) “Is this a state law?” I asked.

“It’s a federal law, sir; a Secret Service agent came and explained it to us.”

“Look, I don’t want to give you a hard time, and I’m very thankful that you alerted me to this, and I’ve done what you asked, but I’d be very surprised if there turned out to be a federal law forbidding my using an open wireless signal in a public place.”

“Well, you can look it up, sir, and explain it to the chief. . . .”

At this point, it became clear that my uniformed interlocutor had to head in a different direction from me, so we shook hands and parted. And I walked back to the studio, dumbfounded that someone just rousted me for picking an open wireless signal in public — indeed (as it turns out) for using a laptop within a wireless signal’s range of the library. Weird.

posted from a secure hiding place near an open access point. . . .

[Rest of story: here, here, here, and if you haven’t seen Gary Turner’s coverage go here too.]

EFF, Ahoy!

Just in time for this year’s “Blog Like a Pirate Day,” I saw a t-shirt today in one of the stores dedicated exclusively to t-shirts and sweatshirts. It read, “Piracy: Just Like Hostile Takeovers, Without the Paperwork,” and features a skull and crossbones. Because I was in a Free Culture sort of mood, I was thinking about piracy and what it was “just like,” considering the ways that a Free Culture, Open Source kind of guy resembled a pirate, and the ways he might differ.

Then tonight, Pippa and I watched Jason and the Argonauts (it was a rainy night, and the Dreamland Theater was playing Open Water and the other downtown theater — I’ve forgotten its name, it used to be the Shaggy Dog, I think — was playing The Door in the Floor, and we didn’t care to see either of them). You may remember that the climactic scene in Jason involves a fight between three stupefied-looking Argonauts and seven animated skeletons; that jogged my mind back to the piracy and skull-and-crossbones theme.

I realized that a Creative Commons emblem couldn’t just be a skull and crossbones, since part of the point is that the culture for which we’re struggling isn’t properly someone else’s good that we want to steal, but rather is should be recognized as a common good, that we want to turn loose for the benefit of the culture in general. Instead of a skull, then — a light bulb (illuminating its surroundings, and itself an invention whose patent we would not want to have seen extended indefinitely). The crossed bones — a pen (obviously) and. . . a microphone?

We’ve already established that I’m not design wizard, but this is what I whipped up in Freehand. . . .

The Yankees, Disneyland, Etc.

I have a track record for misunderstanding Dave Winer, so I start out by saying that I may have missed a subtle nuance to what he said early this morning about the U.S. occupation of Najaf. He’s quite right that it must be a profound outrage to many Muslims — something more than “liberation” is at stake here, and I’m astounded at the present administration’s tone-deafness to the implications of its policies. So Dave’s quite on target that far.

I think the comparison of one of the holiest sites in the cosmos (to Muslim believers) to Yankee Stadium or Disneyland may understate the importance of Najaf. Important as the Yankees and Disneyland are to some (and I’m acquainted with both Yankees fans and Disney fans), there is a depth and extent and even duration of significance to the Imam Ali shrine that belies the comparison to the temporal citadels of the Bronx and
Anaheim.

I take his point, absolutely; but as Dave himself is wont to say, “It’s worse than that.” People of faith, any faith, should share the horror at what’s going on in Najaf: the violence, the desecration, the inhumanity, all of it. Baseball and theme parks aren’t playing in the same league.

Go, Creative Commons! But. . . .

Does it seem incongruous to anyone else that the tickets for the big benefit concert for the Creative Commons are being handled by Ticketmaster?

Well, Trying To Be

One Man’s Opinion: “Even if he is a Christian.”

(That was with a smiley, lest anyone think it offensive. By the way, yes, I am a priest, and thank you very much for your kind words!)

Prayers, Thanksgivings

After a long time away, Naomi has blessed her readers with a catena of knock-out entries about liturgy, prayer, language, and watermelon.Tolle, lege.

Appreciation for Antiquity

Lest anyone think that my postmodern technophilic interest in online publishing threatens the survival of the book, permit me simplly to observe how much I love my copy of Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, with durable pages, and the marks of the type pressed visibly, palpably into the paper. I turn to it more than other references in my work on James, in part because I value reference sources that don’t already presuppose Christian theological language-use, but in part also because the sensuous experience of touching and smelling the pages, of observing the play of ink and subtle shadow (from the press’s imprint) delight me.

Then, I use fountain pens, too.

Wondering

Why doesn’t every newspaper in the country syndicate Spinsanity, and place its reports somewhere prominent (the front page wouldn’t be inappropriate, as far as I’m concerned)?

James Problems

Earlier I suggested that I might post some of the notable interpretive issues I’m working with in my James commentary. The first is more a complex of problems, having more to do with interpretive convention than with puzzling out the sense of the text.

A variety of cultural factors combine to produce a Christian document named “The Letter of James” where I see a profoundly Judaic document named “The Letter of Jacob.” The issue arises in the first verse, where one confronts not only the (alleged) author’s name,* but also the address “to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora.” First, the decision to render this author’s as “James” (Iakobos in Greek) obscures the vital connection between the name in question and the subsequent address: the biblical Jacob is the father of the twelve** tribes: “Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. The sons of Leah: Reuben (Jacob’s firstborn), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s maid: Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Zilpah, Leah’s maid: Gad and Asher” (Gen 35:22-26). So it’s very hard to hear the resonances of Genesis, of the very identity of Israel, when we translate the author’s name as “James.”

Is it better to translate the Greek Diaspora to “Dispersion,” or to leave it in the now-familiar transliteration? Probably six of one, half-dozen of the other. Either way, though, the cumulative force of the first verse indicates in flashing neon letters that we’re talking about a Judaic context — which message is muted, if not quite extinguished, if we render Iakobos as “James.”

* I don’t have a big stake in whether the author of this letter was Jacob, Jesus’s brother, or some other Jacob, or someone pretending to be Jacob, or someone named Ermintrude whose name has been supplanted by the present ascription. Luke Johnson makes an intriguing case that the letter actually came from Jesus’s brother (in his recent Brother of Jesus, Friend of God); I’m more sympathetic with the implied early date of the letter than with the obligation to identify the author with that Jacob/James, for reasons such as those I described yesterday. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll operate here on the premise that the author is suitably identified as James (or Jacob).
** Okay, it gets complicated because he takes on Joseph’s sons, born in Egypt (Manasseh and Ephraim), in Gen 48:5, and “Joseph” turns out not to have a tribe of his own, and Levi remains a tribe but without territory.

Happy Ending

Thanks to the I Love Music site, I now know that the answer to this question is The Good Rats, “Tasty.”

Thank you very much!

Obscure Translation Question

In “The End of Peregrinus,” Lucian of Samosata narrates the career of a second-century mountebank who adopts a succession of religious postures to gain glory and honor. At one point, Peregrinus takes up Christianity, in order to be supported by the dupes who believe in Jesus and follow his way of mutual support.

(In what follows, I’m going to not-bother with Unicode or with rendering etas with a different character from epsilon — I’m on vacation, all right?

At one point, Lucian characterizes Christians thus: “they denied the Greek gods, and they worshipped that impaled sophisten” (presumably Jesus), where the translations with which I’m acquainted take sophisten as “Sophist.” Now, granted that Lucian has a jaundiced view of Christianity, and that he means no positive assessment of Jesus, isn’t there still reason to construe the Greek in the more general sense of “sage,” “philosopher”? Regarding sophistes as “Sophist” might please advocates of the cynic-Jesus hypothesis, but as a translator I tend to favor the rendering that leaves as little specificity as necessary, and as much leeway for ambiguity and allusion as possible. Lucian’s scorn emerges clearly enough — perhaps even more clearly — if one applies the honorable characterization to the “impaled” (not “crucified,” though we might not expect Lucian to bother about the distinction) leader of this sect, to whom Lucian earlier applies the honorable title of “law-giver” (nomothetes).

Just wondering, is all, when I ought rather to be working on James 4.

Dear John

“What,” you may ask, “about the earth-shaking, mind-bending, front-page story that finally somebody has discovered the cave of John the Baptist?”

Caveat: I have limited Net access (take that, Wired!), and haven’t done extensive follow-up work. This is just a first reaction to the sensational story.

I think that this sort of story is what helped turn me off archaeology; this, and the weeks of grimy labor sifting sand under the hot sun retrieving nothing but potsherds. (For my vast audience of archaeologists — I know you’re out there — I admire the determination that sustains you through work for which I just have no patience.)

This story reflects several problematic tendencies in the popular (biblical) archaeological market. We get their textual siblings over in literary historiography, so I’m not casting stones only at the other interpreters. But there have been heaps of hermits (I just spent way too much time trying to devise a collective noun for anchorites) in the Judean wilderness about whom we know absolutely nothing. We happen to know a little about one of them: John. So when an archaeologist finds a hermit’s cave that fits what we might expect John’s cave to have looked like, someone draws the inference that it actually was John’s cave.

