Pat Archbold on the Power of Allusion

I’m late to this party, but I just want to say Bravo! to Pat Archbold for illustrating how allusion works in biblical literature (which turn out to be how allusion works in all other forms of literature). The notion that the authors of the New Testament were too stupid to notice that Jesus asked “Why have you forsaken me?” and too stupid again to ask themselves whether this saying (not mention his crucifixion) might present a problem to the thesis “This man is God” is something that only post-moderns could possibly suppose. It requires a stygian ignrorance of Scripture (not to mention human nature) so profound that only post-moderns could imagine that ignorance to be a brilliant flash of insight.

Scripture is, in fact, chockablock with these tossoff references to other biblical passages which the authors assume you will get. That we don’t get them means only that we don’t understand Scripture, not that Scripture is impossible to understand. It turns out, in fact, that biblical writers were, on the whole, skilled literary artists of surprising subtlety, not bronze age morons 2000 years dumber than the sophisticated and highly evolved fans of Beavis and Butthead and Jersey Shore. The flattering illusion of chronological snobbery by which postmoderns perpetually congratulate themselves on being smarter than the alleged near apes who wrote the Bible is one of the most evidence-free myths the post-Christian world has embraced in it’s mind-numbing and cocksure ignorance and arrogance.