Harris: [01:04:16]
Right. Well, you know, I'm both theorist and practitioner, and so I try to blend those two elements. A lot of black preaching, you know, it's just practice. It's not grounded in theory but practice. And I don't have to teach [my students] very much about how to practice preaching. I have to teach them about the theories of preaching and how to be a little more theory-oriented in our preaching and that kind of thing. So, this is not just a process of interpretation. It's a process of exegesis, which is another form of interpretation and so forth. But yes, this reading and rereading, I argue, you know, is so critical and so important. And I say probably from time to time in the manuscript itself, in the book itself, you know, the reading is an act of holiness. If you want to be a holy, focus on reading and focus on rereading and focus on understanding. Because I think that that brings you into the realm of spirituality in a very real sense.
Hawkins: [01:05:38]
So, what's the difference between reading and rereading?
Harris: [01:05:46]
Re-reading is a continuous process. Reading is a continuous process also. But re-reading is a process that continues even beyond the first or second reading or whatever. Re-reading is to go back and see and to fill in the gaps of areas and other things that you missed the first time and to dive deeper into your first reading. I encourage students, for example to just read the text first. Just read without any searching for anything. Just read it and see how it affects you emotionally or whatever or spiritually. Just do the reading. And then the rereading would be to come back with a much more focused, deeper dive into in into the reading of the text itself. But I think that the most complex, and the most helpful concept in this methodology is, is the notion of un- reading.
Harris: [01:07:16]
As a Black man and as an African American, there are so many texts that need to be untangled or unread. And by un-reading in this case, I mean undoing the text in a way. That it can be re-understood, and re-imagined, in a whole different way. And in my book, I use Jesus's un-reading of Torah text often as the model. He would often say to the Pharisees and the scribes, and even to the audience and others, and even to his followers, You've heard it said of old. But I say unto you, I consider that 'you've heard it said of old' is a reference to Torah and the teachings of Torah. But 'I say unto you,' is a kind of re-reading and reading of, often, the Torah text.
And I think I make the case as the book progresses with Jesus. Well, in a shamanic discourse, when Jesus's disciples wanted to stone the adulterous woman. And Jesus refers them back to the Torah text and also issues them a challenge. And each of them has to walk away in disgust because Jesus's reading is that, in many ways, they are no better than the women that they are accusing.
Harris: [01:09:31]
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