Reconstructionism

• Today
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  9:17pm
  

  BB
  

  
  

  i often find myself thinking about your dickinson quote, "tell all the truth but tell it slant, success in circuit lies." i think this article helped me make sense of why this is the case -- http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tell-all-the-truth/

  So, I'm just going to copy/paste something I wrote for Tikvah that I think relates to your question. Anything I write would be some variation of the principle that you will extract from what follows --

  I was in attendance last year for Christine Hayes’ presentation of the rabbinical discussion of the passage in Leviticus about the stoning of the rebellious son. She showed how the authorial intent in those verses—written at a time when the patriarch of a household could kill his children without consequence—was to add several obstacles that would make it more difficult for him to do so. The rabbis seized on this intent and found ways to cryptically interpret out of the text another series of obstacles extreme enough to eliminate the practice altogether. Professor Hayes called this interpreting with the principle of charity.

  But why the charade? Why not just admit the passage was morally flawed? This is a question I was forced to confront as an undergrad, when I gave lectures on philosophy and faith in high school religion departments. One of my biggest challenges was to find a way to talk about divine revelation as sacred and central to our lives to students who had a knack for paraphrasing a few unseemly passages from Leviticus or the Epistles of Paul.

  Professor Hayes explained that we read and interpret this way because we have a special relationship with the text. When we find it unconscionable, we don’t just get to toss it aside like we might with any other book. As with our closest relationships to other people, sometimes we have to change ourselves in order to make sense of the text, and other times we have to interpret the text with as much charity as we can muster. “The Scriptures make us sparring partners with God,” she said. Or, as Rabbi Yehoshua averred, “The Torah is ‘not in heaven’” (Deut 30:12).
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  9:22pm
  

  BB
  

  
  

  In other words, the prophets are probably contradicting the letter of the Torah. But they would still see themselves as being faithful to the text. Heschel has a great quote on what the prophets are doing to the tradition in his chapter titled "Dissent" that I will write out for you as soon as I am reunited with the book.
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  9:42pm
  

  CG
  

  
  

  Seems like it could be used to excuse any text with which you have a special relationship.

  Much like any object of faith.
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  9:50pm
  

  CG
  

  
  

  I was once trying to write an essay about how charity in interpretation can be used to transform a text. We often excuse authors the odd incongruity here and there by making reference to the spirit of the work. Apply the principle with enough tenacity, and it is unclear where it stops. With enough love in one's heart one could divine scripture out of a computer manual. I am only half kidding. The same principle was applied by the deconstructionists only in the reverse direction. Any text can be teased apart with sufficient mendacity of intention. But this leaves one with the conundrum of what any text really means, since it could mean almost anything to anyone willing to forgive or to requite sufficiently. Which is one reason I do not put much stock in texts.
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  9:56pm
  

  BB
  

  
  

  this is the conclusion that I am left with. but i think the text agrees -- even after the giving the the law, judges are appointed over the people who are "wise and experienced," because it is understood that, at the end of the day, we do not have a text that tells us what to do. what we have is people who have to do their best to live between the tensions with honesty and integrity. there's a lot more i'd like to say but this dunkin donuts closes in 4 minutes. i will write again soon.