OPAQUE EXEGESIS

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In a thread in another forum, i wrote, concerning the contributions of another member, a sentence ending: " . . . typically opaque exegesis."

Codeborg responded thereafter with definitions of both words, and the claim that according to Google (May the Peace of the Almighty descend upon them), this is the first time in history that those two words have been used together in a sentence. He then proclaims this another A2K first. While i rather doubt that this is the case, i am nevertheless attempting to stretch my fleeting moment of fame out to at least fifteen minutes, so as not to offend the shade of Andy Warhol.

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Re: OPAQUE EXEGESIS
Codeborg should have claimed that it was the first time in history the phrase "opaque exegesis" occurred in a sentence, because i found the following sentence with Google, which contains the 2 words in question:

Quote:

Its own younger generation also does not understand many of these metaphors, so that in the future, unless we make an exegesis, the next generation will find such texts opaque and inexplicable with a loss of beauty and power.

(italics mine)

here's a link to the webpage that contains this pearl. undoubtedly, your phrase is uncommon because it's something of an oxymoron.

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In that opaque in this context means obscure, and perhaps to the point of being unintelligible, and exegesis means a critical interpretation of a scriptural text, your contention that this is an oxymoron--a contradiction in terms--strongly suggests that you do not know how to use opaque, exegesis or oxymoron correctly in a sentence.

I suspect that what you meant to write was: "Codeborg should not have claimed . . . "

Please note the forum in which this thread appears.

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Quote:

Teaching through contradiction or the pairing of opposites was a characteristic deeply embedded in medieval thought articulated in the techniques of questio and disputatio in the schools as well as analogous approaches in literature.

Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism, by Catherine Brown. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1998. xvi 210 pp. $45.00 U.S.

Laughing

edited: quote marked

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doublette

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Re: OPAQUE EXEGESIS

yitwail wrote:

Codeborg should have claimed . . .

Thought i'd better hurry up and quote you before you edit your post, and make my subsequent post opaque due to a lack of context for my exegesis of said post.

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Setanta wrote:

In that opaque in this context means obscure, and perhaps to the point of being unintelligible, and exegesis means a critical interpretation of a scriptural text, your contention that this is an oxymoron--a contradiction in terms--strongly suggests that you do not know how to use opaque, exegesis or oxymoron correctly in a sentence.

I suspect that what you meant to write was: "Codeborg should not have claimed . . . "

Please note the forum in which this thread appears.

i have duly noted the forum in which this discussion appears. i also dispute the contention that i did not use the aforementioned three words correctly in a sentence, inasmuch as i did not contend your phrase was an oxymoron, but rather, "something of an oxymoron," to indicate that it merely possessed an oxymoronic aspect. for instance, if an exegesis that was intended to clarify the meaning of an obscure Biblical passage was itself opaque, then i would find it ironic or even oxymoronic.

i also did not intend to write "Codeborg should not have claimed..." since Google indeed returns no hits for the phrase "opaque exegis", whereas many hits are returned for the two words "opaque" and "exegesis," including the one I found in which they occur in the same sentence and thus refure his/her original claim. mind you, i'm well aware that absence of a phrase in webpages indexed by Google hardly constitutes proof that said phrase had never been uttered or written in history, but the claim i suggested Codeborg should have stated at least has the possibility of being true, whereas his original claim was demonstrably false.

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Your point about the phrase in which the two words are conjoined is taken.

As to the phrase itself, it is quite à propos in that the member in question never fails to make a complete hash of any attempt to explain scripture. The thread in the question ought to be accorded legendary status for the sole reason of that members so frequent contributions of extraordinary length and inimitable opacity of style and meaning. In short, that member rarely, if ever, makes any sense.

To contend that the use of opaque and exegesis to describe someone's attempt to explain scripture partakes of an oxymoronic character presumes at the outset that any exegesis is by definition lucid and intelligible--which is certainly not the case. In response to such a contention, i would simply direct he or she who made it to the Religion and Spirituality forum here to read at length.

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Hot Damn ! ! !

I'm well past the fifteen minute mark . . .

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Setanta wrote:

To contend that the use of opaque and exegesis to describe someone's attempt to explain scripture partakes of an oxymoronic character presumes at the outset that any exegesis is by definition lucid and intelligible--which is certainly not the case.

i don't dispute this at all, and did not intend to imply the lucidity of any particular attempted exegesis in an a2k forum. i was rather alluding to an idealized conception of exegesis, which ought to clarify and not obfuscate.

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Setanta wrote:

Hot Damn ! ! !

I'm well past the fifteen minute mark . . .

glad to be of assistance. Rolling Eyes

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Yes, i take that point as well . . . would that such were true of all human intellectual activity . . .

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OPAQUE EXEGESIS

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