@DanO'Day he'll basically tell you the same thing, but i'll walk you through it. i'm leaving for the day so it may be tomorrow before i get around to it. also, i have a big deploy tomorrow so it may be the end of the day
@JonEricson, about your "mobile" meta post, I think you and I may be answering different questions. I am looking for a guideline by which we can say "this answer needs work" (what we should strive for), while you seem to be trying to catalogue answers that need work. Without the former what can we do about the latter? Am I misunderstanding?
This is a mobile:
Most of us are familiar with them in the context of children's nurseries. But the inspiration came from Alexander Calder, a kinetic artist:
I'd like to argue that Biblical Hermeneutics is like a mobile:
We have a fixed point in space, the text of the Bible and the philo...
It is the UBS4 greek text but a reader's edition (did I mention that I cheated when I first studied Greek in 2002?), so it has limited textual apparatus
I do have a full NA27 and NA28 tho which I used more recently at the Reformed seminary
The Text
John 12:40 literally reads:
[He] has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, in order that they
would not see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and
turn, and I would heal them.
A parallel passage also seems to exist in Matthew 13:14-15. However, slight manu...
The specific question was: "Is this saying that God blinded and prevented the understanding of some, thus preventing them from being converted and believing in Christ?"
To me, this is a doctrinal question.
I responded by sticking to the text: "In John 12, the author is equating the Lord/LORD of Isaiah's vision with Jesus Christ. The Jews' unbelief in the context of this passage is seen as fulfillment or continual evidence of Isaiah's prophecy concerning God's people (they refused to turn to God).
The implication also seems to be that God is the cause of (or at least a contributor to) the Jews' blindness and hardness of heart (getting into this any further would be impossible without introducing significant doctrinal speculation)."
My question (for clarification): Am I allowed to elaborate more on the meaning and assert doctrine when doing so, or is this best reserved for Christianity.SE? (I'm still confused about this)
@DanO'Day Yes, hermeneutics is about the interpretation of a text. I don't know how you can interpret a theological text without getting into theology at some point.
2
What we don't want is fishing expeditions (wherein someone says "Does the Bible teach x?")
@Soldarnal ahh ok. In this case the verse could potentially deal with predestination and God's will and whatnot - and there are several prevailing ideas on all of that
Do you think my answer was appropriate or too vague
I ask because in my tradition, if you want the interpretation of a text, that means first I go look up what Church Fathers had to say about it and see if there is consensus (which I did in the footnotes)
@DanO'Day I think it's fine. I think the person asking the question is looking for more theology probably than you feel comfortable giving; but your mini bibliography is a start there
@Soldarnal I don't mind dumping theology into the post, I just don't want to violate site rules - I'm always a little unclear on how far is too far with doctrine
I'll probably modify the response to highlight the Fathers' more
@DanO'Day I don't think anyone is too worried about your answers. Even if they include doctrine, you're constantly citing sources and backing up your answers. I think you're well within the bounds of the community quoting the Church Fathers.
@Soldarnal i'm staying out of it. i find that i'm part of the vocal minority that causes all kinds of turbidity. i've not even actually thought through whether or not Dan's answer is in-bounds because it's just too exhausting to talk about it. i'll just hang out
@DanO'Day so you look at John14_15.pdf and see the "decided-upon" passage and you see there's a note number <sup>8</sup>
so you look at the bottom and the first thing that you notice is {C}
which you look at Grading.pdf and notice that the Committee had difficulty choosing a variant. Ruhroh - we're gonna need a bigger boat ... i mean we're going to actually have to evaluate this
so then we go back to the text and look at the variants which are each separated by //
@DanO'Day I think this is a fine example of what I meant when I said we should strive for "clinical", dispassionate answers rather than the assertions we so often see here. It is quite possible to explain how a particular perspective understands a text without crossing the line into "and therefore this is true".
with sinaiticus and and old papyrus (bodmer) ... both of these are alexandrian-text type.
the third variant is also strongly attested because of the major uncial support and the geographic diversity. both alexandrian and byzantine text types are represented in this, not to mention a wealth of Fathers, lectionaries, etc.
it looks like the change was made based on the strength of the diversity of the attestation.
