Monday, February 7, 2011

More Trickery, More Obfuscation and More Humbug (1)




Well, it’s clear Mikey is even more in denial than I could have conceived. Rather than address the key errors I have resoundingly exposed (no matter whether one is using “Eisegesis” or “exegesis” – he continues to fulminate and obfuscate rather than HONESTLY dealing with what he’s been presented. This is sad, because at one time – before his brain fell pray to the fundageicals and bible-dom he could actually reason fairly well. (Also, before he enlisted in the Marines – who really did a number on his brain while at Parris Island)

SO, given what Mike has crafted is consummate “sophomoric Sophistry” (in the words of Fr. Hecker) - generally meaning tossing arcane words around to baffle with bull shit, why are we not surprised? Well, because Mikey's aim is to try to befuddle and mislead, while at the same time posing as some kind of authority. In order to expose this one has to look closely at the words used, so we will do so with Mikey’s while also presenting him with clear examples for which he will either have to be honest and address the problems or admit he’s a damned liar.
I’m not going to recycle all his babble, just the key parts that he scribbles in his blog reply to my last blog on finally admitting the Bible can’t be taken literally.

He writes:

Anyway , to continue , exegesis and eisegesis are two conflicting approaches in Bible study. Exegesis is the exposition or explanation of a text based on a careful, objective analysis. The word exegesis literally means “to lead out of.” That means that the interpreter is led to his conclusions by following the text.”

This is true but as usual he omits key aspects! Without those aspects one isn’t practicing exegesis but some facsimile. At Loyola, exegesis was taught as a rigorous discipline that used the actual original forms of the texts in their original languages and the meanings associated with each.

At each class session, we were issued the passages for exegesis from the different quadriform gospels. The passage was rendered under different headers, e.g.

--Aramaic------Greek---------Latin-------English----------


One then went from column to column annotating the changes in emphasis of the respective passage, as well as its contextual meaning and then to the final English rendition. In the process, we were expected to estimate: 1) the net loss in meaning based on the total meaning in the original, usually Aramaic text, and 2) discern the actual meaning from docetic and textual analysis.

This is really the basis of biblical hermeneutics. The primary objective of exegesis is interpreting what the passage in the original language meant in terms of its OWN CONTEXT not simply putting it into the new one. THIS is why so many biblical literalists foul up and end up in a ditch.

As I noted in an earlier blog, the process for the literalist is basically 1:1 onto:

[Text x] -> [Text x]

Thus, [Text x] undergoes no modification from what their eyes detect or parse in the passage.In fact, there are three primary phases of the hermeneutics process so that at least three stages have to be covered, so:

[text x] -> [1] ->[2] –[3] -> [Text Z]

Even this is oversimplified, since technically each step also needs to be checked and parsed from one language to the other. For example, what did the author MEAN in Aramaic? What did he mean when this was transferred to GREEK? What did he mean when this Greek was transferred to Latin? What did he mean when the Latin went to English? Then step [2] – repeating the same. When we did exegesis at Loyola we used columns for the four main languages and parsed each passage for EACH step before arriving at the final meaning. (As anyone who's ever studied foreign languages knows- and I've studied Latin, Russian, German and Spanish- it is essentially impossible to get a perfect translation from one to another!)

What we acknowledge in doing this procedure is the fact that we have NO ORIGINALS of any scriptures, only error-ridden copies. But, if we can take the passages through the above sequence, then let the light of the historical research shine upon the effort, we can at least approach the truth. We are not so naïve as to claim or expect we HAVE the truth, since hermeneutics itself – its very use- is a tacit admission one can’t take passages literally.

Bible scholar Bart Ehrman also notes (Misquoting Jesus, p. 54) there were almost no controls for standardization of textual content like there are today because there were no copyright laws! Thus, copyists could literally add or subtract as they saw fit. One estimate has it that nearly all the references in the NT to “Satan” or “Hell” were accomplished at the hands of copyists, leading one Bishop of Corinth to remark that:

The devils’ apostles have filled it with tares, taking away some things and adding others. For them the woe is reserved”.

