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1.4 The road to Emmaus
In this Module, we explored the question raised by Luke in the story of the road to Emmaus: His question is not what does Scripture say, but how do you read? It’s a question of interpretation.
Receiving a new story
Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
What’s the news
Whether we recognize it or not, news sources give us more than the unvarnished facts – they are also giving us their interpretation (we call it a “slant” or “bias”). Share your favorite news sources. Can you defend your news source as “objective”? How would you describe its editorial bias?
Food for thought
Join the conversation taking place around these questions in the Discussion Forum for this module.
- James used the term “hermeneutic” at the opening of this module. Do you recall what that word means?
- What hermeneutic have you used or been taught to use for reading Scripture?
- When it comes to the Bible, what do you think is the difference between asking “What does the text say?” and “How do you read it?”
- Does it help or hinder your approach to reading the Bible to place importance on the hermeneutic, or method of interpretation?
- How does the role of the one reading change when the emphasis is on the question, “How do you read it?”
- Have you had experiences in which you felt you had received a communication from God? Did you trust it, doubt it, or seek help in understanding it from anyone?
Wrap-up question
What might it mean for us to be listening to the unheard voice in the midst of confusing and traumatic events in our own communities or society?
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I am having some experiences which bring home to me how much the social other forms me.
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I don’t have a favorite news source because I don’t keep up and so much of the “news” is sensational and propaganda and inaccurate. I am currently searching for alternative news sources though these too of course have an agenda but sometimes openly stated and I make a point of trying to look at European news sources like The Voice of Russia so that at least I get a tiny bit more than the American scene and perspective.
I enjoyed keeping up with news before the internet took over.
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What hermeneutic have you used or been taught to use for reading Scripture? A hermeneutic that says I have to defer to patriarchal religious authorities as a Catholic because the alternative is private interpretation which is totally subjective and invalid. In my experience of being Protestant it was different but very chaotic and confusing because so many claimed to be authoritative in their hermeneutics. Alison does a great job of steering clear of anything polemical.
How does the role of the one reading change when the emphasis is on the question, “How do you read it?”
I like the phrase “through whose eyes” do you read it because it implies that the reading can only happen within a relationship. Interpretation doesn’t happen in a vacuum ever. In his essay James writes, “We read the Scriptures eucharistically, through the eyes of Jesus our Rabbi”. This suggests intimacy and concreteness – staying human. He continues, “We read through the eyes of one who is present amongst us and who causes us to undergo a complete change of belonging to our world, so that we find him interrupting us, speaking to us from out of the periphery of our vision, from just off the screen of what we can understand, including us in a story which is his story…We find ourselves being…drawn into a bigger framework”. I am struggling towards this way of seeing which is far removed from the abstract theorizing and applying the moral code.
I am seeking a new hermeneutic at present which is why I am taking this course. James gives me a good beginning by noting that the Emmaus disciples interpretative experience is structured but not a question of authority. -
I tend to rely on National Public Radio, the “PBS News Hour” and the BBC. While I would like to think that these sources are objective the first two, at least, have a somewhat liberal slant or bias which is no doubt why I like them.
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I’ve watched this video twice and have not heard James use the word hermeneutic.
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You’re right, Bob. James tries to avoid using specialized vocabulary but hermeneutics is what he is talking about when he says that Jesus is giving himself as the interpretative key to read Scripture.
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This final question on what it might mean for us to listen to the unheard voice in the midst of traumatic events in our community/world is BIG and I don’t want to give glib answers but this course and the essays are opening me to explore this and giving deep hope. Two threads in my present experience – one is James rereading of the story of Achan and the invitation to stop making victims. I am listening to the unheard voice by beginning to volunteer just being at a shelter which is really like a home for six homeless women in Detroit – this city that so many would want to give up on. The unheard voice I hear in the women who call asking for shelter and I have to say no but somehow communicate that I care. This unheard voice I listen to when I step out of my comfort zone and recognize my communion with other wounded, struggling folks at a liturgy that bursts my categories. This unheard voice I hear when I go into nature and listen to the life pulsing in all things.
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Maginel, what gives you the courage to listen to a voice that asks you to step out of your comfort zone? So many of us resist this voice and its impact on us, which is why it remains unheard.
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What gives me the courage to listen to this unheard voice is an unquenchable thirst, a restlessness that returns over and over; that pursues me wherever I go and will not let me settle.
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Insights from the previous unit…
I am not sure where I am going with this but…
Last week at mass, the priest told a story in his homily about having to go up to Tokyo for a wedding. The train was crowded and he was tired from having to stand up for a long time. (He’s in his late 60’s) A seat opened up and as he went to sit down, a young woman pushed him out of the way and sat down. (paused a beat) And then she got off at the next station.The story got a good laugh from the congregation and I started thinking about humor and my theory that it is intimately tied to horror. There is a gap between receiving my story from the social other and receiving it from God. My understanding of Girard is that the gap is bridged by the horror of the cross. I am wondering where humor fits in.
Anyway, not a totally thought-out thought, but it is where my thoughts are now.
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News sources. For news in English (I am in Japan), I mainly watch BBC international. Regarding biases, I noticed something kind of funny. The BBC recently reported that the government news channel in Moscow was reporting that US special forces mercenaries were sneaking into Ukraine and stiring up trouble. The slant from the BBC was that the Moscow news was doing this without any real proof meaning that it was not news but rather propaganda. However, the next news story was that of the US secretary of state John Kerry saying that Russian special forces were sneaking into Ukraine stirring up trouble, again providing no proof.
Now, leaving aside the question of who was telling the “truth” and who was not, I found it interesting that there seemed to be no awareness on the part of the people from the BBC that from the perspective of the viewer, they were doing the same thing that the Moscow news station was doing.
Disconcerting, yet also fascinating.
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Having watched the video, I don’t have any good answers to the questions posed. However, the video and the topic has influenced some questions of my own. For example, one question I am thinking on now is, if the Bible is the word of God, and that to understand it, I need the help of someone familiar with ancient Greek and Hebrew as well as in how Hebrew and Greek texts were interpreted by ancient peoples, what does that say about the nature of God?
By the way, the video player used for these last two videos is not nearly as useful as the player for the earlier videos. This recent player only has start and pause. I cannot expand the screen nor fast forward or see how long the video is and how much time there is left. If the player for the whole course would be the one used earlier, that would make everything much easier.
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What might it mean for us to be listening to the unheard voice in the midst of confusing and traumatic events in our own communities or society?
As the unheard voice seems to be saying that the source of the events lies at the core of that which we feel to be ourselves, I think that it might mean that things are going to get even more confusing and traumatic. Hopefully, this would be the first step to things getting a whole lot better!
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Hi Sheelah,
The experiential structure of humour and horror are the same. Let me try to explain it with a joke.
A 90 year old man visits his doctor with a complaint. “Doc, I have a bowel movement at exactly 7:00 a.m. every morning.” The doctor responds “What?! But that’s great. I have patients much younger than you that would love to have such regular bowel movements.”
To which the man responds, “But Doc, I don’t wake up until 8.”
Putting my analysis hat on, we can see that the joke is funny because as we listen to the first part of the joke we are envisioning a certain picture that suddenly gets taken away at the end of the joke. It is the sudden change of our internal pictures which sets off our nervous systems to which laughter is a healing response. This is the structure of all humour. It is also the structure of all horror.
I suspect that it is also the structure of God’s work on the cross as espoused by Rene Girard. We think we are absolutely justified in our condemnation of the “bad guy”. Surprise! The “bad guy” is actually God. And as God is innocent, the bad guy must be me. The experience of the gap between the way I thought things are and how they really are, becomes my opportunity to look back at my self and begin the process of change.
Anyway, sorry for the length. These are the things I am working on and that is why I am here as I believe there are strong corollaries with what Girard and James Alison are talking about.
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Well, Charles, Girard tells us that the crucified God put an end to the sacrificial mechanism of scapegoating, by exposing it as a lie. And yes, you are quite right, René Girard and James Alison are talking about the same thing. Girard’s mimetic theory has two basic pillars a) mimetic or misdirected desire which leads to rivalry and conflict and b) the sacrificial or scapegoating mechanism, where in archaic society the greater outbreak of violence in a community caused by mimetic desire, is managed by a controlled act of violence, that is, sacrifice; the archaic sacred. But we continue to scapegoat daily in our lives with our rivalry, jealously and conflicts with our neighbour. Girard’s definition of the conversion process is “the redirection of desire towards God”, where we let go of the “I”, which leads us to the recognition of the other as also made in the image and likeness of God, where there are no ‘bad guys’ of good guys’, but all of us striving for the ‘peace that is not of this world’. Again, wonderfully explained by Simone Weil who exposes ‘the Great Beast’ as the world, the place of the idolatry of those who desire things other than the desire for God.
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I like what Maginel said earlier (much earlier):
“I like the phrase “through whose eyes” do you read it because it implies that the reading can only happen within a relationship. Interpretation doesn’t happen in a vacuum ever. In his essay James writes, “We read the Scriptures eucharistically, through the eyes of Jesus our Rabbi”.”At this point I am not sure what it truly means to read through Jesus’ eyes. Is it to read everything in the light of his forgiveness and love of us? Is it to read looking at others (neighbors) without the rivalry that causes hatred, jealousy and conflict? And will that simplistic interpretive key apply to most of scripture?
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Lee, in the road to Emmaus, Luke is showing us how Jesus is interpreting the Hebrew scriptures to Cleopas and his companion. Here the Risen Lord is telling a story and giving a very detailed answer to a matter of interpretation of Scripture. The Emmaus story is about how to interpret Scripture and how Jesus it truly our interpretive key.
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… share your favorite news sources. Can you defend your news source as “objective”? How would you describe its editorial bias?
Our local paper, the Globe-Gazette feeds us ‘close to home’ news. I cite it here as a favorite only because it provides topics for polite conversation in whitewashed categories such as: the trial, downtown redevelopment, Mohawk football, the letter to the editor, and so on. I don’t find the Globe striving for objectivity. Its provides a common journal of events, which is generally biased toward the interests of local economic and political opinion leaders, because this increases advertising sales.
