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kaigouBack in college, I was [stop laughing] a theology [NOT religion] major, and one of the classes I took -- fortunately alongside my favorite malcontent, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kraehe -- was on Revelations. I was raised Episcopalian, which is possibly one of the least apocalyptic forms of xtianity out there, so I'd never given Revelations much attention. Plus, the professor was definitely a theologian, not a religionist, so I figured I'd get something out of it.
One of the professor's main points was that Revelations' author had an extensive and comprehensive and incredibly in-depth knowledge of the source material, which is the original Hebraic canonical texts. This never really got through to me, because it seemed to me that if you have a good working handle on the general concepts in the earlier judeo-xtian texts, that of course you could flip them around and play with them. I didn't get the degree of playing, because I didn't have the depth myself to see all the minute areas where a concept or image from the Pentateuch got stood on its head in Revelations.
Thing is, I get it now: it's another form of fanfiction, if we loosely define fanfiction as "something written that uses source material outside the author's own immediate creation". I didn't get this when studying, and I also didn't know the source material well enough, so much of the text's nuances missed me, and at times I felt like the text was really quite flat -- and I'd have to say that from the reactions of my classmates (nearly all of whom self-identified as fundamentalist, wow, that was a nightmare class in the end), they didn't get it, either. I was used to metaphor, but had little ground for the specific metaphor in the text, and where they were used to the images, they weren't used to them being treated metaphorically. Either way, we were all ill-equipped for seeing the flips going on in the text.
I mean, think of when you read fanfiction that's lauded in its fandom as a brilliant work. Most often this is because the fanfic manages to reveal something previously obscured in the original, or perhaps explain something that had been left as a plothole. For instance, I can think of retconning stories that are utterly brilliant, really, unless you don't know the story well enough, and by "well enough" I mean that that you, too, could see that plothole or that unanswered question. If you miss the pivot-point in the original story upon which the retcon is built, then the story requires a foundation you're lacking, or that you only have partially. For you, the story becomes a house of cards that eventually collapses under its own weight -- but it's just as possible that it's collapsing because the foundation you provided wasn't thorough enough to hold up under it.
That was happened when I studied Revelations, because I just didn't have the extent of the massive scope (despite our professor's determined attempts to get us there!) that the imagery and metaphor needs to be able to see how the Pentateuch is getting completely and utterly retconned out the wazoo. I could get it around the edges, but then the house of cards would fall on me, and I'd feel like it was a lot of sturm und drang for very little in the end.
Riffing further off that, this is also the reason -- with original thanks tocaseyvalhalla -- I consider received (religious) texts as a form of fanfiction, again using the loose(r) definition introduced here. Especially in the judeo-xtian systems, which do rely a great deal on specific canonical limitations, the imagery and metaphor in the text becomes fodder for the next go-round, whatever it may be. It's being recycled. That's true of texts in most developing systems, since texts that match the company line (IOW reflect current political views) are more likely to become canon.
But received texts are a kind of juggernaut that can distort a religion/fandom into a completely different direction (cf Aishuu's comments on the post before this one). The more the text overlays while moving away from the shadow-lines of the original, the more we're getting into Major AU territory, where fanon can and has overshadowed the source material to such a degree that it's almost ignored in favor of the brilliance of this one fan, err, this one prophet*. We'll tell each other, "sure, the original story's okay, but it doesn't always make sense, so you should really read so-and-so's version, because she explains it so it all totally makes sense" -- until the day comes that some folks don't see reason to read canon but are perfectly comfortable sticking with fanon.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but find amusing that the authors of these so-called texts do, themselves, become a kind of BNF. A religious BNF, but still, a BNF.
* I am very much looking at you and your fandom, Weiss Kruez.
kraehe -- was on Revelations. I was raised Episcopalian, which is possibly one of the least apocalyptic forms of xtianity out there, so I'd never given Revelations much attention. Plus, the professor was definitely a theologian, not a religionist, so I figured I'd get something out of it.One of the professor's main points was that Revelations' author had an extensive and comprehensive and incredibly in-depth knowledge of the source material, which is the original Hebraic canonical texts. This never really got through to me, because it seemed to me that if you have a good working handle on the general concepts in the earlier judeo-xtian texts, that of course you could flip them around and play with them. I didn't get the degree of playing, because I didn't have the depth myself to see all the minute areas where a concept or image from the Pentateuch got stood on its head in Revelations.
