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  • From: "Virginia Wiles" <vwiles AT sprynet.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Sacred cows
  • Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 23:51:12 -0400


I'm not sure we'd admit to anything being truly "beyond debate." But a few
items do occur to me as being those where our minds might not be as open as
we might be:

1) The "genuine" letters versus the deutero-canonical letters, especially
the pastorals. I'm on the side of the sacred cow, here, but I do need to
remind myself not simply to assume that the question has been settled "once
and for all."

2) I have some fears/suspicions that for some of us "the new perspective"
might be quickly becoming a sacred cow--as though those who wrote prior to
*our* new perspective are simply not useful voices any more.

3) A smaller issue that I seem to have bumped up against unwittingly on a
number of occasions now: the assumption (undefended by those in
conversation with me, at any rate) that Phil 2:6-11 is *obviously* a
prescriptive exhortation for correcting the Philippians' behavior. I argue
that the hymn is descriptive of the Philippians' life and experience rather
than prescriptive, but have had difficulty getting any hearing for that
reading. Granted, my interpretation may simply be wrong (though I don't
think so, of course!), but the responses (in reader reviews) to my efforts
have certainly smelled "sacred cow-ish." So I pose the question: is Phil
2:6-11 a sacred cow?

I suspect that many, if not most, of us have such "smaller" issues, where we
have tried to make an argument "against the stream," so to speak, but keep
hitting a wall. It'd be interesting to hear what some of these other issues
are.

Virginia Wiles
Assoc. Prof. of NT
New Brunswick Theological Seminary
New Brunswick, NJ





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