Today, a year ago, my father was diagnosed with deadly cancer. His oncologists call it "inoperable and uncurable Stage IV Adenocarcinoma." In lay terms, it's lung cancer, crazy-mutated cells of large tumors that don't stop growing, in his lungs, and in him also on his spine, and in him also present as 6 additional tumors inside his skull, right in his brain. When I heard the doctor speak, much for me stopped. I wanted to stop blogging, to start giving as much attention as I could to my father and my mother. And my blogging did halt. However.
A big surprise for me is that Dad has been so healthy in his year-long battle against the disease. Last month, he wrote, "To this point I have not been confined to bed—nor spent one day in the hospital. This is God’s doing and we praise Him!"
And it's true. For the past 365 days, I've either been with Dad in person or have talked with him by phone, nearly daily. The early radiation on his head, to battle the brain tumors, caused a few little lapses in his short term memory. The chemotherapies have taken their toll on his hair and his strength. He prefers to walk now with a cane. But he's sharp as a tack. And he's taken time to receive hundreds of visitors into his home with my mother. Mom has been his chauffeur, since he no longer can drive a vehicle, and they've been to visit my little family's home, and one of my sibling's family's home, in cities some distance from their own home. In May, he went to his granddaughter's graduation from high school, a long ceremony in another city, and a party afterwards at our home.
A bigger surprise for me is how much healthier this man I call Dad has become spiritually. I think I've blogged some about his emotional maturity, his repentance of his past abuses, his attempts at reconciliations of all sorts with so many especially those of his household, his kindnesses to Mom and to his children and to his grandchildren. He no longer treats her as his helpmeet. He now calls her his soulmate. He now is writing about her as his best friend. He considers her his equal. He knows with his head (riddled with tumors), deeply breathes with his lungs (so full of final-stage cancer), and has resolved with his backbone (dis-eased by a mass) how wonderful she is. She is created by God in God's image. Today, on this very anniversary of his deadly cancer diagnosis, here's what he wrote: "I truly am grateful for all she does to make our lives full and meaningful. But as I pondered my thoughts, I realized that my “thank you” meant more than a word of appreciation. I was feeling gratitude for our shared life—for the person she is, for sharing the challenges and walking faithfully with me in this climb to overcome cancer, for the encouragement she gives (sometimes pushing me along)." This is, for my father, a huge change. Can we call it a conversion? Meta-Noia?
Yesterday, one of his granddaughters, my eldest daughter, was with a boyfriend. This young man was expressing to our family how he cannot read the Bible. He'd been to church. He'd heard the preacher preaching. He'd listened to this man reading the Bible. He'd drawn sharp conclusions. "The Bible says, 'Women can't preach.'" "The Bible says, 'Women have to be quiet in church.'" "The Bible says, 'Females can't wear beautiful clothes or their beauty on the outside.'" I won't have any part of that stupidity. My daughter stood up for the Bible but didn't back down for women. This is a strong young woman, one who's had a few disagreements with her grandfathers, especially with my Dad, over the biblical strengths of a woman, the biblical voices of women. My daughter has an eyebrow ring, a new ring in her nose, a couple of tattoos. This also has dismayed her grandfathers, both preachers. Both men are SBC ministers. Both are "complementarians" who have also interpreted their Bible for today as meaning that women, because they are born into bodies sexed female, cannot have any of the leadership roles above men in their homes or in their church.
Well, this granddaughter of my father knows a thing or two herself about cancer survivorship. She once had a deadly case of the disease. It had infected her liver. Long story short, she needed an organ transplant, and I was selected to be her organ donor. So there's this incarnation of me in her, which is pretty remarkable for both of us. I've found myself saying these past 15 years, "This is God’s doing and we praise Him!"
