Comments on: The Dead Sea Stele http://raphael.doxos.com/2008/07/08/the-dead-sea-stele/ We are Flesh-and-Spirit on a journey to Integral Unity with God. Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:21:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Fr. Ernesto http://raphael.doxos.com/2008/07/08/the-dead-sea-stele/comment-page-1/#comment-6020 Fr. Ernesto Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:48:06 +0000 http://raphael.doxos.com/?p=2834#comment-6020 Ditto that. There is a secondary theme here as well. Both modernist liberals and modernist conservatives agreed that if the story were shown to be false, then the doctrines would be brought into question. The neo-orthodox simply played mind games by speaking of the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. I am convinced that much of the scholarship over "myth" and "mythology" was an attempt to have one's cake and eat it too. That is, underpinning neo-orthodoxy was a modernist liberal assesment that the stories were not historically true. However, mystically that was a non-starter. So, take a bit of cultural studies and stretch it past the breaking point and come up with this whole theory of "myth" that allows you to have your warm fuzzies without worrying about history. That is, as long as inconvenient truths do not turn up, like what you said was not historical turning out to possibly be historical. So, I opine that much of the fight over the "relics" that are found in archeology is a leftover modernist fight over history. Both the post-modernist and emergent approaches to history are somewhat different. It will be interesting to see how philosophy of history develops eventually in a more mature post-modernist / emergent setting. Both post-modernism and emergent thinking are not yet in their mature form. It will do interesting things to theology, that's for sure! Ditto that. There is a secondary theme here as well. Both modernist liberals and modernist conservatives agreed that if the story were shown to be false, then the doctrines would be brought into question. The neo-orthodox simply played mind games by speaking of the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. I am convinced that much of the scholarship over “myth” and “mythology” was an attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too. That is, underpinning neo-orthodoxy was a modernist liberal assesment that the stories were not historically true. However, mystically that was a non-starter.

So, take a bit of cultural studies and stretch it past the breaking point and come up with this whole theory of “myth” that allows you to have your warm fuzzies without worrying about history. That is, as long as inconvenient truths do not turn up, like what you said was not historical turning out to possibly be historical.

So, I opine that much of the fight over the “relics” that are found in archeology is a leftover modernist fight over history. Both the post-modernist and emergent approaches to history are somewhat different. It will be interesting to see how philosophy of history develops eventually in a more mature post-modernist / emergent setting. Both post-modernism and emergent thinking are not yet in their mature form. It will do interesting things to theology, that’s for sure!

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