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Jesus' Parables and the War of Myths: Essays on Imagination in the Scripture
Essays on imagination in the scriptures in two those which situation the parables of Jesus within the broader context of biblical narrative and those dealing with the problem of adequately interpreting the "kingdom of language" of Jesus.
168 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 10, 2021
I was misled by the title and hoped for something different. This has happened more than once in the past and I was surprised by some delightfully serendipitous discoveries. But not this time. Even so, there were intriguing moments of confirmation.
Ernst Fuchs describes the eruption of the Gospel in Palestine as a startling and novel event in the order of language, a Sprachereignis, a shock to the existing fabric of human discourse, the effects and reverberations of which were felt in many ways. pg 122
Although Paul considered all literature to be a bauble, he spoke into the language with a fresh inward experience of life. p 113
The Biblical narrative has the character of dialectical or epic theatre. It is not seductive, subjective or romantic. It does not work by a depersonalising enchantment or subject the reader to the arts of narration in such a way as to render them a victim of hypnotic compulsion or sorcery. In, for example, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac or Jephthah's daughter, any evasion into common pathos is blocked by high austerity. p 66
In the early church, the witness in word was inseparable from witness in action and behaviour. Thus Christian beginnings can be seen as a "war of myths" or, even better, as a "war of liturgies" with the understanding the liturgy involves lifestyle, action and ethic, as well as recital. p 37
The linkage of language with reality, words with things, and the distrust of acts of naming, predicating, and imaging are meet with suspicion today. p 35
"My experience, as a soldier in World War I, of ordeal and expectation, of preternatural transactions, of occult agencies and phantasmata ... prepared me to sympathise with all such surreal symbol and its vicissitudes." p15-16; see also p153-154
Ancient apocalyptic pioneered the first universal view of history which included all peoples and times. p 8
"Both testaments make much of the mystery of 'naming' in the sense of knowing, or of calling that which is inchoate into definition and actuality. They also from of old make much of numbers and numbering, of counting and dividing, of those operations of language which map existence and orient us with its mysteries. Likewise, they make much of tongues as communication, their dialogic dimension and the distinction between babel and sense. It is not surprising, then, that we also find a special preoccupation with all that has to do with the mystery of writing and its urgency, with books earthly and heavenly, with scrolls, tablets, scribes and recorders." p 17
Ernst Kasemann often quoted as writing the apocalyptic is the mother of theology, in the sense that the portrayal of the end-time required reflections on the meaning of the divine plan. p59-60
Decision as divine judgment on the nations. p168
Ernst Fuchs describes the eruption of the Gospel in Palestine as a startling and novel event in the order of language, a Sprachereignis, a shock to the existing fabric of human discourse, the effects and reverberations of which were felt in many ways. pg 122
Although Paul considered all literature to be a bauble, he spoke into the language with a fresh inward experience of life. p 113
The Biblical narrative has the character of dialectical or epic theatre. It is not seductive, subjective or romantic. It does not work by a depersonalising enchantment or subject the reader to the arts of narration in such a way as to render them a victim of hypnotic compulsion or sorcery. In, for example, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac or Jephthah's daughter, any evasion into common pathos is blocked by high austerity. p 66
In the early church, the witness in word was inseparable from witness in action and behaviour. Thus Christian beginnings can be seen as a "war of myths" or, even better, as a "war of liturgies" with the understanding the liturgy involves lifestyle, action and ethic, as well as recital. p 37
The linkage of language with reality, words with things, and the distrust of acts of naming, predicating, and imaging are meet with suspicion today. p 35
"My experience, as a soldier in World War I, of ordeal and expectation, of preternatural transactions, of occult agencies and phantasmata ... prepared me to sympathise with all such surreal symbol and its vicissitudes." p15-16; see also p153-154
Ancient apocalyptic pioneered the first universal view of history which included all peoples and times. p 8
"Both testaments make much of the mystery of 'naming' in the sense of knowing, or of calling that which is inchoate into definition and actuality. They also from of old make much of numbers and numbering, of counting and dividing, of those operations of language which map existence and orient us with its mysteries. Likewise, they make much of tongues as communication, their dialogic dimension and the distinction between babel and sense. It is not surprising, then, that we also find a special preoccupation with all that has to do with the mystery of writing and its urgency, with books earthly and heavenly, with scrolls, tablets, scribes and recorders." p 17
Ernst Kasemann often quoted as writing the apocalyptic is the mother of theology, in the sense that the portrayal of the end-time required reflections on the meaning of the divine plan. p59-60
Decision as divine judgment on the nations. p168
October 22, 2022
This is a book of relatively dense, specialised theo-linguistic essays, so perhaps I shouldn't mark it down simply because of that, but the fact remains that it was a long slog for few new insights. I suppose I was also thrown by the misleading title, having bought it after reading Herzog's "The Parables of Jesus as Subversive Speech" while on one of my periodic deep-dives into parable studies. Whilst a couple of the essays refer directly to Jesus's Parables, the majority and best of them focus on the eschatology that probably underpins them, and the overtly apocalyptic texts that flowed from that. There was a brief reference to mid-20th century American apocalyptic literature, but sadly the book was published before the full flowering of the modern Western fundamentalist approach to apocalyptic that results in the "Left Behind" literature etc, or the secular apocalyptic of contemporary dystopian teen fiction. I would be intrigued to know what Wilder, who I was interested to find was no mean poet himself, would have made of these trends. The war of myths continues and we need to be more adept in how we handle such texts in that context.
June 3, 2023
The density of this collection of theo-linguistic essays required a second reading in order to fully understand Wilder's thesis and to mine it for useful insights. These were not, as the title suggests, primarily regarding Jesus's Parables, but the eschatology that Wilder and others argue underpins them, and the subsequent apocalypticism of the early church. However because it was written before the modern flowering of modern western evangelical apocalypticism I was perpetually left asking what Wilder (or indeed Jesus) would have said about this toxic theology?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews