Wed Jan 22 12:41:36 1997

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From: Jim West 
Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
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At 08:18 AM 1/22/97 -0800, you wrote:
>  There's no longer an author.  The text has 
>been liberated from any such constraining notion as an author or an 
>intent.  

In fact the text has not been liberated at all by this method- it has been
brought into the bondage of the reader who may understand absolutely nothing
of what the author intended.  And, by the by, to suggest that an author
intends nothing is the purest folly.  What fun Erasmus and Hutten would have
had with deconstructionists!  Would that their mighty spirits arise from the
netherworld and put to right what has been so wrongly asserted.

>So we can never do anything but count MSS.  As Larry pointd out 
>quite adeqautely, there are no more copyist errors.  

It is impossible for anyone who has ever graded a students paper to actually
believe this nonsense.

>When one scribe (I 
>forget which MS) in Luke 3 apparently went across the columns instead of 
>down, making for a very interestng geneaology, that's not an error.  
>It's another, equally valid reading.  I see no way under this construct 
>to even defend the idea of doing textual criticism.  

True enough.  Thats why no one of a deconstructionist bent does text
criticism.  To your tents, O Israel!

>How can you 
>possibly attempt to get to an autograph, if you can not ask about intent 
>or context to help determine what is or is not a "good" reading?  Just 
>so you don't wonder, I just spent the last semester working through some 
>of these authors and have spent the January break reading Thiselton's 
>New Horizons in Hermeneutics.  He seems to show, at a much more erudite 
>level than I can, that my appraisals are not far from the mark.
>
>Ken Litwak


Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jim West, ThD
Petros TN

jwest@sunbelt.net

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