An interesting quote…
cheapham April 24th, 2008
I heard an interesting quote the other day that I found interesting. I think I’ll present it without any context or commentary and see what sort of comments/responses in evokes. I have my own thoughts, but I think this quote could provoke very interesting (and hopefully fruitful) discussion. It’s short, so here it goes:
I’d rather do violence to a text than violence to a person.
Discuss.
- Ethics , Hermeneutics , The Bible
- Comments(1)
Well, those are two very different types of violence. I am much more prone to do violence to a text because I simply do not have nearly as many opportunities to do violence to people than texts (I am working on picking apart two texts right now as major projects).
With that said, sometimes texts are our only artifacts of vanished peoples. To do what is being called violence (and I need a good definition, because as is, I think it is a vague, loaded term that is more often used as a tool of rhetoric than anything else) to a text erases or changes what we know and think and remember about a real people group.
Lastly, how in the world are we defining violence? I like the following definition of violence when talking about people:
I like this definition because it stresses the intentionality of violence and bypasses the physicality hang-up that most people have.
What do you mean when you talk about violence towards a text?