Thursday, July 09, 2009

The true meaning of the text

I missed this as I was extracting citations from Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One:

The truest meaning of a text is found in what the author and hearers would have thought.—The Lost World of Genesis One, page 43

<idle musing>
I would say that this sentence is the underlying foundation of exegesis. We are interested in what the text meant, so that we can apply it to today—without distorting what it is saying. Allegorical and analogical interpretations do violence to the text—but now we enter the realm of philosophical presuppositions and metaphysics :)

But, for a different take on this, see Kevin Edgecomb's post:

Firstly, what is the result of finding the primary and only valid meaning of a text in the distant past, through whatever means? Does it not render all other readings “invalid” or “inaccurate”? Does this not also immediately render the text itself dead, and no longer to speak with a living voice to any community? Secondly, doesn’t such an approach itself also come to be deadened by this methodology? Finding no living voice in opposition to its theoretical constructions of meaning, it is unimpeded in its approach to the text, and finds only deadness reflected back upon it, because it will find nothing else. There is no living interaction. The results of the experiment are predetermined by the experiment. In this case, the approach, partaking as it does of a number of presuppositions, is limited in its conclusions.

Hmmm...what do you think? I think we are on the same page, just different emphases; I said the primary meaning, but not only meaning. Kevin emphasizes the ongoing interaction with the text throughout history. But, am I right?
</idle musing>

2 comments:

Kevin P. Edgecomb said...

Yes, I think we're on the same page, because you're certainly not one of the people who requires an originalist reading and its connoted exclusivity. Such exclusivity is generally, however, the approach in the realm of source criticism and related fooferaw.

There are two issues that I think are important, and that govern all such exegesis in Scripture:
1.) God: involved or not involved.
2.) Text: invented or representative.

For a person believing that there is a God, and that He has a plan for humanity, and that that plan involved the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, then that person cannot approach the text without that in mind. Any criticism "bracketing faith" is null and void in such a view, as it avoids the central reason for the texts existence: the belief that generated the text, which is still shared by living communities (however attenuated one's theoretical suppositions may make that continuity).

Concomittant with that bracketing is the belief in the text as it stands being invented, for it cannot represent any real historical events if there is no God involved. This kind of "negative criticism" ("negative" in the sense of denying historical value to the OT and NT texts; this terminology first appeared, interestingly, in the early nineteenth century) requires a continually reinforced timidity, a standoffishness from God and His work in reality that, not surprisingly, cuts those dealing in it off from the possibility of recognizing such work.

Returning to "orignial meaning" though, we are taught to view the texts through lenses of modern presuppositions resulting from the methodologies of our nineteenth century German "friends", whose own presuppositions invented those methodologies, the results of which methodologies were intended to support and further their intended goals, which were namely the eradication of all religious belief except radical liberal German Protestantism. Those presuppositions and goals are positively heinous, and the methodologies are a key part of them, not at all separable, not at all neutral. Using those methodologies to approach the text is therefore not a neutral way to approach the text, but one that is just as rooted in a particular belief system as one that posits Moses writing Genesis as we have it on Mount Sinai! (cont'd above)

Kevin P. Edgecomb said...

(cont'd from my 3:13:00 post)

I would suggest a new pair of lenses, bifocals in a way. Firstly, the entire Old Testament is a product of the Prophets and their supporters. (I'll write more on this later.) Their viewpoint is the one preserved there. That is one perspective, one set of the lenses. Secondly, the continuation of one aspect of this Prophetic perspective, through a continuous and directly traced transmission of beliefs about the Anointed Son of David, the rightful ruler of not just Israel, but the world, comes to expression in the Apostles and Church Fathers. Secondly, there is another perspective, that of preserving and obeying God's Law, and this we find in the Rabbinic Canon. Both are Israel's heritage. It is through those two perspectives that "original meaning" need to be determined.

In the case of Genesis (through the first chapters of 2 Kings), which, as I said, I believe to have been constructed as a Prophetic legitimation of the Son of David (particularly Solomon) in contrast to other claimants to the throne of Israel, a Prophetically legitimated king, we have to read with that ultimate legitimation in mind: first the selection of one man, then his family, which grows to a clan, and then a nation, and the selection within that of one particular line as having received the blessings of rulership. This is the perspective, the only perspective, I think, which can legitimately be used to discover meaning within the OT. By this, too, it is therefore not "doing violence to the text" in finding the Son of David par excellence in Jesus, for this is a key factor in the NT as well: the Son of David is Son of God not just adoptively, but in a particularly surprising way! Tracking all this through the historical, prophetic, and other writings into the NT is clear.

So, that's a little preview, I suppose, of where I'm heading with all this.