[Vision2020] Being Geraldine

[Joan Opyr]

Mike says:

>The Bible is either God's word to men or it isn't.

Why?  Why is this an either/or?  What if some parts of the Bible are 
divinely inspired and others aren't?  How did the Bible in its current 
incarnation come to be?  (Let's ignore, for the sake of convenience, the 
differences not only between the Catholic and Protestant versions but also 
among the various translations.)  What texts were included?  What texts were 
left out?  And always why, why, why?

I spent the better part of my graduate school career translating a single 
poem, Beowulf.  Three thousand and some odd lines, written in Old English, 
only one extant copy.  Compared to assembling, translating, and interpreting 
the Bible, working with Beowulf is a piece of cake.  And yet there are words 
in Beowulf that translators can only guess at; there are other words that 
have multiple meanings.  The manuscript was at one time used as a chopping 
block, and, later, it was burned in a fire.  The edges have deteriorated, so 
we rely on something called the Thorkelin transcripts, but Thorkelin, though 
painstaking, did make the occasional transcription error.

An Anglo-Saxonist might build her career arguing over a passage or a verse, 
laboriously explaining why her interpretation of "Modthryth was a good folk 
queen" is better than your interpretation.  Or, she might look at the bigger 
picture and ask why the story of the Old Testament Judith was bound in a 
single manuscript with a long paean to a pagan hero.

Philology.  Textual analysis.  Analogs.  History.  Literary theory.  We have 
all sorts of tools at our disposal for understanding Beowulf, and those of 
us who love the poem and believe it has meaning today in a world far removed 
from the world it describes can find some common ground in our understanding 
of the basics of the story.  Ultimately, however, what we get out of it is 
at least in part dependent on what we bring to it.

Whether or not Doug, or Jim Jones, or the Bible, or you, or that voice I 
keep hearing through the dryer vent -- whether or not any of these are 
speaking for God is a matter of faith.  We're all free to believe, free to 
disbelieve, and free to doubt.  That's why I reject your either/or 
assertion.  It might be all or nothing for you, but it's not all or nothing 
for me.

"By what standard" is a con.  It's a trick question, a bulleted talking 
point, an empty shell.  You know where the marble is hidden.  If I pick the 
cup on the left or the right, you'll pick them up to show me that they're 
empty.  That's because the marble is always in the third cup, the cup not 
chosen.  And so, the crowd will clap, you'll take my money, and you'll move 
on to the next mark.  Unless, of course, I refuse to play.  I prefer instead 
to stand at the back and warn the mugs.

So . . . if Doug is Flip Wilson, I want to be Geraldine.  "What you see is 
what you get, and what you don't see has already been got."

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

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