But the physical health and transformations are hardly the half of it. It's the deep spiritual and relational changes that count most for me. And my daughter, her mother, her grandmothers, have continued to be equal with her grandfathers and her father, equal in the image of God, equally created, equally capable and called in leadership roles of various sorts. My daughter did not have to be silent to her boyfriend yesterday. He didn't like what he'd heard from a complementarian preacher; and so he'd given up on the Bible and its messages of creation and re-creation and the beauty of God's image in women and in men. But my daughter didn't shut up. She's encouraging him to listen to her, to listen to other ways to listen to the scriptures. There's an incarnation there, which stresses humanity and humanness and not one sex exclusive of or in complement to or over the other.
Jane Stranz, blogger, yesterday writes of ways three bloggers have inspired and intrigued her. She kindly included me among two of my favorite bloggers, Suzanne, and David. And Jane also said of me that I have "had several blogging incarnations but despite a bit of time offline is still very much on form these days." Indeed, around a year ago I noticed, "I’ve blogged at four different blogs, saying many different things." And then Dad got sick, was facing the worst, and I was pretty sure for a good while that I didn't want to say anything anymore. Sitting with Mom, waiting, I was sure it was good to be with them much more as much as I was able. But then Dad started modeling health to me in new and fresh ways, the health of a biblical man, coming into biblical manhood. As long as I could, I wanted to blog more about that. Some days, there's an inspiration from the incarnations. Some days there's not. Today there is!
Showing posts with label blogging post dissertation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging post dissertation. Show all posts
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Women Writer Bans, but where you can still go to read them
"I’m happy to unblock you for the occasion. I would only ask that you keep to the subject."
--a prominent biblioblogger consistently in the Top 50 (do I have to tell you he's a man?), addressing a woman publicly
"The difficulty is that ANY conversation can end up including gender issues. For example, if a man expresses disbelief in a woman having read the Illiad, that might trigger me to respond that I have read it in Greek, and that this notion that some men have of women not being truly literate, is a block to full fellowship between men and women.... The last time you blocked me for “vitriol” I emailed the young man that I was in conversation with – you often tend to block me mid-thread and do not indicate to the other participants on the blog that I cannot answer them. He said that he was unaware of anything that I had said that caused me to be blocked or called names, and expressed his regrets, and we continued our conversation by email. But usually I am not able to do that, not knowing the email. Since I am unaware of teh exact boundaries that will trigger you to block me mid-thread, I would still prefer for conversations here not to be tracked over to your blog."
--that woman blogger, and a couple of her banned comments at Better Bibles Blog
I think it was the day after my Ph.D. graduation that my post entitled "Miss Piss Tiss" got overwhelmed with comments. When I decided to retire from blogging not long afterward, I agreed to delete some of the thread because of some of the public and disparaging comments of one male blogger about one female blogger, who is rightly concerned with bans of women from various domains of public discourse. It was her request. I still find - through RSS feeds - comments made and later deleted from public view. And I'm always committed to showing such comments here at this blog, as and when the commenters want them shown; likewise, I'm always happy to hide the record at the request of those most injured. This has happened more than once.
Now, on a happier note, there are many places where we readers - women and men - can still read women writers freely.
Judy Redman, bible scholar and blogger and woman, for example, has posted where she and others are being published:
Suzanne McCarthy, linguist and teacher, has posted where "women are blogging about what life was like under patriarchy":
April D. DeConick, Professor of Biblical Studies, Director of Graduate Studies in Religion, and author, has published a very active "Women and Religion Blog Roll." Reproduced here are the bloggers' blogsite titles, and the titles of their most recent blogposts:
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Pheminist Phooh
If the Christian bible writer Paul can dump his Star of David like far-flung doggy doo doo, then a "good" biblioblogger ought at least to be able to go beyond the concerns of gender and race and class. Right? "Amen and aMen," so say the really Big BiblioBloggers.
(But more on all that in a moment. First this:
>Never mind that this Humble Little guy named שָׁאוּל and also called Παῦλος never ever ever divorces his Joshua aka "Jesus" from his Jewishness.
>Never mind that this blogger is ever concerned with how this ever Jewish rabbi is always concerned with gender, race, and class.
