popaface
May 18th 2009, 01:23 AM
Due to particular reasons, I've decided to re-edit previous claims made in a thread by myself which has been moved to another part of this website.
My particular point was in response to the view that contemporary scholars don't feel the need to argue for the historicity of every single story in the Bible. This in light of talk about Mark 9 and the Transfiguration story.
Though, in qualification, I think that it's quite likely that Jesus' disciples did indeed have a (many?) mystical experience(s) with Jesus, even as Jesus being the object of these experiences. In fact, apart from the Transfiguration, the Resurrection itself would qualify.
The serious issue here is not about what sort of weight we give to the data, the issue is about world-view. And my issue with contemporary approaches to the issue is where I'd like to address the major discussion.
Contemporary scholars fall under two main consensuses in respect to Biblical history: the fundamentalistic conservatives and the rationalistic naturalist humanists. The fundamentalists live with the world-view which they call "supernaturalist" and hte humanists live in the world-view which they call "naturalist". The "supernaturalists" in fact, live in the same world-view as the "naturalists" with respect to any claim made by any other religious experience but their own.
The problem here is a question between what can be understood as polyphasic and monophasic interpretations of reality. The world of the NT was a polyphasic world where reality as was known did not occur in a strict one-dimensional, rationalistic effect, rather it was experiential and rationalistic, it was multi-layered. The contemporary world seems to function more in terms of monophasic interpretations of reality, that there is one single universe of reality which is itself objective. Now, arguing about which view is more realistic is one matter, (I believe that polyphasic understandings of reality are plainly culturally-sensitive and much more realistic in terms of historical understanding). What is of absolute concern is that if the early Christians were living in polyphasic understandings of reality, their interpretation of religious experiences (not that we can remove "religious experience" from "interpretation" or "any experience" from "interpretation" for that matter), would have been understood very differently from contemporary understandings of religious experiences. As such, to assess the claims of these people in contemporary terms such as "literally true" and "figuratively/metaphorically true" is 1. anachronistic and 2. problematic.
I would suggest that these people did take their claims as normative to their experience of reality. That is that they understood Jesus' resurrection as part of their reality, the same polyphasic reality which experienced everything in their lives. In this respect, taking the experiences literally in our sense can be very harmful in understanding them literally in the sense of the first century Christians who proclaimed this faith. In the same respect, taking the experiences figuratively in our sense is also a harmful understanding of the experiences in respect to the first century Christians who proclaimed their faith. A culturally sensitive approach is much more realistic, we need to keep in mind the differences between our monophasic understanding of reality and our tendency to package everything together in a bow in respect to the universe and experience; we need to understand the Resurrection of Jesus and the Transfiguration of Jesus in polyphasic interpretations of reality in which, phenomenologically, the event occurred, the experience occured, the interpretations occured and they are all one and the same phenomenon, together, sitting inside the normative first century polyphasic, multi-layered reality.
In short, I've argued that the conservative literalists have missed the point, as have rationalist humanists. I've argued that they're interpretations of the data are classic examples of neo-colonial, imperialist agendas which Romanticize on particular view of reality (monophasic rationalism). Further, I've argued that a culturally-sensitive (polyphasic, multi-layered realism) approach to the data makes much more sense and is much more faithful to the literature available. This approach is also entirely within Orthodox (as opposed to Conservative or Humanist) Christian faith. Thoughts good thinkers?
I would like to qualify what I mean by a culturally sensitive approach above: Anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in his book After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist 1995, told a story about a visit to a Mosque in Indonesia during the second anniversary of the landing of the moon (1971). The ustad said to Geertz that no Muslim could believe that the Americans had gone on the mood because according to the hadith by the Prophet (pbuh) there is an enormous ocean between the earth and the moon and as such the space ship would have put a hole through it, causing a flood like that of Noah. Geertz's escort mockingly proclaimed that educated Muslims like himself could believe in the moonlanding because the astronauts could have gone around the edge of the ocean. The ustad would have nothing to do with this explanation and insisted that God, not wanting to disappoint the astronauts hard work and effort, had constructed a fake moon for them to land on.
From a culturally distant position, this is a remarkable example of how cultural beliefs ultimately determine what people take for real and how this reality could determine what people think could have happened. Geertz and his hosts did not share the same view of reality and thus could never agree on whether Neil Armstrong had actually walked on the moon. Geertz remark about this experience is my definition of "cultural sensitivity":
Field research in such times, in such places, is not a matter of working free from the cultural baggage you have brought with you so as to enter, without shape and without attachment, into a foriegn mode of life. It is a matter of living out your existence in two stories at once.
