Thu Jan 23 07:08:21 1997

From owner-tc-list  Thu Jan 23 07:08:21 1997
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id HAA07652; Thu, 23 Jan 1997 07:07:41 -0500
Date: 	Thu, 23 Jan 1997 07:03:09 -0500 (EST)
From: Bart Ehrman 
X-Sender: behrman@login4.isis.unc.edu
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
In-Reply-To: <29D34A5AD7@div.ed.ac.uk>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
content-length: 2671

   Well, maybe "unreconstructed modernist" sounds like a dirty epithet
that you simply don't want to embrace.  Because based on what does seem to
be your assumptions about the hegemony of "correct" understandings of the
"original" meanings of "texts," that somehow we can have access to (if we
just work hard enough at it and apply the right methods), I'd judge that
postmodernist discourse has created only a negative and reactive response,
rather than a rethinking and reformulation of any of your basic
epistemological positions.  I.e., your approach to texts is clearly
modernist, and it doesn't appear to be a modernism affected by anything
resembling poststructuralist theory.  If that's not an unreconstructed
modernism, then I'll eat my Fish. 

:-) Bart


On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Professor L.W. Hurtado wrote:

> 
> 
> Bart Ehrman writes:
> 
> >    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)
> 
> Bart,
> I certainly *intend* no caricature, but state what I have formed as 
> understandings of what thorough-going postmodernist theorists say, 
> and have been assured in my understandings by specialists, such as my 
> colleague Kevin VanHoozer, et alia.  But it's still possible that my 
> understanding is *incorrect*, or only partially (i.e., "more or 
> less") correct.
> And, for what it's worth, pa-leese don't number me among 
> "unreconsructed modernists"--never have been one, couldn't be one.  
> Actually, both the latter and radical "postmodernists" seem to me to 
> share a common anthropo-centric hubris, though manifesting itself in 
> varying ways.  I have deeply held epistemological and theological 
> bases for rejecting both positions as untenable--though, to be sure, 
> learning much from both (and other) positions.  As is so often the 
> case, in my view, rejecting a position doesn't mean it's worthless, 
> just inadequate as a resting place or premise.  Many of the positions 
> I'd reject (in TC work, for example, radical eclecticism such as 
> advocated by Kilpatrick & my friend Keith Elliott) I deem very 
> instructive in their respective subject matters--I just find reasons 
> to go on to some other position.
> As we seem to be winding down this set-to, my thanks for the patience 
> of the TC list in this by-path into epistemology, etc.
> Larry Hurtado
>  
> 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