+1. The "aorist active imperative reading (τηρήσατε)" has a wider geographic distribution of attestation which may be the rationale behind the change. At any rate, the subjunctive introduces a degree of uncertainty, and may have greater governance over the entire clause. Ergo, the imperative can't be evaluated in a vacuum but as subordinate to the subjunctive. Theologically it makes more sense for ἀγαπᾶτέ to govern, because otherwise the passage would read, "You MUST keep my commandments if you might love me." — swasheck22 secs ago
@MonicaCellio What I was arguing in that post (ineffectually, it turns out) is that answers is the wrong level of granularity to look at when trying to understand if our site is presenting a balanced view of any particular question. Rather we should look at the entire page as if we were reading it without any context at all. Does the entire page give a "balanced" view of the question?
So what I'm arguing for is, yes, let's have answers that are themselves balanced, but let's also encourage answers that are "minority opinions" so to speak.
And we should judge, look for, and correct Q&A pages that are unbalanced by any means that we have at our disposal.
@JonEricson minority opinions are fine, but an unsupported assertion-driven minority opinion still throws the page out of whack unless it's downvoted. (And even in that case we need a good answer to offset.) We're both talking about the mobile as a whole, but I think we give different weight to the individual pieces.
My examples are intended to show pages we can improve. Sometimes it might be by editing or voting on particular answers. But sometimes it might be by getting an alternate answer that balances an otherwise great answer. (See Amichai's wonderful, but unusual, answer to the Lot's daughters question.)
@JonEricson If I misunderstood the point of your CW post feel free to edit out my additions. I thought I was doing what you asked but I could certainly have misunderstood.
@MonicaCellio I think I'm trying to take a different approach to the issue than I have in the past. I don't think I can explain it in a short phrase. ;-)
@JonEricson thanks. On this one note that the question also has problems and OP never responded to this comment.
@JonEricson it seems like you're trying to address individual problems as they come up (though the community doesn't seem to agree on what's a problem) while I am looking for a guideline we can say to (especially new) users about what we want to see here.
To me, trying to tackle them individually without a guideline makes me worry that we will be arbitrary and inconsistent. A user who doesn't like what we did with his post, but there's a consistent guideline, will react differently than one who thinks he was picked-on or in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Since several of our bad posts come from a few users, I want to avoid them feeling targeted and driven off. I want them to improve their posts, but obviously they aren't doing it already so how do we help them?
@MonicaCellio Right. So rather than figure out exactly how we are going to edit other people's posts and prod them with comments and so on, I'd like to fix problem pages by providing answers that balance things out when possible.
@MonicaCellio Yeah. That question remains a bit of a mess. Deletion might be necessary since some participants have not returned.
> And so round and round we go in this never-ending argument. The particulars change, but the pattern is always the same whether it’s Eric Siebert talking about violence, or Steve Chalke talking about same-sex relationships, or Jonathan Blanchard talking about slavery, or Paul talking about circumcision, or Peter talking about unclean Gentiles, or Jesus talking about the Sabbath, or Isaiah talking about feast days.
@Soldarnal and @DanO'Day: Absolutely. Truth is we have so many participants that produce spectacular answers that I'm tempted to say we don't need new users coming in. From day one, I've felt so blessed to have y'all answer my questions and correct my answers. It's a rare privilege.
I note that not all of us were here on day one, so that's way I want to encourage new users: who know when we will find another gem!
@MonicaCellio Well, the site is 504 days in beta and I joined 1 year, 4 months ago. I'm not sure about the math, but I think I was here on day two or three of the private beta.
Trivia: our oldest question came on Aug 25 '11. I first answered a question on Oct 5 '11--one day after the start of the private beta. How can this be?
@JonEricson ah yes, here he is. I wonder what happened -- Area 51 took too long and he lost steam, maybe? (Of course we can only either speculate or ask him. :-) )
@JonEricson oh, unregistered! I missed that. Yes, we should edit as needed then, though I suspect the question will collapse under the weight. Fundamentally the premises of the question (as currently written) don't seem to be there, so unless someone else can fill those in...
