More on Miles' Christ

This bit of promised followup is opportunistic. I wrote to Jack Miles asking if he'd consider putting the appendices of his book -- fascinating pieces of scholarhip in themselves -- on the web, and he kindly replied that he'd look into it. I took the opportunity to reply (taking an hour for a short paragraph, leaving me once again in awe of eloquent authors like he). So, to fulfill my promise of more on Miles, here's what I wrote:

Speaking of web pages and links, I was especially intrigued by your notion of the Old Testament as an "implied harmony" for the New Testament, and the importance of the collective familiarity of the Old Testament to the continuity provided by allusions in the New Testament. In the world of the web the "nod of recognition" (cf. p. 261 of your book) of allusion is simulated by the link. So I'm thinking of the Bible as a hyperlinked structure. This is of course already implemented on the web and in many study Bibles. But maybe we can view the (implied at least) linked structure as part of the literary work we're considering. Do you have any thoughts on this? If you do, please don't waste them on an individual email to me -- I'd love to see an article about it.

Clearly I don't expect a reply, but I'll post it if I get one. (If you're reading, Jack, you're forewarned :-)

[Update: Jack has already touched on this, as I'd have seen it if I'd re-read a little further. On p. 262 he writes:

Allusion legitimizes an intrusion of one text upon another or of one portion of a text upon another portion. The "hypertextual" syncretism that results turns the reader who notices into a kind of writer. Morover, a reader thus stimulated may continue in the same direction on his own, making linkages that the author himself may not have indended.

]

February 02, 2003 07:12 PM