Seventh Blog Question: Response

I’d say my blog writing definitely improves over the course of the term. As the term progresses, it is obvious that the concepts presented in the class become more clear to me as they are more easily integrated into the writing of the blog. The idea of sparseness in what the authors say and don’t say is a constant in my writing. It is one of the key ideas and appears in almost every blog entry. I think that personality comes through my writing style a little more as term progresses as well, which I believe strengthens my writing and not detracts from it. It feels more conversational than just a stiff informational essay, which is how my early entries feel to me. Now that I think of it, this is sounding as stiff as my early entries, but seeing as it is somewhat of an inventory, I fear it can’t be helped much.

Since blogs were not scheduled into small time frames, I fell that I had much more time to ponder and turn over in my head the ideas presented in class. This helps to make my blog much more well-rounded and insightful than my freewriting is. My blog entries are also a great deal longer than my freewrites, which allows for better explanation of my thoughts and more in-depth processes to be worked through without sounding confused or muddled by my haste to write.

What I see in the blog as a whole is that the members have moved from stating their own assumptions to struggling/trying to engage the ideas of the class to actually beginning to understand them. The ideas of genre seemed to be new to most everyone and deciding what to do with that unclear. Showing and telling was grasped at multiple times, as was the idea of interpretation. I see a lot of searching and trying to put uncertain thoughts into words. Some people’s blog entries remain fairly broad and general, never taking the plunge to narrow in on details. Others take more risks. Occasionally there is an attempt to engage responses to other people’s opinions into their own blogs, but this never really turns into a constant thing that carries any depth in it. I consider this to be a somewhat disappointing thing, as I think it could possibly have added more life to the blog (as well as more frequent posting). But there is only so much one can control, and I’ll admit I never really stuck my foot out there for that one much.

To sum up, I think that I see growth in most people’s blog entries, as well as my own. The concepts and ideas presented in class become more apparent and well integrated as the terms rolls on, which must mean we actually learned something new. Amazing.

Bible as Literature, Seventh Blog Question

Describe the overall shape, pattern, movement, narrative, plot of:

• your own blog entries
• the blog entries of the others in your team
  

What are the dominate themes? What’s clear to people and what isn’t? What interests people and what doesn’t? You? Is there progress? Is there a movement up and down, back and forth, what? How does your own individual movement or progress or set of issues relate to the group’s?

Now that the class is nearly over, how does all this add up?

As you’re writing this, compare the shape and movement of your blog postings to the shape and movement of your in-class freewriting journal. What I’m looking for here in particular are ways that your blog postings advance, expand, deepen, complicate, elaborate the things you’ve written about in class. This is the difference between an A and a B for most of you: the in-class versus the out of class writing. OK. What’s the difference?

As I read the blog at the end of the term, this posting will be the first thing I read—sort of a preface to everything that follows.

Sixth Blog Question: Response

The Old and New Testaments are from different times, different genres, and even different languages, it is true. (And hey, being American, it’s all Greek to me! Ha ha… Ha.) But lame puns aside, there are many similarities between the two in the realms of sparseness and showing verses telling, and even in differences of stories.

The gospels do not all share the same stories between them, some leave out what others have or have what others do not. And in the stories that are the same, there are differences in the details. One example of that would be found most obviously in the crucifixion of Jesus. The gospels do not all agree on what Jesus’ final words were before dying. The phrases vary between “It is finished” (John), “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew and Mark), and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke). After Matthew and Mark’s statements he cries out, and maybe he cries out Luke’s statement and they didn’t know about it, but who knows. John mentions no crying out at all.

If you’re wondering how that has anything to do with connections to the Old Testament, just look at Genesis. In Genesis, the order of things vary from chapter to chapter, not even as much as book to book. Were Adam and Eve created at the same time, or did Eve come after Adam? Were animals created first or humans? Compare the first two chapters of Genesis and let me know what you find.

So maybe Jesus said all of those things and maybe he said none of those things and they are just elements that bring together a good story. We just don’t know without asking the original authors of the books.

Now to be less broad, let’s look at Mark in particular. Mark focuses a lot on the actions of Jesus and doesn’t explain them to us. He let’s the actions speak for themselves. He never states that Jesus is divine, that he or anyone else thinks of him as divine, or even that he saw the things he wrote about. The only thing stated about who Jesus is, is that he is the son of God. But the meaning of that is never explained. Mark’s quietness and sparseness on these issues is often referred to as authorial silence. He doesn’t tell us why these things are important, but the fact that he chooses to write about them makes them important.

Mark doesn’t state whether what he wrote about what literally happened or whether the stories are partially or wholly fabricated in order to portray a certain image of Jesus. All we have is our own interpretations of the scriptures. It’s quite possible that Mark didn’t even write his gospel in chronological order, considering the patterns found in the way it is set up. Like Price has said, Mark’s focus is on the story itself, not on reporting dry facts. And the fact that his faith is entwined in his account gives the story life, whether it is meant to be perfectly accurate or not.

Bible as Literature, Sixth Blog Question

You’re talking to both your friends from before—the nervous believer and the cranky atheist. You’re at the Beanery. It’s late at night.

And they’re both agreeing, with each other, amazingly. The nervous believer says, “well, maybe what you’ve been saying about showing versus telling and the spareness of the language and all that kind of stuff is true for Genesis and the Old Testament. Maybe. I’m not sure. But I know it’s not true for the New Testament. Not for the Gospels! Those couldn’t be clearer! Everything is spelled out and everything is obvious and all you have to do is go to a chapter and read it. You’ll know exactly what to do with your life. You’ll be completely at ease.”