>Never mind that Paul is writing "Christian politically incorrect" words like σκύβαλα - which another Joshua aka "Jesus" uses first to translate some politically incorrect Hebrew, all of which gets dumped from the bible as the unwise "Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach" especially Chapter 27, Verse 4, in which puppy pooh remains for humans even after the canonical siftings.
>Never mind that this blogger's blog has a "Christian politically incorrect" middle name, "feminist" - which one must accurately point out is purposefully left out of all the Bible texts, especially those few "respectable" texts that "include" so-called "non-feminist alterity.")
Now, back to the point. The point is that there is a problem with "feminist" blogging in the biblioblogosphere. (And let's not mark the biblioblogosphere with maleness -- can't we all just get beyond, like God is?)
The problem was a serious problem of conviviality back in 2007 at SBL.
It is a problem now. One big problem we can all sympathize with - given our common desire for a post-sexist, post-racial, post-classist society - is that messengers (such as the word feminism) tend to get shot in church on a Sunday morning. In other words, we all tend to forget that sexism runs deep in the dark places, our own dark places, our own blogosphere, where you can't even see your compass or your mirror as if you're willing there to look at a compass or in a mirror at all.
The Biggest problem now, however, seems to be that the sure fact that little bloggers like me just really might "contribute to creating an environment in which Bible readers who do not share [my so-called] passionately chosen brand of feminism will [therefore,] feel free to ignore and even disrespect [my] particular alterity."
Alas! I myself have other concerns. Alas!
Alas! My associations with Jane Stranz and her "living, laughing, liturgical" brand of feminism have become public. Hence, I'm getting all these Pheminist Phoohy blogger awards lately. And, after reading each of Aristotle's terribly numerous works on Animals, I thought I was only working to rid the world of sexism among hippos. (Careful Suzanne, Jane just might also bring down your now-very-well-read Bookshelf.)
Alas! I haven't even come close to earning enough cash for my very own "Lingamish franchise." (I think I only get paid when David the Hippo Ker visits my blog, and there's only $6.66 in the bank now.)
Alas! John F. Hobbins keeps picking on me at James R. Getz Jr.'s Carnival. And James won't let Julia M. O'Brien sit between us. The only help he offers is "good grammar" and the imperative "don't panic!"
Alas! The Month of May made me put on my thinking cap for #1 Top Biblioblogger Dr. Jim "why does gender matter?" West, who deserves congratulations for being crowned Mr. March and Mr. April and Mr. May.
---
(But more on all that in a moment. First this:
>Never mind that this Humble Little guy named שָׁאוּל and also called Παῦλος never ever ever divorces his Joshua aka "Jesus" from his Jewishness.
>Never mind that this blogger is ever concerned with how this ever Jewish rabbi is always concerned with gender, race, and class.
>Never mind that Paul is writing "Christian politically incorrect" words like σκύβαλα - which another Joshua aka "Jesus" uses first to translate some politically incorrect Hebrew, all of which gets dumped from the bible as the unwise "Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach" especially Chapter 27, Verse 4, in which puppy pooh remains for humans even after the canonical siftings.
>Never mind that this blogger's blog has a "Christian politically incorrect" middle name, "feminist" - which one must accurately point out is purposefully left out of all the Bible texts, especially those few "respectable" texts that "include" so-called "non-feminist alterity.")
Now, back to the point. The point is that there is a problem with "feminist" blogging in the biblioblogosphere. (And let's not mark the biblioblogosphere with maleness -- can't we all just get beyond, like God is?)
The problem was a serious problem of conviviality back in 2007 at SBL.
It is a problem now. One big problem we can all sympathize with - given our common desire for a post-sexist, post-racial, post-classist society - is that messengers (such as the word feminism) tend to get shot in church on a Sunday morning. In other words, we all tend to forget that sexism runs deep in the dark places, our own dark places, our own blogosphere, where you can't even see your compass or your mirror as if you're willing there to look at a compass or in a mirror at all.
The Biggest problem now, however, seems to be that the sure fact that little bloggers like me just really might "contribute to creating an environment in which Bible readers who do not share [my so-called] passionately chosen brand of feminism will [therefore,] feel free to ignore and even disrespect [my] particular alterity."
