Jacob

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  • DooneDoone Shipmate


    [/quote]

    Well, I tried to remember where I got the Lewis stuff (he has a huge corpus of work, which all runs together in my head at this point) and found this, his "Fernseed and Elephants" essay, which is not a bad place to start. https://normangeisler.com/fernseeds-elephants/ There are likely to be other places he addresses such issues, both for the Bible and for texts like Shakespeare, Homer, etc. (He was a Classics man who ended up writing the Oxford History of English Literature volume Poetry and Prose in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama), so he's got expertise in both. I'd try the various collections of his essays that are out there.

    If you're interested in the way orality vs. literacy (or digitalism (?)) affects texts and authors, try Walter Ong, who has several books on the subject, including (of course) Orality and Literacy and also The Presence of the Word.

    One very important thing to remember (which is rather a "yeah, duh" moment for me) is that communities do not author texts; individuals do. In the end it comes down to one person opening his/her mouth, taking up his/her pen, sitting at his/her keyboard--and making decisions on how to tell a story. Texts simply do not "grow" organically, as a great deal of critical literature implies through its phrasing. Every change that is made, is made for a reason (either intentional or accidental). And THAT means that we have a fighting chance of understanding the text and what the author meant by it, simply by virtue of being fellow human beings. We may not belong to his/her time and culture, but we can learn as much as possible about that spot in space/time, and also draw on our own knowledge of human nature to help. That is sometimes shockingly illuminating--and other times, mundanely illuminating, but still, I'll take whatever I can get.[/quote]

    Thank you for your suggestions, I’ll let you know how I get on!

    I’m really enjoying this thread and everyone’s thoughtful contributions.
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    One very important thing to remember (which is rather a "yeah, duh" moment for me) is that communities do not author texts; individuals do. In the end it comes down to one person opening his/her mouth, taking up his/her pen, sitting at his/her keyboard--and making decisions on how to tell a story. Texts simply do not "grow" organically, as a great deal of critical literature implies through its phrasing. Every change that is made, is made for a reason (either intentional or accidental).
    Given that I said this a bit upthread:
    As I approach scripture, I see them as the writings/stories of a community, not of individual authors, and they’ve ended up where they have because of how the community has told the stories over time.
    I think maybe it’s worth saying I don’t disagree with you that it’s individuals, not communities, who actually author texts. I don’t necessarily think it’s an either/or thing, though, at least not when the texts at issue commit to writing stories that have been told and passed along in community. The author certainly makes choices of exactly what to say and what not to say, of how to tell the story, but the clay they’re working with, so to mix the metaphor, is clay prepared by those who have passed to story along.

    And then the community that takes the written stories as its own interprets them. Which is why, when it comes to Scripture, I think “what did the author(s) intend here?” and “how have the people of God understood this text?” are both valid questions.

  • Surely. I wasn't in fact aiming that point in your direction. Reader reception theory has a lot of good things going for it, and only a fool could deny that Scripture--or Shakespeare--was based on pre-existing stories, events, material, and so forth.

    No, I was thinking of certain fools I was forced to read in graduate school, or read later via my husband in seminary, who seem to think that texts "just grow" like mushrooms, without the intervention of human intention or choice.
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    I’ve read your CS Lewis link and it was very useful, especially, as you suggested, in what he said about the assumptions being made about his own work. I shall now see if I can access the book recommendations.
    Oh, I’m not expecting a response, as your wonderful Heaven thread must be taking a lot of your time - I am really enjoying reading that as well!
  • I'm glad it helped. I am avoiding work (of course!) and so may turn up way more than I ought on various threads... :lol:
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    😂👍🏻
  • To the point that only individuals write a story. Not so fast. Take 20 people. Whisper a short story to one person and have her whisper that story to another person and so on. Likely, that story will be significantly changed by the time the last person repeats the story to you. Each time the story was passed on, it was changed, sometimes slightly, other times quite radically. Even if you want to argue that Moses was the person who wrote everything down, that story would have been passed through several generations before he put pen to paper--or papyri. Consequently, the stories of Jacob could have gone through several changes.

    Myself, I think the stories were likely written long after Moses was gone, probably shortly after the Babylonian captivity when Israel was trying to distinguish itself from all the other cultures. Both stories came from two separate sources, but ultimately someone did put them together. Gerhard von Rad wrote an excellent commentary on Genesis which discussed why the redactor put these two stories together. Unfortunately, I gave my copy of that commentary to a Lutheran Seminary in Africa several months ago.
  • I'd recommend you having a look at Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy--take a look particularly at the chapters on oral memorization and on Homer. He may have handled these issues in other places at greater depth, but that is the book I remember best. Oral cultures have safeguards built in to the transmission process, particularly in the case of important narratives handed down by bards/griots/whatever you want to call them. Memory, too, is a very different beastie when you are not dependent on writing, printing, or digital memory substitutes. Even cultures where writing has been a presence for many, many years (such as St. Paul's), often retain the oral habits of memory that allow them to do what he did--memorize the whole Old Testament, and not be considered an incredible wonder (as he would today). You might consider in this connection the Quran memorization schools as well. Orality and literacy are not mutually excluding, and your example of the "telephone game" is unfortunately over-simplified. Do try Ong!
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    Yes, I think we do underestimate the ability of ancient peoples to maintain the the integrity of their oral traditions. @Lamb Chopped, I have the Ong book on my Christmas present book list, as it’s a bit expensive to justify the cost at the moment, but I will read it!
  • Try used bookstores, especially academic. It's not precisely light reading, and I'm willing to bet a great many grad students lighten their load at the end of the semester.
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    I will, thank you.
  • jay_emmjay_emm Shipmate
    I came across the story, semi-unexpectedly (I was looking up the meanings of the children's names), and found I'd forgotten/never noticed that it was part of a bigger encounter.

    Jacob runs away from Laban. Laban catches him up at a campsite. They make a treaty and Laban goes. Then (as he leaves) angels of god come to see him, and he says this is God's camp and calls it 2 camps*. Then he sends to Esau and sends his family ahead and stays overnight at (which?) camp. And Then someone wrestles with him.

    i'm not sure what to make of it.
  • On the question of authorship by individuals or communities, there are problematic cases. For instance, Raymond Carver. Carver is well-known for his concise style. But that style was foisted on him by his editor, Gordon Lish, who cut him down heavily, to Carver's chagrin. So if you take one of the stories edited by Lish I don't know that you can say that Carver was solely the author.
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