Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Common theme: Who's the author?
I think it's both disappointing and interesting that a lot of the true authors of these religious works are questionable. We have the names of a lot of the authors in Christianity but not all of the exact information of their lives. There are multiple authors of the bible because they couldn't decide one just one single author's text. Here, in the beginning of the Confucius text, the translator explains how some scholars question if the text was actually written by "Confucius" or if he was a character a group of authors created to preach their ideas. It's disappointing because, personally, I enjoy learning about the authors of the literature I read, it helps me interpret the text deeper and understand where the text derived from. On the other hand, it's interesting because we have multiple ways of looking at where this text grew from. For example, the Jesus text we have just finished displays all of the texts and stories behind the life and lessons of Jesus. We aren't left with just one text, we are left with multiple texts and can decide which we believe is closest to the truth.
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your right both cases are true. However, we will never precisely know the original intent. Even if we knew about the author we are still reading an interpretation that we are interpreting. Likewise, if Jesus wrote his own bible we will still interpret his work which cannot capture precisely original intent. We may come close, but a lack of living in the context is vastly different from observing it after many generations.
ReplyDeleteWith religious texts, I almost prefer the multiple authors or not knowing who they are because then we have many different perspectives. If the main focus is on the work and not who wrote it, we have to take the text for what it is. However, who wrote the text it is important because every person has their own bias which can easily come through in their writing and their own interpretation of what happened.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, but I also think learning about the life of the author, or the people who created a character to preach their ideas, also gives us an interesting view into what life was like for those who lived long before us. We get to look into their morals and beliefs, and what was important to them at the time. No matter what the truth may be, as each person may think one interpretation is closer to the truth than others, these texts have so much they can teach us about the past.
ReplyDeleteI entirely agree with both your ideas of how it is both interesting and sad. I think though that the fact that we have several readings and stories is much better because it shows how people differ and it gives us a chance to choose what we agree with or not.
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