In addition, other portions or whole segments of the Bible (King James or other versions) are easily exposed as incorporating bogus "padding" with just cursory inspection of the same passages in different editions. An excellent example of a later added text ("synthetic addition") bearing no relation (in terms of coda context or document validation) are the last twelve verses of Mark. None of that content bears any continuity with what came before it so it's reasonable to conclude these were later additions and not part of the original text.

The content of Mark dealing with Yeshua’s end is fairly intact from say 15:42-47 to 16:4-8. Thereafter the problem text appears. (Last 12 verses)Terrific stuff, compelling and used as the basis for “speaking in tongues” by many Pentecostals, but totally bogus. The whole last 12 verses were added by another scribe (as pointed out by biblical textual analyst and scholar, Bart Ehrman (a former evangelical).

There's also the matter of how historicity of the scripts, documents affects the exegesis process. Doing one without the other is like trying to argue about the justification of recent historical events without knowing what they were.

Consider the letter of Paul to the Galatians.This encapsulates a problem of not only historicity, but of significant copyist errors (bastardized mss.) left to parse, as well as geography. Consider, even at the time of the original “letter” (assuming it was even penned by Paul), Galatia was not a single town with a single church, it was a region in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in which Paul had established churches.

When he writes to the “Galatians” therefore, is Paul writing to ONE single church or to all of them? (Presumably since he doesn’t single out any he intends his missive to go to all of them). If so, given the churches are far apart (on average 150 miles) does that mean he made multiple copies of the same letter – or did he intend one letter to circulate to all the churches of the region?Suppose he made multiple copies, how did he do it given no printing presses were available and the precise copying of merely one letter would have taken over a year.

In fact, the evidence of extant texts shows Paul dictated the letter to a scribe. (Paul’s initials, unusually large, diverge from the scale of script used in the actual letters)Problem with the dictation: Did Paul actually dictate it word for word, or did he merely spell out general points and enjoin the scribe to fill in the rest?

Here’s what we do know: What survives today is not the original copy of the letter, nor one of the first copies that Paul himself made, nor any of the copies that were produced in the towns of Galatia to which the letter was sent – nor any of the copies of those copies.The first reasonable copy we have of Galatians is a papyrus called P 46 – for the 46th New Testament papyrus to be catalogued, which dates to 200 CE (200 AD). This is roughly 150 years after Paul putatively wrote the letter.

It was in circulation – copied sometimes correctly, sometimes not, for 15 decades BEFORE any copy was made that survived to the present day. Further, we cannot reconstruct the copy from which P 46 was made.Was it accurate? If so, how accurate? It surely had mistakes of some kind, as did the copy from which it was copied. We can see all these exposed like rotting wood under the floorboards when we use textual analysis to peel back the layers!

Trustworthiness itself was often determined by consensus in the earliest writings and codices. Most present day fundamentalists aren’t even remotely aware that the content they are claiming today as “literal or inerrant words” were in fact originally “passed by committee” !

Half the oldest manuscript witness texts, including a Bodmer papyrus, the Vaticanus and Beza’s Codex omit the sentence in Luke 23: 34 which contains the words of Jesus. This level of uncertainty in the textual tradition means the interpretation of the passage was a subject of serious debate. Put briefly: half the witnesses insisted Jesus begged God’s forgiveness for “them” – the other half pretended to know nothing of the “Eloi, eloi lama sabacthani” prayer. What gives?

It is probably bogus and a later addition. Why say so? Because the earliest Greek witness papyrus (called P 75 - which dates back to 200 AD) has no such content. However, the prayer CAN be found in Codex Sinaiticus and a large range of mss. produced in the Middle Ages.

Mikey goes on to write:

“The opposite approach to Scripture is eisegesis, which is the interpretation of a passage based on a subjective, non-analytical reading. The word eisegesis literally means “to lead into,” which means the interpreter injects his own ideas into the text, making it mean whatever he wants ( can y'all spell "P-H-I-L" 'da atheist? ) .”

