![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
I was thinking about this after coming across some of the disputes regarding authorship of some parts of the Bible. More and more I realize just how much we are inadvertently recruited into fights without ever stopping to ask if we really care about it. Politics or whatever. Do we really care who wrote the Bible? Do we really care how old the Earth is? I mean, what's the point? Let's say I drink the Kool-Aid and go on believing that the Earth is 6000-some years old... and? Does this better my walk with God? Does it increase my understanding? No, it's just a putative claim that goes nowhere and does nothing.
I don't care who wrote the Bible. Somebody, sometime way back when, in a society far different from my own, from a history that informs my own, wrote something down, and then someone else collected or redacted all of these different things into one compilation. This is all I need. What I am saying is, is that the Bible is not a Christian book or even a Jewish book. It is a book comprised of parts taken from an age long before our modern paradigms.
What frustrates me the most about modern attitudes toward the Bible is this exact prejudice people bring to it. It is a collection of writings from people who have nothing to do with what we are right now. They don't have any of our agendas, ideas, concepts or paradigms. They don't have any of our worldviews, allegiances or cultural upbringing. It is such a vastly alien and fundamentally, radically free piece of literature that it is tantalizing to me. Ultimately, the Bible lets me break free from the determinative tyranny of modern culture. Every other thing I read is steeped in and so full of everything that I am already so intimately familiar with. Everything else is so restrictive. The Bible teaches me and lets me think and see the world as if I were a 4th century BC human being. A world that is unknown. A world that has no end. A world that is endless in its breadth, not tacked down and mapped out and delineated and so gone over. It lets me see the world anew.
Just think of the Bible as you would any other old historical journal, from any other random people, in any other time and place.
The next step after this is realizing that the bigger fight about divine authorship is likewise superfluous. It doesn't add anything. It doesn't teach anything. It doesn't develop in any sense a deeper study or understanding of the text. It is a superfluous and ideological claim that has nothing to do with the material.
All of these "religious" conflicts we spend so much time on... do nothing. They have no fruit. They produce nothing. I'm not going to get lost in sectarian and ideological fights that don't make me wiser or smarter.
This is also in part a reaction to checking in on Joel Osteen to see if he has opened up his Bible yet. There are deep and incredibly involved philosophies from our ancient past coursing through the Bible, and it isn't anything like creeds or systems or doctrines. It is a collection of full-blown treatises, and it is not simply some collection of sayings or good advice. It isn't just stories or histories. The stories themselves are vehicles of underlying philosophies that are easily transmitted by oral tradition. The point of the stories isn't the bare facts of these events. These are just the packages designed for easy transmission.
The beautiful part of human oral traditions is that even if you have no clue about what it is that is contained within a narrative, you're still passing it on for those who cares to find it. It is such a brilliant and highly effective mode of cultural preservation and transmission that those who do it don't even have to know they are doing it!
Par example: In the Psalms or Wisdom literature, there is a perplexing pattern in some of the passages. For instance, it will say, "Worry not about the affairs of the world..." and immediately thereafter it will lament the affairs of the world. The instructive nature of a given passage is sometimes explicitly announced:
2 Hear this, all ye peoples; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world,3 Both low and high, rich and poor together.4 My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.5 I will incline mine ear to a parable; I will open my dark saying upon the harp.
It literally comes out and says on many occasions that what is being taught is a "dark saying" or a hidden proverb, or a mystery to be unlocked.
The genius of the Bible ultimately lies in its self-teaching nature. For every hidden sign there is a corresponding instruction. Everything is layered up in a pretty straight-forward framework of descending symbology that literally rolls itself out once you key in to it.
I don't care who wrote the Bible. Somebody, sometime way back when, in a society far different from my own, from a history that informs my own, wrote something down, and then someone else collected or redacted all of these different things into one compilation. This is all I need. What I am saying is, is that the Bible is not a Christian book or even a Jewish book. It is a book comprised of parts taken from an age long before our modern paradigms.
What frustrates me the most about modern attitudes toward the Bible is this exact prejudice people bring to it. It is a collection of writings from people who have nothing to do with what we are right now. They don't have any of our agendas, ideas, concepts or paradigms. They don't have any of our worldviews, allegiances or cultural upbringing. It is such a vastly alien and fundamentally, radically free piece of literature that it is tantalizing to me. Ultimately, the Bible lets me break free from the determinative tyranny of modern culture. Every other thing I read is steeped in and so full of everything that I am already so intimately familiar with. Everything else is so restrictive. The Bible teaches me and lets me think and see the world as if I were a 4th century BC human being. A world that is unknown. A world that has no end. A world that is endless in its breadth, not tacked down and mapped out and delineated and so gone over. It lets me see the world anew.
Just think of the Bible as you would any other old historical journal, from any other random people, in any other time and place.
The next step after this is realizing that the bigger fight about divine authorship is likewise superfluous. It doesn't add anything. It doesn't teach anything. It doesn't develop in any sense a deeper study or understanding of the text. It is a superfluous and ideological claim that has nothing to do with the material.
All of these "religious" conflicts we spend so much time on... do nothing. They have no fruit. They produce nothing. I'm not going to get lost in sectarian and ideological fights that don't make me wiser or smarter.
This is also in part a reaction to checking in on Joel Osteen to see if he has opened up his Bible yet. There are deep and incredibly involved philosophies from our ancient past coursing through the Bible, and it isn't anything like creeds or systems or doctrines. It is a collection of full-blown treatises, and it is not simply some collection of sayings or good advice. It isn't just stories or histories. The stories themselves are vehicles of underlying philosophies that are easily transmitted by oral tradition. The point of the stories isn't the bare facts of these events. These are just the packages designed for easy transmission.
The beautiful part of human oral traditions is that even if you have no clue about what it is that is contained within a narrative, you're still passing it on for those who cares to find it. It is such a brilliant and highly effective mode of cultural preservation and transmission that those who do it don't even have to know they are doing it!
Par example: In the Psalms or Wisdom literature, there is a perplexing pattern in some of the passages. For instance, it will say, "Worry not about the affairs of the world..." and immediately thereafter it will lament the affairs of the world. The instructive nature of a given passage is sometimes explicitly announced:
2 Hear this, all ye peoples; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world,3 Both low and high, rich and poor together.4 My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.5 I will incline mine ear to a parable; I will open my dark saying upon the harp.
It literally comes out and says on many occasions that what is being taught is a "dark saying" or a hidden proverb, or a mystery to be unlocked.
The genius of the Bible ultimately lies in its self-teaching nature. For every hidden sign there is a corresponding instruction. Everything is layered up in a pretty straight-forward framework of descending symbology that literally rolls itself out once you key in to it.
2 comments | Leave a comment