the issue of interpretation

Why do people think they can interpret a “holy” book better than other people?

Really, unless we DIVE into the mindset of the writer it’s impossible to interpret the text correctly.

It’s completely subjective, much like a poem, the author can convey all the meaning he wants into the words of a poem, but when it comes across anothers ears or eyes, they apply their own filter of life to those words… much is the same thing that happened when the early christians looked to the torah and other “prophetic” writings to fulfill christs coming. Taking things out of context is a precedent.

The lamb of god: - allaboutjesuschrist.org/lamb-of-god.htm

gen 22 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

and so he does, not needing to be fulifilled in christ:

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram [a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

another prophecy is that through abraham the world will be redeemed… once again, answered in this chapter:

[b] 15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

Some scripture has become impossible to interpret correctly, in one part of the book of kings we are told David killed goliath, then we learn that it was Elhanan.

In the tale of the ark, we’re told the animals went in 2 by 2, then we learn that the clean animals went in by 7’s. you can see this by the amount of times Noah entered the ark.

it comes down to interpretation. Too bad all modern interpretation is so holey. No one wants to look at the bible with a critical eye. we gladly misinterpret it through the eye of mysticism (an interpretation in no way meant by the original author.), but never through the eyes of the skeptic. The eyes of the skeptic provide a clear path to what the words actually mean.

the butter knife to cut through the holey book.

feel free to keep using the interpretation you use, it is after all absolute.

Hermaneutics is an important part of any tradition.
When I read baudy poems in the Shijing, I don’t care that the author wrote it because he was trying to get his swerve on with a courtisan – I attach layers of meaning to it based on the metaphors that were used, a touch of wu xing and architypes, and the political setup at the time. The result is something that is indeed far more complex than what it started out as.
You gotta milk these things. The author’s intent is rarely solid justification for any work of art. If the work does not transcend the creator in some way, then it is hardly art, it is merely a picture, or merely a manuscript.
That said, sometimes you can go too far. Ezra Pound took waaaay too many liberties with the Shijing and most modern ‘believing’ Christians I’ve encountered take too many liberties with their holy book.
But that doesn’t mean the idea of applying layers to a flat surface is a bad one.

Hello F(r)iends,

Because some people are idiots…

-Thirst

…and because some people have educations.

Why do some people think they can “Read Spanish” better than other people?

Hello thirst

I believe you have something there. IMO to begin to truly appreciate the integration of deeper meanings within scripture, a person must experience and admit to themselves their nothingness or idiocy in this capacity. So you are right in asserting it takes an idiot to begin to appreciate the influence of superficiality and begin to derive deeper meaning from sacred scripture.

Of course I believe we have fake idiots or “experts,” all around us in virtual epademic proportions. But also, I believe, a minority of real idiots that have begun to understand.

sigh

yes thirst… I wonder who you are talking about.

Uccisore,

I think people read way too far into the scriptures. The more educated you are about the scriptures, the greater this problem becomes. You no longer can see them for what they are, but only for what you’ve been trained to see.

Nick,

The deeper meaning of scripture? It was written by a tribe of nomads who thought god lived on mt. sinai. They attributed “natural” events to the power of god. We only find a deeper meaning to scripture becase we are reading way too far into it.

life is mysterious, to think that some nomads from 2000+ years ago had all the answers to life is fantasy.

Not to say that people shouldn’t be free to live out fantasy…

Scyth

I believe you are wrong to assume people are the same in their being and resultant capacity for understanding. You would think it absurd that the difference in levels of being between Man taken as a whole is greater than between than between an animal and plant for example yet I believe it to be so.

The fact that there were people of the past as ignorant as those of today does not prove that their sciences and knowledge of human psychology could not have been greater than much of ours today.

Read on the objective mathematical and astronomical knowledge the Great Pyramid of Gizeh is constructed upon. We would not be able to even build it which means they understood something we have forgotten.

Yet take these ego deflating peculiarities away since they are impossible to kick under the table and you’d consider these people unfortunates from having lacked the intellectual benefits of Harvard, Yale, and MTV.

We really may not be as intelligent as we think we are and some of the past may not have been as ignorant as we think they were.

Of course since the invasion of the plague of “experts” such ideas are considered old fashioned and prepostrous. Heh, heh,heh.

i didn’t really read the entire thread, but i’d say that the matter of how one interprets any religious text is the most vital. So many religious sects take the matter of hermeneutics as being a given, but it is not.
One’s ihermeneutics define’s one’s orthodoxy. i have been thinking on this subject for a while and trying to outline a “Christian” hermeneutic that would be both philosophically acceptable, (con)textually accurate, and historically valid. We could spend many long posts discussing this issue.

Hi MB,

Apparently the only thing a human is incapable of is to say, “I don’t know.” That said, if you’re having problems understanding something, by all means just ask. I’ll be happy to tell you exactly what it means.

Thirst,

It isn’t some people are idiots, all people are idiots. The dilemma is that some people don’t think they’re idiots… We need more idiots!

JT

Hello F(r)iends,

Some are just bigger idiots…

Nick: So, are you an idiot or a fake idiot?

Scythekain you idiot! If I thought you were an idiot , then I would just call you an idiot. You suggested that the more educated you are about scriptures the “greater the problem becomes”. If we accept this, then this potentially applies to all types of education. However, I reject your assertion because I can learn a lot about a philosophy without buying into it, without making it more than it is. Perhaps the problem is that the people who you’ve met are incapable of seeing beyond their education. Then again, you used the word trained. Training is not the same as learning it’s more like indoctrinization.

