Recently, I read about various debates in Victorian biblical hermeneutics. One of the questions (that I think is still being debated today) is whether or not the bible can/should be interpreted as all other literature and writing is interpreted. 1) I hold pretty strongly that the bible being 'scripture' doesn't free it from the problems (and peculiarities) of all other writing. 2) No one reads literature as a set of moral lessons or instructions. Discourse and ideologies are examined, but narrative is not reduced (at least in literature studies) to attempts to discover how I should eat or who I should sleep with or live with (but of course writing has these political/ideological/moral conversations). But even if such lessons are prescribed, this doesn't transfer into prescription for how to live my life.
Attempting to turn writing into instructions, morals, ideologies to follow is disrespectful of text and author, and transforms the text into propaganda, or uses it for the purpose of propaganda. Similarly, trying to find an emergent discourse or lesson out of a text (what does the story of David and Bathsheba teach us? what does "The Bible" say about faith and deeds, etc) is really blinding. The bible is not the location of a single or coherent theology, it is many theologies. The bible is not the location of one coherent or systematic truth. What interests me more at the moment is thinking of the bible in terms of dialogue: each book with the others, with itself, with its readers, with other literature that has appropriated the bible and biblical narratives. And trying to find "lessons" in the bible is the source of the problem, it flattens the entire bible and the many voices found within.
Also. I've been thinking about history lately. I read an article on transatlantic literature in the nineteenth century last week, and one of the arguments being made was that the American writers in that time period were very concerned with the issue of history, precisely because their country was new and in this sense they had a chip on their shoulder compared to their european counterparts. What I see there, then, is deliberate rejection of ignorance of history in early US history. I don't know how widespread this was, but it is easy for me to see how this might have evolved into the current America (or American church). BUT, let's not talk about cause and effect, because that can be easily rejected, because I simply don't have evidence.
Instead, I'll say that I wish the church in America had more of a sense of and appreciation for history, especially hermeneutical history, for which interpretations that seem to be traditional and orthodox (the infallibility of the bible? "literal" creation story? etc.) are either new species of interpretation or were moot questions historically. Even more of an understanding of modernity, and conceptions of truth that were developed in modernity (perhaps post-modernity would not seem threatening to people if they understood that much of what is being rejected is not something that has been passed on from the beginning of the church or civilization or time, what is being rejected is a species of belief that is still relatively young, if powerful. But no one wants to study history: it's terrifying to learn that the present is not the same as the past, and is not always better.
And history is boring of course.
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-can't tell you how many times i've started a sentence "recently, I read about various debates in Victorian biblical hermeneutics."
-you shouldn't talk about cause and effect, not because you don't have evidence, because they don't exist
-and history is only boring if it's history, get some narrative historical fiction concerning theology and philosophy, write a book about it, turn it into a SICK movie along the lines of gladiator (but with thoughts not swords), and the American church will totally dig on it
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