A question about how you interpret your holy book

[graysor]

I am curious about how you interpret what is written in the bible ( or other holy books / scriptures.

Do you take it all literally? If not why not?
And how do you know / decide which bits in particular to follow ( or aspire to follow) to the letter. Vs other bits that you consider can be interpreted more loosely, or viewed differently given our current knowledge / understanding of the world.

Eg. Do you actually believe God sent a flood and killed off everyone except Noah, his family and 2 of every animal in the ark? If not, are there other parts of the bible that you do take literally? Why?

I get the feeling that most people are not of the view that everything written in the bible is true and to be taken literally. But believers must believe parts of the bible, otherwise they wouldn't be believers. So how do you know what to believe?

I don't know if I'm explaining myself very well. But I'd welcome any thoughts on this if you're willing to share.

Here is a good start. I know it is Wikipedia and the first bit about history isn't brilliant as it neglects the medieval and scholastic methods of biblical study but scroll down a bit and the list of different ways of approaching scripture are good.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_criticism

In Christianity it is the conservative or fundamentalist groups that take the Bible literally. For them it's authority is as the literal word of God. This is a very modern view from the 19th century onwards and not a majority view.

As Christians we believe in Jesus. The Bible is a library of books which contain the writings of people from thousands of years ago in the form of letters and myths and wisdom and gospels. Christians don't 'believe in' the Bible. Some say it is the literal word of God. Others say it is inerrant (without error) in its original language. Others are more cautious saying that it is a record of people wrestling with the divine. Get three Christians together and they will probably disagree about what the Bible is but they will agree on following Jesus.

Thanks for your input thegreen. I have come across that wiki page before. Very interesting, but it still leaves me quote puzzled.

I get that some / most people view the bible as a collection of books written over a long period of time. And need to be considered in their historical context. But I'm still not sure what guides the interpretation.

Eg. There are various passages in the bible that strongly suggest that sex before marriage is a sin. But lots of Christians now don't believe it is. How can this be reconciled?

I was taught that the Bible is written by man inspired by God and that it is to be read alongside apostolic tradition and church teachings.

so if you just rely on the bible itself, you only have half the information you need an apostolic church to understand it.

I don't think you will reconcile things as there is not a lot of logic to what people believe and how they act.

I look at it as a series of books telling the story of how various people/groups encountered a God who is fundamentally beyond human understanding. So the stories they tell are shaped by the views, beliefs, customs and opportunities of their own time, just as my own perceptions of God are shaped by my own environment. My take on it is that as humans, we can glimpse divinity, but we can't see the whole, and the Bible us a sort of patchwork of many glimpses which gives us a bigger picture than our individual, very limited experiences can provide.

Like many guides for life many people chose to follow the bits literally that their lifestyle allows, while ignoring parts that conflict them. It's really just like a chocolate assortment, people choose the ones they like.

I follow the Quran as I'm Muslim and believe it's the word of God and should be taken literally, its very different from the bible though.

You read the Bible in the power of the Holy Spirit :)

So what's your position OP? Do you read a scriptural work and interpret it as 'literal'?

So interesting to hear the different approaches.

I'm an atheist, so am very much of the view that scriptures are various writings and need to be interpreted through the lens of our current understanding of the world. And cannot be the actual word of God.

Those of you who pick and choose (like in jason' chocolate box analogy), are you viewing the scripture more like a self help book? That's how I treat parenting books. Read a whole load, with different approaches, and choose to believe in or follow the bits that fit with my existing world view.

Not world view more like the life stage im in at the time. for all times and all places doesnt mean applied at all times and all places. just that, in all times, and in all places, there is wisdom and guidance to follow.

part of being a good Imam i was told is knowing the congregation and which parts of the Quran that can uplift them and help them to face whatever challenges they are in. If the demographic is an urban inner city congregation with low educational attainment, high unemployment, transient population, the parts of the Quran preached to them is different to the parts of the Quran preached to a congregation where the demographic are upwardly mobile, wealthy, settled groups.

I was taught that the Bible is written by man inspired by God and that it is to be read alongside apostolic tradition and church teachings.