Alas! I myself have other concerns. Alas!
Alas! My associations with Jane Stranz and her "living, laughing, liturgical" brand of feminism have become public. Hence, I'm getting all these Pheminist Phoohy blogger awards lately. And, after reading each of Aristotle's terribly numerous works on Animals, I thought I was only working to rid the world of sexism among hippos. (Careful Suzanne, Jane just might also bring down your now-very-well-read Bookshelf.)
Alas! I haven't even come close to earning enough cash for my very own "Lingamish franchise." (I think I only get paid when David the Hippo Ker visits my blog, and there's only $6.66 in the bank now.)
Alas! John F. Hobbins keeps picking on me at James R. Getz Jr.'s Carnival. And James won't let Julia M. O'Brien sit between us. The only help he offers is "good grammar" and the imperative "don't panic!"
Alas! The Month of May made me put on my thinking cap for #1 Top Biblioblogger Dr. Jim "why does gender matter?" West, who deserves congratulations for being crowned Mr. March and Mr. April and Mr. May.
---
Coda
Lest my babbling above is not clear, I'm looking for the smile on your face. I count you all as my friends. What you say here in comments and in posts at your own blogs constantly challenges and amazes and encourages me. I'm okay when people like Polycarp pick on me for my Ph.D., a harassment which he rationalized in vain by claiming, once upon a time, [quote], "Since J.K. Gayle has stopped blogging, I have been trying to find a balance to my acknowledged masculine viewpoint which would challenge me to look through another’s eyes." I am quite alright with people like Tonya and Daniel at their Hebrew and Greek Reader looking for things that shouldn't be there, and when people like N.T. Wrong, who never really was, aren't there any more but still come around for conversation as if critical theory and the Enlightenment weren't dead. I love it when people like Jared Calaway at his Antiquitopia can advise us: "be creative, stick your head out and see what people are doing in other fields."
My sadness is that the "feminist" label in some contexts works as the "Bible" label works in others. My affinity with feminists is more profound perhaps than mine with bible bloggers because feminists tend more generally to be much more inclusive (both personally and methodologically). The awards above tend, nonetheless, to cause us blogging against sexism to be suspicious of the power afforded the many male-dominant voices. We see how many are silenced by phallogocentric interpretations and translations and bloggings of "the Bible."
My hope is that we all can listen rhetorically, translatively, feministically, biblically, playfully. Not just listening to refute but rather listening to render what the Other is saying - and thereby finding ourselves, our bodies, repositioned however differently. Otherwise, it just sounds like more Phe-men-ist Phooh and biblical Boo!
(ps:
My post title comes from the effort of one of my friends to translate Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne from English into another of her languages. She rightly noted that other translators had neglected the play in the feminine name Winnie for the male bear - even though everyone knows that the author only intended originally to name his character after Winnipeg, a real bear in the London zoo. Winnie, of course, as the feminine diminutive of Winifred also plays on Whinny [as in the Whinny womanly Fred]. And now not a few writers have taken Pooh to mean what it sounds like. Thus, Frederick Crews authors The Pooh Perplex, which we all say aloud and laugh. [Didn't even chuckle? Well, say The Pooper Plex for an academic work.] This authorizes Benjamin Hoff, as if aspiring to the crap of the Ivory Tow-er, to write The Tao of Pooh. And not to be outdone, Crews goes beyond that stuff with Postmodern Pooh. The last book mentioned includes several women writers, and many feminists, not the least of which is one Ms Sisera Cathetera, whose contribution is the punny chapter, "Just Lack A Woman." I think we get the point. If we're smiling we do. Please feel free to smile, to ignore, or even to disrespect.)
My sadness is that the "feminist" label in some contexts works as the "Bible" label works in others. My affinity with feminists is more profound perhaps than mine with bible bloggers because feminists tend more generally to be much more inclusive (both personally and methodologically). The awards above tend, nonetheless, to cause us blogging against sexism to be suspicious of the power afforded the many male-dominant voices. We see how many are silenced by phallogocentric interpretations and translations and bloggings of "the Bible."
