Interpretation of Texts (General)

by dhw, Thursday, September 23, 2010, 09:04 (5174 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

BALANCE_MAINTAINED: Even the bible claims divine intervention in the writing of it: "All scriptures are inspired of God and beneficial..."-You have not identified the source of the quote, but the Bible doesn't claim anything. Whoever wrote the particular text makes the particular claim.-But even this quote illustrates the point I'm trying to make. Intervention suggests direct participation. You have interpreted the words your way, whereas I would say that inspiration is not intervention. Sibelius is said to have been inspired by the landscapes and forests of Finland. That doesn't mean the animals, birds, wind and snow intervened in the composition of his symphonies and tone poems! He was the composer ... they weren't. The writers of the biblical texts may well have thought they were doing God's will, but so did Mohammed and Joseph Smith, and so do the Muslim suicide bombers. Such "inspiration" means nothing. Only God can tell us his will. -As for "all scriptures" and "beneficial", try this for size:
"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: / Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of the city, and unto the gate of his place [...] / And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die [...]" (Deuteronomy 21, 18-21 ... the omissions don't change the message)-Inspired of God and beneficial? You may say that times change, and we must move with the times. But if this is the Word of God, who are we to say what needs to be changed? The Bible is a literary text, its history is suspect, its teachings are suspect, its sources are suspect, and its different translations and interpretations make one another suspect. The evidence you have referred to is interesting in itself, and I'm not criticizing the research that's going on. A figure much reviled by the scientific establishment, Immanuel Velikovsky, also studied myths, biblical stories, histories, geology, archaeology, cosmology and all other related disciplines in a fascinating attempt to put science and literature together to uncover the truth. (There are some historical references to the Earth having been turned upside down on more than one occasion. That might well have caused the flood you're looking to authenticate!) It reminds me very much of the archaeological quest for Troy, which almost certainly did exist and may well have been located. Does that mean we now have to believe in Homer's gods and goddesses?-I suppose what I'm really doing here is continuing my response to your statement that the Bible "is clearly not a book to be interpreted literally". Of course I agree, but now you say: "I am not claiming it is all true", which suggests you are claiming that some of it is true. And no doubt some of it is. But who decides? The meaning of the text depends ultimately on the interpreter.