Blogging the Bible

Thats what David Plotz, an American Journalist is doing -
he has an online magazine called Slate.com and as an ignoramus
(his words) about the Bible has been reading it since May
and putting up site each week giving his version of events -
sometimes they are hilarious and sometimes insightful
Check Samuel out..............

"No wonder priests, ministers, and rabbis have spent so
much of the last 3,500 years discouraging regular folks
from reading the Bible on their own: It makes clerics
look like sleazeballs—venal, greedy, smug, and unholy.
As we saw back in Exodus, the priestly caste got off
to a very bad start. The first priest was Aaron,
the Fredo Corleone of the Sinai. Then Aaron's two sons
dissed God so badly that He smote them. The Israelite clergy
didn't much improve after that. Here at the beginning of
1 Samuel—"First Samuel," as it's spoken—we meet Eli, Israel's
top priest, who gives his profession another black eye.
Sitting in the temple one day, he observes the visibly
distressed Hannah praying that the Lord give her a son,
because she's barren. Eli sees her lips moving, but can't
hear her speaking. Does he ask her what's wrong?
Offer succor and counsel? Uh, no. He accosts Hannah angrily
and says, "How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself?
Put away your wine." What a welcoming man of God!"

Thats pretty mild - but really makes you look at the
Bible straight without all the nuancing we get up to
studying and looking at all the influences, way to
read and all that.

It really is worth looking at
Google - Blogging the Bible - Plotz. You will grin as it
is laced with cultural idioms and "takes."
Hmmm - I am spending too much time with eyes fixed to
the screen - but admit the access to anything and
everything is fabulous.

'Afterword'
This last chapter in "New Paradigms for Bible Study" is based
on the premise that we are between paradigms. We are no longer
secure in what we had presumed was settled, nor have we agreed
upon a new synthesis, system or paradigm.

The writer Martin E. Marty quotes Rainer Maria Rilke
"Each torpid turn of the world has such disinherited ones,
To whom neither the past belongs, nor yet what has nearly arrived"
and the chapter is shaped around the words from this quote
"past" and "what has nearly arrived."

He then gives a much lengthier quote from one of those
venerable sources - attributed to a wise Abbot,
when architecture was moving from Romanesque arches to Gothic
- from rounded to sort of pointed arches, and relays the
consternation and worry over this new form, ending with the Abbot
consoling a Brother with "Let us be patient. Some good thing may
yet grow out of them"

He writes about the way Bible shops (American)carry all sorts
of things that are from secular culture like T-shirts, mugs,
and other non-book stuff,and indeed don't we find fridge magnets
and the like in ours - he rightly says that Christians and
particularly the more evangelical ones - get into Christian
Rock music which is exactly like its secular equivalent
except for the words, plus they even dress like their pagan
counterparts. When pop music first started happening and
Elvis started gyrating his hips it was the devils work.

So things change and adapt and adopt secular expressions
- no where more so than evangelical groups - interesting
isnt it! Those who we perceive as the most theologically
conservative are the ones who embrace new technology
- who does TV evangelism - not the mainstream denominations.

He wonders if everything that "belonged in the past"
is disappearing - displaced by "what has nearly "arrived."
"The Other" is no longer marginalised because digitally
everyone is.

He writes that more communities lives have been mediated
by the spoken word than have been inspired by the written
word, by images in glass and stone and wood than by bound
volumes. I like that.

So in between specualtion as to "what has nearly arrived"
he asks
"let us be patient,something good may still grow out of it"

Researching online

This has got to be the most seductive and the best.
I just went into www.religion-online.org/ and it is just
so good to be able to get short succinct informative articles
by very pointy-headed people. Don't you love them!

I just read a nine page article by Carol Newsom called
Probing Scripture: The New Biblical Critics and it is
so good for a clear and concise overview of the subject.
Often that is all we want so as to get the gist of things
before we go deeper.

She takes us through all the major approaches to biblical
studies since the 1970's - literary including structuralism
through to deconstruction and post-modernism. Then moves
into Social-Scientific criticism and then to Cultural Hermeneutics
and I could go on............................. but it is really well written
and easy to read. And only nine pages - you beauty!

When I go into this site the offerings are quite astounding
and it is wonderful - on the title page going into 'Other Theologians'
and I want to read them all. Have a look!!
The really good part is that they appear to be reasonably short
and scholarly. Some whole books there too - wow!

My point is that I couldn't do this in a library - it would be too
hard - and here it is - JUST WAITING for me. Wow again!
This is the beauty of online web-based research - its all there
short and concise.

But I still print it out to read hard copy - I still believe that
reading online is not where its at - YET!

There is something very provisional about writing on the screen.
I know, I know - I rat on about it but even as I use the medium
I am very aware of the ephemeral and alterable nature of it.
Shifty if you ask me!

What about art then. Even though we can print off reproductions
and get copies of everything online there is nothing that replaces
the original. I ask myself why when I know I can get a perfectly
good copy.