The Bible narratives have a power over the imagination that tempts people to lead way beyond what the evidence offers. That’s a reason I assign Egeria’s Pilgrimage to my Early Church History class; fourth-century pilgrim Egeria keeps encountering the exact place where this or that biblical story took place, such that after a few stops on the pilgrimage even the most credulous student begins to wonder how on earth anyone knew that this is where Moses struck the rock, or where elijah heard the still small voice. In the literary study of the Bible, you can see readers trying to associate the Letter to the Hebrews (for instance) with people whose names we know from the New Testament, rather than allowing that one of countless unknown early Christian authors might have written it. Given “evidence” over here, and “possible answer” over there, people want badly to connect them and eliminate the uncertainty that dogs inconclusive data. Plus, more people will buy a book or watch a TV special is it says “Cave of John the Baptist” than if it says “Cave of Ascetic With Lustration Pools.”

But that’s a kind of argumentation that we would never accept in other spheres. It’s all circumstantial evidence, no positive evidence (as far as I’ve seen); and though we wouldn’t expect to see a stone at the entrance of the cave saying “937 Hermit Drive, Home of John the Baptist,” we have no particular reason to think that this was John’s own actual cave as opposed to the cave of some other hermit who might have looked like John, or a cave that some post-Johannine Baptists used for memorializing John. “Man with wild hair and carrying a staff”? Must be John the Baptist!

Of course, neither of those makes for attention-grabbing headlines: “Cave of Hermit Who Looked Like John the Baptist Found” (observe that this more accurate headline doesn’t exclude the possibility that it was John’s cave). Or, “Cave Shrine To John The Baptist Discovered.” They aren’t startling, because they’re probably truer.

Caveat redux: There’s probably some unreported, more-decisive evidence about this case, such that my specific jeremiad against premature closure in archaeological reasoning makes me look an arrant fool. If I’m wrong about this one, I’m demonstrably right about a stack of other examples that have a moment’s duration as Biblical Evidence, then fall into discredit.

Later: Mark Goodacre covers the news, with fuller examination of various reports and analyses. By the way, he is not the Mark who wrote Mark’s Gospel, nor John Mark who was supposed to have accompanied Paul.

Go, Ryan

Last week at the technology-and-teaching conference, I had the chance to meet and bore Ryan Bolger, who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary. It was a treat to converse with him then, and an even greater treat to see him quoted in the LA Times (free registration required, sorry), in a story on the emerging-church movement.

The report gets at some of the defining issues (as best I read them — but I am not an expert on this), in a rough way. George Barna seems to have it wrong, though, when he says, “piecing together the different activities that are important to them in ways that fit their unique needs, as opposed to fitting into the schedules of religious institutions.” That sounds to me like an institutionalist thinker looking out at behavior that isn’t determined by institutions (without being anti-institutional, I think). So many church arguments have been pre-defined as involving "the institutional church," though, that the gravitational attraction of the familiar makes it hard to avoid that characterization of the emergent church. I take it, though, that emergent leaders want to get out from under the burden of reacting against "institutional" behavior as much as they want to escape the fetters of inherited (obsolescent) institutions.

If I’m right, then, it’s not a matter of the “cafeteria spirituality” that Barna describes, and more a matter of a genuine experiment in the nature of the church. An observer simply lumps Burke, McLaren, Cooper, Holsclaw, and their colleagues in with the “pick-and-choose” “needs-meeting” religious movements, misses a decisive part of what the emergents wants not to re-enact. The emergent leaders I’ve met want no part of a rope-’em-in-for-Jesus membership head count game; they’ve stopped cold, asked the basic question of why people who love God and want to follow Jesus should do it in bunches, and are trying to see what answers make sense on the ground.

I’m not a part of that endeavor, and I’m probably misconstruing it in various ways, but as far as I understand it, I respect the impulse and the ways it’s being played out around us. Institutional spokespeople (like me) should mostly just quiet down and let the Spirit speak, aye or nay, through the ministries of hard-working, committed leaders such as these.

Milestone

Finished chapter three of James. I’ll start chapter four tonight, if only as a symbolic gesture. It’s still a first run-through; one could devote ages (and pages) to compiling a commentary if one felt obliged to plumb the depths of every single verse. Still, it’ll be good to get editorial feedback on formatting questions, and then to go through and flesh out the more intricate problems.

I’ll probably toss a few of the more vexing texts onto the blog, but right now I’m going to feed the dog, play a little Snood, and wander into town to post this joyous news before the Atheneum closes. (Someday I’ll check to see whether they shut down the wireless router after the doors close.)

Nantucket Architecture

In the old-timey buildings I’m wont to haunt on Nantucket, doorways are often no higher than 6 feet (sometimes lower). The other night, I bumped my head on the doorway to the bathroom in the middle of the night — but I’m so attuned to my Nantucket habitat that my knees buckled right away, and I only just tapped my forehead against the doorframe.

On the other hand, I do look forward to returning to a space in which I can navigate my world without hunching over every time I pass through a doorway or stand in a kitchen or bathroom.

One Of Those Moments

As I’m hip-hop impaired, despite the positive example of my loosely-joined NSA bodhisattva DigID comrade Eric, I thought I’d begin exploring by checking out the classic Enter the Wu-Tang Clan. Right?

So there I was, typing away, listening to “Bring Da Ruckus,” when Aunt Grace knocked at the studio door. Now, Aunt Grace is not a delicate vessel, but I still think that if the speakers on my TiBook had a little more precise reproduction, she might have been startled at what her middle-aged theologian nephew had on his mp3 player.

“En garde! I’ll let you try my Wu-Tang style!”

Hmmmmm. . .

Puzzling Evidence

1. I’m a big-time coffee drinker. Even now that Aunt Grace has shown me how to operate the coffeemaker in the kitchen, I’d be delighted to spend hours (and dollars) at a pleasant café.

2. The Even Keel on Main Street is just such a café; I found their employees to be cheerful and pleasant, and their coffee just fine.

3. The Even Keel has pay-per-minute wireless access to the internet.

4. The Athenaeum has free wireless access.

5. At the Athenaeum, there’s no coffee.

6. I spend my visits to town at the Athenaeum, and no one makes any profit from my online errands.

(Now, I like to stand on the portico of the Athenaeum while surfing, where I could indeed sip a cup of coffee — but if I do buy a cup in town, it won’t be at the cyberactive café.)

Life At The Studio

Well, I’ve been making steady progress on James; with luck, I’ll finish chapter 3 today, and forge on to chapter 4. It’s fun, but I have so many other things to do that it’s exceptionally difficult to grind out the (relatively short) commentary. I’d love to spend more time taking pictures, just sitting on Main Street drinking coffee, browsing at the Athenaeum, but duty calls.

Pippa is having a lovely time sleeping late and hanging out with her lifelong friend Jenny. Margaret has begun inhabiting her new apartment, bought a couch and bed, and tackles her first day of Orientation today.

Noon — time for me to get back to James.

Putting Up

I was browsing through odds and ends on my hard drive yesterday, thinking about things that might distract me from my commentary on James (to which I did finally add five verses yesterday), when I stumbled over the article I wrote last January on postmodern interpretation (surprise, surprise) for publication in France. I don’t remember whether I posted it when I wrote it, so I’m uploading it to the Disseminary as a PDF, with a link from here for convenience.

I'll add the text in the “extended entry” box, but what with fancy characters and limited time for online editing, it look something of a hash.

Someone who presumes to introduce postmodern interpretation (in a single chapter!) begins from the embarrassing predicament that the more simple and lucid one makes the topic, the less adequately one has represented it. Since no single thing can be decisively isolated and identified as the official, undisputedly postmodern approach to postmodern biblical interpretation, a single introductory essay can only begin to hint at the intricacies of this polytropic mode of exegesis (some manifestations of which emerge in other essays in this volume). Nonetheless, one must begin somewhere, and perhaps an introduction that denies itself the pretense of adequacy may successfully point onward toward the more complex whole of which it constitutes only an attenuated part.*1*

By way of introduction, then, I propose that a postmodern approach to biblical interpretation will show some characteristics from a broad (but mutually-related) repertoire. Postmodern readers suggest interpretations that reject totalizing explanations of the text they study (indeed, they often concentrate their attention upon texts that render totalizing interpretations problematic). Postmodern interpreters likewise avoid justifying their work with appeals to unshakeable axioms about the nature of reality, of history, of communication, or other such absolutes; they are antifoundational, operating more in the realm of persuasion than of proof, of "making a case" more than "discovering the facts." Postmodern interpretations typically involve demystifying the hidden presuppositions and power relations that buttress other approaches to the text. So at a very general level, postmodern interpretations adopt an anti-totalizing, antifoundational, demystifying rhetoric.