Actually, Mike is so blind that he can’t see HE is the one practicing Eisegesis. He does this, for example, by whole cloth invention of his own whole Biblical taxonomies (“creepers”, “crawlers” etc.) which actually have NO origin in exegesis! By exegesis, on the other hand, whether a biblical author wrote “foul goeth on all four” isn’t important, because the source itself is incidental to the authentic docetic meaning and hence irrelevant to the spiritual message for modern believers. (Most of these errors are found in Leviticus, the ancient book of Jewish laws, and so have no relevance to Gentiles anyway. After all, what Gentile husband follows the injunctions to stay away from women during their menses – as purification?)

But rather than admit this, Mikey charges ahead as if someone took his god’s head off, or acts like Don Quixote in tilting at an exegetical windmill that has no ballast.

This alone shows he is unable to differentiate what is crucial and important to understand and submit to exegesis and what isn’t. He purports to subject the WHOLE bible to it, when in fact it is only the New Testament that has relevance to the modern adherent of Yeshua. Let’s examine this using some examples to show again how Mike is hoist on his own petard:

IF MIKE truly knows exegesis – as opposed to Eisegesis- then he ought to be able to reconcile basic contradictions in Yeshua’s own reported statements, as made by the Gospel writers. Numerous examples abound but so we don’t overwork Mike’s brain let’s confine attention to just a few key ones. Certain gospel passages have Jesus contradicting himself on various points, as, for example, whether or not to fast (Mark 2:18 vs. Matthew 6:16), and why (Mark 2:20) or why not (Mark 2:19 vs. Mark 2:21-22), whether to divorce (Mark 10:11 vs. Matthew 19:9),or whether to preach to Gentiles and Samaritans (Matthew 10:5 vs. Matthew 28:19 and John 4:35-42), whether the near approach of the End may be gauged by apocalyptic signs (Luke 17:20-21 vs. Mark 13:28-29), and whether religious obligations supersede filial duties (Mark 7:9-15 vs. Matthew 8:21-22 and Luke 14:26)

CAN MIKE reconcile ANY of the above 2-sided issues from the exegesis of the respective passages? I seriously doubt it, but I challenge him to resolve just THREE – say the first two sets of conflicting statements, and the last. I challenge him to do so without resorting to more inventions, artifice, and dishonest tactics! I don't believe he's competent to do so because he isn't really capable of exegesis! What's he's capable of is endless bullshit, dodging simple facts and doctoring others (that disclose incontestable errors), and using every sort of guile he can command to attempt to escape the truth - thereby proving himself the one and only perpetrator of eisegesis!

Let's even give him a bit of break and make his job easier! Let him just reconcile (from an Exegetical basis) the following two contradictions:

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus says two different things about bearing his own witness:

1) “If I bear witness to myself, my testimony is not true” (John 5:3 1)

and


2) "Even if I do bear witness to myself, my testimony is true” (John 8:14)


So Mr. Mikey Wise Guy, use exegesis to explain this conflict. Can you do it, or will you invoke more rubbish about "Eisegesis" or some other neologism, to punt again?

Here's another to chew on:

Did Jesus ascend to Paradise the same day of the crucifixion?

According to: Luke 23:43

Yes. He said to the thief who defended him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise

According to John 20:17

No. He said to Mary Magdalen two days later, “I have not yet ascended to the Father

So, on an exegetical basis how are these two distinct claims reconciled? Or are you going to just dismiss them as an "inconsistency"?

To the true practitioner of Exegesis, unlike Mikey, there is no problem since comparison of the specific line passages to the original Aramaic forms shows a simple copyist error in translating from the Aramaic to the Greek. Once that copyist error is rectified, the passages say the same thing, or rather allude to the same time frame.

What will be interesting to see is whether Mr. Big Mouth can actually resolve these problems without interjecting his own subjective notions, definitions, ideas and taxonomies!

We will wait, and meanwhile stay tuned for Part II!

No comments: