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Not quite the right list for this quote, but I can't resist: "If all the
year were playing holidays, / To sport would be as tedious as to work" (1H4,
1.2.204-5). Not quite hermeneutics, but I think the point is the same.
pch
On 5/22/10 8:56 AM, "JD Fleming" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Absent the notion of the cat, the mice's play has to become much more serious!
> For they are in charge! Best, J
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hannibal Hamlin" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2010 8:34:32 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: Re: CFP The King James Bible
>
> Interesting. Would the mice be so playful without at least a notional, absent,
> cat?
>
>
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 4:37 PM, JD Fleming < [log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
>
> Great, Hannibal! I would qualify only that to assume luxuriation as consequent
> on the non-presence of the original is still, in fact, to assume the
> normativity of the latter. If the mice can play when the cat's away, then the
> cat's where it's at. JD Fleming
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hannibal Hamlin" < [log in to unmask] >
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 12:29:27 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: Re: CFP The King James Bible
>
>
> Yes, indeed. For a popular but scholary grounded take on the text, Bart
> Ehrman's books are excellent. More sophisticated is Robin Lane Fox's
> Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible . The more one digs into
> matters textual, the clearer it becomes that there simply is no such thing as
> "the original text," at least not in any sense that is now recoverable. No
> manuscripts survive from anything close to the date of the originals, so even
> the very earliest surviving texts are copies of copies of copies (etc.), with
> all the errors, accretions, and such that that entails. As Ehrman points out (
> Misquoting Jesus ) the number of variants in surviving mss is staggering. Add
> to this the problems of translation. Whatever Jesus spoke, it was not in
> Greek, so presumably even the gospel "originals" (and there were many more
> than four) were reporting his words in another language. But even before the
> gospels were written down, there were likely sayings and stories in oral
> circulation, in whatever language, and those were also subject to elaboration,
> alteration, etc. For the Old Testament, one has to deal with the different
> traditions in different languages and national-cultural traditions: Hebrew
> mss, but dating from the time of the Masoretes (7th-11th c.); the earlier
> Greek Septuagint, translated from the Hebrew; texts in Coptic, from the
> ancient Egyption church; texts in Syriac (the Peshitta), from the ancient
> Syriac church; also the Vetus Latina, Latin version pre-Jerome. Dizzying.
> Fascinating.
>
> For the period of the Reformation, the question of an original text doesn't
> seem to have bothered many, even the most educated. Certainly, there were
> humanistic efforts to get back to something closer to the originals than the
> Vulgate -- Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum (though when his mss failed him, he
> just made it up), the amazing Complutensian Polyglot. And English translators
> like Tyndale and the Genevans were concerned to translate on the basis of the
> best texts in Hebrew and Greek. Yet even after Erasmus, or the Latin Bible of
> Immanuel Tremellius, many, including Protestants, continued to use the
> Vulgate. As for English translations, there were regular movements every so
> often to produce one that was "new and improved," but look at Matthew Parker
> in the Bishops' Bible:
>
> "NOW let the gentle reader haue this christian consideration within him selfe,
> that though he findeth the psalmes of this translation folowing, not so to
> sounde agreeably to his eares in his wonted wordes and phrases, as he is
> accustomed with: yet let him not be to much offended with the worke, which was
> wrought for his owne commoditie and comfort. And if he be learned, let him
> correct the worde or sentence (which may dislike him) with the better, and
> whether his note riseth either of good wyll and charitie, either of enuie and
> contention not purely, yet his reprehension, if it may turne to the finding
> out of the trueth, shall not be repelled with griefe, but applauded to in
> gladnesse, that Christe may euer haue the prayse: To whom with the father and
> the holy spirite, be all glory and prayse for euer, Amen."
>
> Not much anxiety. If you like it, great, if not, change it. Presumably the
> "learning" Parker has in mind involves a knowledge of the Hebrew, but then not
> many had such knowledge, or, if they did, they got it secondhand from
> Hebraists like Tremellius or Reuchlin.
>
> I ramble. But I agree that originalist historicism is of little use in getting
> at the Bible text, let alone the interpretation thereof (which may not have
> been intended to be revealed anyway -- see Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy ).
> But then perhaps that doesn't matter, at least for the purposes of literary
> study? Are we concerned with the right, or original interpretation of the
> Bible, or with what authors X, Y, and Z made of it, however whacky (indeed,
> the wackier the better)? Constitutional lawyers may not be as comfortable
> luxuriating in the delights of polysemy or the endless Romance of midrash, but
> that's another matter.
>
> Hannibal
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:27 PM, JD Fleming < [log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
>
> A hermeneutic perspective: let's note that the concept of the original text,
> expressing terminal intensions, is much more mercurial than it at first
> appears. In the last analysis, it is a transcendent (or metaphysical) concept
> -- which is precisely why it was so hermeneutically and culturally powerful
> when it began systematically to be deployed in Reformation biblical exegesis
> and philology. Against the idea of the Word as the Church understood it, the
> Reformers brought the idea of _the Word as it was first spoken_. An
> intoxicating banner. Yet anybody who has ever spoken a word (that is, anybody)
> can attest that doing so _puts something in play_, rather than terminating
> playing.
>
> In other words, to think of the original text as the place where
> interpretation stops is, arguably, to think something both erroneous and
> interminable. For it will always be possible to draw closer to, or suppose
> that it is possible to draw closer to, the posited transcendence. Very good on
> this dialectic in late-period Protestantism are the essays by Mandelbrote,
> Keene, and Snobelen in Hessayon and Keene (eds), _Scripture and Scholarship in
> Early-Modern England_ (Ashgate, 2006). And in the wider world, just think of
> the extraordinary interpretative authoritarianism of "originalist"
> constitutional jurisprudence, which is empowered by the idea of the original
> intension _precisely because the latter is not really available_.
>
> What's the alternative? A long and difficult inquiry begins from that
> question. But I think it's an inquiry worth opening ourselves to; and I think
> it will have something to do with the recognition that the judgment of
> rightness or fittingness -- of having understood -- that somebody like the KJV
> parishioner has had is not necessarily or neatly outflanked by the method of
> originalist historicism.
>
> JD Fleming
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Helen Vincent" < [log in to unmask] >
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 1:12:43 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: Re: CFP The King James Bible
>
>
>
> I have come across people who seem in all honesty incapable of understanding
> what 'the KJB is a *translation*, we need to look at the original text' means.
> They simply refer to the book they have in their hands and say 'but it says
> here...'. Sometimes showing them an actual Greek or Hebrew testament helps
> change their minds, because they have often never seen one and have no real
> conception of the Bible as anything other than the fixed text they have heard
> and read all their lives.
>
> Helen
>
>
> Helen Vincent
> Senior Curator
> Rare Book Collections
>
> Tel: +44 (0) 131 623 3894
> Fax: +44 (0) 131 623 3888
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
> National Library of Scotland
> George IV Bridge
> Edinburgh
> EH1 1EW
> Scotland
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto: [log in to unmask] ]
> On Behalf Of Peter Herman
> Sent: 21 May 2010 00:16
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: CFP The King James Bible
>
>
>
>
>
> Anne, that¹s what happens with sensible people. I meant what happens when
> those who burn any and all translations of the Bible other than the KJV are
> confronted with a difference between what¹s in the KJV and the original
> language.
>
> pch
>
>
> On 5/20/10 3:16 PM, "Anne Prescott" < [log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
>
>
> Seriously, Peter, and I hope I'm not misreading you, what happened in later
> years was either a set of new translations (The Anchor Bible, e.g.) or a King
> James revised according to some better Hebrew and Greek scholarship so that
> you get the "Revised Standard Version" that many of us have in church. Some
> discrepancies may be too hard to resolve--e.g., "the valley of the shadow of
> death," I read somewhere, just says "shadow," although I could be mistaken. So
> just to say "what happens" is later revised editions after even more years of
> Hebrew scholarship. Often the rhythms aren't as good and the wording can grate
> on a traditionalist ear, but there is more accuracy. Even Congregationalists
> and Presbyterians, nowadays, use modernized and emended translations--at least
> in the northeast of the USA. Nobody I know complains about the content, only
> the tin ear of the translators. It may be different in more fundamentalist
> circles, but in my part of the States using the revised version(s) is standard
> and the Hebrew comes first. Then there's the 1928 prayerbook etc., but that's
> another story. Anne.
> PS: pity my poor grandfather, K. Lake, who as I recall translated Paul for the
> Loeb (I think--I know he did some Loeb Church Fathers). Think of the
> competition!