What other local news sources does our small, rural community have in addition to the Globe? I’m not aware of many others. This morning only a small, church-related FM radio station comes to mind. Certainly a community with 29,000 people has more local news sources, which reveals my conforming bias toward to the ‘easiest’ source of local news. Writing here this morning awakened me to my own bias keeping me ignorant of commercial and other sources of local news. It’s time to start looking for more!
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You have a very realistic attitude towards your local press, Rich. I am afraid that this kind of biased reporting to serve vested interests is a worldwide problem. That is why this chapter of JFV is so much about interpretation, and how Jesus is our interpretive guide in reading the Scriptures. Jesus is initially the guest of Cleopas and the unnamed disciple, who could be you or me, in a place, Emmaus, which does not exist, so could be anywhere. He becomes in a way the host at Cleopas’s home and at the same time reveals himself as the interpretative key to the Scriptures. Luke is asking us through whose eyes do we read the Scriptures? And he makes it clear that the central interpretative experience is not a matter of church authority. It can happen to anyone, anywhere, through the crucified and risen Christ.
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Sheelah, Thank you for your comments, which are much appreciated. I’ve been reading James’s books and other writings for a few years now. I decided to take this course to deepen my understanding of his ideas. And boy, has it ever gripped me in ways both articulate and inarticulate. I am committed to following the discipline of the course structure letting it take me where it will. Generally, I write my lesson responses in the mornings, then returning in the evening or the next day to review and post. Today I wrote a response to The Road to Emmaus video.
“Through whose eyes do you read the Scriptures?”
James talked about “hermeneutic” in the video, which seemed an opaque idea at first, until I remembered that ancient Greek god Hermes is associated with the derivation of the English word hermeneutic. Hermes was the messenger of the gods, courier between divine word and mundane world. While Hermes has receded into myth, interpretation continues as necessary for language today as it was in the ancient world. Just as we are inducted over time into greater understanding and finer practice, so also finding the meaning of life’s quest depends on clear vision founded on true interpretation. Jesus’s loving eyes provide the only true, interpretive hermeneutic opening scripture to guide our lifelong rambles into God’s greater presence.
The sixth-century Irish poem comes to mind – “Be Thou My Vision, O Lord of My Heart” … … … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qO2xKvGFk
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The YouTube I just posted in the response to The Road to Emmaus is one I selected, not one I performed. If only I could sing so well!
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What might it mean for us to be listening to the unheard voice in the midst of confusing and traumatic events in our own communities or society?
I serve our parish as volunteer treasurer, coming and going to church several times each week. One afternoon last week I entered the building through the Penn Avenue door, not my usual entrance. Right away I heard someone playing the piano in the nave, but I could not figure out who it was. It sounded like a fugue, maybe, with very long pauses between musical phrases. I guessed it was someone practicing for a Holy Week performance, and then I walked down the hallway to the finance office.
Later in the afternoon I ran into Fred as we walked toward each other down the Sunday School Wing hallway. Fred’s about my age. He’s schizophrenic, drinks too much and probably doesn’t take his medications on any kind of regular schedule. He’s the third generation of his family in our congregation, and … … … he plays the piano. It must have been Fred playing in the nave when I arrived. Did his playing express the unheard voice of the ongoing trauma of a confused and self-medicated psyche?
“Hi Fred!” I said as I passed him by on the other side of the hallway.
Fred’s confusion and trauma I find threatening, I guess. It feels like if I get too close physically or psychically he’ll breach the boundaries of my carefully constructed defenses. I seem to avoid people like Fred whenever I can, which is most of the time. When I can’t avoid them, then I feel awkward, not knowing quite what to say; but really, they don’t seem to stay around very long.
On the way out of church at the end of the day, I ran into Bill in the parish hall, who’s a doctor at our local clinic. Coincidentally to Fred playing the piano when I arrived, Bill had just finished playing a baby grand piano recently donated to the church. I didn’t hear Bill’s playing, as he was just pushing the piano back into its corner when I saw him. We talked for a while about the piano and how nice it would be to move it into the nave; but the church building is old and chopped up, moving the piano from the parish hall to the nave would be very difficult. Bill’s predictable, he’s not wounded, at least not on the surface. I felt on safe ground talking with Bill, listening to what he had to say.
As Bill and I parted, I remembered earlier just passing Fred by in the hallway, in the confused silence of my own wounded need for security and predictability. How might I have stopped and listened to Fred’s unheard voice?
Pianist Daniel Barenboim, in the first of his 2006 Reith Lectures, said: “… the first note already determines the music itself, because it comes out of the silence that precedes it.” Barenboim was pianist in a performance of the “Quartet for the end of time,” which was written in 1941 by French composer Olivier Messiaen. When he wrote the Quartet, Messiaen was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.
Barenboim plays the piano in the version of the Quartet accessed by clicking the link below, which goes to the fifth movement, “Praise to the Eternity of Jesus.”
http://grooveshark.com/s/Quatuor+Pour+La+Fin+Du+Temps+5+Louange+L+Eternit+De+J+sus/3XSdMI?src=5
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Danny Barenboim also remarked that we begin a musical phrase as if we were stepping on to a moving train. The music precedes us and will go on after us; a lovely musical example of how we are inducted into life, culture,society and all that surrounds us. Olivier Messiaen was one of the most serene beings I have ever encountered. ‘Le Quatuor pour La Fin du Temps’ is a remarkable testimony to faith and hope in desperate and evil times.
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share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Who makes me who I am and how I came to have the particular way of looking at the world is a constant question. Likewise, as I have been living alone these past three years (post divorce) I have had to learn how to figure out who the other is— so often I am completely alone and the other is not as clear as it once was.
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Michael, it seems that your life has been very difficult for some time now. While we are all brought into being by our parents and those close to us until adulthood, we continue to be influenced by others around us all our lives. But what is essential is the realisation that we are all made in the image and likeness of a loving God, and that we find God in others, who, like ourselves, are flawed people also made in God’s image. James opens up for us the the knowledge of a loving God coming towards us without any judgment. Loneliness is a terrible thing that eats into us, and distorts our judgement, and so many people endure it without knowing how many others are going through the same experience. Have you thought of finding a group which is working on James’s course that you could join?
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share your favorite news sources. Can you defend your news source as “objective”? How would you describe its editorial bias?
NPR is my primary news source— it is biased and I know it and as a general rule I agree with the bias it has. I also read internet stories but don’t actually think of them as news, I watch very little TV. On local issues I rely on the town gossip to be my source of information.
I do this the conversation between information and news could be very helpful
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James used the term “hermeneutic” at the opening of this module. Do you recall what that word means?
Hermeneutics in their formal definition is a means by which we either study or proceed through a set of information or evidence or text etc….
What hermeneutic have you used or been taught to use for reading Scripture?
I was taught the Historical Critical Method as well as some post-modernist methods of interpretation. In this methods the text lays somewhat dry and hollow.
What do you think is the difference between asking about the Bible “What does the text say?” and “How do you read it?”
I actually this the second question is the essential question. How one reads has everything to do with how one communications and how one is read.
Does it help or hinder your approach to reading the Bible to place importance on the hermeneutic, or method of interpretation?
I would not actually want to place importance on a specific reading or methodology of reading but I think what is being asked here, is precisely what I have been doing. Does the reading process and the being read process interact in your personhood.
How does the role of the one reading change when the emphasis is on the question, “How do you read it?”
How is different than what! Put simply the position changes.
Have you had experiences in which you felt you had received a communication from God? Did you trust it, doubt it, or seek help in understanding it from anyone?
NO! I have to be honest I am not convinced God at this time exist. I cannot say I have ever heard, seen or experienced God in a concrete physical way. That just is not something that seems to be in my card deck at this time.
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Yes, with your background Michael, some of this comes naturally to you. And yes, as you say ‘how one reads has everything to do with how one communicates…’ in this case of the road to Emmaus James showing us that this story is about how to interpret. Two people are discussing things which they are unable to interpret and a third person, that is Jesus, offers the definitive interpretation from God. As to a personal communication from God, it is frequently in the ‘dark night of the soul’ as John of the Cross described the desert or wilderness experience, that we find God.
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What might it mean for us to be listening to the unheard voice in the midst of confusing and traumatic events in our own communities or society?
Working with young adults who are college students as well as their parents makes such a question very difficult. Unheard voice is a category that I often feel but know that their is a voice that is unheard that is different than myself. I will think about this awhile and come back to it if I can.
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Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
As someone who is expected to lead people in Bible study at least once a week, I endeavor to be circumspect about what I ask others to do when they read scripture. I don’t want to dazzle a class into a fixation that prevents them from reading. Eloquent treatment of a passage could leave people feeling that they don’t actually need to read it—that they just need to have it read to them by someone who has studied it thoroughly. I’m not presuming to be such an eloquent reader and commentator that this actually happens with any regularity; rather, I am struggling with what SHOULD be my goal, if the goal is not a supremely eloquent reading with a savvy and compassionate commentary.
It occurred to me this week that Alison’s “revisionist history” discussion has a “revisionist reading” parallel with respect to the Bible. Now that I’ve see the topic of Module 1.4, I see this is directly where we are going. I haven’t listened to the lesson yet. I suspect that Alison will talk about an appropriate revisionist reading of scripture; I’d like to make a brief comment on an inappropriate revisionist reading of scripture—one that parallels his communist dictatorship example.
When teachers of scripture direct themselves toward a vision of the future, they will grab hold of texts and employ them for the purpose of bringing about this future state. Students of such teachers have two easy options: (i) adopt the vision whole-hog and employ the text in the same way as their teacher did, or (ii) reject their teacher’s vision and refuse to take up the text at all. In both cases, the students were never invited to be confronted by the text.
I should never allow a lesson objective to preclude my students from actually reading the Bible. I should not invite students to gaze forward upon a vision of the future; I should direct them to look back at the text with eyes that are prepared to see something new. If I’ve already decided what “new” things my students shall see, then I’m appropriating scripture—not reading it. And I’ll be setting a poor example for students who—absent another model—won’t know what to do with scripture other than appropriate it for pre-determined ends.
I believe the Bible is the Word of God. I hope I don’t inappropriately appropriate the voice of God as my own, and I hope I don’t teach others to do so. I hope I can listen to the voice of God, and direct others to do the same. Case in point: I could appropriate imprecatory Psalms and transform myself into a victim even when that is not actually the case—which would not be the Word of God. Or I can recite imprecatory psalms and hear them as a voice coming to me (not coming out of me), as training so that I am prepared to hear the contemporary cries of those who are being victimized by enemies.
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Share your favorite news sources. Can you defend your news source as “objective”? How would you describe its editorial bias?
It just so happened that a “smart” phone came into my possession just last week. I could wax ambivalent for no short moment on what I think about becoming a human with an open internet portal perpetually in his pocket. I won’t. I mention it only to say that one of the apps on the phone had me select news agencies I wanted to follow. Without too much deliberation I chose: NPR, PBS Newshour, Politico, Slate, and Vox. I also remember being a bit bummed that Aljazeera English (not to be confused with Aljazeera America, which came and went a few years back) was not an option.
Now, the Forgiving Victim has me deliberating more closely over a perfunctory selection of “likes” and “dislikes”:
I certainly cannot defend my preferred news sources as objective. The top two on the list are clearly state sponsored. They are never going to direct lucid criticism toward the United States government. Sure, they may spotlight “shortcomings in need of repair” or “egregious oversights that must never happen again,” but they will never point to a fundamental flaw in way the republic is structured. Case in point: both these sources may regularly talk about Russian interference in elections (i.e. an external stressor) or uncover the excessive influence of corporate interests in policy making (i.e. internal imbalance), but they will never EVER do a reportage which attempts to do something like: (i) disabuse viewers of the belief that American elections have something to do with decision making and then (ii) explain that elections are mere illusions of choice whose principal effectiveness resides in their ability to pacify a large number of upset people. That is not an external stressor or an internal imbalance; its a a structural deficiency. No state sponsored media address those sorts of flaws.
The next two choices, honestly, I picked just because some “cool” people I know go to these sites. I never actually visited them regularly before.
As for VOX , my selection has more to do with format: they tend to wade a little further into the details than other news sources. They are utterly obsequious in their affirmation of the enlightenment assumption that humans are human because they can be RATIONAL actors—which always chafes me, but even if I’m rubbed raw, I still come away with the appreciation of a few extra policy details.
Now Aljazeera, the reason I wished I could follow it on my fancy phone app was precisely BECAUSE of its bias. I like it when editorials use the term neoliberalism pejoratively. I like it when the term “global south” rings out like a rallying cry to defend those suffering under colonialism. Does this make it a good news source? I guess it depends on what you use the news for.
Sheelah, yes, I have listened to the lesson. In fact, I’m all the way to module 2.4. Let me explain, I download videos and discussion questions to work on at home at a slightly quicker pace. I only post a comment or two on those occasions when I come into town and have ample internet access, which results in me moving at a slightly slower pace through the forums. So, when I said on April 21 that I hadn’t listened to it yet, it was actually only true when I wrote that post about two months previous. [Another example of misleading information due to my comment lag appears in today’s post: I have long since stopped reading Slate for news on my fancy phone app–they are just a little too snarky in tone–though I find I like the pop culture articles they put out.]
I suppose I could dump all my collected comments on the forums at once [right now that would be from 1.5 to 2.4] so as to catch my posting up with my first viewing/thinking/writing. They are all sitting in an open Word doc just one Microsoft Window away. But honestly, Sheelah, I value your feedback too much! If I dumped it all at once, there is no way you would respond to all of it–and, besides, I benefit from the review that happens when I upload a comment I drafted a little while back.
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Sheelah, I’ve signed up to receive notices each time someone posts on these Discussion Forums. You posted yesterday, I read it in my email, but now I don’t actually see it on the JFV website itself. Perhaps there is some technical problem with the Module 1.4 Forum? I wonder this because I see that for some reason one of your responses to Rich from back in 2015 has inserted itself among the 2018 posts. Perhaps, then, your post addressed to me yesterday is nestled away in some other place; I looked, but I couldn’t find it. Whatever the case may be, I am a little distraught over what seems to be a frightful miscommunication.
Many apologies for my lack of clarity in my earlier post!! I would never want in any way, shape, or form to compare James’ faults to those faults characteristic of a communist dictator. First, I should say that I don’t know him well enough to know any of his faults whatsoever; second, even though I (regrettably) don’t know him personally, I can (in some small respect) concur with your commendation of him by saying that he indeed possesses one of the least dictatorial demeanors of any lecturer I’ve encountered.
When I spoke of James’ “communist dictatorship example” on April 21, I was NOT saying that James is himself an example of dictatorial behavior!! I meant only to reference the example he used to introduce us to the term ‘revisionist history’ in Module 1.3 minute 4:15 to 6:40. He discusses specious communist historians and concludes: “We can always tell that most revisionist accounts of history are bad accounts of history, but on the other hand there aren’t any good accounts of history that are not revisionist accounts of history.”
I meant to give James the benefit of the doubt when I said, “I suspect that Alison will talk about an appropriate revisionist reading of scripture;” and I was trying to introduce a pit fall I myself have fallen into when I’m in a teaching role when I said, “I’d like to make a brief comment on an inappropriate revisionist reading of scripture” [italics added here to emphasize what I utterly failed to make clear in the original post].
Again, I did not want to say that James had done something inappropriate, nor did I want to say that I could foresee that he was about to do something questionable; just the opposite—I wanted to say that (given what I knew of him up to that point) I could anticipate that he would NOT entertain any inappropriate revisions. The only inappropriate revisionist reading of scripture I was addressing was one that I suspect I myself have done on more than one unfortunate occasion during a Sunday school class. Please, therefore, read the critical remarks I then make of a teacher who appropriates the Word of God (rather than read it/listen to it) as a non-specific indictment of some very specific mistakes I myself have made–probably more times than I realize! [E.g., in my March 17 comment on the Module 1.3 Discussion Forum, I relay the tale of a woefully dictatorial stance I took while reading scripture with others.]
I’m truly mortified to learn that vague language and a terse exposition of my ideas allowed for my comment to be interpreted as a swipe at James’ character. I couldn’t write this clarification quick enough, once I saw what happened.
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Yes, Andrew, I think there is a technical hitch. When I submitted the post it did not appear as it usually does under your last post. And an old post from Rich is there too, I don’t know how that happened. I actually posted my reply about four times, but it seems that it did not arrive on the Discussion Forum.
I am copying Maura Junius from the Raven Foundation in on this as I think it is a matter for the technical crew and needs to be fixed at the source.
Let’s hope that it will not happen again, but I’m sure they will repair to problem. They are very capable.
Sheelah
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Sheelah, I’m glad there is a tech person out there looking into your missing post. In the meantime, know that, even on those occasions when your posts don’t upload to the public Forum properly, they DO seem to be forwarded on to those of us who have subscribed to receive private notifications of postings. [I briefly thought about posting your comments from my side, since my account doesn’t seem to be suffering from the technical bug. However, I ultimately decided that might lead too easily to added confusion. I am now trying a point out where I believe I was misunderstood by you (and likely others, if anyone is reading). So, if I were to state the misunderstanding of me under my name, it might be too much to unravel.]
Anyone other than Sheelah who might be reading this (now or at a later date), one of Sheelah’s recent posts (which I have read but may or may not be visible on this board) convinced me that I had done a very poor job or expressing two of my ideas. One I address above on May 5. I am now trying to clarify a point regarding an April 12 post on the Module 1.3 Forum. While there is more to Sheelah’s missing comments that these two small matters (and so I hope it gets successfully uploaded soon), the particular segment of Sheelah’s missing post that is relevant to what I discuss today can be inferred from what follows:
Again, I want to apologize for what appears to have been a lack of clarity in an earlier post. I never understood James’ essay title “Don’t speak until you are spoken to” to be an introductory command for a list of further commandments. I actually meant to contrast James’ usage of the phrase against the take-charge attitude with which that line is (in my experience) normally delivered. Sheelah, I agree that it is a quirky utterance. I think James’ creative employment of a common phrase succeeded in removing all the imperatival force from an imperatival structure and, thereby, left us with a simple statement: “Those people who believe themselves to be speaking before they have been spoken to are flatly mistaken about what speaking is.”
I think a parallel rhetorical twist may have been performed by the one who in Exodus self identifies as “YHWH your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt” when saying “you shall have no other gods before Me.” Syntactically, this line is structured as a command; the semantics, nevertheless, may be read as a declarative statement of a timeless truth. It is with a very rudimentary understanding of Girard’s work that I suggest the following reading of the first word of the Decalogue, so please, Sheelah, look over my shoulder to see if this next bit fits into Mimetic Theory.
Girard contends that gods are nothing more than the stuff of human projections, which were conjured during the aftermath of some scapegoating episode in which a community killed one of its own. As such, no god can ever “appear” without there first having been an extirpated victim. If such a victim were to speak to a crowd about gods, this extirpated one could assert (i.e., assert as a matter of fact—not deliver as some order that may or may not be followed) that “You aren’t going to ever have a god without having had Me in your midst first—you just can’t do it. It can’t work any other way; you don’t get to gods with having the victim pass by first” Or, to adopt a nautical metaphor, “Each and every last one of the gods is a tag-along who never manages anything more than to glide about within the wake I cut; it is roundly impossible for any of them to swim ahead into the area in front of my bow.”
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Yes, Andrew, “you shall have no other gods before me” is a command from YHWH and a universal, timeless truth. It is a prohibition against idolatry.