My hope is that we all can listen rhetorically, translatively, feministically, biblically, playfully. Not just listening to refute but rather listening to render what the Other is saying - and thereby finding ourselves, our bodies, repositioned however differently. Otherwise, it just sounds like more Phe-men-ist Phooh and biblical Boo!
(ps:
My post title comes from the effort of one of my friends to translate Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne from English into another of her languages. She rightly noted that other translators had neglected the play in the feminine name Winnie for the male bear - even though everyone knows that the author only intended originally to name his character after Winnipeg, a real bear in the London zoo. Winnie, of course, as the feminine diminutive of Winifred also plays on Whinny [as in the Whinny womanly Fred]. And now not a few writers have taken Pooh to mean what it sounds like. Thus, Frederick Crews authors The Pooh Perplex, which we all say aloud and laugh. [Didn't even chuckle? Well, say The Pooper Plex for an academic work.] This authorizes Benjamin Hoff, as if aspiring to the crap of the Ivory Tow-er, to write The Tao of Pooh. And not to be outdone, Crews goes beyond that stuff with Postmodern Pooh. The last book mentioned includes several women writers, and many feminists, not the least of which is one Ms Sisera Cathetera, whose contribution is the punny chapter, "Just Lack A Woman." I think we get the point. If we're smiling we do. Please feel free to smile, to ignore, or even to disrespect.)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Dear John Hobbins: Have You Censored Me?
Dear John,
When I try now to make a response to your post, "A Response to Kurk Gayle," I only get this: "The page at ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com says: We're sorry, we cannot accept this data." I really was trying to continue the dialog you began. And I do appreciate Jay's comment on your post too. Here's how I was starting to respond:
Jay - In reading Exodus (all of it even in English and not just "LXX Exodus 21:22-25"), you really get us wondering about what John says about how it is there are so many (of us) for whom "the Bible functions as light, mirror, and compass." How is it that this thing so functions? As if it is a Natural or supernatural thing in itself, so imposing on its readers. This makes us think too of what Katherine recently claims in a comment on a post at my blog: her her.meneutics. And there's that Spirit of God you mention.
John - Where do I begin with your charges against me? Augustine as if the Aristotelian binary buster?
In Book IV of De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine says,
"if anyone, unlearnedly learned, so to speak, contend that the Apostle [Paul] has followed the rules of [pagan, Greek] rhetoric, will he not be laughed at by Christians, cultured and uncultured alike? And still we recognize here the figure called in Greek χλιμαξ, in Latin by some, gradatio . . . . But this, and things of this kind are set forth in the art of oratory. So, though we do not say that the Apostle followed the rules of eloquence, still, we do not deny that eloquence followed close upon his wisdom."
Augustine goes on to say,
"But some perhaps may think that I have chosen the Apostle Paul as the example of our eloquence. . . . And so I see that I must say something also of the eloquence of the Prophets, greatly cloaked as it is in a metaphorical style. The more, however, that they seem obscure by the use of figurative expressions, the more pleasing they are when their meaning has been made clear. . . .
[The Prophet Amos, for example,] was by divine appointment taken and sent to prophesy to the people of God: but not according to the Septuagint translators, who even themselves, working under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, seem for this very reason to have expressed some things in a different way, in order that the attention of the reader might be rather directed to a study of the spiritual sense--and thus some of their passages are even more obscure because more figurative."
Augustine goes even further to suggest that oratory (i.e., the pagan stuff of Greek rhetorics) is from God himself. He (Augustine) has lots of thoughts about how and whether such rhetoric must be taught, as if by law, by rules, my mandate, by proposition. (They shouldn't, he says.)
What Augustine writes is very close, in method, to what many feminisms do. Notice that Augustine allows the Septuagint translators to be fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, to follow pagan rhetoric - as it were -, and to say something different or at least differently from their Prophet who speaks in firmly-written Hebrew.
(My only personal defense to any of your charges at this point is this: have I called myself either a biblioblogger or a feminist blogger?)
