St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was the founder of the Jesuit order and the author of the Spiritual Exercises (originally published in 1548). For an English translation, see the book The Spiritual Exercises: A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganss, S.J. (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992).
Now, as part of the lengthy Jesuit formation, each Jesuit makes a 30-day retreat in silence (except for the daily conferences with the retreat director) in the first year of the two-year Jesuit novitiate and again in the special year later in formation after ordination known as the third year of novitiate-like living.
Now, in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, there is a frequently repeated instruction for the application of the senses to the biblical passage for meditation that day. The application of the senses instruction means that the person making the retreat is supposed to apply each of his five senses to the biblical passage in question as the way to fully imagine the passage.
Now, in Stanleys 1986 book, he says, Yet in the same passage [John 20:16-18], the evangelist [John] issues a warning to his reader that adhering to the dear, dead past as past even that of Jesus is unavailing to faith. When Mary [Magdalene] clings impulsively to the risen One in a loving gesture, she is abruptly told, Stop touching me! (verse 20:17). The human senses of sight and touch must somehow be born anew from above (John 3:3), otherwise a person cannot see the kingdom of God. At the same time, the evangelist [John] insists that these same senses are not destroyed when empowered by the gift gifts of faith. In some mysterious manner, they have a role to play in the bestowal of this new faith by the risen One, as may be gathered from Johns narrative of the meeting of ten disciples with Jesus on the first Easter evening. After dispelling their fears and anxiety with his greeting, Peace to you!, we are told, On saying this, he showed them his hands and his side; and so the disciples rejoiced at seeing the Lord (verse 20). John is very conscious that the resurrection has not destroyed the experience of the Passion, but by transfiguring it has made it the principal avenue of approach to the unprecedented relation with Jesus, which founds faith (Stanley, 1986, pp. 26-27; my boldface here).
Subsequently, Stanley further drives home his basic point about the lack of nostalgia for the past in the Gospel of John when he says, If as we have been implying throughout this study, one is to read Johns Gospel as a dialogue between himself and his reader, not so much as a biography of Jesus as an autobiography of the evangelist [John], not as history but as good news, we shall gain new insights into the mystery of Jesus raising by God to a new, unprecedented existence a life lived unto God (Romans 6:10).
Dr. Krister Stendahl, distinguished New Testament professor of Harvard Divinity School, once remarked to me that the most striking feature of our Gospels is the astonishing lack of nostalgia for the good old days of Jesus earthly life, which their authors display (Stanley, 1986, p. 273; my boldface here).
Subsequent to that, Stanley also says, One of the most salient features of our Gospels is their perspicuous lack of nostalgia for the good old days of Jesus earthly life notwithstanding their almost exclusive character as the record of what Jesus said and did in the days of his flesh (Stanley, 1986, p. 325; my boldface here).
For a meditation of related interest about the Bible, in part,, see Ongs essay Maranatha: Death and Life in the Text of the Book in his 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, pp. 230-271).
Now, on page 287, Father Stanley says, To underscore the completeness of this authority [entrusted to the disciples] over sin, the evangelist [John] employs forensic terminology in his characteristic manner through what is known as a totality conception typical of semitic language, Aramaic and Hebrew are notoriously concrete languages (by contrast, for instance, with Greek): thus any abstract notion such as universality can be expressed only by means of antithetical expressions (Stanley, 1986, p. 287).
The abstractness of ancient Greek philosophical language is the central claim of the classicist Eric A. Havelock in his landmark book Preface to Plato (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963) in which Havelock notes that the Greek used in the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, is concrete compared to the Greek in Platos philosophical dialogues. Havelock attributes the greater about of Platos philosophical dialogues to the interiorization of phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Greek culture.
The American Jesuit media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, where, over the years, I took five courses from him, never tired of touting Havelocks 1963 landmark book Preface to Plato. Ongs perceptive review of Havelocks landmark 1963 book is reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002, pp. 309-312).
Now, what Father Stanley describes as a totality conception typical of semitic language, Aramaic and Hebrew . . . (by contrast, for instance, with Greek, should be understood as a relative contrast of concrete language.
For a related study of the Hebrew Bible, see James L. Kugels book The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
Now, I take Kugels account of The Great Shift in ancient Hebrew texts as involving the ancient Hebrew cultures early aural-to-visual shift in sensory cognitive analogues involving what Ong refers to as the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our long Western cultural history in his pioneering study of the print culture that emerged in Europe after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s in Ongs breakthrough 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason, mentioned above.
Now, in Ongs subsequent publications about his breakthrough insight, he stopped referring to it as the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive analogues. Eventually Ong came to settle on referring to orality-literacy contrasts. See, for example, his most widely translated book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen, 1982).
Now, over the years of my long life (I was born on March 17, 1944), I have published the following four articles involving interpreting various biblical texts:
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