Matthew 10:19-20 (KJV)
But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
Mark 13:11 (KJV)
But when they shall lead [...
Is asking if something is valid...valid? (Re this) Asking how a hermeneutic works, or who uses it, or something like that seems fine, but is this question on the right side of our line?
And this answer reads like something I would expect to find on meta. Am I missing something? To the extent it answers the question it's pure opinion, and the rest treats the example as the question
@JonEricson ok, I'll vote to close so you have some visible support.
and done.
@JonEricson somewhere in all that (between these two questions) it seems like there's a "how do we reconcile these different texts that maybe are talking about the same thing?" question. I can't tell.
@MonicaCellio Yeah. It's a contradiction. Of course, harmonizing the gospel traditions has a long and interesting history. So synoptic parallelism has great pedigree. Perhaps the question is "Is synoptic parallelism compatible with modern Textual Criticism scholarship?"
@MonicaCellio I am trying to compose a comment that will help him be more productive on the site. He obviously values us, which is gratifying. He ran into this issue:
This "auto-moderation" feature has outlived its usefulness.
Community Wiki really isn't used much anymore. Partially, as I explain below, that's because it's a malfeature. But more importantly, we now have Suggested Edits, which means that even anonymous users can fix problems in posts. It's ...
(It's 10 owner edits now and he got to 13!)
@MonicaCellio Yeah. And each is set to different timezones.
I'm going to say that it's somewhat invalid to ask about the validity of a hermeneutic. For instance, most modern biblical scholars would say that allegories and typologies should not be used as valid proofs for doctrine. And yet St. Paul "explicitly indulges in allegory (allegoroumena, Galatians...
The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies
He argues that tools (hermeneutics included) themselves contain an underlying ideology, so even the tools used introduce bias and steer in potentially misleading directions
but he traces how studying scripture survived in academic --> by using the methods of the Classics dept and applying them to the bible
he is very critical of modern biblical scholarship (and he's a Harvard Ph.D. grad in Hebrew Bible, so he can hack it in academia)
Rather than tie the origins of the demise of the “scriptural Bible” to the Enlightenment, as is often done, he attributes it to the crisis of epistemological authority engendered by the Protestant Reformation (p. viii). The center of his thesis is that eighteenth-century approaches to Scripture as a text like any other were not a rejection of a “scriptural Bible” (it was, he argues, already a thing of the past) but an effort to preserve its presence in a new cultural context (p. 9).
“The academic Bible was created by scholars who saw that the scriptural Bible, embedded as it was in confessional particularities, was inimical to the socio-political project from which Enlightenment universities draw their purpose and support” (p. viii). Legaspi’s interpretation of the period and phenomena involved is thus focused on “social causes” rather than “intellectual antinomies” like the tension between faith and reason (p. ix).
It has been suggested in previous posts regarding the exegesis tag that we blacklist the tag. The subject came up again in chat.
Reasoning
It seems that a large majority of our questions are exegetic questions. To be complete, each of these questions seeking exegesis would include this exeges...
Jeff Atwood says, "It is my strong belief that the tags page is an essential map of what your community is, and is not, about." Many sites have a primary set of tags that categorize questions. On Arqade, those primary tags are the only tag most questions carry. It's easy to see the site is abo...
@JonEricson the first question was asked during the first weeks of the site. I think with the benefit of experience it's worth asking again, maybe making the "tagging philosophy" question more pointed. translation grates on my nerves (it's pointless) and exegesis is in pretty much the same boat -- they're overly broad and implied by the other tags that ought to be on those questions. I say kill 'em.
@JonEricson on a quick visual inspection of translation I've found and fixed a few questions that were missing a language. I think for both of these the order would be: review questions, add other tags where needed, and then mass-delete the over-broad tags. In that order, because untagged is a bear otherwise. :-)
On a different note, I read somewhere the other day ( I think in a link you posted here to a discussion), but cannot find it now-- one of the rules governing edits is that you don't edit something that is regarded by tradition or has been generally accepted as fact or a given even though new trends may emerge. (I know I'm mutilating it; but that is what I got out of it). Boy did I mess up.