Walter Benjamin in"The Work of Art in an Age of
Mechanical Reproduction" reckons that copying robs a painting
of its 'aura' - it lacks the real presence in time and space, its
unique existence in its own place. Benjamin claims that the technical
abstraction changes the status. His key notion is the 'aura' which is
the natural emanationof the painting itself - its spirit. This aura is
there when we see it in the original but not when we see the copy.
Further to this argument is the quality of being-in-itself
(Birkerts, Gutenburg), the "otherness" that all things manifest.
By accepting reproductions we are overcoming the uniqueness
of every reality.

So what of the Bible? What does it mean and say about the canon of a
collection of sacred texts that can be printed off, used for scrap paper
or printed off bit by bit. Just the good comfy bits you like without all
that gory mean stuff - never in a wholeness or body but just Xerox
sheets. Hypothetically - what happens to the Bible online without
codex type imprints. Does it all get chopped up into segments
without relating to the whole corpus and thereby lose integrity
and meaning - not even thinking about any historical faith
perspective.

It is worth thinking about - particularly as this medium is seen as
the future information commons and predicts the demise of the
codex.
Again - where would/will the authority lie?

In my reading around the effects of hypertext/web communication/information an aspect that comes up is the relevance and awareness of the past. Taken to a univeral expression, as written about in The Gutenberg Elegies (which is great reading - easy and thought provoking) the past becomes defunct with the potential concept of hypertext/web overtaking print and a pretelevision past - all we are left with is an ever-renewable present.

We don't actually go to places , we hyper-experience them. The faraway world is here and now - distance is a concept rather than a reality. Every place that held romance and allure(Taj Mahal, Yosemite, Rio, the Vatican hey baby) is no longer unique. The great geographical Other is no longer what it used to be. Every place is shot through with each other place. Everywhere is infused with accessiblity.

Print is linear and reading is a private act of translation.
Importantly, this accords with our traditional sense of history
which is sequential and layered. Electronic order is different -
engagement is public with a lateral association where everything
is relative and flat. Very postmodern!
In the solid dimensional depth of print we capture a sense of time past.
Hypertext/web based information expunges this very real sense,
this chronology and gives us a strange weightlessness and ephemeral
accessiblilty.

So - my point - what becomes of Scripture? Birkets(Gutenberg) reckons that history will become a mythology - data for retrieval in the hands of the dream merchants. The more we
become rooted in the Now the more everything else/history becomes subject to the Theme Park scenario
- 40 Days in the Wilderness anyone - O such Pretty Manna
- just like snowflakes isn't it -mmm tastes just like icecream.

Without the physical grounding will everything become notional relative and diminished?

Online research

I take it all back.
From being an ardent devotee of the book(codex type) I have
fallen. Yes, I am seduced by the ease of access to online journals
and information. Sitting at home and getting what I need from the
Web is easy and fast and solid if I use the right sites. It makes
isolating the topic information much simpler than trawling through
book tables of Content and Indexes. Plus I don't have to
move from my chair. (a disadvantage - pass the chips?)

However, I will not go easily. I think that this medium is great for
sourcing information and targeting particular items - also for playing
randomly around the subject area BUT - I do not think in its present
state that it will satisfy readers of fiction and perusers of visual texts
and people who like to languish over a page - photography for
example. Part of buying a book is the tactile visual asethic appeal plus
all the notes and the portability. They are satisfying and individually alluring.
Can we say this about computers?

Plus - there is the sociability. It is good to handle, talk, discuss and
share books. Books are powerful mediums for exchange - of ideas,
literally in lending and recommendations. They are social animals.

The argument about being able to change a written text if you
disagree with what you have written five years later is double edged.
It means that there is no record of your progress in thinking and that
good stuff could be jettisoned. Also - if one is a conspiracy theorist
(not me she says) then it is believable that stuff on the web could be
tampered with.

Plus - people could lose their lives just sitting in front of the screen
- we could all become slugs who never venture forth from our portals!
So there!

Do you do any worship online. Check out www.sacredspace.ie and see what you think. In Give me That Online Religion Brenda Brasher claims that cyberspace is overflowing with religious sites and that it is an excellent platform for conveying religious information

It appears to eclipse the idea of authority and is totally open where we can flip from site to site until we find what satisfies. Place and distance do not exist, but romantically perhaps the locale is literally in 'the heavens' - in the ether between you and me. Somehow we become the product of the words we print and read on our screens - we are dwelling in cyberspace indeed.

It privatises belief and makes it all utterly accessible as the same time. We can flip from a Jesuit prayer site to a Hindu Temple at the click of our mouse. So what of community and song - are we flesh and blood no more and what happens to pastoral care. Is it worship by menu? Are we all totally leveled out by the medium?

Certainly it must be an affair of the mind - only. No shuffling in the pews, no sermons, no incense. Eucharist by hyperlink anyone?

I guess it is another step on from people who watch religious programmes on television on Sundays and see that as their worship - at least there is some interaction - you can sing along or stand or clap and the sound and visuals draw the viewer in and demand involvement.

