Right now I am working on an SBL paper on Mark 1:1, “The Son of God Was in the Beginning” (perhaps you can guess from the title which reading I am arguing for). In any case I am working through the patristic citations, which has been very rewarding. One very important father who cite Mark 1:1 is Origen.
Interesting enough. But what inspired Tommy to share? He says:
This post has been inspired by an odd dream I had tonight, which I only remember fragmentarily. I dreamt I was going on a bus travel to Caesarea with other text-critics to somehow find out the truth about the Caesarean text. I remember entering the bus and taking my seat beside Ulrich Schmid when suddenly I realized that I had forgotten to bring my luggage! I had to climb off the bus and I missed the trip. I wonder if the other guys found the Caesarean text.
Wow! Who knows…had Tommy made the trip, he may well have come away with an answer! Now if only I could dream up the perfect dissertation!
Wisebread.com lists caffeine contents in various drinks, foods, and medications, including my favorite… espresso! So how about that coffee?
Coffee
Coffee varies in caffeine content drastically, even in the same coffeehouse, on the same day. Everything from roast styles to brewing methods affect the amount of caffeine you get. The lighter the roast, the more caffeine it has.
Starbucks (Grande) iced coffee, 16 oz: 190 mg. This is double-brewed. Without the ice it contains 380mg.
Starbucks brewed coffee, 16 oz: 330 mg. Brewed coffee has 50% more caffeine on average than instant coffee.
After completing the brief series on existentialism and hermeneutics (pt 1, pt 2, pt 3), I noticed a few related discussion around the way worth mentioning:
2. Ken Schenck shares an introduction to a paper he is writing in which he will attempt to build a bridge “across the ugly ditch between historical-contextual interpretations of individual biblical books and a holistic Christian perspective on Scripture as a whole.”
3. Ben Byerlyinteracts briefly with Schenck, most interestingly suggesting that coherence in a reader-centered approach must mean “internal coherence.” (I have a few thoughts on ‘coherence’, perhaps for another time).
I would love to see more discussion related to the problem (from my perspective) of multiple meanings (cf. previous post).
[Be sure to catch part 1 and part 2, first, and note Mike's comment in p2 which highlights the importance of the terms we use when discussing philosophy].
The Strength of an Existential Approach to the Text?
Our kitten 'experiencing' a text.
Sure…reading a text is an experience of sorts. Paul Ricoeur emphasized that reading a text leads to self-understanding. I liken this idea to the phrase “letting the text read you.” Ricoeur would say (if I understand him correctly) that when a reader encounters a text, an event takes place in which the world of the text is disclosed to the reader, and at the same time, the reader gains perspective on his or her own relation to the world of the text (and in this sense, develops self-understanding).
In other words, we learn about ourself, our own views, our understanding of things when we read a text. I’ve heard similar ideas from the pulpit–“Don’t just read the Bible. Let the Bible read you”–followed by a reference to Heb. 4:12. Certainly there is truth to this (though I have my doubts as to whether the Hebrews passage is an appropriate prooftext!).
Weaknesses
Even so, it does not necessarily follow that the primary function of interpretation is self-understanding. Nor do I care to follow Ricoeur in his view that a text is relatively autonomous from its author (though he seems to suggest that the experience of a text possesses a vague link to what he calls a ‘founding event’…perhaps a link to a historical author and situation).
In some cases, existentialism questions whether an interpreter can really get at that historical context of a passage, the intentions of an author, and any meaning as perceived by an original reader (for example, an original reader of Paul’s letter to the Romans). Rather than worry about that, they suggest the modern day reader ought to meet the text half-way and dance together (my metaphor, not theirs so far as I know). My experience (no pun intended) suggests to me, however, that historical context can be reestablished accurately, and such information has bearing on the meaning of the text.
The Problem of Multiple Meanings
One other critique is that an existential approach (like that of Gadamer or Ricoeur) can result in multiple and divergent meanings. While this is welcomed by many interpreters today, I contend that multiple interpreters can reasonably perceive the same meaning in a text–a meaning which largely reflects the meaning intended by the author (I think I just heard gasps from the reader-response folks). I suppose I mean to suggests that the ‘gist’ of the meaning reasonably comes through. Sure, we lose some of the meaning, but not usually essential meaning.
Existentialism is a philosophy which emphasizes subjective experience over against subjective rationality. I think of it as the view that all of life is like playing a tape (DVD or MP4 or your format of choice)–Someone has pushed play, and there are no other controls such as pause, rewind, or fast-forward. Thus, everything is NOW. Reality happens. Even when we think, observe, analyze, etc., we do so in the here and now.
In this view, history becomes somewhat fuzzy because we cannot revisit it (rewind). We can contemplate a memory that we have, but even this takes place as an event (an important term in existential thought) in the present. We might also read a text which reports ‘historical’ events. Still, the reading and reflecting on such a text is done in the present, too.
Meaning
So what about meaning? As you might have guessed, the meaning of a text (according to many existentialists) is not found in a text or in the author of the text. Rather, meaning happens as you ‘experience’ the text.
Recall our movie player illustration above. We only have a play button. Thus, in this movie you cannot read a book and rewind to find the author’s original intent. Traces of the author might be found as you read the text (an event in the present), but this may or may not correspond to the author’s original intent. Further, since the play button is pressed, meaning is best thought of in terms of an experience, not a thing or object that lives somewhere else (like in an author).
Strengths and Weaknesses
This view has weaknesses (though it is not without certain strengths, too). In the next post, I will offer a brief critique.
Hermeneutics asks such questions as, Where does the meaning of a text reside (if it has meaning at all)? How does one interpret a text? Does a text have a singular (or primary) meaning? What criteria are reasonable (if any) to determine whether or not a meaning is incorrect? Answers to such questions are directly related to one’s views about reality and about our experience of reality.
In a seminar on hermeneutics, I just finished up some reading and discussion of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, especially as their work in the 20th century affected hermeneutics. Both were influenced by Heidegger’s existentialism, a philosophy which asserts that “existence comes before essence” (a popular definition, but a phrase I find difficult to trace to any one individual). Of course, there is more to Heidegger than this, and I doubt I fully understand him. Even so, what I am interested in doing here (in perhaps two or three posts) is briefly demonstrating how one’s view of reality affects hermeneutics…in this case, how existentialism affects hermeneutics.
Zotero is a firefox browser plugin which can do some quite amazing things (and save you tons of time in the process). I’ve been using it for about a year now, and I love it. For more info, you might check out Lifehacker.com’s recent post, or some of Thomas Keene’s posts on the topic (he uses it in the context of biblical/theological studies).
Problem: When I run Windows XP in Parallels, I cannot run a program (in my case, Logos) which is on a partition separate from the one from which Parallels runs. (I split my hard drive into 3 partitions: (1) mac osx; (2) extra stuff (FAT32); and (3) Windows XP. Logos is on “extra stuff” drive, but Windows would not recognize it properly when running inside the Parallels program.)
Solution:
Best instructions are found here. Instructions were written for Parallels Desktop 4, but they worked for me in PD5.
In this scenario, the Mac’s hard disk is partitioned into 3 volumes:
- Macintosh HD (HFS+, Mac OS default)
- Data (NTFS)
- Windows (NTFS, created by Boot Camp Assistant)
[I set this up like this...]
The output for Terminal’s command “diskutil list” is as follows:
Code:
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *298.1 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 145.5 Gi disk0s2
3: Microsoft Basic Data Data 50.2 Gi disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 101.9 Gi disk0s4
MacFUSE and NTFS-3G for Mac are installed in Mac OSX. They are required for read/write at the Data partition from the Mac side, but they wouldn’t be neccesary if the Data partition is FAT32.
When Windows boots natively it can read and write the Data volume perfectly. However, when running the Boot Camp Windows inside a Virtual Machine the partition is detected but it cannot be accessed. Here’s the procedure for allowing it.
1- Locate the file of your Boot Camp virtual machine in Finder (~/Documents/Parallels), i.e. BootCamp.pvm. Ctrl-click the file, then “Show package contents”.
2- Locate a file with extension .hdd, in my case Hitachi HTS543232L9SA02.hdd. Ctrl-click this file, then “Show package contents”.
3- There’s a file named DiskDescriptor.xml. First, make a duplicate as backup (cmd-D), then open it with TextEdit (ctrl-click, Open with…)
The <StorageData> section has several <Storage> sub-sections. The last one should be pointing to the current Boot Camp partition:
In order to grant access to our Data partition we need to add a new <Storage> section after that one. First we need to gather some data:
Start, End:
Use the Partition Inspector application included with the rEFIt package. You don’t need to install rEFIt, simply download the DMG file and run the Partition Inspector application located inside. It produces an output like this:
Code:
*** Report for internal hard disk ***
Current GPT partition table:
# Start LBA End LBA Type
1 40 409639 EFI System (FAT)
2 409640 305620663 Mac OS X HFS+
3 305882808 411191295 Basic Data
4 411453440 625141759 Basic Data
Current MBR partition table:
# A Start LBA End LBA Type
1 1 409639 ee EFI Protective
2 409640 305620663 af Mac OS X HFS+
3 305882808 411191295 07 NTFS/HPFS
4 * 411453440 625141759 07 NTFS/HPFS
...
The Data partition is number 3, so the Start and End values are 305882808 and 411191295 respectively.
File:
The Data partition is disk0s3 (see the output of “diskutil list” above). So the <File> tag for the Data partition is /dev/disk0s3
Now, back to DiskDescriptor.xml file, duplicate the last <Storage> section and change the Start, End and File values in the copied section leaving all other values unchanged. The result for the <StorageData> section will be this:
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