A Brief Historical Interlude (CH4PT1)

When Galileo was on trial it was because the Church had read portions of the Bible which suggested that the earth was the center of the universe. The story of Joshua and the sun standing still is one such example. The church has read the Bible literally for pretty much through all of its existence. Literalism is perhaps the easiest of all meanings to derive from the text of the Bible. And as was argued earlier, it is really easy to understand something literally, supposedly. So for an organization which promotes itself to be a universal community of faith it has to be willing to appeal to the common man. So it makes sense that the literal meaning of Scripture has been the de facto method of interpretation throughout the ages, but this only makes sense practically. When we look into the essentials of inspiration we find that this has no grounding.

It is along these lines that I feel a historical survey is important to consider when it comes to understanding the Biblical narrative. Through this chapter we will see how important it is to have a wide open view of the Scriptures instead of a rigid narrow one. Before we can engage ourselves into this journey it is important to recognize that a real potential threat exists, and it is one that I cannot guarantee the outcome of. As I mentioned in the last chapter that once we abandon literalism any certainty of faith becomes nearly impossible, but it is even more dangerous then that. Once we accept symbolism into our faith narrative we also run a much higher risk of delusion. This may seem counter-intuitive to my goal. When I set out to explore Christianity, as a Christian, my goal was to follow the Biblical directive to keep a clear conscience, so that my faith would not be betrayed.

Literalism offered an intellectual escape clause to this end, and it provided perhaps the best means to obtain a religion, but as we looked deeper into its implications we had to abandon it. Literalism can only set up a false deity and a law which does not come by faith (Gal. 3:12). Thus, it does not mean that my conscience is betrayed by having to abandon literalism, in fact it is all the more cleared. By realizing the connections which existed between paganism and the literalists of the Biblical times I was more able to recognize how my own faith turned against me.

But I could not wrestle myself free from the impending doubt that had to be assuaged. The Bible was literally just like any other book. This fact had to be accepted, or else the idolatry of the Bible would take root once again. But to accept this threatened the very faith and experience I found in the Bible. How could the Bible remain Holy, if there was nothing special about it compared to other sacred texts? Suffice it to say, abandoning literalism was not necessarily a victory for me, nor was it a special insight. It gave me a sense of foreboding that faith just very well may be a completely contrived aspect of man's mental life. Literalism offered the chance to prove faith, in a sense. It was the best chance for faith, and it failed. This reality has to be accepted, because many fall away from the faith because of the inconsistencies, irregularities, and errors found in the Bible.

Now we can see why religion for the most part has advocated a literalist interpretation of their sacred texts. It gives the believers a kind of certainty that absolves the church of any real responsibility to educate their constituents, and it makes for a servile congregation. And the most important part of literalism is that it secures the power structure of religious authority that is currently in control. Pastors of churches feel a responsibility to tend and care for their flock, and this responsibility is an all too easy excuse to misuse one's power to ensure that the flock remains strong. It is natural for the shepherd to think that the success of the flock entails his control and power over the flock. For this reason, we might even consider the absence of literalism in an inspired text to be the very sign of its authenticity rather then the reverse.

Because of this tension between literalism and symbolism I think it is important to consider some historical narratives in the progression of faith to see how believers have connected and related to their holy texts. Do we have cause to consider that the absence of literalism is a sign of inspiration, rather then it being a sign for despair?

I - From The Jews To The Pews

The first part of the Christian Bible, which comprises about two thirds of our Bible, was written by Jews who lived hundreds and hundreds of years before the Jesus was born. They wrote their Bible and then had to live it out and interpret it in drastic changing cultural environment. The books written during times of prosperity and peace had to be interpreted in times of exile and war. Commands given to a people who ruled a land had to be interpreted by a people who had no land. Considering that Christians share such an essential aspect of their faith with another religion it seems pertinent to ask how this other religion interprets their Bible?

