No, that's not all that I'm talking about. A consensus may say the author wrote the water is pink but she meant the water is blue. But we always have the text to anchor us. I suppose i'm equally confused about your position. How can we possibly impart meaning about anything (including textbooks!) if we don't, at least initially, take the words for their literal meaning first. Not constantly, but initially.But all you're talking about is consensus. In other words, a group of readers has decided that a text means something. That has nothing to do with what the author intended or whether the consensus is correct. We can make educated guesses with all the tools at our disposal, but we cannot possibly know what was in the mind of the writer when he or she wrote the words.
Why I'm Not a Biblical Literalist
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Re: Why I'm Not a Biblical Literalist
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Re: Regarding Jehovah's Witnesses' "New World Translation" Bible
Hoops wrote:
Thank you for making my point that there are big doctrinal and textual differences between translations and translators. I don't have a dog in this fight, but suffice it to say you don't agree with the mainstream Christian folks, as I would have expected.
I don't think this is making your point at all. Because JW's (and LDS, for that matter) have added to scripture and made that a jumping off point to some Gnostic knowledge doesn't mean that orthodox Christianity has all of these variations that you claim. The greatest divide might be between RCC and Protestants, or Charismatics and the rest, and that divide is non existent in core beliefs.
And, just because someone comes here and touts some earth shattering new research - that has not even been published, reviewed, and we don't even know who is making the claim - doesn't support your case. You didn't Will Schryver get away with this. Why does this person?
“As to orthodox, I should be glad to know the meaning of the epithet. Nothing, you say, can be plainer. The orthodox are those, who, in religious matters, entertain right opinions. Be it so. How, then, is it possible I should know who they are that entertain right opinions, before I know what opinions are right? I must therefore unquestionably know orthodoxy, before I can know or judge who are orthodox. Now, to know the truths of religion, which you call orthodox, is the very end of my inquiries; and am I to begin these inquiries on the presumption that without any inquiry I know it already?…There is nothing about which men have been, and still are, more divided. It has been accounted orthodox divinity in one age, which hath been branded as ridiculous fanaticism in the next. It is at this day deemed the perfection of orthodoxy in one country, which in an adjacent country is looked upon as damnable heresy. Nay, in the same country, hath not every sect a standard of their own? Accordingly, when a person seriously uses the word, before we can understand his meaning, we must know to what communion he belongs. When that is known, we comprehend him perfectly. By the orthodox he means always those who agree in opinion with him and his party; and by the heterodox [heretical], those who differ from him. When one says, then, of any teacher whatever, that all the orthodox acknowledge his orthodoxy, he says neither more nor less than this, ‘All who are of the same opinion with him, of which number I am one, believe him to be in the right.’ And is this any thing more than what may be asserted by some person or other, of every teacher that ever did or ever will exist?….To say the truth, we have but too many ecclesiastic terms and phrases which savor grossly of the arts of a crafty priesthood, who meant to keep the world in ignorance, to secure an implicit faith in their own dogmas, and to intimidate men from an impartial inquiry into holy writ [i.e., the Bible].” – Campbell, George (b.1719-d.1796), D.D., F.R.S. Edinburgh, Scotland; Professor of Divinity and Principal of Marshal College, Aberdeen. Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence. (London, England: 1807), pp. 112-115. 1810 Edition: (Boston, Massachusetts: W. Wells and T. B. Wait & Co. [etc.], 1810). BT75 .C2 1810 / 31-011673.
Agape, JohnOneOne
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Re: Why I'm Not a Biblical Literalist
Hoops wrote:No, that's not all that I'm talking about. A consensus may say the author wrote the water is pink but she meant the water is blue. But we always have the text to anchor us. I suppose i'm equally confused about your position. How can we possibly impart meaning about anything (including textbooks!) if we don't, at least initially, take the words for their literal meaning first. Not constantly, but initially.
I guess I wonder what the text anchors us to.
My approach to literalness is pretty well articulated by Terry Eagleton, as follows, though he's probably harder on fundamentalists than I am:
The word "fundamentalism" was first used in the early years of the last century by anti-liberal US Christians, who singled out seven supposed fundamentals of their faith. The word, then, is not one of those derogatory terms that only other people use about you, like "fatso". It began life as a proud self-description. The first of the seven fundamentals was a belief in the literal truth of the Bible; and this is probably the best definition of fundamentalism there is. It is basically a textual affair. Fundamentalists are those who believe that our linguistic currency is trustworthy only if it is backed by the gold standard of the Word of Words. They see God as copperfastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.
Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase "sacred text" is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade.
The New Testament author known as Luke is presumably aware that Jesus was actually born in Galilee. But he needs to have him born in Judea, since the Messiah is to spring from the Judea-based house of David. A Messiah born in bumpkinish Galilee would be like one born in Gary, Indiana. So Luke coolly invents a Roman census, for which there is no independent evidence, which requires everyone to return to their place of birth to be registered. Since Jesus's father Joseph comes from Bethlehem in Judea, he and his wife Mary obediently trudge off to the town, where Jesus is conveniently born.
It would be hard to think up a more ludicrous way of registering the population of the entire Roman empire than having them all return to their birthplaces. Why not just register them on the spot? The result of such a madcap scheme would have been total chaos. The traffic jams would have made Ken Livingstone's job look positively cushy. And we would almost certainly have heard about this international gridlocking from rather more disinterested witnesses than Luke. Yet fundamentalists must take Luke at his word.
Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death. Matthew's gospel, in a moment of carelessness, presents Jesus as riding into Jerusalem on both a colt and an ass - in which case, for the fundamentalist, the Son of God must indeed have had one leg thrown over each.
The fundamentalist is a more diseased version of the argument-from-the-floodgates type of conservative. Once you allow one motorist to throw up out of the car window without imposing a lengthy prison sentence, then before you know where you are, every motorist will be throwing up out of the window all the time, and the roads will become impassable. It is this kind of pathological anxiety, pressed to an extreme, which drove the religious police in Mecca early last year to send fleeing schoolgirls back into their burning school because they were not wearing their robes and head dresses, and which inspires family-loving US pro-lifers eager to incinerate Iraq to gun down doctors who terminate pregnancies. To read the world literally is a kind of insanity.
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Re: Regarding Jehovah's Witnesses' "New World Translation" Bible
“As to orthodox, I should be glad to know the meaning of the epithet. Nothing, you say, can be plainer... of Divinity and Principal of Marshal College, Aberdeen. Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence. (London, England: 1807), pp. 112-115. 1810 Edition: (Boston, Massachusetts: W. Wells and T. B. Wait & Co. [etc.], 1810). BT75 .C2 1810 / 31-011673.
Agape, JohnOneOne
What are you expecting me to do with this? If anything. I have little interest in discussing this matter, an important one, in my opinion, with a long dead rhetorician. Particularly since, I expect, that Campbell and I are talking about different things. Or at least in a different context, be it social or doctrinal development.
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Re: Regarding Jehovah's Witnesses' "New World Translation" Bible
Hoops wrote:
“As to orthodox, I should be glad to know the meaning of the epithet. Nothing, you say, can be plainer... of Divinity and Principal of Marshal College, Aberdeen. Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence. (London, England: 1807), pp. 112-115. 1810 Edition: (Boston, Massachusetts: W. Wells and T. B. Wait & Co. [etc.], 1810). BT75 .C2 1810 / 31-011673.
Agape, JohnOneOne
What are you expecting me to do with this? If anything. I have little interest in discussing this matter, an important one, in my opinion, with a long dead rhetorician. Particularly since, I expect, that Campbell and I are talking about different things. Or at least in a different context, be it social or doctrinal development.
lol....classic 19th century American Protestant anti-Catholicism....what to do with this from a Fundamental POV...I just don't know where one would begin.
Thanks for the entertainment johnonejohn.
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI
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Re: Why I'm Not a Biblical Literalist
Runtu wrote:Hoops wrote:No, that's not all that I'm talking about. A consensus may say the author wrote the water is pink but she meant the water is blue. But we always have the text to anchor us. I suppose i'm equally confused about your position. How can we possibly impart meaning about anything (including textbooks!) if we don't, at least initially, take the words for their literal meaning first. Not constantly, but initially.
I guess I wonder what the text anchors us to.
My approach to literalness is pretty well articulated by Terry Eagleton, as follows, though he's probably harder on fundamentalists than I am:The word "fundamentalism" was first used in the early years of the last century by anti-liberal US Christians, who singled out seven supposed fundamentals of their faith. The word, then, is not one of those derogatory terms that only other people use about you, like "fatso". It began life as a proud self-description. The first of the seven fundamentals was a belief in the literal truth of the Bible; and this is probably the best definition of fundamentalism there is. It is basically a textual affair. Fundamentalists are those who believe that our linguistic currency is trustworthy only if it is backed by the gold standard of the Word of Words. They see God as copperfastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.
Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase "sacred text" is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade.
The New Testament author known as Luke is presumably aware that Jesus was actually born in Galilee. But he needs to have him born in Judea, since the Messiah is to spring from the Judea-based house of David. A Messiah born in bumpkinish Galilee would be like one born in Gary, Indiana. So Luke coolly invents a Roman census, for which there is no independent evidence, which requires everyone to return to their place of birth to be registered. Since Jesus's father Joseph comes from Bethlehem in Judea, he and his wife Mary obediently trudge off to the town, where Jesus is conveniently born.
It would be hard to think up a more ludicrous way of registering the population of the entire Roman empire than having them all return to their birthplaces. Why not just register them on the spot? The result of such a madcap scheme would have been total chaos. The traffic jams would have made Ken Livingstone's job look positively cushy. And we would almost certainly have heard about this international gridlocking from rather more disinterested witnesses than Luke. Yet fundamentalists must take Luke at his word.
Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death. Matthew's gospel, in a moment of carelessness, presents Jesus as riding into Jerusalem on both a colt and an ass - in which case, for the fundamentalist, the Son of God must indeed have had one leg thrown over each.
The fundamentalist is a more diseased version of the argument-from-the-floodgates type of conservative. Once you allow one motorist to throw up out of the car window without imposing a lengthy prison sentence, then before you know where you are, every motorist will be throwing up out of the window all the time, and the roads will become impassable. It is this kind of pathological anxiety, pressed to an extreme, which drove the religious police in Mecca early last year to send fleeing schoolgirls back into their burning school because they were not wearing their robes and head dresses, and which inspires family-loving US pro-lifers eager to incinerate Iraq to gun down doctors who terminate pregnancies. To read the world literally is a kind of insanity.
I get that Eagleton is more learned than I am, but I can see several problems with his assertions immediately. But, I'd rather discuss it with you. Much less pomposity :)