Thursday, June 09, 2011
Oral v. Written Texts - A Living Tradition and a Way of Life
Belinda wrote: I see through your recent postings that you grapple with scholarly arguments posted over the centuries which make our modern day churches. And, in the same breadth it appears you love the finality or static dictum in the Qur'an. It makes for fascinating reading. Please keep posting.
William: I have read the Qur'an in English and I do not admire it thought I think it is important to understand/study. To me it is obvious that the Qur'an is a totally human creation to serve personal agendas. What intrigues me lately is the notion that the spoken word of the oral tradition is in some ways more important that the later redacted written texts. The Qur'an becomes significant in relation to Sabdah Brahman (sound as God). It has been said that the sounds of the Qur'an properly recited is non-different from Allah (or the presence of Allah). The Vedas must be properly chanted aloud and that oral tradition is more important than any study of the written word. Socrates and Plato seemed to distrust written texts because the author was not present to engage in dialog and clarify the meaning. If we look at Plato's dialogues it seems that "philosophy" is something that only takes place in a living discussion. Obviously Plato tried to simulate such discussions in writing and it is only through the surviving manuscripts that we have access to such discussions. I remember reading in Jaroslav Pelikan's 5 volume history of the development of Christian doctrine that Iranaeus of the 2nd century distrusted the written text preferring instead the tradition of oral instruction from people who knew people who knew people who knew Jesus. I have not been able to locate where Pelikan made this statement. All these reflections came about because I know an American, Fr. Justin, who is the first non-Greek to be accepted at St. Catherine's ancient monastery in Sinai. He is the librarian and labors to capture all the ancient crumbling texts digitally to preserve them for future generations. As I listened to Fr. Justin's lecture on Youtube I realized how amazing it is that places like St. Catherine's and Mt. Athos have survived all these centuries in an unbroken lineage and living tradition of ascetic renunciates who continue to live much as the Desert Fathers of the first centuries lived. The perpetuation of such a fragile way of life through all these centuries is something of a miracle. Perhaps the only reliable repository of a genuine understanding of the first Christians is NOT possible in written texts but is only possible in the daily life of those who embrace the monastic way of life. Aristotle said that the spoken word points to an idea or thought whereas the written word points to a spoken word and therefore is removed one level from the idea or meaning. Aristotle and Plato both had the notion that humans enjoy mimesis or imitation and that art and poetry imitate something more original and are in some sense false and misleading insofar as they are imitations. Plato further seemed to believe that living speech and thought itself is an imitation or shadow or reflection of some eternal ideal forms (justice, truth, beauty, virtue). Now all this, as I see it, is connected with http://bible.cc/2_peter/3-16.htm "Paul writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." Psalm 56:5 All day long they twist my words; they are always plotting to harm me. Jeremiah 23:36 But you must not mention 'the oracle of the LORD' again, because every man's own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of the living God, the LORD Almighty, our God. (end of quotes) I also see a connection with Wittgenstein where is says in the Tractatus “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” and also Kurt Gödel - Gödel mistrusted our ability to communicate. Natural language, he thought, was imprecise, and we usually don't understand each other. Bertrand Russell himself believed that there was an ultimate end, a final proof that underpinned all others, and thus rendered solid - at last - the very foundations of mathematics: a complete and proven system. This was the holy grail of mathematics – the paradigm-defining challenge first proposed in 1920 by David Hilbert.
Proverbs 25:11 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. A word fitly spoken - על אפניו al ophannaiv, upon its wheels. Maimonides thinks the external sense of the word is meant by the silver, and the internal sense by the gold; which latter is seen through, and is much better than the former. Proverbs 15:23 A man finds joy in giving an apt reply--and how good is a timely word! Psalm 45:1 My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
Romans 10:17 So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShabdaŚábda is the Sanskrit for "sound, speech" In Sanskrit grammar, the term refers to an utterance in the sense of linguistic performance.http://www.chishti.org/universe_of_the_breath.htm One of the Companions of the Prophet related this comment by Muhammad (s.a.w.s.) on the value of reciting the Qur'an: "Reciting the Qur'an out of memory carries one thousand degrees of religious merit, while reading the Qur'an from the Book itself increases [the merit] up to two thousand degrees." The most important consideration regarding the Qur'an is that Allah states in the Book that it is not of human origin; it consists of the actual pre-eternal, uncreated speech of Allah Himself. As such, no other book exists which carries the degree of perfection and balance in its words. Even the most disinterested observer cannot fail to be impressed upon hearing the Qur'an recited. It is of surpassing beauty, melody, and majesty.
From Sheldon Kopp's third chapter entitled "Disclosing the Self" in his book If You Meet The Buddha On The Road Kill Him (©1972 Science and Behavior Books, Inc.):
The guru instructs by metaphor and parable, but the pilgrim learns through the telling of his own tale. Each man's identity is an emergent of the myths, rituals, and corporate legends of his culture, compounded with the epic of his own personal history. In either case, it is the compelling power of the storytelling that distinguishes men from beasts. The paradoxical interstice of power and vulnerability, which makes a man most human, rests on his knowing who he is right now, because he can remember who he has been, and because he knows who he hopes to become. All this comes of the wonder of his being able to tell his tale.