>
> On May 20, 2010, at 5:22 PM, Peter Herman wrote:
>
>
>
> I¹m serious about this question: what happens (assuming someone on this list
> knows) if there is a contradiction between the KJV and the original original,
> i.e., the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek? pch
>
>
> On 5/20/10 2:19 PM, "Ryan Paul" < [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/
> [log in to unmask] > > wrote:
>
>
>
> Re: KJV-centrism.
>
> I read an article (in a New York Review of Books-style publication) that had a
> number of quotes from some American fundamentalists about the KJV. I wish I
> could find it, but there were numerous statements that the KJ translation is
> the true word of God, to be consulted as the definitive edition, and that if
> there exist contradictions between it and original texts, then the original
> texts are wrong.
>
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Hannibal Hamlin < [log in to unmask]
> <x-msg: //428/ [log in to unmask] > > wrote:
>
>
> Hi Anne (an all -- to clarify),
>
> Yes, there is one at York in July, but it will be strictly 17th c., while the
> OSU one ranges from the Reformation to the contemporary. I talked to Kevin
> Killeen (organizer at York) while at the Folger, and I don't think we'll be
> treading on each others' toes too much. Of course, we'll be only two of scads
> of KJV events that year. I might give a plug to the site of the British 2011
> Trust. http://www.2011trust.org/ Quite impressive, and where else to see
> Richard Dawkins reading The Song of Songs!!
> There is a lively (or deadly) KJV-only movement in the US, which seems a
> bizarre offshoot of fundamentalism. A colleague sent me a clipping about an
> evangelical church that hosts an annual book burning -- of Bibles! Apparently
> all translations other than KJV are consigned to the flames. Truly weird.
>
> Hope you're well.
>
> Hannibal
>
>
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 4:41 PM, anne prescott < [log in to unmask] <x-msg:
> //428/ [log in to unmask] > > wrote:
>
>
> Hi, Hannibal. Isn't there also a KJV conference in Britain later in 2011? No
> reason not to have two, of course. As I think I've mentioned before, several
> of my students referred on their exams or papers to the "Hebrew translation."
> A colleague suggests that they think "translation" means "version," but it
> took me aback anyway. And apparently some Americans do believe the KJV is the
> original. Anyway, the conference sounds terrific. Anne.
>
> On May 20, 2010, at 3:48 PM, Hannibal Hamlin wrote:
>
>
>
> [Apologies for cross-posting]
> KJV Conference CFP
> Conference Name: ³The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife²
>
> Date and Location: May 5-7, 2011, at The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH).
>
> Contact: [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/ [log in to unmask] > <
> mailto: [log in to unmask] > , see also http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu <
> http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu/ > < http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu/ > .
> The English Department at The Ohio State University will host an international
> conference in 2011 on the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King
> James (or Authorized) Version of the Bible. Held in Columbus, Ohio from May
> 5-7, 2011 , the conference will focus on the making of the KJV in the context
> of Reformation Bible translation and printing as well as on the KJV¹s long
> literary and cultural influence from Milton and Bunyan to Faulkner, Woolf, and
> Toni Morrison. Events will include plenary lectures and discussions, scholarly
> panels, and readings by contemporary writers. An accompanying exhibit will be
> mounted by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.
>
> Unlike traditional conference panels in which each participant delivers his or
> her entire paper at the conference, these seminars will focus on guided
> roundtable discussions of the issues raised in a group of 8-12 position
> papers. To that end, participants must submit materials well in advance of the
> conference , so seminar leaders can read them, formulate discussion questions,
> and circulate the papers and questions to participants. Individual seminar
> leaders will determine more precise schedules and seminar requirements, once
> enrollments have been reviewed and approved.
>
> Possible seminar topics include (but are not limited to) the Bible and
> particular authors/works (Milton, Melville, Morrison, et al), the Bible and
> periods or genres (e.g., Reformation, 19 th century, 20th century,
> African-American Lit, American literature, postcolonial studies), the Bible
> and narrative/poetic style, biblical allusion, and the Bible in popular
> culture (film, graphic versions, music).
>
> Please submit questions or project titles & statements of interest to
> [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/ [log in to unmask] > < mailto:
> [log in to unmask] > by July 1, 2010 .
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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