More specifically, postmodern readers may adopt one of many finer-grained interpretive tactics. The best-known mode of postmodern interpretation is deconstruction, the persistent attention to a discourse's details, a painstaking examination that undoes the appearance that a discourse attains finality, coherence, closure. Or a reader may concentrate on the ways that political considerations cross and counter-cross at the meeting-place of text and readers. A postmodern political reading aims not only to spell out the attitudes that an author expounds, but also (or often "instead") to situate the political claims that the reader associates with the text in a panorama of shifting political scenes of interpretation. Some other postmodern readers take up the phenomenon of intertextuality -- the extent to which all discourses constitute themselves with textual bits and pieces drawn from other discourses -- not simply as basis for analyzing "influences" and "effects," but as an opportunity to envision afresh the constellations by which we associate (and dissociate) texts. Other postmodern discourses address modern culture's anxiety over identity. Modern discourses tend to rely on identity as a principle of standardization (as in the assembly-line where interchangeable workers put together interchangeable parts) more than the actuality and precision by which an identity renders itself distinct, unique, and truly itself. Modern discourses require identity, but they require an odd, inside-out sort of identity: identities serve modern purposes by affirming the markers by which institutional powers minimize confusion and maximize efficiency -- but modern identities must not be so very individual as to defy categorizations, to disrupt market profiles. The modern individual marks a site where specifiable samenesses intersect, but does not decenter the productivity of modern projects.

These postmodern gestures do not cohere in a single methodical program. Sometimes they complement one another; sometimes they conflict. Never is a postmodern interpreter obligated by a transcendent Law of Postmodernity to adhere to one or all of these. Indeed, one may often recognize postmodern sensibilities at work precisely to the extent that the interpreter betrays no fealty to repeating the required steps of an extrinsically-determined method. More often than not, postmodern interpreters operate without the constraints and consolations of pre-determined methods, and thus they produce interpretations that defy simple categorization (or reproduction). In the manipulation of this kind of hermeneutical freedom, postmodern interpreters justify their readings not by appealing to familiar indubitable premises, ironclad reasoning, or certified systems of distilling meanings from words -- but by the truthfulness, the beauty, the subtlety, the brilliance, or the resonance of the gesture itself.

One way to get acquainted with the ways of postmodern interpretation involves exploring a particular text in relation to characteristically postmodern premises. The selection of a text to explore offers the opportunity to demonstrate an postmodern sensibility from the beginning. One may, for instance, hold up for examination an expression that readers have hitherto treated as a simple digression, parenthesis, an aside. Or one may point to a familiar and thoroughly-analyzed text in order to demonstrate interpretations that diverge markedly from what conventional wisdom has long taught.*2*

Counterintuitive readings of canonical texts frequently encounter scornful responses from hostile critics, as such interpretations defy "common sense." Yet "common sense" isn't a self-evident, unchanging criterion of plausibility; that which counts as "common sense" changes from period to period, from culture to culture, even from neighborhood to neighborhood. When critics appeal to "common sense," they enlist readers into the club of readers to whom they, the critics, belong, which rejects certain (postmodern) allegedly-nonsensical readings. Observe, though, that this gesture proves nothing relative to the text or its interpretation; it simply effects a partisan division between "us," who read sensibly, and "them," who don't abide by the canons of interpretive etiquette that "we" take for granted.

Common-sensical readings will never be able to exclude, to fend off aberrant approaches, because "meaning" doesn't subsist in texts in a way that limits interpretation. Limits to interpretation derive always only from the conventions by which communities of interpreters order their interactions. Once upon a time, the style of reading that we now identify as "historical criticism" was derided and vilified, its practitioners expelled from teaching positions and excommunicated from their churches (indeed, this is still the case in some places and denominations); now, historical criticism constitutes the common-sense hegemony in most European and North American faculties of biblical studies. Has common sense itself changed? By no means -- but the culture of interpretation has changed, its constituents engaged in different social practices, different scientific presuppositions, different theological (or atheological) axioms. Postmodern interpreters defy the conventions of dominant approaches to reading not just out of a gratuitous impulse to tweak the noses of stuffy forebears, but because interpreters' imaginations can always extend beyond the boundaries of convention. Today's outré interpretations of well-known texts will either fall by the wayside of misguided false starts, or will be assimilated into the common sense of another generation of interpreters.*3*

But in this chapter, I'll adopt the alternative of drawing a less-prominent passage into an analysis that conventional scholarship has relegated to parenthetical insignificance. In 1 Corinthians, as Paul the Apostle warms to the topic that will occupy his rambling paranesis and expostulations, he drops an innocent, human expression with far-reaching consequences. Paul advances his case against factionalism by scolding the congregation for (apparently) identifying with their theological heroes: "I belong to Apollos," "I belong to Cephas" (v 12). "I thank God that I baptized none of you," he says (v 14), lest they have that reason to commit their allegiance to him as their savior, neglecting the nonpareil importance of Christ in forming the identities of the Corinthian believers. Except, as it turns out, Paul admits that he did baptize two of them: Crispus and Gaius. Then, after a moment's theological exposition, Paul recalls that his firm asseveration that Christ did not send him to baptize (v 17) overlooks yet another set of converts, the household of Stephanas. "Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else" (v 16).

Scholars and translators treat this passage with a certain degree of embarrassment. Translations commonly punctuate verse 16 as a genuine parenthesis; scholars acknowledge that the torrent of Pauline rhetoric carries him faster than his power of recollection, so that in verse 16 he simply continues the list of exclusions he stipulates in verse 14 (and issues a rhetorical insurance policy against having forgotten any other members of the congregation whom he might have baptized). Common sense dictates that we simply accept this disclaimer from Paul, perhaps with an indulgent smile, and proceed to the weightier theological topics about which he is obviously more concerned.

If we decline, for a moment, to cooperate with this common sense, we encounter a distinct discursive peculiarity in this passage, a peculiarity that disrupts modern interpretive assumptions. On one hand, certain modern interpreters adhere to the premise that the meaning of biblical texts must be inerrant, that each word is inspired by God so as to render the discourse infallible in matters of fact. This interpretive premise, which some readers will associate with a retrograde conservative fundamentalism, in fact accepts fundamentally modern notions about meaning, history, factuality, and interpretation: meaning, on this account, inheres in a text, has a single "real" definition per unit of communication, and corresponds unambiguously with events and personalities in an externally identifiable reality.*4* On the other hand, a different school of interpreters depend on Paul to have provided in his letters sufficient information for subsequent readers to arrive at sound conclusions concerning Paul's interests and intentions. In order for their interpretations to claim any purchase on the historical "reality" of Paul's discursive world, they need a basis for advancing reasoned conclusions grounded in stable warrants; if the evidence for "what Paul meant" rests on too precarious a body of evidence, the historical critics' pretense to interpretive authority would ring hollow. Paul’s standing as an inerrant spokesman for the Holy Spirit and his prominence as an exemplary author from the early Christian movement both rely on implicit assumptions about his capacity to serve as a fount of data, where 1 Cor 1:16 indicates that any data from Paul might be taken back, corrected, perhaps even repudiated in the next breath. Both of these tacitly modern approaches to Pauline interpretation suppress the subversive memory that the supposedly-immovable foundations on which they rest have always been shifting. On one hand, one can easily find development and disputation among scholars who earnestly affirm the inerrancy of Paul's letters; on the other, the "history" that grounds academic interpretation changes perceptibly with each generation of persuasive scholarship. Even within the foundationalist discourses of biblical inerrancy and biblical historical criticism, the "foundations" never stop shifting, mutating, re-orienting the fundamental premises of the discourse.

The major parties to contemporary hermeneutical disputes share a reliance on distinctly modern premises (premises that Paul's parenthetical disclaimer undermines). Each party adopts a different mode of generating an interpretive totality (hence, "totalizing") out of the bits and pieces of information Paul provides. In the first case, that totality rests on the premise that Scripture cannot err in matters of fact, still less contradict itself; where evidence is lacking or ambiguous, the guiding principle supplies what is lacking in the evidence. In the second case, that totality rests on the premise that diligent investigation provides a basis for sufficiently-grounded evaluation of the most probable course of actual events and intentions. Each approach can allow the hypothetical possibility that their totalizing axiom might not hold true -- but practitioners of each approach turn out to find ample justification for maintaining their position in every situation they encounter.

If divine inspiration insulates the Scriptures from any possibility of factual error, then what shall we say about Paul's claim in verse 14 that he baptized none of the Corinthians? Even if we grant his immediate reservation -- "except for Crispus and Gaius" -- one must exercise some hermeneutical gymnastics to reconcile the parenthetical correction in verse 16 with Paul's initial position. Paul does not only admit that he baptized several of the Corinthians he of whom he initially claimed to have baptized none, he further acknowledges that he doesn't know whether he baptized even more. Which of these claims is inerrant? This line of interrogation may seem impertinent; Paul presumably deserves the respect that allows him the final, corrected version of his argument (something such as, "It doesn't matter how many of you I baptized, since the point is that I was called not to baptized but to preach the gospel"). At this point, however, those who posit the axiomatic inerrancy of the biblical text run into a stumbling-block: while readers can with little difficulty follow the apparent thrust of Paul's rhetoric, their apprehension of Paul's claims derives not from the explicit words recorded in the letter, which are nakedly self-contradictory, but from an implicit communicative sympathy that offers Paul the benefit of the interpretive doubt.

If on the other hand the authoritative scholarship that adjudicates historical probabilities were to take quite seriously Paul's admission that he doesn't know how many Corinthians he baptized, on what Pauline propositions could one rely? Paul is not, after all, introducing a matter of no consequence in these verses; the factionalism that he decries seems to bear some important relation to the Corinthians' allegiance to the various leaders who baptized them. By denying (erroneously) that he baptized any of them, he gains the rhetorical high ground of claiming to be disinterested. When he then admits that not only did he actually baptize a small crowd of Corinthians, but he may have baptized even more, he calls into question his own reliability as a reporter. He may be an inspired preacher and theologian, but he makes an unsatisfactory witness to history. Since his is the only testimony available to most of the events he narrates, however, the historian must either advance a façade of confidence incommensurate with Paul's capacity to remember basic elements of his career, or admit that one can say little about what Paul actually did, since any of his recollections may be as faulty as was his memory of this pivotal aspect of his Corinthian ministry.*5*

All this, from taking seriously a short aside in one letter! Yet the text of 1 Corinthians doesn't distinguish "the important verses" from the unimportant. Even if it did, one would have to rank verse 16 as a particularly important verse, since that verse protects Paul from falsifying his relation to the Corinthians. The logic of totalizing discourses requires that Paul espouse a coherent, non-contradictory account of his activity in Corinth, so that they understandably tend to divert attention from verse 16 to the more theologically dense parts of Paul's argument. Specifically modern interpreters, however, hold no power to force readers to accede to the imperative to generate a totality from fragmentary expressions. Indeed, between the poles of inerrantist orthodoxy and historical skepticism lies a vast ocean of readers who perhaps sense that their most obvious interpretive options have been defined for them by hermeneutical extremes to which they do not adhere. Their interpretive practice stands to benefit from all parties encountering and reckoning with the problems that inhabit any identifiable repertoire of interpretive gestures; postmodern interpretations do not deliver readers from problems, but do serve the salutary purpose of keeping problems toward the foreground (rather than burying the evidence that might tell against an ideologically-determined exposition). A postmodern reluctance to leap from the particular things Paul wrote, to the over-arching firmament of his theology or to the actual historical realities to which he presumably refers, thus serves the cause of interpretive clarity precisely by focusing attention on the untidy ambiguities with which Paul (and all communicators) venture to evoke understanding.

A postmodern attention to verse 16 provides an antidote to inerrantist and historicist readings of Paul by way of calling into questions the foundations on which these totalizing discourses raise their interpretive edifices. Scholars who operate within the sphere of modern assumptions bolster their arguments by claiming to base their conclusions on unassailable rhetorical bedrock: historical facts, or the nature of reality, or incontrovertible logic, or undeniable theological affirmations. They imagine that in so doing, they render their arguments more persuasive, but this is hardly ever the case. If in analyzing Paul's Corinthian correspondence one aimed at grounding one's interpretation in the true facts of history, what would connect those alleged facts with Paul's letters (and the critic's interpretation)? The only way from facts to interpretation leads by way of Paul, who has already stipulated that neither he nor we can rely on his memory. Because we have no other access to the actual events in Corinth, we must either confront the contingency of our assessments (which contingency dispels the rhetorical advantage of appealing to the bedrock foundation of absolute factuality), or ignore Paul's own uncertainty about what actually happened.

By the same token, scholars who attempt to ground their interpretations in the self-authenticating, infallible trustworthiness of the Bible run into a parallel problem. The verses in view include Paul's initial claim not to have baptized anyone, a subsequent revision of that claim (Crispus and Gaius), a later further revision of the claim (the household of Stephanas), and a contradictory assertion that he does not know how many people he baptized (why didn't the Holy Spirit inspire Paul the first time through, so that he would not have had to correct himself?). One of these may provide the unassailable apologetic foundation that affiliates Paul's point with the facts in question -- but sadly, Paul neglects to indicate which is the connection-to-truth claim, and what should be the status of the less foundational claims. Even if he did, we would have to take that indication provisionally, granted Paul's uncertainty about his own words and deeds.

Indeed, any interpretive discourse should find Paul's words too sandy a foundation. He asserts his forgetfulness and ignorance not only in these verses, but also at various points throughout his letters. To the Philippians, he does not know whether he would rather die or live (1:22); to the Romans, he does not know what he's doing (7:15); to the Corinthians, he distinguishes the authority of his own perspective on ethics from Christ's authority (1 Cor 7:25) and he upholds to the Philippians his practice of forgetting what lies behind, but pressing on toward what lies ahead (3:13). Paul professes uncertainty over whether the ecstatic experience he describes in 2 Cor 12:2 and 3 was corporeal or spiritual; many scholars reckon that the one who was "caught up into heaven" was Paul himself, in which case his uncertainty is understandable -- but it also constitutes a problem for making a foundation of Paul's teaching. In these ways, Paul undermines the modern constitution of identity as a self-identical, consistent, unity; the Paul who baptized a number of the Corinthians was no longer accessible to the Paul who wrote to them against factionalism; the Paul who was caught up to the third heaven was no longer available to the Paul who cited that heavenly voyage in defense of his apostleship. However convenient it would be for interpreters to invoke an apostle whose self-identity certified the accuracy of his every word, such an identity is more the requirement of and product of modern discourses than a characteristic of general human experience. The Paul who represents himself as an uncertain, unreliable witness makes a tenuous candidate for an epistemologically certain, reliable foundation for modern discourse.

We need not conclude from all this that Paul was feeble-minded or deceptive, that if his letters are not perfect, they are worthless. Paul evidently felt comfortable acknowledging his shortcomings in part because he did not think of himself as a privileged mediator of reality and factuality, but rather as a trustworthy (rather than infallible) spokesperson for the gospel. If in any regard his words strayed from a perfect expression of God's message, he could be confident that God would make the message clear in some other way. Paul's emphasis on faith, on persuasion, comports well with a non-foundational, non-totalizing account of the gospel; Paul can thereby reserve for God the power actually to make the divine truth manifest, while the apostle's writings remain the corrigible products of an earthen vessel. A postmodern reader who foregrounds the incongruity of supplying the forgetful apostle with the façade of inerrancy thus does Paul no dishonor. The grandiose vestures of a totalizing, foundational argument don't fit Paul; in this passage at least, an anti-totalizing, anti-foundational reading of Pauline rhetoric shows Paul the greater respect of taking his words seriously even when they reflect a discomfiting light on him.

The importance of giving a complete account of Paul's actions and meaning derives not from Paul's own letters, but from the magisterial modernists' sense of their obligation to provide Paul with a globally consistent theology, which rests on unassailable foundations (or to deride him for lacking these). Modern critics' insistence on determinate criteria reflect an anxiety about the limits of legitimate interpretation, an anxiety that may extend as far back as the Reformation. Before the Reformation, a catholic (in the sense of "comprehensive") church could rest comfortably with diversity in biblical interpretation, manifest in figurative or "spiritual" interpretation; the criterion of an interpretation's truth was the catholicity of its reception. Once the very identity of the true church depended on which party promulgated the more correct interpretation of the Bible, no interpretation could be unproblematically "catholic," and every interpretation marked a site of theological, political contestation. Under these circumstances, an interpreter had to appeal not simply to the authority of the church itself, but to some criterion with more persuasive authority. Over time -- as specifically modern discourses displaced the modes of argument prevalent in antiquity and the middle ages -- this authority devolved upon the discourse of "history," understood as a wissenschaftlich (scientific, scholarly) investigation of the actual course of events in the past. One constituency of interpreters developed an array of rigorous rationalizations for the literal archaeological, historical precision of biblical narratives; another constituency tended to grant legitimacy only to those biblical texts that bore the imprimatur of independently-attested Reason.*6*

Ironically, the genealogical roots of both the inerrantist and the historical critic go back to the same historiographical developments. Both, however, manifest an urgent necessity to limit legitimate interpretations that derives not so much from "the nature of interpretation" (which teaches us that divergent interpretations have always provided adequate justification to satisfy receptive audiences) nor from the actual facts of history (which have yet to speak apart from the interpretive ventriloquism with which partisans offer to give them voice), but from the vital importance of establishing one party's discursive dominance.

