Wed Jan 22 12:00:26 1997

From owner-tc-list  Wed Jan 22 12:00:26 1997
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id LAA29550; Wed, 22 Jan 1997 11:58:53 -0500
From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
Organization: Divinity Faculty
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 16:53:53 +000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
Priority: normal
References: <16BDEC2A36@div.ed.ac.uk>
In-reply-to: 
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.50)
Message-ID: <190A315B1A@div.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
content-length: 3149

Bart Ehrman writes to me:

>    Of course we can argue over readings.  What else do you imagine
> postmodernist interpreters *do*?  
Yes, postmodernists argue over readings, but not at all necessarily 
about whether any reading approximates anything like a first meaning 
such as might have been intended by the author or understood by first 
readers.  For the postmodernists I dissent from reject any such 
interest, and indeed regard any such thing as chimerical.  I though I 
had made this point fairly clearly.  The issue is not whether 
postmodernist argue (they're human aren't they?), but whether they 
grant any basis for an argument such as historians normally carry on 
(Stanley Fish quote during his Manitoba visit:  "All historians are 
brain-dead".)

> But
> you still haven't answered my question concerning what you think a
> "correct" reading is.  (I should point out, by the way, that a more or
> less correct reading, to use your phrase, is also more or less incorrect; 
> and if all we can do is give readings that are more or less correct, then
> our readings always, inevitably, more or less incorrect.  I.e., we
> inevitably corrupt the text.  This is quite apart from the question of
> what you imagine this "correct" reading to be, which we appear to be able
> only more or less to approximate.)

Oh indeed so!  My careful way of stating the issue ("more or less 
'correct'") was intended precisely to indicate the provisional and 
thus corrigible nature of any particular interpretative claim.  We 
surely don't have to choose between saying that a reading is either 
*nothing but* the whims of the interpreter (with no possibility of 
seeking the meaning of another such as the author) or must claim to 
be perfectly that author or past event "wie es eigentlich gewesen 
ist".  
In some cases we may be able to say with very high assurance that 
this or that interpretation of data is so very improbable as to be 
almost certainly "incorrect".  In other cases, we may only be able to 
say that this or that interpretation seems to be highly probable as 
to being "correct", or may be judged at least partially "correct".  
By "correct", I mean the attempt achieve some accuracy, completeness 
and faithfulness in understanding something (*under*-standing, with 
the interpreter *seving* the thing to be interpreted, not lording it 
over the thing, as in the will-to-power approach advocated in at 
least some postmodernist theory).
But perhaps this thread of discussion is now too extended and too 
restricted to Bart and me for this particular list.  I do not cherish 
the hope of securing Bart's assent to anything on the basis of these 
brief interchanges.  I seek only to make somewhat clear (!; i.e., as 
clear as this medium and format, and my limited powers of expression 
enable) reasons to distinguish between copyists and authors for 
historical purposes--i.e., copyists copy and/or amend texts which 
have previously been composed.

Cheers.  Larry H. 
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

Back