Wed Jan 22 14:45:38 1997
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Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 14:39:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Bart Ehrman
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Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
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Larry, I *think* I know what you *mean*.
:-) Bart
P.S. (But I stand by my claim that you're still caricaturing the people
you're taking on! Fish and co. have a *lot* to teach us unreconstructed
modernists)
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Professor L.W. Hurtado wrote:
>
> 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
>
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