Since modern interpreters of both factions operate under the sign of a mystified imperative to claim exclusive legitimacy, neither interpretive conservatives nor liberals can rest comfortably with a postmodern, demystified discourse that allows a proliferation of legitimate interpretations -- nor (paradoxically) with Paul's own assertion that he himself cannot recall the number of Corinthians whom he may have baptized. They repudiate the ambiguity within which postmodern interpreters operate, demonstrating an aversion more related to hysteria or panic than to reasoned objection. An increasing number of scholarly readers acknowledge the influence of postmodern thought, but Western civilization has not ground to a shabby end, nor has the discipline of academic biblical interpretation lost its bearings. Likewise, were scholarly interpreters of Paul to attend to his imperfect recollection, instead of averting their gaze in favor of more reassuringly important points, they would not have to jettison every consistent version of Pauline theology, nor ignore his every assertion of his (historical) experience.

To this extent, then, verse 16 provides a key to demystifying Pauline theology. Whereas professional Paulinists have a vested interest in putting an imposing face on Paul's discourse, this disclaimer should release Paul from exaggerated claims made on his behalf. Paul understands that he is at best a favored servant of the gospel, but that the power of the gospel comes from its source rather than its herald. Some of the mysteries that had been kept hidden for long ages have been revealed to him, and he feels no hesitation to proclaim them; his gospel was not taught him by human agency, he does not plan by human terms, nor does he walk a human walk -- but he recognizes his own folly, he boasts, he admits his faulty recollection, he carefully distinguishes his own counsel from the Lord's command. Paul's advocates and detractors, however, hold him to a superhuman standard of rigor and historical veracity, because their theological and historical discourses require that he fulfill a discursive role which precludes absent-mindedness and imperfect consistency. Inerrancy and historical precision are not attributes of human discourse -- not even of divinely-inspired human discourse, according to Paul's own words -- as even a cursory survey of the history of interpretation ought to show. Where human discourses depend for their authority on attaining divine infallibility or asymptotically approximating academic certainty, interpreters will trade off precision and perspective for the ideological advantage of laying claim to the decisive criterion of valid interpretation. Readers overstate their claims about the degree of certainty one can ascribe to interpretive approaches in order to support the ideological structures with which modern authorities define Paul. Yet although Paul’s poor memory and his uncertainty shake the foundations of the most prominent, most rigid uses of the Pauline persona, they do not affect a historiography or a theology that permits Paul his genuine forgetful, imprecise humanity.

Postmodern interpreters may therefore opt out of modern imperatives that mandate comprehensive explanations of multifaceted letters, that fuse interpretive claims to (supposedly) invulnerable foundations, that mystify these inflationary gestures by representing them as natural, as necessary, as simply given features of any interpretation. Insofar as they eschew these modern maneuvers, they position themselves -- ironically -- to take up the Paul's admonition to "become imitators of me," echoed elsewhere in the New Testament (1 Cor 4:16, 11:1; Eph 5:1; Phil 3:17; 1 Thes 1:6, 2:14; 2 Thes 3:7, 9; Heb 6:12, 13:7, 3 Jn 11). Their imitation of Paul departs from the modern anxiety over identity -- they do not become Paul, but they follow (differently) the example they have in him. His willingness occasionally to disclaim comprehensive knowledge contrasts with a critical rhetoric of decisive proof, of conclusive demonstration, of final revelation. Postmodern interpreters more closely resemble the disciples, of whom Jesus constantly asks "Do you not yet understand?" than they resemble the modern interpreters who claim to know something (whom Paul might remind that they do not yet have the necessary knowledge).*7*

In the end, then, postmodern biblical critics can pursue interpretations without knowing in advance the method or rules by which they operate. They recognize the various hermeneutical rules taught in modern academic settings as mystified loyalty-oaths: "Read this way, and we will accord you support and respect; read otherwise, and we have no part in your interpretations." Rule-based hermeneutics guarantee a limited, familiar array of interpretive options; postmodern hermeneutics open onto horizons whose contours are not already determined, whose paths may lead to unforeseen stations.

That does not imply that all postmodern interpretations are equal, or that no one can evaluate them. Where modern interpretations authenticate their legitimacy by the extent to which they apply authorized methods, a postmodern reader may produce an interpretation without a definable method, whose authority derives from the interpretive performance itself. Interpretive performance surely includes the familiar expository essay, sermon, and commentary -- but the range of postmodern interpretive performance extends beyond the predictable genres to include instances that diverge markedly from precedents, in medium, style, direction, or sense. Postmodern interpretations can actualize their warrants retrospectively. Rather than replicating the authorized steps of an interpretive method, performative postmodern interpreters can learn to free their imaginations from the strictures imposed by the institutions that guard biblical sobriety. (Postmodern interpreters will -- for instance -- be particularly likely to take advantage of the accelerating availability of high-quality tools for digital composition of video, audio, and interactive interpretations; non-verbal visual or auditory interpretations of biblical texts are not less "interpretations," but more obviously escape the judicatory regimes of modern interpreters.)

Some of the interpretations produced thusly will certainly amount to little more than self-indulgent nonsense (at least, they will seem so when evaluated by the standards of conventional interpretive wisdom); even modern interpretive discourses have produced much forgettable speculation. For those who have ears to hear, however, the very interpretive liberty that unconvincing, trivial, failed postmodern readings announce will provide an impetus for essaying stronger, richer, truer postmodern interpretations. Then as imagination-stretching practices of interpretation gain currency, the likelihood that some will attain brilliance likewise increases.

Where such postmodern interpreters bring acute attention and fecund imagination to the opportunity to pass along the Word of God, living and active, there the efforts of modern scribes to quench the verve that the postmoderns bring to bear will reveal themselves as the forced conformity of a superannuated hermeneutical bureaucracy. Without totalizing, without foundations, without the protection of mystified claims to power over interpretive alternatives; with exuberant delight in the intertextual relations of scriptural and secular writings, with vigilance toward the political costs and effects of specific interpretations, with intense attention to the ambiguities and self-contradictions that modern interpretations suppress, with diverse expressions of diverse identities, postmodern critics espouse their freedom from hermeneutical slavery to any particular constellation of cultural determinations. Indeed, just these modes of postmodern appropriation of the Bible well capture the audacious spirit with which outstanding interpreters of Scripture have, through the ages, announced their freedom from the strictures that constrained their teachers. Of such hermeneutical resuscitations, Paul himself might well have said that "the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive" -- if he remembered.*8*

*1*More expansive introductions to the relation of postmodern thought to biblical interpretation include my small book, What Is Postmodern Biblical Interpretation? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), its larger successor A Handbook for Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000), The Postmodern Bible by the Bible and Culture Collective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), and Jean-François Lyotard, Le Postmoderne Expliqué aux Enfants (Paris: Galilée, 1986). The bibliographies in these books will also point toward further reading in the primary sources of postmodern thought.

*2* The outstanding example of emphasizing a marginal reading would be Derrida's Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), and Foucault's "What Is An Author?" in Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1977).

*3* Such critics as Stanley Fish and Frank Kermode have contributed powerful essays on the importance of communities in interpretation; see Fish, Is There a Text In This Class? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) and Kermode, The Art of Telling (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) for beginning examples.

*4* On the persistent fallacious assumption that "meaning" inheres in texts, see Stephen Fowl's "Texts Don't Have Ideologies," Biblical Interpretation 3 (1995): 1-34, and Engaging Scripture (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1998).

*5* For further, more specifically postmodern reflections on the relation of discourse to history, see D. Attridge, G. Bennington, and R. Young, eds. Poststructuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) and J. Chandler, A. Davidson, and H. Harootunian, Questions of Evidence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

*6* I endeavor to sketch some of these characteristics and developments in New Testament Theology and the Problem of Modernity (Macon, Ga. : Mercer University Press, 1995).

*7* For two perspectives on the imitation motif in Pauline literature, see Elizabeth Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991) and my essay, "Walk This Way: Difference, Repetition, and the Imitation of Christ," Interpretation 55 (2001): 19-33.

*8* I did not forget, but simply found no convenient place to insert, references to a variety of pivotally important works in postmodern thought. For instance, the contributions of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Françcois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michel de Certeau, Fredric Jameson, Paul de Man, and Judith Butler could never be catalogued in an essay of short compass. The chef of biblical postmodernism is Stephen Moore, whose Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), Mark and Luke in Poststructuralist Perspectives: Jesus Begins to Write (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), Poststructuralism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), God's Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (Routledge: New York and London, 1996), and God’s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and around the Bible (Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences Series; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001) stand out as exercises of postmodern imagination in biblical studies.

