Re: Cyberhermeneutics

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 23 1998 - 17:58:08 EST


At 4:14 PM -0600 1/23/98, JUAN STAM wrote:
>Greetings to all the B-greeker friends with best wishes for a great 98!
>
>Last September's CHRISTIANITY TODAY had a thought-provoking article on
>Cyberspace by Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary. He comments on the
>danger than cyberexegesis may lead some to use the Bible •n a manner that
>"divorces Scripture from its literary genre and contextal meaning. I can
>run a program that gives me a host of texts on say *righteosness*, but the
>program cannot present the meaning of each text in its context"
>
>ìs there a real danger that computer use can foment either proof-texting or
>the kind of word-study exegesis that James Barr attacked? How can this be
>avoided?

For my part, I think that computer use represents no greater threat to
careful and serious Biblical study than do other technologies of earlier
transitional periods in our history. Obviously computer use makes abuse of
the Biblical text all the easier for those who want to abuse it, but on the
other hand it also offers opportunities for more readily demonstrating the
range of legitimate possibilities of meanings to be read from scriptures.
It's the people who make use of the new tools and the purposes to which
they put them that will, of course, be responsible for the realization of
what the technology promises or the actualization of foreseen perils.
Ultimately it's the people involved who are responsible for what comes of a
technology, not the technology itself. Or so I think.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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