Doesn't that just mean it means whatever you want it to mean?

Not at all! It means that you read it in the context of the most information that you have: modern critical historical scholarship, the tradition of the church handed down through hundreds of years, interpretations by a wide range of theologians and interpreters. Not all of them will agree, it's true. You have to make a decision about which interpretation is the right one, taking into account everything you know about how and when the part of the Bible you are looking at was written, what kind of thing it is (poetry, or wisdom literature, or chronicle, or prayer, or biography, or letter...), what tradition says about it, how it has been interpreted, how it fits into the Bible as a whole, how it speaks to you now. The 'meaning' is made out of all of those things, which function as a set of checks and balances to your own interpretation.

You have to make a decision about which interpretation is the right one
So basically you pick which ever one of the tens of thousands of interpretations that fits in with best with whatever you want it to mean.

Nope. You missed out the rest of the sentence, which runs "taking into account everything you know about how and when the part of the Bible you are looking at was written, what kind of thing it is (poetry, or wisdom literature, or chronicle, or prayer, or biography, or letter...), what tradition says about it, how it has been interpreted, how it fits into the Bible as a whole, how it speaks to you now."

That is what is known as cherry-picking, taking out of context and twisting to suit your own view.

taking into account everything you know about how and when...

No I was including that, just aiming for brevity.

So you read the books you want to read, listen to the people you want to listen to, think about whatever you want to think about and then pick which ever one of the tens of thousands of interpretations fits in best with whatever you want it to mean.

How is that any different from, it means whatever you want it to mean?

Perhaps you have a better methodology of hermeneutics?

Ach, being a bit snippy there, sorry. That's because there is a huge tradition of thinking about interpretation (hermeneutics) which is intellectually very sophisticated and has its own philosophical underpinnings (methodology).

I certainly would only go to authorities on the Bible to get a sense of what a passage means. I wouldn't, for example, look to Richard Dawkins who demonstrates abysmal ignorance in his discussions of the Bible.

But I suspect you want there to be one meaning, which is pretty close to a literal reading. Like many atheists, I suspect, you think that Christians should take the Bible literally - see report of new research here.

The methods that Christians use to interpret the Bible have links to the methods used to interpret all sorts of other kinds of texts, for example historical documents, literary texts, legal judgements and so on. It is commonly agreed that the Bible cannot simply mean what you want it to mean, but that interpretation takes place within certain parameters - larger frameworks of belief and theological concepts, traditions of the church, and communities of interpreters.

Of course there are differences of interpretation. That is only a problem if you somehow want there to be only one way of reading the Bible (or, indeed, any other book) and demand that be one plain and literal meaning. For such people the fact that (as Oscar Wilde said) the truth is never plain and rarely simple, is quite baffling.

Niminy, I come from, half strict Catholic, half liberal Protestant family. So trying to understand this... some people need/want an objective view and therefore take the Bible literally. Which I tend toward because it seems to make the most sense if religion where to be true. But I cant reconcile that view with my understanding of science and morality.

On the other hand some people study and study and study and come up with a view of Christianity that is unique to them. It tends to be more tolerable and in line with our contemporary cultural perspective. But I can't reconcile that with an eternal unchanging truth and it seems to be no different than, "it means whatever you want it to mean".

So what is a person to do?

You want Christians to take the Bible literally, because "it seems to make the most sense if religion where to be true". As I said before, the truth is never plain, and rarely simple. Christianity is full of paradoxes and mysteries, things that absolutely resist a literal understanding. So it is possible to have an eternal and unchanging truth - that is, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit - constantly renewed and re-understood. It's not at matter of an interpretation that it unique to the individual, however, but of reaching an understanding of scripture drawing on tradition, reason and experience - an understanding that can grow richer and more complex the more you delve into it.

It seems to me that you are wanting truth to be one thing, and to be black and white. But because God is beyond complete human understanding, the eternal unchanging truth of God comes through the prism of what we, as human beings can know. But that can still be profoundly, deeply true - even in its divergences and disagreements. A good way to think of it is like the poet John Keats's description of what he called 'negative capability' which he thought was the essence of genius: "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". That's hard, but it is the way, or one way, of seeking after truth.

