BobRyan said:
lordkalvan said:
There are no purely objective methods in exegesis; once more, exegesis presumes objectivity, it does not guarantee it.
That is like saying "the scientific method does not guarantee that every experiment will be successful and flawless therefore it is not an objective method".
Surely you see that.
Your point is flawed. The scientific method is based on the concept of falsifiability; please show me how exegesis of biblical text can be falsified. Please show me how you can assess and measure the intent of the writer(s) of biblical text without using subjective assumptions - guesswork, indeed - as to what those intentions were. Please show me how exegesis guarantees objectivity rather than just presuming it. Please demonstrate that exegesis of OT text by different religions and different denominations within individual religions shows full agreement on the meaning of that text. I have asked elsewhere if exegesis of biblical text by Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Orthdox scholars can be shown to demonstrate such agreement and, if it cannot, why this might be.
[quote:29a11]Subjectivity is unconscious because no one approaches textual analysis free of cultural, linguistic, religious and historical assumptions, biases and pre-existing ideas that drive their analysis.
Hence the need for exegesis "or something even better".
So far you seem to embrace neither -- choosing to cling to the least objective instead -- eisegesis.
(which of course is the default once you reject exegesis)[/quote:29a11]
You continue to claim without demonstrating evidence for your claim that exegesis avoids the subjective influences I believe it is victim to given the nature of the individuals carrying it out.
[quote:29a11]Bob said
The point ramains -- the text is sooooo incredibly obvious that BOTH Darwinists AND YEC Christians AGREE on the gap it presents to darwinism.
That is a pretty hard "confirming fact" to get around -- wouldn't you agree?
It is going far beyond "I assert" and "I imagine" and "I suppose" it is going to "SEE LOOK both Darwinists and non-Darwinists are AGREEING on this one glaringly obvious point!"
(I love stating the obvious -- as you may have noticed)[/quote:29a11]
I cannot agree to something you have not shown, but only asserted.
[quote:29a11]L.K
Claiming the text has but one interpretation only demonstrates your unwillingness to admit that it may be susceptible of a different interpretation.
Maybe..might be...could be - suggestions are not nearly as compelling as the confirming OBJECTIVE fact I just stated above where find AGREEMENT between both darwinists (Darwin, Dawkins, Provine, Huxley...) and YEC Christians on the incredibly obvious statements of scripture.[/quote:29a11]
You claim this, but you don't show it. Nor do you show that anyone agrees at all with your exegesis of Exodus as an overwhelmingly persuasive argument as to what constitutes a day in the creation story recounted in Genesis.
[quote:29a11]L.K
You cannot know the mind of the author(s) and the meaning they intended;
Really? Do you have an example from Exodus 20 that shows your assertion to be true?[/quote:29a11]
You want me to show how I cannot know the the intent of author(s) dead for millennia by giving you an example from Exodus 20 demonstrating how I cannot be sure of knowing the intent of whoever wrote it? Well, insofar as I cannot be certain whether
day is used entirely metaphorically, entirely literally, or perhaps in both usages in Exodus 20, I cannot therefore be certain that I know the intent of the writer(s). But then I've told you this before. Several times. I think it more proper that, as you claim that you
can be sure of this knowledge that you show some evidence to support that certainty.
oops -- or is this just "assertion following assertion"??
No, it's just an attempt to get you to acknowledge the complexity of literary analysis and that it is difficult to be certain that any given understanding is wholly correct. Which is why we look for evidence beyond text to help support our conclusions about that text.
Notice that the entire point of Exegesis (the objective methods) is to discover the meaning of the author - to discover their intent by LOOKING at what they wrote.. by NOTICING the details regarding the way they treat the SAME subject in the SAME book or chapter writing to the SAME group of readers.
You seem to think that I fail to understand what exegesis claims to be able to achieve and how it claims to be able to do this. I understand this fully. I do not accept that the claim can be justified, however, because both the writer(s) and the analyst(s) interact with the text and that interaction is necessarily subjective. You are entitled to say, I think this is more likely a correct understanding of the text than that; what you cannot say is, This is most certainly the one correct understanding of the text.