So what does cyberspace offer except unlimited variety, worship at the click of a mouse, and the restlessness that goes with it? Do we stay with a site usually or just check in and surf and scan.

Brenda Brasher argues that religious expression in cyberspace should be protected and supported because good religion is valuable and necessary as a deep meaning resource for civil society. And that it is crucial and positive for the future of religious society....................

Is this the future or just an option?

A fascinating and hugely relevant book ............!

Authority - I think it is a moveable feast.
My interest in Ecotheology leads me to look at the Bible anew. Differently.
Neil Darragh asks in his article -
Adjusting to the Newcomer: Theology and Ecotheology (Pacifica 13, 2000),
"when the focus of our theology changes from human-centred to
Earth-centred, what happens to the rest of our theology?"

I believe this is perhaps the most pressing concern we have today.
This planet Earth that sustains us, is deeply in distress and ailing.

Our theology has predominantly been about our relationships
and with God. In public debate it is economics and social policy that
hold sway with environmental issues coming a poor third.
I hope we do not leave it too late - as a scientist said on BBC radio
" we don't know when the momentum of what is happening will have
reached the point where it is unstoppable." Kapow - Armageddon!!!

Our Christian theologies give more weight to the obvious social justice
and human rights issues. I am not disputing the rightness of this,
but equally, if not more (if we are concerned with conditions sympathetic
to life) important is ecological awareness and action.

Darragh writes that this is a problem for biblical hermeneutics.
The anthropocentric bias is not the only problem - a widespread
opinion is that "the bible itself is ecologically defective."
Admittedly, context was vastly different and that sort of thing
but it does conjure up questions as to the "authority" of the bible.

One problem he cites is that this pushes Christians into extremes.
So here we get fundamentalists who wont countenance any
questioning of the authority of the bible including any ecological issues.
The other is the religious supermarket where the bible doesnt speak
any more effectively than other texts.

So - instead of seeing ourselves as separate, we must embrace (the
buzzwords) intrinsic value, interconnectedness and sustainability.
And we must begin to look for the subtexts in the Bible that inform this.
Jesus of Nazareth is not just a human being, he is also a function in
the carbon cycles of the planet, a mammal, and event in the
production-consumption processes of first century Palestine.
And the Christ.

We are not used to seeing ourelves in this biological chemical way
either. Evolutionary Christology?
So what of Authority -

Religion of the Badlands?????
- a wired look at"Connecting to the Religion of the Broadband" - the author claims that
broadband/the web...........has altered the play in scholarship irredeemably............
it's open slather now and anyone can give it a go ..............even scholars and professors
have bought into the media hype and want part of the action.......to be seen, heard and quoted.
No more the hallowed "Halls of Ivy" where weighty scholarship was enshrined..........
now its open, democratised and anyone with an opinion can comment - ain't that the truth when we look at blogging.
The author (help Tim) is into politics, the media and the BIGBOOK(bible) and reckons...(rightly by my account in the US)............ that they are tightly woven. Ah Ha - the plot thickens.........
I love it when he says "a biblical scholar can consider America's First Ladies as modern-day examples of the TIRELESS FANTASY WIFE in whom the author of Proverbs 31 so delights."
O Please ......give me more!
The borders have been shattered, he says its a new culture man! -this media with music, words, visual images can make connections and really get to people so that they can own it too.
Next up - religion has gone public(writing from the US has it ever been anything diff.) - but the
guys in charge are getting savvy to this and .....whew.....big bro is close by.
"God is on OUR side. It seems clear that only a deity could be on so many sides simultaneously."- way to say yeah.
To get down and solid he mentions some very cool writers like Crossan (yeh - I think Jesus was a religious political activist peasant as well as .........) and Elaine Pagels (a fave) who is worth reading cos she is already future church I think .................
Politically its great to see "Sojourners"(web link - help again) come out with the news about the "red letter Christians" (don't know about the name!)- taking up the fight in the US against the conservative moral militaristic right in their dastardly destructive ways of assuming the high ground on moral issues (abortion, gays, birth control.....) and make anyone who doesn't agree EVIL. Please, teacher..........is anyone hungry or sick or sad out there?
I have just become a convert of broadband!

Millenium Wisdom?

If we derive our wisdom/faith/way of being in the world, from our belief systems
look at "The Abridged Millenium Matrix" pg. 227 in
" The Millenium Matrix."
It charts HOW we have believed historically through communicating - from oral -
to print - to NOW in the Postmodern age - called Broadcast-Celebration era (1950-2010)

Check it out:
Worship - Event
Truth - Existential
Understanding - Selective awareness
Faith - Conviction
Gospel - Reselling
Godhead - Holy Spirit
God's Location - In
Connection With God - Hand of God
Relating to God - They-it silence
Revelation of God - Scripture and Experience
Time - Existential time

Worship is more than an Event - if Truth and Time are Existential and God is In,
then surely Worship is intrinsic to who we are in our Awareness/Faith -Conviction?
And where has Jesus gone?
Does this list represent you and how you believe?