-Thirst4Idiots

the problem comes when the idiots refuse to believe they are idiots which is just plain stoopid…

-Imp

Idiotism, being a self realization on the path that I am moving towards, I could neither be so presumptions to assert myself as a complete idiot or give the impression of such by acting as a fake idiot. I consider myself a pre-idiot which means having the potential to grasp my condition of idiocy as part of the human condition in general with the whole of myself and not just intellectually. It would defeat my purpose and automatically deny my potential if I intentionally faked this degree of realistic perception for purely egoistic satisfaction.

LMAO

-Imp

Jesus spoke in metephores to help us with this issue.

Scythekain:

I don’t see how education in general can be indicted, it’s just learning, and learning is good. I mean, you could say that learning ‘these days’ or ‘at this institution’ is subject to certain biases and limitations, but people are going to intepret the Bible, as long as there are copies to read. They may as well learn what they are talking about first.
It’s as simple as this: Interpreting an ancient text is hard. If something is hard, then it takes some degree of training or education to do well. If something takes education or training to do well, then some people are better at it than others. Just like reading a foreign language, playing basketball, or anything else we can’t do out of the womb.
So in answer to your original question:

A variety of reasons. Some think they can interpret a holy book better because they have the training, experience, and background knowledge to do so. Apparently some people think that such things are actually hinderences, and thus think they can interpret holy books better because they lack these things. In your own words:

 In your own words, you assert that some people are better at interpreting Scriptures than others- there is a 'way they are' and some people can 'no longer see it'.  So you can count yourself among those who think that some people can interpret the Scriptures better than others, it is just odd that you think the uneducated are the gifted ones in this respect.

Hello F(r)iends,

I’m too much of an idiot to understand that…

-Thirst

Imp

It may be stoopid but it is how liberals were initially created and proof of our stupidity…They begin as fake idiots or “experts” giving everyone indigestion.

Thirst

No, not enough of an idiot. As a result you have become normal and no longer appreciate your potential idiocy. Christianity is evil word around here so I’ll just ask you to consider this from the Buddhist perspective:

raintaxi.com/online/2002spring/gach.shtml

thirst, uccisore…
I thought more of the education dillema and I stand by my original assertation.

Just because someone has a doctorate, doesn’t mean we should trust them! A perfect example of that is Dr. Atkins who recommended a no - low carb diet along with eating a higher amount of protein. All I have to say about that towards him: “You EEE-DIOT!”

I think most people are looking to support their belief system with their interpretation. A few people (very few) look at scripture more as mythological than as historical. An example of this is available in many modern stories, of hisory that got mythologized. George Washington and the apple tree, Paul Bunyan being 100 yards tall, and make his oxen from the blue mountains in the west. Johnny applseed, these are all based on actual people, and within even a few years they got mythologized. Today mythology is dead, we want cold hard facts, and when we look to interpret the ancient texts, we look only to prove it’s factualness, and disprove it’s mythological standing.

I don’t know why.

Do you think the writers of the bible were aware of the “divine ratio”?

the ark of the covenant is 2.5 cubits by 1.5 cubits which is the 5/3 ratio in the fibonacci sequence.

Nick,

was imp’s reply to this:

Personally I think it’s ridiculous to think that ancient people knew more about the human psyche than we do, and we can. We’ve reach a stage of development where we can sit around and think all day long about the meaning of life and other such mundane stuff of life. The writers of these books didn’t have these luxuries. That is why they are filled with violence, and burden and hard work. Most of us here haven’t ever worked in a field to grow food for our community. Most of us sit on a bus, car, bike, than proceed to our destination.

We have far more time to sit and think.

of course maybe that’s the problem!

scythekain:

Certainly so, but trusting the guy with the doctorate is still a safer bet than trusting the guy who dropped out of middle-school, yes? Nothing is certain where humans are concerned, that’s a fact.

Well, that's kind of a chicken/egg situation, isn't it? The have the belief system they do because they have the interpretation they do, and if one changes the other must if they are rational people, yes? 

Certainly, and those people have a belief system, and seeing scriptures as mythology reinforces that belief system. Do you know many atheists that believe Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and rose from the dead three days later?

uccisore,

I’m not speaking against education in general, I’m talking about a moderate amount of skepticism coupled with education. I wouldn’t know that Dr. Atkins was an idiot without the following recipe:

1 tablespoon of skepticism

2 ounces of common sense

4 cups of research

Stir vigorously for 5 minutes than broil for half a year.

The bible of course is a far more subjective piece of work… it’s like a poem. If I produce a poem in front of you and tell you what it means, you’ll show it to someone else than try telling them what I told you coupled with your own interpretation… so on and so on for several thousand generations and you have what we have with holy books today.

Calling yourself an expert theologian is the greatest misnomer we have today. how can you be an expert theologian? Did you interview the writer of the book? get his personal opinion of the work? All an expert theologian is, is someone who has a doctorate, therefore we are to trust their opinion of the book over our own.

I vouge that we should all be idiots when it comes to the bible and other holy books, we can never understand the intent of an author that has been dead for two thousand years… if we look at it through the eyes of allegory and mythology it begans to take on a new light, but apply mythos to something factual like the holy books!!! blasphemy.

Are we ready to be idiots?

looks around at all the different sects of christianity and Islam

Yep, that is what happened. as someone else came up with a different interpretation, a new group of people followed them. You can see this by looking backwards in time, anytime a branch broke off from the starting religion it’s almost always due to interpretation.