When I try now to make a response to your post, "A Response to Kurk Gayle," I only get this: "The page at ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com says: We're sorry, we cannot accept this data." I really was trying to continue the dialog you began. And I do appreciate Jay's comment on your post too. Here's how I was starting to respond:
Jay - In reading Exodus (all of it even in English and not just "LXX Exodus 21:22-25"), you really get us wondering about what John says about how it is there are so many (of us) for whom "the Bible functions as light, mirror, and compass." How is it that this thing so functions? As if it is a Natural or supernatural thing in itself, so imposing on its readers. This makes us think too of what Katherine recently claims in a comment on a post at my blog: her her.meneutics. And there's that Spirit of God you mention.
John - Where do I begin with your charges against me? Augustine as if the Aristotelian binary buster?
In Book IV of De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine says,
"if anyone, unlearnedly learned, so to speak, contend that the Apostle [Paul] has followed the rules of [pagan, Greek] rhetoric, will he not be laughed at by Christians, cultured and uncultured alike? And still we recognize here the figure called in Greek χλιμαξ, in Latin by some, gradatio . . . . But this, and things of this kind are set forth in the art of oratory. So, though we do not say that the Apostle followed the rules of eloquence, still, we do not deny that eloquence followed close upon his wisdom."
Augustine goes on to say,
"But some perhaps may think that I have chosen the Apostle Paul as the example of our eloquence. . . . And so I see that I must say something also of the eloquence of the Prophets, greatly cloaked as it is in a metaphorical style. The more, however, that they seem obscure by the use of figurative expressions, the more pleasing they are when their meaning has been made clear. . . .
[The Prophet Amos, for example,] was by divine appointment taken and sent to prophesy to the people of God: but not according to the Septuagint translators, who even themselves, working under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, seem for this very reason to have expressed some things in a different way, in order that the attention of the reader might be rather directed to a study of the spiritual sense--and thus some of their passages are even more obscure because more figurative."
Augustine goes even further to suggest that oratory (i.e., the pagan stuff of Greek rhetorics) is from God himself. He (Augustine) has lots of thoughts about how and whether such rhetoric must be taught, as if by law, by rules, my mandate, by proposition. (They shouldn't, he says.)
What Augustine writes is very close, in method, to what many feminisms do. Notice that Augustine allows the Septuagint translators to be fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, to follow pagan rhetoric - as it were -, and to say something different or at least differently from their Prophet who speaks in firmly-written Hebrew.
(My only personal defense to any of your charges at this point is this: have I called myself either a biblioblogger or a feminist blogger?)
One of My Addictions
may be one of yours too. But who's denying blogging is addicting while reading this post?
And what do you think of intermonk's
And what do you think of intermonk's
Random Thoughts About The Internet: What I’m Doing With It, What It’s Doing To Us, How It’s Changed Me, Etc.
And have you checked your ownSigns of Blog Addiction?
Good Grief, J. K. Gayle
We all hope he'll post more on David E. S. Stein's “On Beyond Gender: The Representation of God in the Torah and in Three Recent English Renditions” published in Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues.
I'm listening, instead, to John Hobbins dedicating an entire blog post to me. "Dear," he starts and calls me by a nickname my father gave me when I was a tiny baby. As I listen to his charges, to his list, to his "I've been meaning to. . . " - I remember hearing my father when I was in grade school telling me not to say "Good grief" or "rats" or any of those "disrepectful things" that characterized the Peanuts comic book characters' speech. He made his meaning clear in various ways, many of which I felt profoundly. When I was sent away to boarding school he sent money after me if I would read (and when I could convince the dorm father I had memorized particular passages of) the Bible. When I went to undergraduate school he was not there (and neither were the fathers of two of my dear missionary-kid friends who ended their own lives prematurely - renouncing Christ and his heaven eternally according to those fathers of theirs). Lots of water under the bridge. Didn't I blog for you already how my father accepted my invitation to the defense of my dissertation some months back? How he took the opportunity to question me there in public, as if my "feminist rhetorical translating of the Rhetoric of Aristotle" were somehow a threat to Nature and the nature of things as they really are?