Durham Update

(To alicia — my beloved dogmatician was headed to Durham, NC, not Durham, NH, so a flight into Manchester would have been lovely, no doubt, but off-target.)

I just got a phone call from Margaret; or, more precisely, I just grabbed my laptop, my backpack , and vibrating cell phone, tore down the stairs from the second floor of the Athenaeum (“no cell phones allowed”), and got down to the porch in time to call Margaret back. She’s doing fine, visiting with friends, and investigating bare-minimum furniture purchases. All is well, and our thanks to everyone who’s caring and praying.

Likewise, our prayers go out to Tom, Miki, Sawyer, and Wendy who are waiting out restoration after Hurricane Charley. Honest, y’all, I wasn’t so much wishing that the hurricane would veer east before hitting my former haunts as I was wishing it would dissipate into a gentle shower, bedewing the palms with sweet fresh water. Let us all know if we can help.

Here

I blogged my last trip to Nantucket, two summers ago; at the time, I reflected on what’s changed and what’s not. Two years on, I’m struck by how much development continues; though there’s a snooty condescension in saying that no further buildings should be erected on the island, at the same time the congestion here is getting ridiculous. The streets are even more crowded with SUVs than last time (maybe development could be conditional upon willingness to drive a Mini). The crowds are more tourist-y, and the stores more alarmingly upscale.

Now, having kvetched, I must admit complicity with that about which I complain. My relations have built houses here, and it’s (only) through their generosity that I can even imagine spending time on Nantucket (the cost of imagining time on Nantucket has gone up drastically; one daydream could set you back a month’s wages). I could point out that my family’s been here a long time, long before the development curve took its alarming upward curve, and my mom and aunt are year-rounders — but that defense opens me to the charge of dog-in-the-manger-ism. There’s no way I, a summer visitor, can innocently carp about overbuilding on Nantucket, except perhaps to ask everyone involved, “Wouldn’t it be lovelier and more livable if the island were less congested. And then I’d have to be prepared to accept the answer, “No, especially not if that meant that I [my hypothetical interlocutor] can’t get lodgings.” And to be entirely fair to all concerned, this is probably near the height of the summer tourist season, amplifying the congestion and shortening people’s patience. So chalk one up for self-interested nostalgia, and mark me down for self-indulgent pining for the good ol’ days.

At the same time, sitting here in my late Grandmother’s studio, all that seems pretty far away. The studio is rougher-edged than my aunt’s house (where we stayed last visit), and it’s practically surrounded with vegetation that screens out most of the signs of the tourist industry (apart from earth-moving automotive sub-woofers; didn’t they go out of fashion several years ago? Why then am I still feeling the floor vibrate once an hour or so, when some hyperhormonal driver tries to impress the world with his capacity to turn a knob up to eleven?). I’m more relaxed and, for a day now, more productive. I could be even more so, given a solid block of time. And the stuff of Nantucket still bespeaks the nineteenth-century heyday of the town.

There’s one form of development about which I won’t complain, and I will highlight it and use many related words to make this Google-able: Nantucket’s public library, the Athenaeum, has free wireless access to the internet. Free wifi in the library elicits a modicum of tolerance from me. (Whoops! That passed quickly — back to curmudgeonliness. Where’s the magic wand to make all those SUVs disappear?)

Praise Be

for wifi in strange places.

The Story So Far

“Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues. . . .”

“d; (b) plane flights out of O’Hare (the rain-delay capital of the U.S.) to Pittsburgh and Portland (two opportunities for landing problems)”

The conference went well, which was not that exciting for me since my interests in disruptive applications of digital technology lie athwart the conference’s interest in stabilizing and controlling the role of digital tech in theological teaching. So I played my part, intervening where not inappropriate, making a pitch for the Disseminary. The conference part of my day was OK.

Then I tore out a bit early, to make sure I could get all my plane travel squared away. I sprinted to the United terminal, to get my boarding pass for my flight to Pittsburgh — but no, because it’s a US Air flight operating under a United brand name (I don’t quite understand this), I had to check in at the US Air terminal. Sprinted to the US Air terminal, and when I started the check-in procedure, the counter person informed me that my ticket had been issued an hour and a half earlier (while I was still sitting in the meeting).

After some negotiation, and the display of my credit card, my driver’s license, my passport, the ticket stub from my flight in from Portland, and big, patient eyes, the US Air people issued me my ticket, and I actually arrived in Pittsburgh right on time. Sweeet!

Sprinted from the extreme end of Terminal B to the far end of Terminal A, only to discover the gate area abandoned. “Change of gates,” I whistled in the dark. But the attendant at the counter said, “Flight to Portland? It’s cancelled.”

Did I mention that Margaret is leaving for Durham tomorrow morning, that this was to be my last evening with the wisest, most wonderful, most beautiful, best mom and spouse, most intensely terrific theologian in the Western Hemisphere, before she trundles off to Durham to begin her academic glory?

As in, the last night together?

So, this is the story for now. My helpful counter attendant Yan (not the cook or the pitcher, but a US Air ticketing agent) advised me that although Portland was not technically closed, there were no flights available into Portland until tomorrow at midday. This would totally screw up our overall travel plan, so that was out. So instead, I’m flying into Logan tonight, with our pro tempore course of action entailing my sleeping in Logan till she comes to pick me up tomorrow morning.

[Update: Margaret has arranged to pack up the car with Pip and Bea and all our stuff, drive down to Logan to pick me up, and stay at a Boston-area Red Roof Inn for the night. She’s a strong-willed woman, and wasn’t going to let any hurricane impede her last night with her man.]

Hurricanado

We lived in St. Pete for four years, without a serious hurricane — but we had an apartment at about eighteen inches above sea level, so I can imagine everything we own under ten feet of storm surge. The college at which I taught (Eckerd College) sits on landfill at the very end of the peninsula. Classes for first-year students start at the beginning of August, so they’re probably in the middle of August Term right now. Many of my former colleagues’ homes overlook the bay. I hope this one peters out before landfall, but it sounds as though they foresee a direct hit; my best wishes to everyone in the Tampa Bay area.

The hurricanes affect us directly, too, though not in nearly so dramatic a way. The one weekend on which we had scheduled one of the world’s most intricate travel maneuvers involves (a) a train trip into the heart of the hurricane-affected mainland, which trip may be cancelled; (b) plane flights out of O’Hare (the rain-delay capital of the U.S.) to Pittsburgh and Portland (two opportunities for landing problems); a ferry ride over hurricane-roughened seas on Saturday.

We’ll be keeping an eye on developments.

Long Day

I arrived safely at O’Hare, after getting up early in Augusta, driving to Portland with Margaret through showers and downpours. The conference here aims to follow up the Lilly Foundation’s millions of dollars of grants to theological schools: what worked, what didn’t, what have we learned? The discussion has been good, but not so very intensely exciting that I haven’t spent much of the conference time counting the hours I’ve spent in transit during the past two days, about to be increased by another two days’ worth.

Better Luck

Following Liz’s good advice, we took Bonamine on the return ferry, and every body process functioned as usual — no startling reversals. I can’t speak for Liz, but I’m available for commercial endorsements (I envision one of those overheard-conversation testimonials: “Say, Liz, since I started taking Bonamine, I haven’t had a single one of those heaving, miserable, seasick ferry voyages!”).

Apart from that news flash, we’ve been traveling since 6 AM Atlantic Time, and I can barely keep my eyes open. Off, tomorrow, for the Association of Theological Schools technology conference.

Squid Groupy

Remember the drum-and-bagpipe ensemble Margaret and I saw last week? Well, three of them actually eat Chinese food! More to the point, they were eating at the restaurant Margaret and I chose for our farewell-to-Halifax dinner.

Margaret wandered over to greet them and to say we couldn’t find their web site last week. They acknowledged the non-obvious (and Google-deprived) site address (nasty frames!), which I’m doing my part to boost by linking here. Go check them out, and tell them the American codger from the Chinese restaurant sent you.

The CBA conference turns out to have been very good, in a number of ways. My conversation with the GReek-book editor went well; I have to remember to send him a proposal for a revision, but he’s favorably disposed. There was a good panel discussion of “The New Testament and Political Discourse,” in which Warren Carter especially shined (Leo Lefebure gave a good historical survey of ways that interpretations of the Nt have shaped political orders; Alice Laffey expouinded an impassioned case for gay marriage). Then we had the thrill-packed business meeting, and a lively session in the evening, when Bruce Malina read a paper on behalf of Jack Elliott, arguing that the terms “Jew” and “Christian” are anachronistic before about the third or fourth century.

This is a topic on which I’ve been harping for a while. Numerous people I respect a lot dispute this claim, but it makes much better sense of the linguistic and social data than anything else I’ve heard, and I was greatly heartened when Fred Danker adopted the translation “Judean” as the primary gloss for the Greek Ioudaios in the new edition of his lexicon. The presentation stirred up some hot debate, and that too was good.

After a morning business session of the Hermeneutics group, in which I was dragooned into leading some of next year’s meetings (on the topic of Michel de Certeau), I played hookie with Margaret; we went to the Dingle Tower, to the York Redoubt, and to Crystal Crescent Beach (where she bade goodbye to the Atlantic Ocean).

Tomorrow Margaret and I return to Augusta; Thursday I fly to O’Hare (not Chicago, just O’Hare) for a one-day conference; Friday evening I fly back to Maine; Saturday, Pippa and I drop Margaret at South Station for her long train ride to Durham, and we set off to Nantucket, where I still don’t know the location of free wifi (hint, hint). See you around. . . .

Your Own Idol

Jonathan Wilson circulated the “Mammon” parody ad from Adbusters at the Ekklesia Project meeting; the other day, here on Jonathan’s home turf, Margaret and I found an advertisement that’s its own parody.

Stray Thought

I was thinking about AI in the shower this morning, about what computers can and can’t do, about what computers are like as far as “life” is concerned. What follows is probably obvious, probably something that one of the AI gurus like Ray Kurzweil or David Weinberger scribbled on a scrap of paper and then threw away as too painfully obvious, but it helped me see AI in a somewhat different light.

Somewhere between the shampoo rinse and drying off, I sensed that computers are much more like trees (or other plants) than like animals. A tree is, in a reductive sense, an algorithm for living and reproducing — but it’s power is limited by immobility (outside Middle-Earth). Botanical life accomplishes marvelous and intricate feats, but its capacities are limited by its need to stay rooted (or in the case of the rootless plant forms — epiphytic bromeliads — with which we became acquainted when we lived in Florida, umm, “niched” maybe).

A computer likewise operates under the constraint of needing roots — a cord (to sustain the analogy) or battery pack (which offers short-term mobility, but as any road warrior knows, the battery begins pooping out when there’s no outlet in sight). But a battery pack is much more like the constraint of a bromeliad plant than like the freedom of a grazing animal. A robot, on present models, is still much closer to being a Venus Fly-Trap than a centipede.

All this doesn’t mean that technologists won’t be able to devise a clever way of simulating animal self-sustenance; I expect they will, surprisingly soon. But I’m more interested (for the moment) in the energy-sustenance point than I am in the ballyhooed (cue the scary music) Singularity. David W has convinced me not to be unduly impressed by comparisons of data storage devices with human memory and deliberation.

More Learning

I omitted to mention that I learned from Toni Craven that there are 206 named women in the Bible (including the Apocrypha and Deutero-canonical books).

Karl Kuhn gave an interesting presentation, at which I arrived sadly late, on diagramming biblical narratives. He’s working on some interesting approaches to representing the gospel narratives graphically. His work is provocative, but he hasn’t done much specific study in the visual representation of information; Tufte and McCloud would greatly enrich his imagination of this task.

Gregory Glazov proposes identifying metaphors from Genesis 2 and 3 as they impinge on biblical discourses on the control of speech. He mentions the Letter of James in passing (the smallness of the tongue implicitly contrasts with the greatness of Leviathan?), but most of his emphasis falls on Old Testament and intertestamental texts. He name-checks Lakoff and Johnson as a point of orientation for his account of the links among protological metaphors and the lived metaphors of later Hellenistic-Judaic culture: the serpent, the flaming sword, the rivers, jewels, nourishing fluids, and so on have resonances in much of the wisdom literature. Glazov also cites Northrup Frye’s analysis of biblical imagery.

In 1991, Marc Girard proposed a biblical theology based on symbols. He regards symbols as the first language of humanity; he characterizes these symbols based on their roles in depth psychology and the history of religions. (His biblical theology remains incomplete; he has finished sections on the symbolism of colors and numbers, but has yet to write out the section on “the symbolism of human realities.” The lecture as a whole appropriately directs attention away from a reductively propositional mode of interpretation, but Girard has bought so thoroughly into Jungian archetypal “symbol” theory that his talk has limited pertinence for interpreters who doubt that approach’s universal applicability and explanatory power. Without disrespect for the value of Jung’s thought for therapy and for understanding particular instances of signification and interpretation, Margaret and I were unconvinced to the point of being impatient.

This morning, I have a meeting regarding a corrected edition of my Greek textbook. It’s been a long, gruesome tale thus far, so I dare not put too much anticipated glee in my publisher’s venturing a revision — but this meeting comes at their initiative; they have experience with printing revised editions of their language textbooks; and I’m not going to press for much more than corrections, although there’s a long list of useability desiderata for which I’ll lobby gently. Then the Hermeneutics Task Force again.

Verrrrrry Interresting

A provocative past 24 hours, including lovely catch-up with friends from the Catholic Biblical Association, dinner with our friend (and my editor — he actually remains both) Jon, a strong and encouraging presidential address, a delightful social hour, a good night’s sleep, a good session of the Hermeneutics Task Force (“CSI: Hermeneutics”), and a fascinating talk from Mark Allan Powell.

Here are some of the things I learned:

Jean-Pierre keeps up on my blog enough to have learned where to go for wifi connectivity in Halifax. I’ll bear that in mind, and say only the most positive things about my deep, abiding respect for him and for his marvelous scholarly work in the areas of Bible and technology. Jean-Pierre also showed himself a close reader of the PR for St. Mary’s University, which blurbs one of the buildings in which we meet as “fully wired, should personal computers for connecting to the internet ever become affordable” (or something like that).

Jon my friend and editor, who applied only the gentlest twist to my arm, wants my book about Matthew’s Gospel more than my book about exegetical method, so that’ll be next up when I finish my James commentary.

Frank Matera, the new president of CBA, is working on the topic of New Testament Theology, taking an approach with which I’m quite sympathetic. After having been plugging away at this topic for years (I think I read my first public paper on NT theology fifteen years ago), it’s intensely gratifying that so prominent a scholar as Matera is taking the same general direction I’ve been staking out.

I pitched the “comics history of the early church” idea to several publishers, at least one of who expressed some interest (and they already have illustrators on the payroll, so they might be well-positioned to tackle such a project).

In the Hermeneutics Task Force meeting (“We’e just after the interpretations, ma’am; nothing but the interpretations”), Toni Craven tried out some material about postmodern thought, chaos theory, pedagogy, and hermeneutics. Much to be said and thought here, certainly much more than we could have brought to a satisfying discussion in the time allotted us. It wasn’t entirely clear to me that Toni was recognizing a difference between the possibility of emergent order coalescing from the chaos of biblical interpretations (on one hand) and the troubling notion of “rules of chaos” (on the other). I sometimes hear people talk about chaos theory as though fractals and various sets abolish the very notion of disorder, a position about which I’m very dubious — as opposed to the entirely plausible notion that we recognize in retrospect patterns, where we once had observed only randomness. I’m quite sure others understand this whole chaos business much better than I; Toni didn’t articulate her perspectives in a way that convinced me she understood it better than I, though perhaps with more time we both could make more sense. I think she’s absolutely right, though, to intuit that there’s a connection between emergence and the effective constraints on interpretation. I should remember to work with my classes more on the emergent, nomadic, adaptive, character of the interpretation I encourage.

I met Sandra Schneiders for the first time in our session, though, and she and I had a lovely conversation.

After the first session, I traipsed over to Mark Allan Powell’s lecture, the beginning of which I missed, but which reported some piquant research results that Mark and I have discussed before. (Mark and I conduct an on-going dialogue in which he is delightfully, persistently wrong, and I am patiently, steadfastly correct. To show how wrong he is, I’ll simply note that he would say that the roles are reversed. How perverse can you get?) Among his findings (published in his under-appreciated book, Chasing the Eastern Star), he explained an experiment he ran among his seminarians in Columbus, Ohio, and St. Petersburg, Russia. When asked to read and summarize the parable of the Prodigal Son, U.S. seminarians all mentioned the son’s financial imprudence — and only 6 % mentioned the famine in the land that precipitates the son’s impecunity. Among the Russian students, on the other hand, %84 remembered the famine, and only %34 said anything about the son’s spending habits. In follow-up discussion, Russian students and faculty strongly identified the son’s sin as his presumptuous illusion that he could be self-sufficient, whereas the Americans typically cited his bad financial planning.

In a similar experiment, Mark found that when he asked a sample of American clergy what a particular passage means, %52 referred to the author in their explanation, while none of the sample of American lay Christians mentioned the author. Contrariwise, all of the lay interpreters mentioned themselves, and their affective response to the passage, in answering the “what does it mean?” question, whereas only %40 of clergy mentioned themselves.

