Paul and the Early Church Reading 1
Well I just finished my readings for my New Testament class Paul and the Early Church. I wanted to comment a little about what I am seeing from the authors and what I am thinking. The first book I read was Sandra Hack Polaski "A Feminist Introduction to Paul." I was pleasently suprised by her writing. The reason being is that Polaski takes seems to take a rather positive outlook on Paul. This is suprising to me because I am still working through the preconcived notions that have been in grained in me about feminism. Her writing is excellent and so far what she has to say is good as well I am looking forward to reading the rest of her book.
The other item I had to read was by Carol Newsom "Communities of Discourse." This is actually one chapter from a book but that is all we are reading for the class. Her writing was more difficult for me than Polaski was but I was very intrigued by some of what she had to say. Newsom seems to be point out the general relativity of language. She is saying that what words are actually saying and actually mean change from group to group, basically from culture to culture as well as to the different subcultures within a given culture. If I understand her right we can precive that with education a persons language changes to be something more "sophisitcated" and they wouldn't use that language when with another group. Say in my case the language that I use in my seminary classes tends to express differently by centering on ideas, schools of thought, history ect. However if I were to go to a family picnic in which extended family is there I would use that same type of language, not because they couldn't handle it but because they talk about different things with different ephasis than here at seminary. I think though that the whole point of Newsoms first chapter for this book comes across of page 19 where she says "What is at stake is power.", I assume that she means the whole of controling the language is a power struggle amounst the groups involved. I have to think on this more...
The other item I had to read was by Carol Newsom "Communities of Discourse." This is actually one chapter from a book but that is all we are reading for the class. Her writing was more difficult for me than Polaski was but I was very intrigued by some of what she had to say. Newsom seems to be point out the general relativity of language. She is saying that what words are actually saying and actually mean change from group to group, basically from culture to culture as well as to the different subcultures within a given culture. If I understand her right we can precive that with education a persons language changes to be something more "sophisitcated" and they wouldn't use that language when with another group. Say in my case the language that I use in my seminary classes tends to express differently by centering on ideas, schools of thought, history ect. However if I were to go to a family picnic in which extended family is there I would use that same type of language, not because they couldn't handle it but because they talk about different things with different ephasis than here at seminary. I think though that the whole point of Newsoms first chapter for this book comes across of page 19 where she says "What is at stake is power.", I assume that she means the whole of controling the language is a power struggle amounst the groups involved. I have to think on this more...
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