Kindest Regards, mens_sana!
But let's get one thing out of the way first. The DH/RT is not anti-semitic.
I'm afraid this subject of anti-semitic association with the founding members of the DH/RT is completely outside the realm of my understanding. I only know of some things in a very general sense such as the Q document and reduction back to the earliest texts showing how some lessons and passages *may* have been added or deleted, but I am not familiar with any part with any depth. Where I agree with BB most decidedly regards the insistance of an outside group dictating how a long established faith should conduct their affairs. At the core this once again is the age old clash between two non-overlapping magesteria as Stephen Gould pointed out. Using science to dictate to religion is...counter-productive to be polite.
I noticed you sidestepped the issue I raised regarding Alighieri through Twain...there is a relevence to my having raised this issue.
The overarching question is, “Do you feel free to read concepts and interpretations developed centuries and millennia after the texts were written back into those texts — and say that these later concepts and interpretations are what the author meant to say, despite the fact, the very solid fact that the author did NOT say them?” Considering that you think those ancient authors had something important to say to you, do you think telling THEM they said THIS, when those words and ideas aren't in their text, is respecting their intent?
Ah!, but show me where I specifically have specifically and with deliberate intent done this specific thing to any specific passage. I will presume the "you" you use is not the accusative sense.
In my own study, I look first to the historical and cultural context before deriving any interpretation. In matters where things seem a bit unclear, I tend towards the Strong's Concordance. Even then, with a word as pregnant with meaning as the word "logos," with history / culture / and definition, the translation still remains subject to poetic interpretation. Sometimes, which is my point regarding the more modern morality mythos I pointed to (Dante's "Divine Comedy," Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," Carroll's "Wonderland" and "Looking Glass," Kipling (a list of short stories not limited only to "the Jungle Book"), and Twain's "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer."), even after context is considered a particular passage must be translated in relation to the whole.
It sounds to me that the academic position you are promoting fails to take such into consideration. Yet it is by this very method that a book as old as Dante's or as recent as Twain's (and many others, I am certain) can remain relevant across cultures and across centuries. I believe the literary term is "timeless." What literature is more timeless than a culture's sacred scriptures?
As a theologian or a believer in ________ (fill in the blank), you can say “I think this interpretation of the text is correct,” but you do not have the right to say, “This interpretation is what the writer said.”
Agreed, as long as the preceeding caveats are kept in mind and brought to bear. How would
you read "The Charge of the Light Brigade?" As a dry, unemotional, uninspired text to be read only one way? Is there no nuance? Is there no emotion? Is there no lesson to be learned? Is there no enlightenment to be sought?
Is the Light Brigade historically factual? Hard to say, but I doubt it was written or dictated by anyone with firsthand knowledge...they all died. That does not make that work of any less value, for all of the literary implications. In fairness, it is not a sacred text. Also in fairness, it is not looked upon with the same level of... adoration?... as a sacred text is and should be. But the essence of my argument remains that strict historicity and literal interpretation are fundamentally at odds with keeping a sacred text relevant as a culture / society grows and changes through the centuries. The position you endorse is also at odds with literary conventions from at least Greek and Roman times.
Poetry and prose are meant to be fluid, not static. How a can a writer write to a reader a hundred, seven hundred, or two thousand years later and still remain relevant? By writing to greater themes that speak to the human condition. BB is on to a very salient point, one I have highlighted elsewhere in other contexts. Academic arrogance does not supplant long standing spiritual and morally motivated instruction with "truth." Particularly if that "truth" is the destruction of all that is good and beautiful in that tradition. One might as well fire their pistols at the central figure of Christ in Leonardo DaVinci's portrait of the Last Supper for target practice. Oh, that's right, that was already done by some of Napolean's troops. So much for the after effects of the French enlightenment. <shrugs> Such an apt metaphor, what beauty or truth was to be had from that act?
I see reductionism when used alone to the exclusion of other linguistic devices as the metaphoric equivalent of painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
It is one tool, and only one tool, from a chest full of tools.
In a craftsman's hands it can work wonders to build and illuminate. But in my experience it seems to usually be weilded by unskilled persons whose intent is questionable at best.
I also noticed you sidestepped my question regarding how your position impacts on your faith walk...
