and a thot about the bible:

there is no one way to follow christ, christ and the christian church demands, from the begining a radical kind of plurailty

it demands it in the most literal way (galatians, the ethopian eunuch, the woman caught in adultery, etc)

but it also demands it in the most subtle of ways, by calling all of those who follow him to no longer follow old ways of capital for example, or to deny family for another....

and sometimes it becomes metacontextual.
the text of the bible is not the rigourous narrative expected out of tradtional religous sagas (its not the rig veda) and its also not the sayings of the prophets, that are also expected (its not any of the sutras)

it is a collection of dozens of narratives, all fractured, all complicated--some playing off each other, some in conflict and some dovetailing perfectly---and it demands a intertextual reading(s)--it is the reason why it is so easy for people to call each other bad xians or to deny xianity in there fellow believers--let me offer an example:

a radical anarcho-libertarian can look in matthew for proof texts, and he can tie those to the idea of debt forgiveness found in the numbers sections on jubillees, and tie that all into the distrust of secular states in the apocloyptic tradtions and have a pretty solid theology (if he ignores the idea of giving to ceaser what is ceasers) (sp)

a homophobe can skip over christ altogther, make bridgings b/w the mosiac laws of levticus, and pauls hatred in romans.

a feminst can link phoebe and ruth

one who objects to the idea of women in leadership can link unclean menses with women subjecting to there husbands.

(these are only the ones that are within the text themselves--there are others, for example the sumarian hymn to inanna featuring almost line by line cribs of the song of songs; isaacs struggle w ith abraham and the politics of moloch; paul's history as a roman before being an xian)

the canon was formed by comittees (who inspired the committees?), its lacunae (literally--the lack of cohesion b.w the hebrew and xian scripture; the 100s of deturocannonical texts, some of which are used as legitmate scripture (ie apocrpahya for the catholics, the maccabes for the orthodox) and some of which remain legitmate.), and since luther, an obsession w. scriptura wrong phrase).

so this text, with its genres, with its contexts--what do we do w. it ?
how do we play sola crpiptura w. a library that contains in it, prohecy and letters and poetry and eoritca and historical narrative and political propgranda (agitprop) and and and and...

anyways, im off to work (!!), this post was mostly for jeff, but andrew/drew put yr nose in.