@futurebird Ehh, like I get this but I think the inherited interpretive tradition has value on its own as its own traditional, passed-down meaning,
and yes if we WANT to take the old stories of the bible as valued-for-being-Core-Religious-Text passed-down religious guidance then we're doing a disservice to them by not centering their fundamental plain-text meaning in expressing/experiencing them.
... but the inherited interpretive tradition is ITSELF a Core Religious Text -- even if it has no canonical serialization, and a living form -- that is ITSELF passed-down, and can ITSELF be valued or not, and be done disservice to or not in a choice of how much to center or disregard it.
And like from an external perspective I don't think there's inherent value in doing the former over the latter?
@futurebird (This is me circling to a common bugbear I have with most Christianity I see -- both liberal and illiberal -- that goes REALLY hard into either Sola Scriptura and how "don't listen to the preachers, just read the bible itself for whatever wisdom you personally find in it"/"I hadn't REALLY read the bible until [fundie reawakening]" or into "there is only one original, timeless meaning of the text, guarded and consistent throughout time by the True Church in whatever era",
and BOTH of those perspectives -- even as the fight each other -- deny the presence, history, and dynamism of the iterpretive tradition they have inherited (and shared with each-other, even while being at their sibling's throat).
Which, for all the humanity and human fallibility and agency that make the source biblical texts so rich, is the product and history of SO MANY more humans from SO many more perspectives.
And this is me moralizing but it feels.. /anti-human/, to me, to erase all those hands.)