As Mark stresses, these are only rough findings, but they’re not insignificant. I asked him how this had affected his pedagogy, and he allowed that it hadn’t changed his intro-course teaching much, although it had somewhat influenced his upper-level courses.

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Halifax was the celebrant and preacher at midday mass, and very wonderfully gave thanks for the work of theologians and biblical scholars in his prayers. Sometimes it seems as though the church regards us mostly as annoyances; his prayer came as a touching surprise.

An usher asked Margaret and me to bring the Offerings of the People to the altar at mass, but we had to explain that — willing though we were to participate in that way — we would be involved in the exquisitely ironic position of not being canonically permitted to receive the elements we had just offered, as we are not Roman Catholics. She appreciatively found other volunteers.

Now, back to the conference.

Light Traffic

The Catholic Biblical Association meeting begins in a few hours, and it’s not clear how often I’ll be able to get away, to walk the half hour it takes to get to Second Cup. I’ll update if I can, but that may not be much till Tuesday. Have a good weekend!

A couple of links by title:

NPR interviewed Joi about his summer reading list, and in the course of the segment he kindly pointed to this blog. Joi asks what others would recommend for summer reading; I’m working through the Greek text of the Epistle of James this summer, word by word, and am having a great time.

Perhaps more to the point, I commend Jonathan Wilson’s God So Loved the World. Margaret’s gotten some helpful provocation from Ewa Ponowska Ziawek’s Ethics of Dissensus (as have I).

Late to the party, but Hugh’s Hughtrain Manifesto and How to Be Creative are well worth the attention.

And Jon asked me to note the upcoming Religion and the Media conference he’s leading next weekend. I’d have liked to be there, but I have a different conference Thursday/Friday, saying goodbye to Margaret in Boston on Friday, so flying to Texas for Monday was right out.

Placemat Notes

Margaret and I had a relaxing day in Halifax, mostly hanging out at Second Cup. Toward late afternoon, we strolled through the buskers festival on the waterfront, then made our way circuitously to avegetarian restaurant that forms the ground floor of a Sri Chinmoy study centre. We had a wonderful dinner — a very savory stir-fry and tofu, and a vegetable stroganoff that might have benefited from a little more zip — and talked over the paper Margaret will be giving at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in November.

She contrasts the relative prominence of Hans Frei in the field of the theological interpretation of Scripture with the relative obscurity of Henri de Lubac. Frei emphasized the importance of the “plain sense” of Scripture as a regulative principle for interpretation, where de Lubac proposed the continuing relevance of the medieval church’s appreciation of multiple senses for biblical interpretation. Margaret’s arguing that de Lubac offers the more productive and theologically-appropriate model for thinking through hermeneutical problems.

One aspect of the discussion involves the extent to which advocates of the “plain sense” often find that principle especially important when they’re trying to make a case that their own interpretation of Scripture is right (theirs is the plain sense), and their opposite number’s interpretation is wrong. If the plain sense always only favors “our side,” though, isn’t it in grave danger of functioning as a mere lever for forcing “our” way onto others? Is there a way to advocate a plain-sense interpretive theory without inscribing the discourse in an ideologically-determined control game? (Here Margaret’s paper runs a course parallel to the one I set out, on the biblical-studies side of the disciplinary divide, in “Integral and Differential Hermeneutics.”)

It was a great, provocative dinner, as the placemat testifies, and it’ll make a terrific paper.

Links

Slacktivist has been updating his Left Behind blogging.

Ben linked to a compilation of “Top 100” lists, one of which correctly notes that “Chestnut Mare” is among the very worst, although the rest of that list’s constituents call the compilation’s discernment into question.

David Weinberger is great, and in response I should say that one of my most urgent goals is helping seminarians (and myself!) learn to read as rabbis do.

And I don’t remember where I saw the link to Andy’s Early Comics page. I just wish I could find a comics artist willing to help with the Disseminary early church history comics project. . . .

LazyFAQ

Number One Son (chronologically — I’m not playing favorites, Si, just making an ancient pop-cult allusion, honest) Nate wants to know whether there’s a way to compel iTunes to list recordings such that they’re ordered primarily by artist name, but secondarily by year, rather than album title. . . .

Almost

This article from the Globe (likely to vanish behind the for-pay firewall any minute now) almost tells me what I need to find out — whether (and where) I can find free wireless access at the next stop on my odyssey. I don’t plan to spend much time online, just checking email and blogging (ha! “just” checking email and blogging”) — but it’d be a lot nicer if it were free (as, for example, the connection at Second Cup in Halifax, our fallback connection since St. Mary’s University won’t let us connect from our rooms).

Worse Things Happen. . .

That’s funny (one might say, someone other than I) — I never used to get seasick. . . .

But yesterday morning was an exception, and after waking up at 4:30 EDT to catch the ferry to Yarmouth, while Margaret downed her Dramamine and settled into a drowsy queasiness, I confidently gobbled down the banana Pat had packed for me, a couple of cups of coffee, a pastry, and took a tour of the passenger deck. That tour ended at one of the men’s rooms, doubled over and lighter by a morning’s snacking. And that wasn’t my last trip. By the time we landed, Margaret was uncomfortable but quite alert and capable, and I was quivering, sweaty, and distinctly unstable.

With three more ferry rides scheduled for the summer.

On the other hand, we had a lovely visit with Jonathan and Marti Wilson, and found a wifi cafe in Halifax (St. Mary’s University, where we’re staying for the Catholic Biblical Association meeting, has a lock-down internet policy that forbids access to such dangerous hackers as (for instance) visiting theologians).

Emergent Ranting

Bob Carlton (sorry I missed the phone call) pointed a number of us to a rant against the emergent church, similar in effect to some of what I heard at the Ekklesia Project the other week. As usual, I sympathize with some of the blogger’s points, but more important to observe that it’s more complicated than that.

Yes, there’s an integrity (in the sense of “integration”) to classic liturgies. The constituent elements aren’t just ornaments that the liturgy tacks on (or shaves off) toward the goal of cooler worship. Yes, the word of God did not begin with “small groups,” and yes, the conventional churches would benefit a lot if emergent disciples devoted their energies to revivifying the ministries of the mainstream church. Et cetera.

At the same time, “emergence” characterizes how these liturgies came to their integrity in the first place; no one sat down and planned the Tridentine Mass, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, or the Book of Common Prayer ex nihilo, with the goal of devising a better liturgy that stood apart from all precedents. Any singular model of liturgical normativity came into prominence by way of a long path of emergence — so picking on emergent church for its buffet liturgical practice occludes the cafeteria past that lies behind the watershed liturgical models.

Moreover, the fact remains that there’s no zero-sum way of routing emergent-church energies into mainstream-church endeavors. There will be some mediating figures (such as Bob C.), for whom everyone should be thankful, but one of the defining characteristics of the ecclesiastical mainstream is its resistance to the kinds of ethos that characterize emergent-church life. Yup, emergents can easily look like self-contradictory closet-conservative arch-hip ultracool poseurs; but let’s not even talk about how the established church looks to the emergent church. Jargon-enhanced conservative theology is a big advance over the vague, self-congratulatory theology lite of many liberal congregations.

But more important than any of those considerations, emergent church is about people struggling to make theological sense of their lives under cultural, theological, technological, and geopolitical conditions that differ from those that define the mainstream. And the mainstream church doesn’t have a license from God to pass judgment on the emergents (or vice versa). If everyone just backs off a little, shows some of the patience that counts as one of the gospel virtues, and endeavors to listen and learn from others, maybe some purpose greater than self-congratulation will ensue.

Connectivity!

We had a great day yesterday — dropping Pippa with her aunts Jeanne and Gail, and proceeding thence to Michael’s house, where our old college-days cohort regrouped to mingle children (we were sadly negligent in this regard, but I showed photos to anyone too polite to escape), talk about the Nomar Garciaparra deal, and agree that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket since the golden age when we were in our early twenties.

Now we’re luxuriating in 802.11b connectivity at the Bohemian Coffee House in Brunswick. The web site is bland, but the operators welcomed all three of us (including Beatrice) enthusiastically. I used to work across the parking lot and railroad tracks from this location, at what was then Waterbeds East, a company that doesn’t seem to exist any more.

Tutor, Johnny

I don’t envision my Tutor (whom I have never met) as a longneckin’, pick-up drivin’, country-and-western kind of guy — at least, that’s not the impression I get from Phil.

But in the light of past conversations, I’ll bet the Happy Tutor would appreciate Johnny Cash’s stark recording of the Tom Waits song “Down There By the Train” as much as this effete Northeastern theologian does.

...You'll be washed of all your sins and all of your crimes

If you're down there by the train...

I saw Judas Iscariot
Carrying John Wilkes Booth

I’ll be looking for you, Tutor.