So the topic from last class that struck me the most was looking at the Gospels as works of fiction, instead of biographies. The idea of creating recordings of a person's life that is intentionally embellished, as well as known by all the readers (or listeners as it may be) that the story is embellished because stating just the facts of the biography would not be sufficient to convey the necessary level of awe required for such a great figure of history.
What also interested me about this topic was the fact that the idea that the Gospels are a literal truth only came about due to institutionalization of the religion. Only when the religion became large enough to require institutional organization did it become something that allows for fanaticism to take over. One wonders what that says about humankind on the whole.
The problem with interpreting the Gospels either way is simply that we lack the original context - obvious fiction to the contemporary apostles is ambiguous value to us. While oral tradition could preserve the original meaning for a good time, when the Romans institutionalized the religion, they essentially just employed what they were doing beforehand - forcing mindless obedience. The issue here is that you can't do that. Religion has to be a free choice, otherwise it's not a valuable endeavor to its disciples. I think that's what people fail to understand all across the board.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input. It sounds like the best way of describing what the Gospels became under the Romans, in contrast to what it was before then (and should have stayed as) is like contrasting White and Green Mana of Magic the Gathering. White is focused on order, protection and control, where Green focuses on nature, letting things change on their own, and having a community. Religion is more of a White Mana concept, but faith is more Green.
DeleteMy one caveat to Kaz's original post is that the use of the term "embellishment" risks trivializing both the process and the text. If you start with the assumption that history is BETTER than literature, or somehow more important or real, then literary construction on a historical model seems like mere frosting on the lily. But what if both history and literature are indispensable, and have different but equally imortant roles to play in human life?
ReplyDelete