There's times in class when we're reading early christian or medieval texts and someone has a question, "Well couldn't it mean this?", or "What's up with this weird phrase?", and after the priest has said something like "Don't worry about that," I usually call attention to the fact that it's likely repeating/echoing language from a biblical passage (the priest often notes the same point, but not always), and suggest that if they're interested, they check out such-and-such a passage, because that might help clarify things and narrow down the range of possible meanings.
Also, a few times people have drawn attention to weird terminology in exegetical texts, and I've pointed out that it's actually terminology from grammatical and rhetorical education employed in a christian context, and briefly state why (the priest isn't up on that line of research, which is too bad, it actually explains a ton of aspects of the texts we're looking at)...
I figure it's no problem, since we're discussing meaning and translation, and I'm only volunteering shit I know about to clarify those issues which are at stake in class, just like people do when they say stuff is like a Vergilian echo or some bullshit like that.
Only, there seems to be this other dynamic where people think they can understand technicalities of religious texts without knowing their context (perhaps because they assume all religious is simple, or accessible to anyone, or a matter of pontificating off of words you read?), or that the priest as a practitioner knows all about religion (one of the oldest mistakes, to think that people who are devotionally active are experts on the history theology etc. of their own tradition, though they do tend to know more than average), and so one person in particular who always asks the questions hears my explanation and then is like, "Well, I don't believe that" and then repeats the question specifically to the priest (who usually responds, "I don't know"), which makes me want to channel my mother and go off on the questioner and be like all telling him about how I spent 6 years of my life studying this bullshit and that he put the question out there for the class, so if he doesn't want to hear the answer, he shouldn't ask the question.
That same guy and another guy in class seem to be Catholics with issues, and they sometimes try to expound on the religous texts, and I gently correct them if they say something egregious, since if they're going to be experts for the class, they damn well better know what they're talking about.
What I've noticed, too, is that the priest is fine with me bringing up historical context or mentioned biblical passages, but not the grammar/rhetoric stuff - perhaps because he's never read those texts? I can tell from the way he changes the subject when I bring up those specific points.
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Hmm? You may be right but then again, since he is so stubbornly committed to what he deems the best way to learn Latin by immersion, he may be instinctively averse to the grammatical / rhetorical explanations that some Latin teachers -to his chagrin- overemphasize (all of this aside from whether or not he's actually read these texts - although teaching Quintilian suggests that he is willing to bring some classical rhetorical lit. to class..)
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