Positing that a world view is either Biblical or secular is an artificial and false duality. Each of those alleged factions yet have their own contentious sub-classes, and many of those permeate the supposed distinction. Even so-called consensus, “approved,” imprimatured and nihil obstated of the over 100 versions of “The” Bible arrived in their form because of contentions over previous understandings of much therein. And, of course, many critics of certain interpretations from a secular view yet believe in the holiness of that book, as do I.
But the book, made of many books gathered, also contentiously, at one point as a compilation of many books is of paper and ink, and one has to ask from where comes its alleged authority? All those selections and translations were made from unoriginal copies by men who were in many instances of poor scholarship and excessive piety, and who likely had agendas. And the criteria were equally stringent: eg, there are four gospels because the church fathers agreed that that is a fitting number, since there are four winds, four directions and four corners of the earth, four seasons, etc. Excellent scholarship and piety, if you ask me.
There is also the question of where is one studying the bible from? As in the thread question, understanding of the Bible has “evolved.” Does one study the Bible piously from the inside, having made a faith commitment to a particular stream of consensus, or from the outside as a phenomenon of history, literature, and interpretive thought, or both? How many ordinary readers of the Bible, for instance, have considered such pertinent disciplines as anthropology, archeology, comparative linguistics and religion, theory of meaning, semantics, symbology, General Semantics, mythology, the natures of abstracting, witnessing, memory, collections, processes in the formation of groups and their interactions, the nature of belief itself relative to human psychology, integrational philosophy, communication theory, single and multi- level logics, etc, etc, etc?
Not many have, I wager, even taken a superficial course that includes these matters, as easy as it is to get a course book on such. Eg, here is a very simple exercise in translation. Below are four sentences in English. Can you come up with the exact meaning? The question is based on the fact that texts in Hebrew and Aramaic are written without vowels, punctuation, or capitalization and depend on context for the meanings of consonant groups. Try it:
1: THSSNXPRMNTNTHDCPHRNGFMSSG
2: THBBLFTHHBRWSWSWRTTNNTHSMNNRWTHTVWLSNDWTHTPNCTTNFNYKND
3: TSMSCLRTHTMNYRRRSFNTRPRTNCLDBMD
4: FRXMPLGDSNWHRCLDBNDRSTDBYSMNTBNSTDGDSNWHR
One might soon agree with Robert Ingersoll that it could take twice as much inspiration to read such text as to write it. And then, despite crediting earlier translators with devotion and piety, and knowing in more detail some technicalities of language, are we in our century yet familiar with words, idioms, and modes of thinking of the original writers of whose work we only have copies, some of them obviously altered? For my part, I have to ask myself: Am I devoted to theological ideas based on original perception, or on linguistic events that took place well after the fresh revelation?
Again, how many know that “rope” is in fact the preferred translation now of the consonant group GML, not “camel.” Also, in the story of Elijah, is RBM “Arabs,” “ravens,” or “the inhabitants of Oreb,” a village hard near where Elijah was ensconced on the brook of Cherith? The only sensical translation is now thought to be “the inhabitants of Oreb.” And two millenia of misogyny might be attributed to the mistranslation of TZD, which actually means “side,” not “rib” and all the implications ancient and modern that go with that.
These differences are predicated on the actual speaking of Aramaic as we now know it. A critical example to some points of faith is this one: where is the comma in Luke 28:43? Is it “Verily, I say unto you, today…”? Or is it “Verily, I say unto you today, …”? The second is the nuance preferred by native speakers of Aramaic in their idiom, changing a major point of “proof” theology. The Bible, all of the versions of it, are riddled with such considerations.
That last one hinges on a comma!!! Which wasn’t there! In Fresno, California, on May 5, 1969. a barber and another man shot each other to death over the true meaning of certain passages of the Bible. The true meaning!!! Is that the kind of piety and devotion we are at the level of here? Is that what we have evolved to? What an excellent recommendation for christianism.
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