Enns on the Ancient Mind

Nice plug. Peter Enns seems like somebody that you could sit down with and have a real authentic conversation/discourse (perhaps in a pub?) about different trajectories of biblical thought and language.

The bit about the un-ancient one-to-one correspondence defining the Western enterprise toward language, I think, is quite a profound understanding. Instead, the ancient Near East was much more symbolic with its linguistic enterprise, unwilling to infer their words as wholly connecting to some “outside” or “external” reality. But Enns empathizes here; those who have studied and discovered this ancient framework of understanding cannot afford to glibly say, “we are now outside Western thought” — rather we must be aware of this tendency.

I am not sure, however, if this mogul has been cleared with any substantial success; I myself have experienced much insider/outsider categories in the realm of academia, especially when said academia has a Christian foundation. Though it is rather complex, as I have also found some really empathetic academics equipping a Christian bent. But maybe this is a microcosm of the larger world; never the best of both worlds – I don’t know..

Good stuff.