Thing is, I get it now: it's another form of fanfiction, if we loosely define fanfiction as "something written that uses source material outside the author's own immediate creation". I didn't get this when studying, and I also didn't know the source material well enough, so much of the text's nuances missed me, and at times I felt like the text was really quite flat -- and I'd have to say that from the reactions of my classmates (nearly all of whom self-identified as fundamentalist, wow, that was a nightmare class in the end), they didn't get it, either. I was used to metaphor, but had little ground for the specific metaphor in the text, and where they were used to the images, they weren't used to them being treated metaphorically. Either way, we were all ill-equipped for seeing the flips going on in the text.
I mean, think of when you read fanfiction that's lauded in its fandom as a brilliant work. Most often this is because the fanfic manages to reveal something previously obscured in the original, or perhaps explain something that had been left as a plothole. For instance, I can think of retconning stories that are utterly brilliant, really, unless you don't know the story well enough, and by "well enough" I mean that that you, too, could see that plothole or that unanswered question. If you miss the pivot-point in the original story upon which the retcon is built, then the story requires a foundation you're lacking, or that you only have partially. For you, the story becomes a house of cards that eventually collapses under its own weight -- but it's just as possible that it's collapsing because the foundation you provided wasn't thorough enough to hold up under it.
That was happened when I studied Revelations, because I just didn't have the extent of the massive scope (despite our professor's determined attempts to get us there!) that the imagery and metaphor needs to be able to see how the Pentateuch is getting completely and utterly retconned out the wazoo. I could get it around the edges, but then the house of cards would fall on me, and I'd feel like it was a lot of sturm und drang for very little in the end.
Riffing further off that, this is also the reason -- with original thanks to
caseyvalhalla -- I consider received (religious) texts as a form of fanfiction, again using the loose(r) definition introduced here. Especially in the judeo-xtian systems, which do rely a great deal on specific canonical limitations, the imagery and metaphor in the text becomes fodder for the next go-round, whatever it may be. It's being recycled. That's true of texts in most developing systems, since texts that match the company line (IOW reflect current political views) are more likely to become canon. But received texts are a kind of juggernaut that can distort a religion/fandom into a completely different direction (cf Aishuu's comments on the post before this one). The more the text overlays while moving away from the shadow-lines of the original, the more we're getting into Major AU territory, where fanon can and has overshadowed the source material to such a degree that it's almost ignored in favor of the brilliance of this one fan, err, this one prophet*. We'll tell each other, "sure, the original story's okay, but it doesn't always make sense, so you should really read so-and-so's version, because she explains it so it all totally makes sense" -- until the day comes that some folks don't see reason to read canon but are perfectly comfortable sticking with fanon.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but find amusing that the authors of these so-called texts do, themselves, become a kind of BNF. A religious BNF, but still, a BNF.
* I am very much looking at you and your fandom, Weiss Kruez.
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Date: 20 Nov 2009 01:47 am (UTC)I had a moment of pure Zen the other day when I realized that the Western canon in art, at least until they got to the landscapes and still lifes stage, is all fan art... I still have zero interest in the subject matter, but that realization made me happier than anybody but another fan could understand.
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Date: 20 Nov 2009 02:49 am (UTC)I guess it's left up to the reader/viewer to determine whether this conclusion degrades art & religion, or elevates fandom.
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Date: 20 Nov 2009 03:47 am (UTC)I tend only to dip my toes into other fandoms, so I can't imagine what BNF of Weiss Kreuz you could be referring to (though I'd love to know), but I can't lie, I find fanon infinitely more fun in Weiss Kreuz than the original - well, no, I do tell a lie, I can spend hours pointing and laughing at the TV anime (which is all I've bothered to watch)...
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Date: 24 Nov 2009 08:22 pm (UTC)Of course, there are theologies, like Premellenial Dispensationalism, that are a ignore the obvious intention of John of Patamos himself.
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Date: 24 Nov 2009 08:51 pm (UTC)Well, if we speak completely intra-fandom, then I'd agree. But if we speak of the overall fandom -- hrm, say, the different Doctors (and I should warn you, I'm only vaguely familiar with the entire Dr Who phenomenon, mostly at just the pop-culture level and not specifics), then if Revelations is considered having an promoted fan, then we're getting into territory where we'd need to ask ourselves the question of whether Mohammed (Islam) or John Smith (Mormonism) are also promoted fans, seeing how they each have received texts. Which I guess would be like Doctors Two, Three, and so on being completely dissed except by their own side-sections, who refuse to acknowledge previous Doctors except as some kind of vague rough draft in a ramp-up to the Ultimate Doctor Ever... And sure, each group may have its promoted fans, but before that could happen, that fan was a BNF of some degree.