The many gods of the ancient world, and of today, are truely the stuff of human projections. Many in the ancient world saw the God of the Hebrews as just another god among many, some considered YHWH as just one of the gods but superior to all the others. YHWH is declaring that there are no other gods. Today these other gods are still with us, in the form of celebrity culture, money, fame, spiritual pride and even football etc.etc.
Regarding Girard’s thinking on sacrifice and the creation of divinity: Girard discovered a recurring pattern when looking at ancient rituals and myths. A victim is sacrificed to ensure the safety and health of the rest of the community. The victim is blamed not only for social problems, but also for droughts, plagues and everything that disrupts social cohesion. The death or expulsion of the scapegoat, restores the peace and calm. Consequently, the scapegoat, having been seen as responsible for all the ills and violence in the community, suddenly becomes a powerful force which is also responsible for the restoration of peace and calm. Put into the words of Girard himself, upon the death of the scapegoat, “peace will descend on the community because everybody will be without and enemy. There will be innocence again. And this will be experienced as such a miracle that the victim who was reviled two minutes before will come to be considered as divine. The malefactor becomes a benefactor. And there you have the real archaic sacred which is both bad and good. This sudden reconciliation – and there must be reconciliation, since there is no more enemy – involves the conflation of absolute war and total peace in one second.”
Andrew, you will find as the course progresses that James illustrates well how the Hebrew scriptures expose this use of violence to quell violence, know as the ‘archaic sacred’, or the ‘the myth of redeeming violence’. Many parts of the Psalms and the prophets, including Hosea, Jeremiah, Amos, and Isaiah, critique the practice of sacrifice. Psalm 50 claims that God doesn’t want a blood sacrifice, but a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Hosea 6:6 claims that God wants mercy, not sacrifice. Jeremiah 7 states that God never ordained sacrifice in the first place. Isaiah 66 states that “Whoever slaughters an Ox is like one who kills a human being. Whoever sacrifices a lamb is like one who breaks a dog’s neck.” And then, of course, we have Jesus who taught forgiveness and reconciliation.
Should you have further queries about the thought of Girard, I would prefer to recommend some reading, as my remit is to accompany you through the journey of ‘Jesus the Forgiving Victim’. But I think you will find that it will become clearer as you progress with the text.
Our current session is 1.4 ‘The Road to Emmaus’ do you have any queries about this topic?
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James used the term “hermeneutic” at the opening of this module. Do you recall what that word means?
I take it as a reference to the study of those methods by which people interpret messages. Somebody told me that the root of the word hearkens back to Hermes.What hermeneutic have you used or been taught to use for reading Scripture?
I was raised in church to do the freewheeling reader response sort of interpretation (though I didn’t learn that name for it until later), and we were all expected to credit the Holy Spirit for providing us with the random ideas we brought to the text.In college, I was taught that the human authors of scripture had intentions when they wrote, and that our job was to sleuth out those authorial intents with the help of grammatical and historical context. Since the program I followed presumed that a single God inspired all these writers, we believed we could always harmonize the various and sundry messages we extracted from different Biblical texts. We called this homogenization Biblical theology. We were then encouraged to supplement our exegetical findings by asking questions like “If St. Paul were writing the same letter to me or you today in English that he wrote to the 1st century Romans in Greek, how might his message shift to accommodate the difference in audience and language?”
Today (unlike my childhood and my undergraduate studies) I no longer think of scripture as something which primarily serves to convey content. Rather, I understand scripture to be something that—when confronted—changes those who confront it. I suppose the Bible can convey content (something about the world humans long lived in and something about a new coming age). However, I believe the Bible is principally something which brings about this cosmic turnover—not a mere exposition of it.
For sensitive and focused readers, all great literature is capable of inaugurating a new manner of existence. The Bible is unique among works of great literature in that the new manner of existence it inaugurates is irrevocable, and readers don’t have to be all that sensitive or focused to be overcome by what it inaugurates.
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Andrew, I think you have an excellent, mature attitude to the reading of scripture. And Hermes was indeed the Greek messenger.
Too often we see the literal word set in stone resulting in a rigid reading of this great work of literature, which in itself can mean differing things to different people in different times. I remember someone telling me once, and I forget who it was, that all interpretations are valid as long as they create love in the community. I think this may have originated with St Augustine. The bible is always working in history in many and varied ways.
You may also be interested to know that Girard always considered that we learn more about humanity and its virtues, vices and behaviour from great literature than from philosophy. Have you read his “Deceit, Desire and the Novel”? It discusses five great writers who describe the process of conversion, and the realisation that we are not autonomous beings. Not individuals, but interdividuals, that is communal, closely linked beings, living together in something akin to a field of gravity. As iron filings to a magnet.
However, and I think we may have discussed this before, in this session, James is illustrating how two people are learning to interpret scripture through the eyes of Jesus, our Rabbi. The “I AM”
Luke 24:13?35 raises an important question of interpretation: through whose eyes do you read the Scriptures? One answer to this question is found in the book of Numbers: we read our scriptures through the eyes of Moses who is meek, “more so than anyone on the face of the earth.” Another answer was given by what we now call Christianity: we read the scriptures through the eyes of Jesus our Rabbi who shows us what real meek Moses was really about. ?