I.e... "paying attention to the details".
The very things you seem most anxious to avoid.
Without exegesis " you can only use your subjective analysis to persuade yourself that you fully understand their minds and the meaning they intended" or in your case to "wildly speculate about infinte vague possibilities".
And yet we find Pope Leo XIII warning Catholics against the soundness of Protestant exegesis:
Though the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should, nevertheless, bear well in mind -- as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages -- that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture, and never attain its pith.
Quoted at
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05692b.htm
While the detailed discussion of exegesis provided at that site warns of the variations in results that supposedly objective analysis provides:
The exegetical results flowing from the supposed clearness of the Bible may be inferred from the fact that one century after the rise of the Reformation Bossuet could give to the world two volumes entitled, "A History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches". A Protestant theologian, S. Werenfels, sets forth the same truth in a telling epigram:
Hic liber est in quo sua quærit dogmata quisque,
Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua,
which may be rendered in an English paraphrase:
Men ope this book, their favourite creed in mind;
Each seeks his own, and each his own doth find.
[quote:29a11]L.K.
You have no more idea whether the relationship between the days of creation week and the days of the calendar week referred to in Exodus is symbolic or actual;
Well not until I actually READ the text![/quote:29a11]
Revealing your pre-existing assumptions again.
I think you and I BOTH AGREE that this text is incredibly simple and direct and that children at the 2, 3rd, 4th grade reading level have no problems understanding the words and simple sentences just as they read in the text.
I agree that young children have a very limited grasp of the techniques of literary analysis and the complexity inherent in attempting an understanding of the meaning intended by long dead writers from a different, pre-scientific culture using a language different from the one in which they are reading the text for themselves. I have also yet to see you present any confirming evidence for concluding that the use of 'day' in the verses you persist in quoting is not metaphorical in the one sense and literal in the other.
You love to eisegete into the text all the vagaries needed by darwinist dogma -- something those children would not be doing and then you attack exegesis to protect your efforts to employ transparent eisegesis in a very fanciful imaginative -- "Who knows" maybe Moses was preaching darwinism - kinda way, when it comes to the Word of God and Darwinism "has a need".
Again, all I have tried to do is point to the lack of absolute certainty that you claim exegesis provides in the your understanding of the verses in question. Let me say this yet again, you may very well be correct in your understanding of the verses, but you may also be wrong. Unless you can provide some evidence external to the Bible verses in question that support your conclusions, there is no way of knowing for sure. There is certainly no way that you can assume that, even if your interpretation of the verses in question is entirely correct, that this somehow establishes without question that the days of creation in Genesis were actual, literal 24-hour days as we know them today; all you will have established is that that is what the writer(s) believed.
But then that is the problem with our discussion - In order to save darwinism you have to claim to have no confidence about KNOWING what the Word of God actually says -- and you compound that "can't know what the Bible is saying" argument by attacking the most objective method known to mankind for determining that answer -- exegesis.
I have no interest in 'saving [D]arwiinism' in this discussion. This discussion says nothing about whether evolutionary theory is right, wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, except in your own mind. All I have been seeking to address is the uncertain grounds for your certainty.
[quote:29a11]L.K
You cannot know the mind of the author(s) and the meaning they intended;
Seeing you step off that last cliff in a true "sacrifice all for Darwinism" kinda way regarding the Word of God - the discerning reader notices this "can't know what the Bible says" idea in your posts and then asks "How then do you remain Christian at all?"
Without the bible -- without any claim to know what even the most glaringly obvious portions of the text "actually say" -- what do you have faith in?? "you"??[/quote:29a11]
Have you yet to grasp the fact that because someone disagrees with an eccentric, literal interpretation of a supposedly non-errant OT as the invariable word of God, and prefers to understand it for what it is - the imperfect understanding of what may well be divine revelation interpreted by imperfect human beings from a pre-literate, pre-scientific culture through oral and written tradition over thousands of years - this does not necessarily make them not Christian, unless you are an adherent of the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. The teachings of Christ are not dependent upon the literal truth of the OT; most Christians understand this.
