This page is part of the Hypertext Bible Commentary - Amos , if you have reached it as a standalone
page, to view it in context, go to www.bible.gen.nz© Tim Bulkeley, 1996-2005, Tim Bulkeley. All rights reserved.
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The title of this project requires some defense. This page presents reasons behind the choice. On the one hand nervous Christians fear that by the use of this name all possibility of claiming authority for the biblical text being commented is forfeit. While the apostles of post-modernism will object equally that the whole notion of a commentary is the antithesis of the slippery nature of language which gives texts their joy.
Both are right - and both are wrong! I can only claim, I don't mean "post-modern" that way. Like Humpty-Dumpty, if need be, I will pay extra to employ the expression as it suits me. Please do not complain, Dear Reader, for in this post-modern world "l'auteur est mort"/1, and as the pre-moderns taught us de mortuis nil nisi bonum./2 So you my reader should not speak ill of what I your poor dead author have done!
In any case, one reason for the name is illustrated by the table below. There I suggest some contrasts between pre-modern biblical commentaries (roughly till the invention of printing) and modern commentaries (the printed books most of us use), and have suggested some ways a "new kind" of commentary may emerge out of the possibilities opened up by hypertext and multimedia.
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| Hand Copied: expensive, luxury for the elite | Printed: relatively cheap and available, but accessible only to educated | Electronic: cheap (now only to the technologically privileged but soon widely, cf. video-games) |
| Sequential: originally on scrolls, later continuing the tradition, often in the form of series of addresses | Codex form: randomly accessible (in theory at least) | Hypertext access: not merely random but chosen by reader |
| Culture of empire: Greek, Latin, Hebrew (intellectual if not political "empire") | Culture of nation states eg.British, American, French and German | Global culture: at least aware of cultural bias and seeking to "avoid" it |
| Authorised by the community | Authoritative and Authoritarian: note the presentation of authors on title pages, and the question of authority implied in the dispute with preceding authors | Democratic: reader controlled and reader driven (expensive to produce, yet cheap to sell) |
| Expressed and served "acceptable" ideas | Individualistic: could be critical of accepted ideas | Committed to text (rather than text's community) |
| "Belonged" to community | Belongs to Author and/or publisher | "Belongs" far more to user |
| Decorated ("illuminated") | Illustrated: some diagrams and plates | Multimedia: text is only part of content, one (at first?) privileged sort of content |
| "Priest" (respected consecrated male) | "Professor" Middle-aged, Middle-class, Male | Produced by group |
| Spiritual | Intellectual | Holistic |
A codex (a "book" with a central binding) can be more be reader-centric than a scroll, permitting a reader in theory to "jump" through the text. However, despite the possibility of random or chosen access that flipping the pages offers, most texts designed for reproduction as codices - this includes both books and magazines - have a high degree of inherent sequence. The complexities and restrictions of existing multi-path novels serve to demonstrate these limits, and to stretch them. Most codex books therefore are only a little more reader-centric than scrolls were.
This leads to the heretical thought that the codex, symbol of literary modernity, promotes the death of the reader at least as much as of the author. Readers habitually and voluntarily surrender control to authors. (Whether to real or to implied authors need not concern us here.) Ancient literature celebrated community. Texts reflected and promoted the ideas of a group, society or movement, as such they were subject to editing and updating throughout the process of their transmission. (Since they were hand-copied even when "reduced to writing" this process was prolonged.) Modernity celebrated its authors, and produced many celebrated authors. Texts were fossilised and standardised by the act of printing.
Postmodernity celebrates the reader. Texts are again seen to be slippery, even if their words are stable, meaning slides. Yet the codex resists the reader, always threatening to restore the author's program. Hypertext linked documents begin to restore control to the reader. The reader "discovers" what they read, and decides "when" to read it.
By empowering the reader, hypertext unthrones the author, and "puts the reader in their place"! Hypertext enables post-modern reading.
The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is untrue, as any wordwright worth their dictionary knows. Yet like all the best untruths it points in significant and true directions. Many things are better shown than told, or heard than read. "Show and tell" is far better than tell, tell, tell.
It is not, however, merely pragmatic advantage which suggests that a post-modern commentary will use multimedia. Multiplication of media allows multiplication of semantic possibility even to the linguistically challenged. The literally rich "boomer" generation can delight in the play of words. Their video-enabled, but often literature-deprived children perhaps find words the bars that seem to compose the "iron cage of laws"/3.
1 "The author is dead", a post-modern slogan made popular by Roland Barthes expressing the fact that once "published" texts "belong" to readers not to authors. RETURN
2 A Latin "tag" attributed to Diogenes Laertius. Circa 200 A. D. which means something like "do not speak of the dead unless you can find something good to say". RETURN
3 The phrase comes I believe from Peter Berger, I think from The Sacred Canopy. (I have tried to check the reference but cannot find the approprtiate page.) RETURN
This page is part of the Hypertext Bible Commentary - Amos , if you have reached it as a standalone
page, to view it in context, go to www.bible.gen.nz
© Tim Bulkeley, 1996-2005, Tim
Bulkeley. All rights reserved.