Thanks Niminy, for the response, but it feels am no further forward, your answer just seem contradictory.

You say "the truth is never plain, and rarely simple", but that's not right. The truth is always simple and straight forward. Everything I have learnt in life ends with plain and simple truths. The same truths that everyone else comes to all around the world. x is x and cannot be not x.

You seem to be redefining truth to mean something that no one can ever know but it can be understood to be whatever you decide to understand it as (after having studied whatever you want to study). Everyone comes to a different truth and they are simultaneously all right and yet all wrong. That's not a truth that is the opposite of a truth, its just opinions, rumors & lies.

Which also contradicts what I thought Jesus/religion was meant to do, bring us a true message.

It's a funny thing, but increasingly I find that truth is complicated.

When you look back at the past, it's very difficult or even impossible to arrive at a simple truth about what happened. There are normally several different possibilities and you have to decide on the basis of the evidence which is more probable. In a court of law it is often extremely hard to arrive at a simple and unambiguous truth, which is why a person has to be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond all doubt. Even in the supposed 'hard' sciences there are often areas of doubt and uncertainty, and areas where two different things can be equally true at the same time.

We can long for simple truths, and we can long for everything to be plain and straightforward, but in reality the cosmos isn't like that. But it is also the case that truth isn't whatever we decide it to mean. In history, you have to look at the evidence; and the same in a court of law; and the same in science. Not everything can be true, and truth isn't just each person's point of view. It's somewhere in the fuzzy middle between totally simple and completely individual.

And that's why it's entirely possible that Jesus came to bring us a true message, but for us still to be interpreting it 2000 years later.

In a court of law it is often extremely hard to arrive at a simple and unambiguous truth Not really, either their is enough proof to convict or there isn't.

you have to decide on the basis of the evidence which is more probable Not really, either their is enough evidence to show what is true or you admit you dont know. You don't pick the least worse theory and say it is therefore true.

Even in the supposed 'hard' sciences there are often areas of doubt and uncertainty No there really isn't. There is only uncertainly until the answer is reached when there is then certainty. And there definitely is not two different things that are equally true at the same time, what ever that means?

we can long for everything to be plain and straightforward, but in reality the cosmos isn't like that That's exactly how the universe is, A is followed by B is followed by C and on until you reach the truth, plain and simple.

In history, you have to look at the evidence; and the same in a court of law; and the same in science Which is what many have tried to do and the evidence points to the straight forward conclusion that there is not enough evidence to conclude anything.

It's somewhere in the fuzzy middle between totally simple and completely individual Which is more succinctly phrased as 'I don't know', not 'definitely true'.

it's entirely possible that Jesus came to bring us a true message, but for us still to be interpreting it 2000 years later Any if we follow the evidence it concludes we dont know if there was a supernatural Jesus, and even if there was we have no way of knowing which of the million different messages espoused, if any, he brought.

So it brings me back to the beginning, unless you take a punt the Book is literally true, there seems no way to know what it really means, in which case you study and take a punt on the least worse option.

I suppose one could take the line that the Torah/Bible/Upanishads/Koran etc were from a time when miracles (or nasty supernatural things, depending on the passage) occurred and we've passed out of that into a more fixed time. But I don't find that personally helpful (or, frankly, believable). I'm pretty agnostic by nature, though I do go off to the synangogue pretty regularly.

I see the Torah more as stories meant to guide us or, when the message seems abhorrent to my sensibilities, something to encourage us to think and argue and question what morality means to us. Which is generally encouraged ("Israel" means "he who struggles with god").

Most holy books are fairly lengthy and therefore filled with contradictions so I struggle a bit to understand how anyone could take every bit literally, even if they are predisposed to believing in the supernatural.

lizzieoak If you see the Torah more as stories meant to guide us How do you know what the stories are supposed to guide us to? Surly you either take them literally or you have to interpret them? You can listen to a priest but then they are faced with the same 2 options.

So how do you interpret what the stories are trying to tell us? Or do you just use your own moral judgement and fit the story to your own opinion?