Given the past two blogs and a few recent assignments, I've come to realize how bad I am at choosing a topic when given free reign and no parameters. I suppose I'm so used to thinking of ideas that fit within strict criteria that I've loosened my grip on what actually captures my interest. Isn't that worrisome? Here's hoping our interests continue to be developed within, and outside of, academia.
With that being said, I think the text(s) that I'd like to study would be a religious text, of any religion really. The reason this interests me is because I was raised without the presence of religion - very few members of my family practice Buddhism, and those that do experience it subjectively. Give this fact, I think it would be interesting to study the origin and prevalence of different texts, without any personal investment in the writings and teachings of the text. Particularly, an objective view would lend itself to research into any chances that have occurred to the texts over time. I'd like to look at how these texts came to be, how they were duplicated, how they were distributed, and what their migration patterns look like. I think this research would have to cover a very long span of time. More interesting is the range of technological advances that would need to be taken into consideration. Presumably, the duplication and distribution of various religious texts would have been done through methods such as transcription by hand, to printing presses, to current day digital platforms.
I find this topic interesting as well, but because I DID grow up in a religious (Mormon) household, but I have since left the church. I am now attempting to view the religious texts we used (The Book of Mormon, the Bible) from a more objective perspective, which is extremely difficult. I have found a couple of good resources from people who have done it, however, like a man who is reading the Book of Mormon for the first time, and producing a podcast based on his hilarious thoughts about it and I find it utterly fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting idea - can you really ever go back to a document and read it objectively? On the other hand, since I didn't grow up religious, I don't think I'll ever be able to understand texts, like the bible, in the way that a person would if they were deeply devout.
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