However, Revelations is one of the few texts (erk, if any -- I can't recall any others in the Xtian bible that purport to be received; most purport to be historical and/or contemporary-for-posterity texts) that's received, similar to a handful of texts in the Pentateuch, and the entirety of the Qu'ran and the Mormon Bible. One of the big issues about a 'received' text, in contrast to the bulk of the Xtian Bible and the Pentateuch (and I think this is where I'm agreeing with you) is that quite often this comes with a "you shall not alter a word of this forever and ever and ever", and thus promoting itself as an authority of some sort even if it's built on previous texts, to the point that -- as both Islam and Mormonism claim to do -- there's an added element of being the perfected or new-and-most-improved version.
That said, I'm not saying at all that there's anything illegitimate about referring to additional texts, be they later or earlier, depending on one's purposes and as long as you're not sinking into eisegesis. My point was mostly focused on the realization that what fanfiction writers do -- take a source material (arguing all the while as to whether the
Pentateuchmanga is a more 'legitimate' source than theNew Testamentanime, of course) that they know really really damn well, and playing with its references and symbolism and pattern to produce a new derivation, and one that can only be fully seen in its entire brilliance if the reader is also fluent to some degree in the original material as well. This was a postulation on my professor's part that I could not -- at the time -- disprove or prove, because I couldn't even grasp how anyone could tell.Now that I've been arguing points in fandoms -- especially those with parallel or contradictory source materials such as series, manga, OVA, and/or audio-plays -- I realize just how versed and fluent I am in some of these fandoms, such that a single statement on the part of a character in Gundam 00 and whammo, I'm like, I know exactly what's being referenced there from the previous series, ahahah, I get the joke! (Or alternately, I see how this time around, they took it in a totally different direction.)
Going back further in the question of canonical texts, it's not just Xtianity that struggled with this; Judaism ran into the same stumbling blocks when a good half or so of its population returned from slavery in Babylon and suddenly you've got an influx of people who have a religious equivalent of playing telephone -- not really practicing quite the same as the folks back home... and naturally, a passel of texts (canonical and apocryphal) spring up in political defense of one system or the other. I was never all that much into historical developments of religions, but those specific moments -- the political influences on canonical choices -- always fascinated me.
Which is why I noted the issue of received texts, because when you have that in its entirety, it's a lot harder to manipulate the text and/or withdraw anything from canon (or add, for that matter). It's all-one-author (ostensibly godlike, at that) and maybe it's just me (well, it probably is just me) but I actually saw studying received-text-based religions to be one of the worst, most boring ways I could conceive of spending my time. There's no intersections between differing viewpoints, unless one posits the godlike author was also schizophrenic, which you might do if you're analyzing from outside the religion, but damn harder if you think to work from an intra-dogmatic theological standpoint. And getting back to the original analogy, a received text is like a closed-circuit series by an author who won't ever be allowing sequels, official or not: there's no room for a BNF to become promoted. Or perhaps one could say that writing a received-work is the BNF's self-promotion in absence of any official party able/willing to promote. Kinda like not necessarily leaving the sandbox but just building an entirely new castle in your own corner, even if you're borrowing someone else's tools to do it.
Also, the fact that the Book of Daniel is a forgery remains one of my greatest-loved trivia about the Pentateuch/Old Testament.
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Date: 24 Nov 2009 09:25 pm (UTC)Point taken, and actually Revelation is the ONLY book in the New Testament which makes any claim to authority on the basis of being direct divine revelation, though some fundamentalists and evangelicals misuse Revelation 22:18-19 to claim direct divine authority for the whole Bible. But that is an example of reading into a text a meaning that the author could not have possibly intended.
