So which of the many interpretations is one to believe. Maybe it would be easier to acknowledge that the bible is a seriously flawed collection of ancient writings.
With all due respect to those who believe, of any religion, Abrahamic or not, ascending form or descending, it is one thing to be part of a lineage of belief and tradition, and another to have a scholarly view of
any sorts of Scriptures, their interpretation, and the phenomenon of religion as such, apart from contents.
Precious few will go through a step by step analysis of how they acquired their faith and beliefs, no matter what it is, and in what area: political, social, or religious. So how many on here who are reading this have asked how they got theirs? Surely everyone knows the story of the Christmas ham: one time during the holiday preparations, when four generations of the family were present, the husband happens to ask his wife “Before you cook it, why do you cut the ends off the ham?” The wife says that it is because her mother taught her to do it that way. “But why?” he persists. Mom is right there, helping, ans says, “Well, because we always do it that way; Mom always cut the ends off and so I did too. It’s just how it’s done.” “But why?” persists the now beginning-to-be-irritating husband. His wife and m.i.l. huff, and they all decide to go ask Grandma. She thinks a bit, and then remembers: “When I was a young woman, just here in this country, we had just married and were very poor. But not so poor we couldn’t afford a small ham. But we only had a small pot as well. I had to cut the ham up to make it fit!” Mystery solved.
Of course, religion is another story, and of far more consequence. But I wonder if there is a family out there that doesn’t have some sort of tradition it just did because that is how it was done since… We were odd in our neighborhood because our Christmas tree went up on Christmas eve, because that is when the Baby Jesus came. St. Nick had already come on the 6th, also making us different, as did some of our foods, and in our community the young men sprinkling perfume on single ladies Easter day. Every nationality had their tradition, “because that is what came down; it is how it is done.” And in the cases of religions, this is invariably given Divine sanction.
So what was life like 4000 years ago for the people who wrote down already ancient oral traditions in what became parts of our Scriptures? The idea of God is a bit more important than how to fix a ham, yes? But we find, for instance, the case of the woman who refused to learn a second language when it would have advanced her greatly. When asked why, she said “God writ the Bible in English, and that makes it good enough for me!”
So when we consider what we find written, do we consider the people who wrote it originally? What was their science, medicine, literature, politics like? what were their daily needs and ides and idioms we really have no clue about? When they wrote RBM, did they mean “Arabim,” (Arabs) “Orabim,” (the people of nearby Orab) or lastly “orabim” or raven? Who fed Elijah? Which is most likely? Which s most piously impressive? Who decided on what basis? Is TZD “rib” or “side?” Does the Aramaic GML mean “camel” or “rope?” Which, in context, makes more sense? Which is more piously spectacular? And such are the relatively very simple questions when it comes to translation and interpretation. We also have to remember, that though they might have been closer in time, early scholars would not earn that title these days, nor would they have much of our methodology available to them.
Few people even know what “epistemology” means, especially now that our Country has slid from first in education among developed nations to somewhere past 20th, in about as many years. But epistemology, general semantics, history of languages and their idioms, meaning and it’s many aspects, translation, interpretation, the nature of collections, of witnessing, transcription, standards of reportage and purpose, science, tradition, the psychology of belief, neurology, all these things come to bear on Bibles and what one believes and why. It is a miracle sometimes that we understand each other face to face, never mind from two or four thousand years ago through innumerable and unimaginable filters.
All Scriptures of any faith contain questionable material of some degree or another. Of course it is far easier to see that in someone else’s books than our own. We have our own affinity for cutting our ham. So it isn’t that ham isn’t good, unless you are Jewish, but there might be some interesting history of how we came to prepare it the way we do. That is worth some consideration.
