Discussion
I sometimes like learning about biblical history and when you do you discover these old arguments that people have been having about parts of the biblical texts. Here is a big one:
In Genesis God warns Adam "If you eat the fruit of that tree you will die on that day." But then Adam eats the fruit and doesn't die (on that day) and for some people this is an in-congruency serious enough to write a whole book about it.
Because, God is perfect and therefore God cannot lie.
1/
You put an arm around this person's shoulder and say "well maybe that's just how the story is written, it's for dramatic effect."
THAT? It just makes them much more upset. Because God cannot lie AND "The Bible" (please don't ask which one...) is also perfect.
And this really worries some religious people deeply.
This makes me think my experience with church and Christianity has been very different from what they have had.
2/
Every pastor I've encountered has said that while there is a perfect word of God, you can only hope to glimpse it through the works of imperfect men.
I wonder if that's common in US churches? Young earth Christians are a minority... but, how common is this kind of literalism?
I worry that literalism can get in the way of understanding the point of these old stories.
3/3
@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.)
@futurebird The reason I lean towards "embrace or at least acknowledge the interpretive tradition, and engage with it" as opposed to "reject and be free of the interpretive tradition, and engage with the text alone" (of the two options I framed as equal in my first comment),
is that I honestly don't think you CAN fully reject the interpretive tradition?
Like, okay, it's meaningful to dig into the story of Eating Of The Tree Of Knowledge in its original text. But what brought you to /this/ story in particular? why are we reading the original text of /this/ as opposed to of Cayin and Hevel -- the Invention of Murder -- just after it in most serializations?
Is it because this is the Original Sin that shaped the entire rest of the history of humanity, and every story of the bible going forward? so this story itself -- and whatever specific nunces -- cannot help but be embedded and entwined with every story thereafter? So its original meaning, outside intepretation, MUST have value?
@futurebird ... except Original Sin /is inherited from the interpretive tradition/.
You can't run AWAY from it! it's the road on which you travel, and the feet with which you run! Inherited means it's YOURS, and that it IS the tapestry you are working on and which you will pass on after you.
--
Also for if they add:
1)
The "b-" prefix, "[b-] the day you eat it you shall die a death", can have multiple meanings and appears both in that "b-yom" / "[b-] the day" construction elsewhere, and also when Moshe hits the rock Bamidbar 20:8 "he hit the rock [b-] his staff twice". So (unless I'm missing something) you can translate that literally "WITH the day you eat it you shall die a death".
2)
The Eating The Fruit story ITSELF contains elements of the fallibility of human transmission of divine texts. It is EVE (created right /after/ the command is given) who eats the fruit after discussing the law with the snake, and she quotes it as "You shall not eat of it OR TOUCH IT, lest you die."
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