This post of mine is not Plato's Socrates' apology. It is not my dissertation defense all over again. I don't think it's even valuable to review, here, the values of feminisms, rhetorics, or translating with respect to sexist texts of patriarchal men. I had, some of you remember, started blogging when doing research and stopped for various unspeakable reasons. John Hobbins has outlined, more recently, several charges desde él en mi contra. Here are some:
The elephant in this room, for me, is why and how this is such a huge thing for John Hobbins. I've grieved at how certain voices of a certain individual have been silenced at his blog, perhaps because she's a woman or speaks (out) feministically, and how he's watching water run under the bridge. This isn't to minimize John's charges. But aren't there other things to talk about when talking about the Nature of the Bible and of bible reading?
I'm listening, instead, to John Hobbins dedicating an entire blog post to me. "Dear," he starts and calls me by a nickname my father gave me when I was a tiny baby. As I listen to his charges, to his list, to his "I've been meaning to. . . " - I remember hearing my father when I was in grade school telling me not to say "Good grief" or "rats" or any of those "disrepectful things" that characterized the Peanuts comic book characters' speech. He made his meaning clear in various ways, many of which I felt profoundly. When I was sent away to boarding school he sent money after me if I would read (and when I could convince the dorm father I had memorized particular passages of) the Bible. When I went to undergraduate school he was not there (and neither were the fathers of two of my dear missionary-kid friends who ended their own lives prematurely - renouncing Christ and his heaven eternally according to those fathers of theirs). Lots of water under the bridge. Didn't I blog for you already how my father accepted my invitation to the defense of my dissertation some months back? How he took the opportunity to question me there in public, as if my "feminist rhetorical translating of the Rhetoric of Aristotle" were somehow a threat to Nature and the nature of things as they really are?
This post of mine is not Plato's Socrates' apology. It is not my dissertation defense all over again. I don't think it's even valuable to review, here, the values of feminisms, rhetorics, or translating with respect to sexist texts of patriarchal men. I had, some of you remember, started blogging when doing research and stopped for various unspeakable reasons. John Hobbins has outlined, more recently, several charges desde él en mi contra. Here are some:
- "Most people for whom the Bible functions as light, mirror, and compass, are not going to give you the time of day, as you must realize by now, because they hear you saying that the Bible is darkness, profoundly distorting as an instrument of self-examination"
- "exactly what you are saying [is. . . ] 'sexism in the Bible,' as it works itself out in precept and teaching, is equivalent to the waterboarding of women"
- "the 'love patriarchy' of Ephesians 5 is still 'patriarchy' . . . But . . . the 'love patriarchy' of 'the Pauline economy' is no better (and perhaps worse) than that of Aristotle."
- "the Bible is darkness, profoundly distorting as an instrument of self-examination, and in need of a 'strong reading' from the outside in order to render it innocuous."
- "the Bible is imperfect and fallible - except for the parts we like based on some external criterion"
- "you are unwilling to go down the path of reciprocity with those who are not feminists after your own heart."
- "you speak of 'bibliobloggers' on the one hand, and 'feminist' bloggers, a category you identify with, on the other. . . . you developed this binary opposition in the context of a defense of Obama's pro-choice positions"
- "people today, and Christians, too, hold very different opinions on abortion, Obama, and many other subjects, with defensible reasons in each case. The tone in your relevant post suggests that you may not."
- you perhaps do not "respect the alterity of the texts, their non-feminist alterity included."
- likely "you contribute to creating an environment in which Bible readers who do not share your passionately chosen brand of feminism will feel free to ignore and even disrespect your particular alterity."
The elephant in this room, for me, is why and how this is such a huge thing for John Hobbins. I've grieved at how certain voices of a certain individual have been silenced at his blog, perhaps because she's a woman or speaks (out) feministically, and how he's watching water run under the bridge. This isn't to minimize John's charges. But aren't there other things to talk about when talking about the Nature of the Bible and of bible reading?
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