I wish I had read that before I came in. Is there a BIG BOLD FOR BEGINNERS START HERE somewhere.
@SarahNoll not trying to 'correct' it or make it more true. Granted, there are times when it can be more focused so a tangent may be removed, but these waters must be tread on lightly :P
@DanO'Day I think it's doable, but needs some tweaking.
> What do you think is the application of these texts for today?
That reads too close to "what do you think the application should be", which would be not constructive.
But you could easily modify it to ask about how it has historically been handled.
Going on with "Do Christian groups today specifically apply these texts and how?"
It runs the risk of being too broad, so if while formulating it you think of any way to par it down to a particular sector either traditionally or doctrinally that would be great.
And @MonicaCellio is right we can't technically migrate it, if you think the answers should come with it, we can actually pull off a stunt to do that.
@JonEricson I just ran through the exegesis questions. I retagged some that should have had book tags to begin with. There were three singletons, two which are closed, and then this question by Caleb which is really a question about exegesis proper
Not sure how I would retag that - perhaps hermeneutical-approaches?
@swasheck I'm leaning towards yours, despite the fact that I completely disagree with your conclusion that ἱλαστήριον must mean propitiation (because it clearly doesn't in Heb 9:5)
@DanO'Day i'm not sure that i contend that it's for all time. different authors use different words at different times to convey different concepts differently
but re-reading i can see how it comes across that way
@swasheck I'm also of the historical mindset that the authors of the NT didn't have the mentality of propitation - this didn't really appear in Christianity until St. Anselm in the 11th century
@DanO'Day iirc propitiation was an ancient mindset by which the wrath of a god was appeased. that, of course, is something that i learned in seminary but do not have a reference for it. i'll have to look
@swasheck Jaroslav Pelikan in this book makes the case that the idea of satisfaction as used today in Christianity didn't exist until the 11th century.
I found what I was looking for. It was Wikipedia's guidelines on neutrality quoted by Monica: •Avoid stating opinions as facts. •Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. •Avoid presenting uncontested factual assertions as mere opinion. •Prefer nonjudgmental language. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aNeutral_point_of_view#Explanation_of_the_neutral_point_of_view
@swasheck and he was Lutheran when he wrote that, so he certainly had no theologically vested interest in asserting otherwise (he did convert to Orthodoxy later in life)
@swasheck I don't know. He notes the use of satisfaction by Tertullian (obviously pre-11th century) but it is in the context of us making satisfaction (repentance / reparations) to God, not something he does for us
@swasheck he's solid, he was teaching at Yale at the time - good at keeping his bias out (and challenging a lot of other folks' biases - especially von Harnack)
@DanO'Day i think that the overall concept of satisfaction is a limited perspective of propitiation. i guess i've understood propitiation to be along the lines of divine wrath being meted out upon the deserving object. that's what makes Jesus so pivotal in all of this. he was the object of deserved wrath.
@DanO'Day it sounds to me like he's describing expiation, though ... where expiation is "atonement" or "discharging"
I'd like to ask @MonicaCellio about the idea of divine justice and satisfaction of deserved wrath in the Jewish mind. summoning @MonicaCellio, where are youuuuu?? :)
@DanO'Day a fair point. this is why i asked about the Jewish mind.
This is a mobile:
Most of us are familiar with them in the context of children's nurseries. But the inspiration came from Alexander Calder, a kinetic artist:
I'd like to argue that Biblical Hermeneutics is like a mobile:
We have a fixed point in space, the text of the Bible and the philo...
Matthew 10:19-20 (KJV)
But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
Mark 13:11 (KJV)
But when they shall lead [...
It has been suggested in previous posts regarding the exegesis tag that we blacklist the tag. The subject came up again in chat.
Reasoning
It seems that a large majority of our questions are exegetic questions. To be complete, each of these questions seeking exegesis would include this exeges...
Out of all the biblical characters, who are the best known evangelists?
The Library
The Library