Comments on the difficulties of using a Scripture as a source of religious authority:
difficulties of interpretation - and this at various levels:
a) ambiguity of words, phrases - e.g. "the ruach of God" (Gen. 1.2)
ruach can mean either "wind" or "spirit"...
Jewish translation: "a wind from God sweeping over the water"
Christian translation: "the spirit of God moved on the water"
Point: the text/Scripture does not force us to choose either way (although the context favors the Jewish translation)
--> interpretation stands between us and the Scripture, where interpretation is in part an act which reflects the already-extant beliefs of a given faith community/tradition.
As an additional example: how do we count the Ten Commandments? (see Youngblood, 1994, 30f., reserve)
b) ambiguity of underlying manuscripts: ancient manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek did not separate out words - that task was left to the reader. On occasion, the same string of characters can be meaningfully separated out in two or more ways - sometimes resulting in quite different meanings, e.g.,
Gen. 3.16: "You will desire your husband, but he will be your master."
With a different parsing of the text, this sentence could also be rendered as
"You are desirable to your husband, but he can rule over you."
(see Bledstein, 1993, 44f.)
c) the relative importance of Scripture also varies - e.g.
in Jewish tradition, the Oral Torah - an oral tradition of diverse commentary and effort to apply the (written) Torah - is in some ways more "authoritative" than the text of the Torah itself as far as ethical teaching is concerned;
in Catholic tradition, Scripture has usually played a secondary role vis-a-vis the teaching traditions of the Church, etc.;
only in modern (i.e., post-Gutenberg) Western Protestant (indeed, 19th ct. American fundamentalist) traditions does the Bible approach the authority attributed to it by some theological conservatives. (And certainly, the notion of the Bible as a "literal" text only is very odd - an anomalous position which emerges perhaps twice in Western Christianity (the persecution of Galileo and 19th ct. responses to Darwin), over against prevailing views of various layers of meaning in the Biblical text, including metaphor, analogy, figurative, etc.
d) which Scripture also raises difficulties of interpretation - e.g.,
early disputes over which books to include in the Christian Scriptures
Catholic vs. Protestant Bibles (reflecting early Christian use of the Greek Septuagint, which entered into Catholic tradition, vs. Protestant efforts to "return to the sources," including the Hebrew/Masoretic text)
Additional topics of conversation:
Diverse readings of the second Genesis creation story (Gen. 2.4-3.24) as these establish diverse accounts of human nature
Ancient Israelite (prophetic) attitudes towards nature
Diverse readings of the role of Satan in the issue of the problem of evil
In light of these interests, we agreed as a class that it would be useful to actually read and discuss some Biblical texts. According, for Tuesday, Feb. 24, please read:
Genesis 1.1-2.4
Note the order of creation - compare the first three days with the second three days like so:
Day 1 |
2 |
3 |
Day 4 |
5 |
6 |
Genesis 2.4-3.24
Leviticus 25
[on the overturning of the Biblical proscription against usury in modern times, see Web document on "Capitalism and Protestantism?"
Job 1-2 (chapters); 42.1-6
Ecclesiasticus (the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach) [Catholic Bible/Apocrypha] 25.24
Matthew 5.1-47 (Sermon on the Mount)
Luke 4.14-21
Luke 6.20-49 (Sermon on the Plain) [NOTE: compare the blessings between the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain]
Acts 2.1-13; 4.32-5.16
Reserve Reading (optional)
Ronald Youngblood, "Counting the Ten Commandments"
Robin M. Jensen, "The Binding or Sacrifice of Isaac - How Jews and Christians See Differently"
Adrien Janis Bledstein, "Was Eve Cursed? (or Did A Woman Write Genesis?)"