When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.
Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezricth, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: "Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer." And again, the miracle would be accomplished.
Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Lieb of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: "I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient."
Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: "I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient." And it was sufficient. ==================
In Kopp's book he tells an Hasidic in the tale of "The Secret Seven" that at any given time in the world there are seven righteous men whose identity remains a secret but for the sake of their righteous manner of life the world is sustained from moment to moment. According to the tale one day the identity of one of these secret seven was revealed and he was a shoe cobbler who uttered praises to God with each nail that he hammered into a shoe. ==================
Some years ago I went with my Roman Catholic wife to an all day retreat where there were readings and discussions. In the cafeteria an old woman sitting next to me asked "What one thing may I do to help the world." I explained to her that in theory the sanctity of her own daily life might be sufficient to preserve the world. I reminded her that God was willing to preserve Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men. Of course we know that Lot could not find even one righteous man and it seems doubtful that even Lot was righteous but was spared because of his relationship to Abraham. =======
So, for all we know our world may be preserved for the sake of a handful in places such as Sinai and Mount Athos. Should such places, heaven forbid, disappear in the future then we may know that the existence of their way of life has no connection with the world's continuance. But it does seem a miracle that such a way of life in small isolated pockets stretches back to apostolic times.
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. - Aristotle- In deconstructing the metaphysics of presence Derrida leans heavily on Heidegger, who contended that human existence isn’t a continuous presence, a perpetual living in the moment, but is rather a duration.
Kant found it necessary to discuss the sublime as an issue apart from the beautiful—which for Kant was always experienced in front of things bounded or contained, and never evoked by the vast and unbounded.
Greenberg points out that Aristotle omitted to say that the Greeks used music only to accompany verse and that the words of the verse therefore actually mediated the meaning of the music. Greenberg quotes Plato’s earlier saying that “when there are no words it is always difficult to recognize the meaning of the music or to see that any worthy object is imitated by it,” and he, Greenberg, goes on to say that as this function was abandoned, as the words and music got separated, music was forced to withdraw into itself to discover its own raison d’être—as has been the case with painting of the modern period.
The heavy duty philosophers of the following century were to identify music with Kant’s noumenon—as “the thing in itself,” where all else was “merely appearance.” Music, according to Schopenhauer, represented the “will” (or life-force) directly; and Schiller asserted that “The plastic arts at their most perfect must become music, and move us by the immediacy of their sensuous presence” (my emphasis). So the key, as Reynolds had said, lay in music’s “immediacy,” something that painting lacked because its subject matter (its “iconicity” or “mimesis”) supposedly got in the way.
Socrates' distrust of text :1. The Information, by James Gleick.
2. Proust and the Squid, The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf 3. @DonaldClark brought up Plato's (Socrates' student) distrust of unchallenged narrative in a response to a great post on context, storytelling and narratives by John Hagel.
2. Proust and the Squid, The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf 3. @DonaldClark brought up Plato's (Socrates' student) distrust of unchallenged narrative in a response to a great post on context, storytelling and narratives by John Hagel.
Plato believed the objective of literature is to imitate and therefore lie, as any copy of an original must be a fake. ... Plato further proposes that even nature itself copies from universal "Forms" or "Ideas," as he calls them. Every person holds a conception in his mind of an original tree that helps him recognize all physical trees. In this way, even nature itself is not original.
O Timothy, keep the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words. O! The exclamation implies fore-knowledge as well as charity. For he mourned in anticipation over the errors which he foresaw. Who is the Timothy of to-day, but either generally the Universal Church, or in particular, the whole body of The Prelacy, whom it behoves either themselves to possess or to communicate to others a complete knowledge of religion? What is Keep the deposit? Keep it, because of thieves, because of adversaries, lest, while men sleep, they sow tares over that good wheat which the Son of Man had sown in his field. Keep the deposit. What is The deposit? That which has been intrusted to thee, not that which thou hast thyself devised: a matter not of wit, but of learning; not of private adoption, but of public tradition; a matter brought to thee, not put forth by thee, wherein thou art bound to be not an author but a keeper, not a teacher but a disciple, not a leader but a follower. Keep the deposit. Preserve the talent of Catholic Faith inviolate, unadulterate. That which has been intrusted to thee, let it continue in thy possession, let it be handed on by thee. Thou hast received gold; give gold in turn. Do not substitute one thing for another. do not for gold impudently substitute lead or brass. Give real gold, not counterfeit.
Id teneamus, ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est; hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum (We hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and of all men; for that is truly and properly Catholic)—St Vincent of Lérins - circa 440 C.E., fifth century-- This is the Latin I can never remember, the formula St. Vincent gave as a touchstone for orthodoxy. Obviously the Western Roman Church understands and applies this differently than the Eastern Greek Church.