The Gospels claim authority because they purport to be true biographical accounts of the life of Jesus, though ancient standards about what could be assumed to be true were much less rigorous then modern ones. Acts, likewise, claims authority as a truthful history. The epistles have an implicit claim to authority based on the authority of their purported authors, which is one of the reasons for psudopiagrapha. They gained additional authority when the Church decided that these writings, and no others, ought to be read in the church as authentic documents from the apostolic era. Whether the bishops at Nicea were right or not is almost beside the point. The point is that the authority of the New Testament derives from being an authentic account of the doings of God, not from being the revelation of God in and of itsef- except for Revelation! This makes it rather an oddity among the canon of the New Testament. However, IMHO mainstream Christian theology has worked around this difference by refusing to acknowledge Revelation's claim to direct divine authority and unchangablility. It has been treated as a book authoritiative because of its truth, and has been translated and transformed along with other books of the Bible. Note that a Bible translated into English, even very loosely (The Message), is still a Bible, and James Petersen paraphrases Revelation every bit as loosely as he paraphrases the Gospels. OTOH, a Koran which is not in Arabic is not a Koran, but an interpretation of the Koran.
That said, Revelation's claim to direct divine authority has always given ammunition to fringe sects.
I would not regard Joseph Smith and Muhommed to be "promoted fanboys" because I am an orthodox, creedal Christian and think both of them heretically perverted the faith. Their works may have authority for the members of their sects, but they have no authority for the mainstream Church. This is of course one of those places where a member of a religion, however open minded, will differ from someone who is studying the religion from outside of it.
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Date: 24 Nov 2009 10:34 pm (UTC)slept throughmissed in class, she filled me in on later. The goal of the class in Revelations, however, wasn't really its political history (though that was interesting enough), but to treat it almost as a kind of poetry. I recall the professor commented early on that if one sees the text as humanly-written, then the author was either Jewish, raised in a Jewish-dominated culture, or an incredible student of Judaism, given the texts' contents and references, and if one sees the text as divinely inspired, then obviously God must be a Jew, to know the ins and outs so well. (With tongue strongly in cheek, given that I don't think our professor could teach a dogmatic position if his life depended on it.)What's mostly my focus in this particular post was that one analogy I recall we debated was one I got, and didn't get. You know the phrases, "he's not playing with a full deck" and "he hasn't got all his hangers in the closet" and so on? Someone who knows those phrases as part of acculturation is going to use them easily; that is, if we say the phrase is originally Jewish in this analogy, the rest of the New Testament uses these phrases readily and handily and properly. What the author of Revelations does is mess with them, which would be the equivalent of saying, perhaps, "he hasn't got all his oars in the closet" and then later, "he's not dealing with all his lightbulbs in the box". You might get the first and think he got it wrong, and the second might trip you up if you don't realize it's a combination of three different versions -- which is also analogous to how plenty of folks over the centuries have tried to take some rather wacky poetic phrases like that and ascribe special meaning to them, when if you know the poetic/imagistic origins then you might see it less as a literal statement of some sort and more of a poetic/metaphorical attempt to say without saying that the first version (Judaism) is now being flipped around on its head, and echoing/underlining that by messing with the language and metaphor as well.
It's like a high school AU where someone still manages to work in Heero saying "mission accepted" except where in the hands of a less skilled author it's "mission accepted", while in a really fluent author's hands, he says "this mission isn't acceptable" -- and the less-fluent fans get miffed because that's not-how-it-goes, while the more fluent fans go ahahahah I see what you did there!
High school AU. I'm just sayin'.
The last paragraph, ehehehehe. *cough* I'll just let you read between the lines to see where I fall on the spectrum. *whistles nonchalantly* But it does amuse me to think of them as BNFs who got tired of the source material being so WRONG,
I'm telling you, season 1 was brilliant but look what they DID to my favorite pairing in season 2and decided to do their own version to the point that none of them have ever even seen an episode of the actual Weiss Kreuz anime, anyway (not that I can blame them). But then again, if I were a WK fan, I would probably be expected to take a completely different approach and argue that the BNFiest BNFs who did massive rewrites of the entire series are the ones who really have authority because, y'know, the original series writers, man, they just sold out. And stuff. And were in it for the drugs, but we do it for the ART! *shakes fist*...and that's probably so very NOT subtle or any kind of nonchalant, either, eh, but then again, I am NOT IN THE FANDOM, even though I guess I would be (sort of) in the GW fandom and I still say that transitional manga -- blind zero? ground zero? whut, something zero? -- is not canon and really just plain MAKES NO SENSE and I don't care if it has "official GW manga" written on it! Hell, I don't even think the manga's canon... and I should probably shut up now before I lose the last tiny bits of my GW membership. *goes back to whistling*