(After the Fact pp. 94)
Allan
My particular point was in response to the view that contemporary scholars don't feel the need to argue for the historicity of every single story in the Bible. This in light of talk about Mark 9 and the Transfiguration story.
Though, in qualification, I think that it's quite likely that Jesus' disciples did indeed have a (many?) mystical experience(s) with Jesus, even as Jesus being the object of these experiences. In fact, apart from the Transfiguration, the Resurrection itself would qualify.
The serious issue here is not about what sort of weight we give to the data, the issue is about world-view. And my issue with contemporary approaches to the issue is where I'd like to address the major discussion.
Contemporary scholars fall under two main consensuses in respect to Biblical history: the fundamentalistic conservatives and the rationalistic naturalist humanists. The fundamentalists live with the world-view which they call "supernaturalist" and hte humanists live in the world-view which they call "naturalist". The "supernaturalists" in fact, live in the same world-view as the "naturalists" with respect to any claim made by any other religious experience but their own.
The problem here is a question between what can be understood as polyphasic and monophasic interpretations of reality. The world of the NT was a polyphasic world where reality as was known did not occur in a strict one-dimensional, rationalistic effect, rather it was experiential and rationalistic, it was multi-layered. The contemporary world seems to function more in terms of monophasic interpretations of reality, that there is one single universe of reality which is itself objective. Now, arguing about which view is more realistic is one matter, (I believe that polyphasic understandings of reality are plainly culturally-sensitive and much more realistic in terms of historical understanding). What is of absolute concern is that if the early Christians were living in polyphasic understandings of reality, their interpretation of religious experiences (not that we can remove "religious experience" from "interpretation" or "any experience" from "interpretation" for that matter), would have been understood very differently from contemporary understandings of religious experiences. As such, to assess the claims of these people in contemporary terms such as "literally true" and "figuratively/metaphorically true" is 1. anachronistic and 2. problematic.
I would suggest that these people did take their claims as normative to their experience of reality. That is that they understood Jesus' resurrection as part of their reality, the same polyphasic reality which experienced everything in their lives. In this respect, taking the experiences literally in our sense can be very harmful in understanding them literally in the sense of the first century Christians who proclaimed this faith. In the same respect, taking the experiences figuratively in our sense is also a harmful understanding of the experiences in respect to the first century Christians who proclaimed their faith. A culturally sensitive approach is much more realistic, we need to keep in mind the differences between our monophasic understanding of reality and our tendency to package everything together in a bow in respect to the universe and experience; we need to understand the Resurrection of Jesus and the Transfiguration of Jesus in polyphasic interpretations of reality in which, phenomenologically, the event occurred, the experience occured, the interpretations occured and they are all one and the same phenomenon, together, sitting inside the normative first century polyphasic, multi-layered reality.
In short, I've argued that the conservative literalists have missed the point, as have rationalist humanists. I've argued that they're interpretations of the data are classic examples of neo-colonial, imperialist agendas which Romanticize on particular view of reality (monophasic rationalism). Further, I've argued that a culturally-sensitive (polyphasic, multi-layered realism) approach to the data makes much more sense and is much more faithful to the literature available. This approach is also entirely within Orthodox (as opposed to Conservative or Humanist) Christian faith. Thoughts good thinkers?
I would like to qualify what I mean by a culturally sensitive approach above: Anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in his book After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist 1995, told a story about a visit to a Mosque in Indonesia during the second anniversary of the landing of the moon (1971). The ustad said to Geertz that no Muslim could believe that the Americans had gone on the mood because according to the hadith by the Prophet (pbuh) there is an enormous ocean between the earth and the moon and as such the space ship would have put a hole through it, causing a flood like that of Noah. Geertz's escort mockingly proclaimed that educated Muslims like himself could believe in the moonlanding because the astronauts could have gone around the edge of the ocean. The ustad would have nothing to do with this explanation and insisted that God, not wanting to disappoint the astronauts hard work and effort, had constructed a fake moon for them to land on.
From a culturally distant position, this is a remarkable example of how cultural beliefs ultimately determine what people take for real and how this reality could determine what people think could have happened. Geertz and his hosts did not share the same view of reality and thus could never agree on whether Neil Armstrong had actually walked on the moon. Geertz remark about this experience is my definition of "cultural sensitivity":
Field research in such times, in such places, is not a matter of working free from the cultural baggage you have brought with you so as to enter, without shape and without attachment, into a foriegn mode of life. It is a matter of living out your existence in two stories at once.
(After the Fact pp. 94)
Allan