Wednesday, February 13, 2013
(WR) Dead Sea Scrolls
Here is a fascinating interview by Fresh Air's Terrie Gross with a well-known scholar of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. It is well worth the 36 minute listening time, as it is highly relevant to our current reading in the course. http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/
(WR) Critical Thinking
I want you all to re-read the Philosophy Toolkit I gave you at the beginning of the semester, focusing particularly on critical thinking and the intellectual virtues. The material we are working with now is where the critical thinking rubber meets the long road of most of our upbringings in or near cultural traditions related to Christianity.
To think critically about something, you have to examine your most basic assumptions -- not to dismiss them, but to suspend them for the time being so as to consider a way of looking at them that is foreign, and that can even feel threatening. For example, many of you begin with the unexamined assumption that certain claims (Jesus as messiah, Mary's virginity, etc.) are identical with, and inseparable from, Christianity as such. However, the historical record tells us otherwise. In the early decades after Jesus' death, there were many different groups of Jews (and eventually, Greeks and Romans as well) who did their best to keep what they understood about Jesus and his work alive. Each of these largely insular groups had its own stories, its own theology, its own understanding of who and what Jesus was, and what the events of his life and death meant. Some (but not all) of these groups thought he was the messiah of Hebrew scripture, some (but not all) liked the idea that he was God, or God's son, some (but not all) told stories about his bodily resurrection, some (but not all) anticipated his return in an apocalyptic destruction and transformation of the world. In point of fact, there is no single story about Jesus of Nazareth that all early Christians agreed on. Some (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas) focus exclusively on sayings attributed to him, some view him as a kind of avatar (hence not really human, but a kind of cosmic projection, like Krishna), etc. ad nearly infinitum.
Instead of reading backward through the filter of the predominant varieties of Christianity in the modern world, I am asking you temporarily to set all those assumptions aside (remember, you can have them back if you like when the course is over) to look as clearly as possible at the historical events, and the historical person, which are the starting points of all subsequent interpretations. I fully understand how difficult this is, but I am asking you to give it your all.
To think critically about something, you have to examine your most basic assumptions -- not to dismiss them, but to suspend them for the time being so as to consider a way of looking at them that is foreign, and that can even feel threatening. For example, many of you begin with the unexamined assumption that certain claims (Jesus as messiah, Mary's virginity, etc.) are identical with, and inseparable from, Christianity as such. However, the historical record tells us otherwise. In the early decades after Jesus' death, there were many different groups of Jews (and eventually, Greeks and Romans as well) who did their best to keep what they understood about Jesus and his work alive. Each of these largely insular groups had its own stories, its own theology, its own understanding of who and what Jesus was, and what the events of his life and death meant. Some (but not all) of these groups thought he was the messiah of Hebrew scripture, some (but not all) liked the idea that he was God, or God's son, some (but not all) told stories about his bodily resurrection, some (but not all) anticipated his return in an apocalyptic destruction and transformation of the world. In point of fact, there is no single story about Jesus of Nazareth that all early Christians agreed on. Some (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas) focus exclusively on sayings attributed to him, some view him as a kind of avatar (hence not really human, but a kind of cosmic projection, like Krishna), etc. ad nearly infinitum.
Instead of reading backward through the filter of the predominant varieties of Christianity in the modern world, I am asking you temporarily to set all those assumptions aside (remember, you can have them back if you like when the course is over) to look as clearly as possible at the historical events, and the historical person, which are the starting points of all subsequent interpretations. I fully understand how difficult this is, but I am asking you to give it your all.
Monday, February 11, 2013
(WR) (CLP) Blogging Success
I really appreciate the quality of your blogging this past week. Many of you raised really thoughtful (and brief!) questions, and the rest of you did a nice job of posing possible answers to them. This is precisely what I hope for in the blog conversations, and I'm delighted to see almost all of you pitching in. Keep it up! In a number of cases I have posted a comment that I hope is helpful and affirming at the end of the thread, and it might be useful for everyone to read those, since some of them are the sort of thing I might have offered in class if I had been there. Of course, further replies (or new posts in response to those comments) are entirely welcome.
Friday, February 8, 2013
(WR) Comment on Reading Crossan
All of you will find
aspects of this book challenging. Those of you who are practicing Christians
will probably encounter a particular challenge, since some (but not all) of the
ways institutional Christian traditions have interpreted the gospels and other
religious texts vary quite a bit from what historians have discovered. If you
find this text threatening, it will be worth remembering two things:
1) Crossan is a leading theologian and a practicing Catholic; his purpose is not in any way to debunk his religion – he aims rather to understand and to deepen it.
2) A course at a public liberal arts college is a secular experience. No-one is asking you to change your spiritual beliefs or religious practices, or even to agree with the professor or the text about anything at all. Rather, such a course requires that you attempt to comprehend and follow the reasoning of a scholarly investigation, so as to grasp how and why some intelligent people who have thought deeply about these things draw the conclusions that they do. Once the course is over and you have succeeded in this intellectual exercise, you are perfectly free to think and believe whatever you please. This sort of challenge, and the freedom to think for yourself once you have met it, are of the essence liberal learning..
1) Crossan is a leading theologian and a practicing Catholic; his purpose is not in any way to debunk his religion – he aims rather to understand and to deepen it.
2) A course at a public liberal arts college is a secular experience. No-one is asking you to change your spiritual beliefs or religious practices, or even to agree with the professor or the text about anything at all. Rather, such a course requires that you attempt to comprehend and follow the reasoning of a scholarly investigation, so as to grasp how and why some intelligent people who have thought deeply about these things draw the conclusions that they do. Once the course is over and you have succeeded in this intellectual exercise, you are perfectly free to think and believe whatever you please. This sort of challenge, and the freedom to think for yourself once you have met it, are of the essence liberal learning..
Monday, February 4, 2013
(WR) (CLP)
Some of you are aware that my wife, Sharon Wyrrick, was involved in a serious automobile accident last week. She is in stable condition, and has been moved to a rehabilitation facility. Thanks to those of you who have offered your concerns and assistance. The best way that all of you can help is to be the most diligent and imaginative students you can be, so that there are no unnecessary distractions from our work together. I will probably not be available for most of my office hours; the most direct way to communicate with me is through email.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
(WR) Varieties of Christianity
We spoke today about the vast range of sects of Christianity, reflecting something like the opposite of the Hindu attitude of inclusion. In a fascinating article on the science and experience of music in the current New Yorker magazine, Adam Gopnik observes in passing: "He [Choueiri] was brought up in Lebanon in the nineteen-sixties, among the Antiochian Orthodox -- much the most ancient of Christians, the Antiochians look upon the Catholics rather the way Boston Episcopalians look upon Appalachian snake-handlers..."
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
(WR) Dueling Literalisms
In the New York Times last month, the anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann
discusses two distinct styles of Christian biblical interpretation,
which we might characterize as textually reductive vs. imaginative or
experiential. Neither has a tremendous amount of patience for historical
scholarship, or even close, informed reading of scriptural texts, but
both are interesting for what motivates them. Some of you might find this of interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/opinion/what-didnt-happen-in-bethlehem.html?src=twr&_r=0
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