“Right,” says the atheist. “Exactly right. And that’s the problem: no brains, no headaches.”

You clear your throat. Take a sip of coffee.

“Actually, you’re both wrong. The Gospels are a different genre, that’s true. And they’re written in Greek, not in Hebrew. There are lots of important differences. But when you get down to the particulars, they, too, are pretty darned spare and they too show a lot more than they tell. There’s much, much, much that’s like Genesis in style and form.”

Explain. And as you explain, quote a particular example from the Gospel of Mark. And use this quotation from the literary critic and Biblical scholar Reynolds’ Price. (You just happen to have this handy):

What matters to Mark is what mattered to the great writers of Genesis. Their central concern, first and last, is with the literal line which human action makes on the surface of time and place. . . The old authors share the ancient trust of all those who bet their entire hand on story, whether oral or written, the thin compelling thread of an action that is worth our attention.

Fifth Blog Question: Response

Just so we’re clear, this entry is in response to Shannie’s entry written on Sunday, November 5 in her response to an atheist friend.

“The way the Bible was written makes the reader stop and try to understand what message is trying to be conveyed. The language used often leaves room for interpretation. It’s not always clear cut and easy to see; redactors used showing versus telling in the Bible. The way they change it from book to book, chapter to chapter can make the “clear lines” of the Bible a little fuzzier.”

I appreciate and agree with the fact that she focuses so much on the language of the Bible in this post. The sparseness of language seems to be one of the most constant and consistent features of the Bible, in both Old Testament and New. Interpretation varies from person to person, and the argument about who’s right and wrong will never be settled, considering the only people who know for sure are the writers and redactors themselves.

Jacob is a great Old Testament example of the sparseness of the text. Another fabulous example would be the gospel of Mark in the New Testament. He tends to let the actions he writes about speak for themselves. He does not describe the appearance of Jesus and claim his divination, nor does he reveal whether he is an eyewitness of what has happened. He does not state whether Jesus or the people listening to him understand who he is. He tells us that Jesus is the son of God, but never whether he is divine or not.

What Marks gives us is his actions, what he does, the miracle he performs and the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Whether he was so sparse because he didn’t have more information or because he was there to answer people’s questions himself is unclear. It could very well be that he was sparse because he believed Jesus was divine, the long-awaited “Messiah,” and like the Old Testament writers wrote sparsely in respect to his divinity. We just don’t have any way of knowing for sure.

Shannie is so right when she says that the lines in the Bible are “fuzzy.” It is part of what makes it so intriguing, so interesting to study.

Bible as Literature, Fifth Blog Question

Take a blog posting from another student in your team—one that you really like, one that seems really good to you—and respond to it. Add another example. Carry it forward into the reading and work we’re doing in class right now.

Quote the posting in part. Say what you like about it. Then go on from there.

If you’re on a team that isn’t posting a lot, check out other teams.

Fourth Blog Question: Response

Before this class, I had never really considered the genre and literalness of the Bible in my reading of it. I suppose subconsciously I’d just assumed that the Old Testament was historical fact and never paid attention to the small details. Actually, I’d never really spent a whole lot of time thinking about the Old Testament in general. I had wondered about the repetitiveness of the Old Testament but had never even heard of the idea of redactors.

Now the idea of redactors makes perfect sense to me. In fact, I think the Old Testament actually makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than it did when I thought maybe one person had written a book and another person had written other books and then someone just sort of put them all side-by-side into one big fat book. Integrating various versions of the same stories together into one book seems more realistic and explains a lot about the way things are presented, in my opinion.

Then the idea of genre, that there are myth and legend in the book and it’s not all 100% accurate rock-hard fact. Stories spurred from actual events, stories explaining realities beyond our understanding – I can grasp that. It makes sense to me. In fact, I’m not sure I would believe in following a book and a God that has prescribed some of the laws we saw in Exodus, such as the slave-beating example we saw in class and the death to those who dishonor their parents, or what-not. To see those applying in today’s world is pretty much unthinkable, at least in what we have come to consider as “civilized” cultures.

One thing I have some issues with is this idea that the redactors sat down to write this with only images in their heads and no ideas. I understand how most writers sitting down to write a story do that, but what I understand is that these redactors sat down to record what to that time had been orally-passed stories down into a book, or maybe took different recording of those oral traditions and combined them into one book. So I guess I see them as having taken what was already there and making it whole, not sitting down and coming up with images to turn into new stories. I agree that they probably had no agenda in mind when writing them down (other than preservation), but then again we have no way of actually being certain of that, see as how they are long dead and all we have is their finished works. Anyways, I could be coming at this idea all wrong, but if I am then I guess that’s all the more reason to sit here and write about it.

I could go on and on, but I don’t want to bore you all or fill up the entire blog with one entry. This class has definitely been challenging my thinking though. I hope this entry makes that obvious.

Bible as Literature, Fourth Blog Question

Write about something you’ve changed your mind about.

You came into class thinking one way. Now you’re thinking another. Explain. Why have you changed? Illustrate with a particular passage.

If you haven’t changed your mind about anything yet, explain. Illustrate with a particular passage.

Several ways to do this:

• you were unclear about something and now you’re clear

• you were clear about something and now you’re unclear

• with a particular passage we’ve discussed in class:

• you thought this at home

• we talked about this in class: just summarize, clearly

• now you think this