Interview with Critical Text Proponent Maestroh (Bill Brown)

ME: So you really don't like not only the Authorized Version of the Word of God but the manuscripts underlying the AV?

MAESTROH: To say I don't like them is quite false and very nonacademic. We don't speak in such terms in the academy. However you of course couldn't be expected to know that. You see, in the academy these matters are spoken of very differently than at the level of the general lay person. But let's set that aside and allow me to articulate the subject in a way you may be more able to understand...

ME: Are you wearing a hair piece?

MAESTROH: If I were you wouldn't be able to tell.

ME: It's an academia hair piece?

MAESTROH: Hm, so, allow me to articulate the subject at hand in a way you will have more of a possibility to grasp so that you nor I will chance on wasting our precious time, though I suspect my current doctrinal work surpasses a bit in importance your need to get to your favorite television program, hm, yes?

ME: Yes, continue, Maestroh.

MAESTROH: OK, first of all-

ME: Oh, no. Could you summarize everything in one point? I have a very short attention span.

MAESTROH: You're absolutely correct, and I doon't knew why I didn't think of it myself! Bravo. Here it is: you're an idiot, and you must accept what your betters say. Concise enough, young Alcibiades?

ME: Yes, perfect, except my brain exploded at the Alcibiades reference.

MAESTROH: So sorry, should have kept that one to myself. I'll think better of it next time.

ME: Very good. So, when Erasmus rejected the very readings you champion he wasn't listening to his betters?

MAESTROH: Oh, dear. You mean Erasmus the pig-buggering, clinically insane opponent of Luther regarding the will of man?

ME: Is that ad hominem?

MAESTROH: That's a Latin term, and you've misspelled it.

ME: I said it out loud.

MAESTROH: It's still a Latin term, and you should be shot for uttering it.

ME: Forgive me, Maestroh, for using a Latin term.

MAESTROH: It's not that you've used it, it's that you don't understand it. Ad hominem is a form of argument that rests on prejudice rather than on proof, designed to influence emotion rather than intellect.

ME: Pig-buggering, clinically insane...

MAESTROH: Now back to the facts. Westcott and Hort-

ME: Madame Blavatsky's dog walkers...

MAESTROH: Now see what you've engaged in just now is called ad hominem. Learn something. You haven't made an argument, you've attacked the reputation of two of the greatest Christian scholars not only of the 19th century but since Christ.

ME: The 19th century was a golden age of Christian scholarship. Charles Finney, Scofield, Joseph Smith...

MAESTROH: Guilt by association. More fallacious delinquency.

ME: Back to Erasmus...

MAESTROH: Yes, Erasmus, a man who dined on blood with the Pope of his day...

ME: Ad homnibus and guilty asocialization, sir! Here, here!

(Suffice to say Maestroh didn't come around to my way of seeing things. It just isn't taught in the academy. I did get out of him though the title of his work-in-progress doctoral thesis: "Reasons the Shepherd of Hermas should not be presented as canonical to the general lay audience until such time as they are educated and prepared sufficiently for the truth." It should be available to Christian scholars, he said, within a couple of years...)