Mon Jan 20 04:44:13 1997

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
Organization: Divinity Faculty
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Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:38:38 +000
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Subject: Re: The Original Text
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With regard the "original text" question being dicussed, one of our 
list wrote:

> 	Some post-modern theory (deconstruction) might be 
> useful here. There is no original text! Every text is 
> "intertextual." Think of Derrida and the idea of 
> logocentrism! Authorial intention (a logocentric idea) and 
> the "original text" are connected: they are our 
> idealizations. Writing dissertations and academic papers 
> comes to mind. When I write, I usually have several 
> versions in the computer. Which one is the "original 
> version." Probably, the one that I have submitted. This 
> means that the "original text" is "proclaimed" by an 
> outside authority, not the author. 

I think we'd all better take a deep breath, count to 10, and be 
*very* careful before we follow Derrida, et al. down that 
"deconstructionist" road.  There lies madness!  The very example our 
writer cites shows this:  If *he* chooses which version of his paper 
to submit, then it is *he* who has decided which to make public, thus 
making it the "official" version--not some other authority.

   >New 
Testament texts are 
> products of their authors and their readers, early 
> Christians. Early Christian communities have decided for us 
> which are the "original texts," but they have also 
> produced many "original texts."
Yes, of course, if the question is which books became canonical, and 
which versions of these books were circulated at any point among 
Christians as the text of this or that book, then many more than the 
original author were involved--copyists, readers, etc.  But none of 
these data in any way logically or historically falsifies the fact 
that each book was written before it was copied, or modified, or 
edited.  And the person(s) who wrote the text was/were the "author", 
with real *authorial intentions*, however much the transmission and 
reading process makes it difficult for such intentions to come to 
realization clearly.  The communication process is complicated, to be 
sure, whether in writing or oral speech, but this in no way justifies 
the "postmodernist" disdain of the genuine human process involved in 
communication--which properly involves *two* principals, not just 
one:  *both* the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader.  Radical 
postmodernist views of texts/communication does to the process what 
auto-eroticism is to real sex, reducing it to readers playing with 
themselves instead of the much more exciting adventure of exploring 
and getting to enjoy another!

Now, can we get on/back to textual criticism and other historical 
questions that are not the anti-human/humane dead-ends that 
deconstructionism represents?

 
L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado@ed.ac.uk

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