Emmaus is a piece of “theological geography”: by not being a definite place of any importance, it can in principle be anywhere at all. The Emmaus story is a story about how to interpret: Two people are discussing things which they are unable to interpret and a third person shows up and offers the definitive interpretation from God. Luke has deliberately not named the disciple with Cleopas. We are meant to supply our own name: could be you, could be me. ?
There is a church structure to the matter of interpretation but Luke is making clear that the central interpretative experience is not a matter of church authority. It happens to anyone, anywhere, at the hand of the crucified and risen Rabbi. ? -
Sheelah, no, I haven’t yet read _Decite, Desire and the Novel_; although, I did attempt it a couple of years ago. Regrettably, I can be a bit overly fastidious when I sit down to read and with every page turn I felt myself to be more and more inadequate of a reader—as I hadn’t (at that time) ever read a single page of Cervantes, Flaubert, Stendhal or Proust. Before I finished the first chapter, I convinced myself that if I were to appreciate this work of Girard’s to any extent whatsoever, then I would at least need to familiarize myself with the Cliff Notes of these works—or something!! Since then I’ve managed to read some Don Quixote excerpts and purchase Madame Bovary from our local library discard shelf, but I fear I still have a long way to go before I can give that book the specialized attention is seems to require.
When it comes to the Bible, what do you think is the difference between asking “What does the text say?” and “How do you read it?”
When we ask “What does the text say?” we pretend the Bible is like a conveyor belt spitting out messages we either grasp hold of, mishandle, or let drop on the floor. The question seems to imply that the meaning of a text can be so utterly divorced from the text that we might just be able to ignore the original texts altogether once we extract their meaning from them.Conversely, when we respond to “How do you read the text?” there can be no grounds by which we could ever set the text aside as a thing which has already served its purpose. For that reason, I think the latter is a superior question for readers to ask.
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Does it help or hinder your approach to reading the Bible to place importance on the hermeneutic, or method of interpretation?
It helps. I believe I read the Bible better when I am conscious of how I am approaching the Bible. Maybe that’s because I’m a novice. Perhaps it is a habit I’ll fall into overtime and someday I’ll stop being so conscious of how I approach the Bible when I read it. Then again, maybe reading scripture appropriately is always an interruption and can never become perfunctory, because it is an encounter with God. I don’t know.That said, I do NOT believe people must first become self-reflective hermeneuticists (which—for good or for ill—I count myself one) before reading the Bible can change who they are. Reflective and unreflective readers alike need only to follow a reliable guide for their reading to change who they are. That guide could come in the form of a teacher, or it could be a queasy feeling (as James suggests in Module 2.1). Luke 24 shows this guide to be Jesus resurrected.
How does the role of the one reading change when the emphasis is on the question, “How do you read it?”
Cohering with the mimetic understanding of human being, the “How do you read it?” question leads a reader to recognize that she does not—indeed cannot—approach the text on her own; she is only capable of reading a text because someone else first demonstrated how to read.– Texts are not autonomous.
– Authorial intention is not a standard.
– No reader is free to respond to texts however she chooses.
The reader’s choice is always a choice to follow someone. In effect, asking a human “How do you read?” is another way of asking “Which reader’s example do you emulate?”
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Yes, Andrew, that is a good summary of what James is teaching as he always comes back to the fact that we learn to read scripture through the eyes of Jesus our Rabbi. You will find that during the course James constantly has us reading Jesus’ commentary on the Hebrew texts, and giving his listeners an entirely new way of reading them. This is as much a revelation for us today as it as for them then. James tells us that we have to relax into this new way of seeing; the ‘new creation in Christ’.
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What might it mean for us to be listening to the unheard voice in the midst of confusing and traumatic events in our own communities or society?
If Cleopas and his companion are our example, then listening to the unheard voice in the midst of trauma and confusion means listening to something foreign. I found Alison’s commentary (in the essay) on the word for ‘resident alien’ to be quite eye opening. My sister just recently visited Iceland, and returning she exclaimed how dumbfounding it was not to be able to hear the names of cities and places when locals spoke to her—especially since they were often speaking to her in English! Structural linguists have pointed out that phonemic differentiation is a pre-requisite for sorting out any stream of phonetic particulars. My sister couldn’t hear Icelandic place-names because she didn’t know what to listen for. Our first hearing of the unheard voice, I suspect, could sound like the sort of nonsense we feel we might could make sense of somehow—but can’t.Or, perhaps, listening to the unheard voice is like having your expectations met in a quite unexpected way. Cleopas and his companion recline for a prepared meal, only to find out that they were the guests—not the hosts.
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Rich, I very much appreciate how you respond to this question, and former questions, by speaking not only about your life, but also your surroundings and the environment. As you say… “The Forgiving Victim course teaches that we are time-laden creatures who experience change through inductive processes shaping us into new forms. Change is communal. I participate, but am in no way the sole author of the script.” You seem to be very aware of how James’s teaching gradually changes us and our rapport with the world around us, i.e. ‘the social other’.
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