Oooooh, controversial...
Dec. 11th, 2005 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
awmperryOn AFP we're having a bit of a discussion on the dangers of interpreting religious texts - with, in this case, specific reference to the Bible - literally without some degree of critical scrutiny. And I, as is my wont, went off on a bit of a rant about it...
Don't read the rest of this post if you're particularly religious and/or easily offended by rational questioning of religious dogma.
I should point out that I intend no offence to those more religious than I, I just wish that the more... how shall I put this... earnestly evangelical would read the stuff and make up their own minds rather than relying on received "wisdom". If you want to take the Bible (or the Koran, or the Torah, or the Epic of Gilgamesh) literally, that's your prerogative. But don't - as someone tried a few months ago - try to tell me that the Bible is entirely, literally accurate and infallible. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that it was inspired or authored by God (which is itself a discussion for another occasion), it was written by humans. It was transcribed by more humans, copied by another bunch of humans, and then translated by even more humans. That makes it the theological equivalent of a video recorder manual; the kind written in Taiwan, translated through Japanese and Dutch before being translated by a team of trained chimpanzees into English and proofread by an illiterate rhinoceros.
OK, maybe not that bad. I don't like badly translated manuals. My point is, that with all the humans involved through the millennia, there really is very little that can be taken literally in most major holy texts these days. Wherever humans get involved, things change. Humans have preconceptions, flaws, memory lapses; they also invariably have their own agendas which can - and in a text as large as the Bible, will - lead to misinterpretations and bowdlerisations, whether intentional or not.
Just look at Cinderella; from a story with no slippers at all, to a story with a possibly glass slipper, to a story with a slipper that, hey, wasn't glass after all, to the story that Disney made famous and nobody really remembers what the original version was in the first place. Fortunately in this case we have Snopes, but the Bible's a bit trickier.
For a simpler - and significantly quicker - example, try playing Chinese Whispers. Same principle.
Anyway, my latest post in the discussion was as follows (and yes, my subscription to Blumrich's theories has just as much basis as belief in a literal interpretation; but at least I've had a think about it and decided that I like the idea, rather than just saying "It's all true, and if you disagree you're a blasphemer!"):
>>There's a lot more fun in the Bible. I haven't personally checked the
>>claim that some accounts of Jesus's travels apparently were written
>>without reference to a map...
>
> I wouldn't bother. There are accounts in the gospels of Jesus' presence
> in certain villages in Judea and Galilea. There is no Thomas Cook, and
> trying to treat the Bible as such is a prime example of why one can not
> take it both literally _and_ seriously.
Agreed. Then, of course, there's the theory that more advanced technologies were involved (take J F Blumrich's theories on the book of Ezekiel, for instance), so the chroniclers had to describe them as best they could. Do we really believe, for instance, that Ezekiel saw a chariot with eyes on the wheels and omnidirectional hubcaps? I rather suspect he'd describe what he saw with similes and approximations. After all, how would a Victorian describe a shiny modern car with TFT monitors and things? Or how would Edward I describe a squad of modern soldiers with machine guns?
I can't see any reason to assume, just because our current society didn't invent something until twenty years ago, that some other civilisation didn't invent it thousands of years ago. Hey, if it's really advanced, perhaps we've already seen the evidence and not had the knowledge to recognise it. Or perhaps their idea of "biodegradable" was rather more effective than ours.
The literal interpretation of the Bible is based, in my view, on an incredible degree of arrogance rather curiously combined with an astonishing degree of faith in other people's observations. An eyewitness in court will be cross-examined from here to Kalamazoo, but some ancient bugger scribbles down the drunken ramblings he heard from some bloke down the pub and we take it as gospel? Doesn't make sense.
I've also aired on occasion the mildly serious assertion that the Bible is part Yellow Pages, part Jeffrey Archer, part Panorama, part History, part What I Did On My Holidays and part geneaology (which may or not be correctly spelled, but it's ten past two AM). Yes, I'm joking, but only up to a point.
Well, that's my theological rant for today. I'm not actually against religion (except for its anti-social tendencies), just against taking religions at their word without thinking for oneself.
Don't read the rest of this post if you're particularly religious and/or easily offended by rational questioning of religious dogma.
I should point out that I intend no offence to those more religious than I, I just wish that the more... how shall I put this... earnestly evangelical would read the stuff and make up their own minds rather than relying on received "wisdom". If you want to take the Bible (or the Koran, or the Torah, or the Epic of Gilgamesh) literally, that's your prerogative. But don't - as someone tried a few months ago - try to tell me that the Bible is entirely, literally accurate and infallible. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that it was inspired or authored by God (which is itself a discussion for another occasion), it was written by humans. It was transcribed by more humans, copied by another bunch of humans, and then translated by even more humans. That makes it the theological equivalent of a video recorder manual; the kind written in Taiwan, translated through Japanese and Dutch before being translated by a team of trained chimpanzees into English and proofread by an illiterate rhinoceros.
OK, maybe not that bad. I don't like badly translated manuals. My point is, that with all the humans involved through the millennia, there really is very little that can be taken literally in most major holy texts these days. Wherever humans get involved, things change. Humans have preconceptions, flaws, memory lapses; they also invariably have their own agendas which can - and in a text as large as the Bible, will - lead to misinterpretations and bowdlerisations, whether intentional or not.
Just look at Cinderella; from a story with no slippers at all, to a story with a possibly glass slipper, to a story with a slipper that, hey, wasn't glass after all, to the story that Disney made famous and nobody really remembers what the original version was in the first place. Fortunately in this case we have Snopes, but the Bible's a bit trickier.
For a simpler - and significantly quicker - example, try playing Chinese Whispers. Same principle.
Anyway, my latest post in the discussion was as follows (and yes, my subscription to Blumrich's theories has just as much basis as belief in a literal interpretation; but at least I've had a think about it and decided that I like the idea, rather than just saying "It's all true, and if you disagree you're a blasphemer!"):
>>There's a lot more fun in the Bible. I haven't personally checked the
>>claim that some accounts of Jesus's travels apparently were written
>>without reference to a map...
>
> I wouldn't bother. There are accounts in the gospels of Jesus' presence
> in certain villages in Judea and Galilea. There is no Thomas Cook, and
> trying to treat the Bible as such is a prime example of why one can not
> take it both literally _and_ seriously.
Agreed. Then, of course, there's the theory that more advanced technologies were involved (take J F Blumrich's theories on the book of Ezekiel, for instance), so the chroniclers had to describe them as best they could. Do we really believe, for instance, that Ezekiel saw a chariot with eyes on the wheels and omnidirectional hubcaps? I rather suspect he'd describe what he saw with similes and approximations. After all, how would a Victorian describe a shiny modern car with TFT monitors and things? Or how would Edward I describe a squad of modern soldiers with machine guns?
I can't see any reason to assume, just because our current society didn't invent something until twenty years ago, that some other civilisation didn't invent it thousands of years ago. Hey, if it's really advanced, perhaps we've already seen the evidence and not had the knowledge to recognise it. Or perhaps their idea of "biodegradable" was rather more effective than ours.
The literal interpretation of the Bible is based, in my view, on an incredible degree of arrogance rather curiously combined with an astonishing degree of faith in other people's observations. An eyewitness in court will be cross-examined from here to Kalamazoo, but some ancient bugger scribbles down the drunken ramblings he heard from some bloke down the pub and we take it as gospel? Doesn't make sense.
I've also aired on occasion the mildly serious assertion that the Bible is part Yellow Pages, part Jeffrey Archer, part Panorama, part History, part What I Did On My Holidays and part geneaology (which may or not be correctly spelled, but it's ten past two AM). Yes, I'm joking, but only up to a point.
Well, that's my theological rant for today. I'm not actually against religion (except for its anti-social tendencies), just against taking religions at their word without thinking for oneself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-11 12:15 pm (UTC)CCA
no subject
Date: 2005-12-11 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-11 04:25 pm (UTC)Thank you; I'm not alone.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 03:16 pm (UTC)