Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Writing Abraham (update) ::
Claude Mariottini, whose post on the Royal Tombs at Ur I mentioned in the earlier post Reading Abram/Abraham does a nice job of succinctly summarising discussion about the location of "Chaldean Ur". His post illustrates one of my perplexities in writing the article on Abraham, Claude takes about 350 words discussing the location of Ur, if I add a sidebar on this I am allowed 100-150 words!
On the wider issue of history/historicity Caude proposes that to write on Abraham the only source available to me is the Bible, which is quite correct. So, inevitably 95% of what I have tries to assist readers of the Atlas to read Abraham's story in the biblical texts. However, "modern" readers of the Atlas are very interested in history, the Atlas will be full of references to archaeological finds... so, in a sidebar of 100-150 words, how does one address this issue? Inevitably the summary will oversimplify excessively, but how...
For a minimalist it would be easy: "Abraham didn't exist, the stories are fiction, here's how the fiction works...
For a maximalist, easy again - though getting harder, difficult to handle the uncertainties (the Bible text does NOT identify Ur...
For a wishy-washy middle of the roadkill it's not so easy, readers have the right to hear something of the complexities, but how many of my precious words do I spend on what Claude (implies in his post) and Jim (putatively would claim) is a side issue to the real thing, helping readers read Abraham?
¶ 6:31 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
Claude Mariottini, whose post on the Royal Tombs at Ur I mentioned in the earlier post Reading Abram/Abraham does a nice job of succinctly summarising discussion about the location of "Chaldean Ur". His post illustrates one of my perplexities in writing the article on Abraham, Claude takes about 350 words discussing the location of Ur, if I add a sidebar on this I am allowed 100-150 words!
On the wider issue of history/historicity Caude proposes that to write on Abraham the only source available to me is the Bible, which is quite correct. So, inevitably 95% of what I have tries to assist readers of the Atlas to read Abraham's story in the biblical texts. However, "modern" readers of the Atlas are very interested in history, the Atlas will be full of references to archaeological finds... so, in a sidebar of 100-150 words, how does one address this issue? Inevitably the summary will oversimplify excessively, but how...
For a minimalist it would be easy: "Abraham didn't exist, the stories are fiction, here's how the fiction works...
For a maximalist, easy again - though getting harder, difficult to handle the uncertainties (the Bible text does NOT identify Ur...
For a wishy-washy middle of the roadkill it's not so easy, readers have the right to hear something of the complexities, but how many of my precious words do I spend on what Claude (implies in his post) and Jim (putatively would claim) is a side issue to the real thing, helping readers read Abraham?
¶ 6:31 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