Surprisingly, Jews approach their Old Testament (*cough* I mean, "Torah") in quite a different way then just about all Christians. Does it not seem strange that two religions who share the same book as a sacred text have two completely different ways of interpreting this it? Granted Christians have a New Testament, or New Torah, and this ought to be factored in how Christians interpret the Bible as a whole, but the majority of the Christian Bible is technically Jewish, and from a perspective of the first century an argument could be made that the entire Bible is Jewish.

With literalism deconstructed we now have to take up the task of putting the pieces back together. As a cursory analog it seems beneficial to look into the Jewish religion to see how they interpret their Bible so that we might find possible collieries to build on. When we do this though we find a completely different method of interpretation then we would think from being exposed to how Christian interpret their Bible.

First off, I am being extremely liberal when I use terms like "bible", "testament", and "Torah". Technically, these terms are exclusive to their particular faiths, and they all have different meanings. A Jew would never consider his Torah a testament. Nor, can we as Christians call each testament of the Bible, a Torah. Christians have pretty much claimed exclusivity on the term "Bible", but I have used it to simply refer to a sacred text. These definitions are just as important for Jews as they are for Christians. So when we undertake as Christians to explore how Jews interpret the Old Testament, we have to realize that our first mistake is calling it the Old Testament.

The Torah is the first five books of the Bible. But the word "Torah" can be used dynamically. It can refer to the Law AND the Prophets. It can refer to the first five books of the Bible, or it can refer to the Torah AND the Oral Torah.... Wait. What is the Oral Torah, again? That's right, fundamentalist Christians have little to no idea about the Oral Torah.

Imagine that you are a Jew living in exile. You want to be true to your God and your faith, but you are separated from the land you live in, and you must live and work with others who do not share the same faith as you. Clearly, a strict or literal adherence to the Torah is impossible. How could Jews be faithful if the Torah became meaningless? The Jews thousands of years ago faced in many ways the same problems we face today. They held in their hands an out-dated holy book that had no relevance to their current environment. They felt like many ancient spiritual followers that if their sacred scriptures were not literal then what good were they.

Thus, a brilliant idea was born. God gave to Moses two Torah's. A written Torah, and an Oral Torah. Moses wrote the Torah down to serve as a constant reference point, and he passed down a tradition orally on how to read it and interpret it for changing times. The Oral Torah was passed down from generation to generation preserving the accurate reading and application of the Torah, and each generation added its own unique and authoritative contribution. The priests and the scribes became the bearers of this tradition in the times of restoration. And it gave the Jewish people the means to hold unto their cherished belief in the Torah.

Thus, a literalist belief in the Torah was preserved in a rather symbolic manner. By the time of the first century it was the Pharisees who were responsible for carrying on the tradition of the Torah. And this irony had not gone unnoticed. By the time of Christ there were various strands of interpretation representing the Torah. In many ways first century Palestine was a hot bed of pluralism. Philo (though Philo was from Egypt) and Hillel had interpreted the Torah to be kind and beneficial to humanity. Hillel the Elder is a first century Pharisee who coined the phrase that the Law is summed up in love. Then there was Shammai who preferred a more traditionalist approach that favored the Torah as an authority and rule over man's actions. The Sadducees were commissioned by the Romans to tend to and be the administrators of the Temple cult. They were the strict literalists of the first century. They only held to the written Torah, as the first five books of the Bible. Then there were the apocalyptic communities like the Qumran. All these people co-existed in the same territory with little conflict. Of these groups it is the Pharisaical ones that are the most important, and in the first century the schools of Shammai and the schools of Hillel were the two competing houses. What becomes clear is that the New Testament clearly favors the school of Hillel. In particular Jesus' teachings almost exactly resemble the teachings of Hillel.

In a pre-critical society religious literalism is to be expected. In the pressures of extinction the Jews formulated a system to preserve their religious heritage, and that heritage included a literal interpretation of the Torah, and when that became impossible a method of integrating tradition into the literalism of the Torah became mainstream and widely accepted. By the time of Shammai, who was the stricter and more literal Pharisee the thesis of the Pharisaical movement had been accepted, namely that Oral Torah was given to Moses at the same time as the written Torah. What is important to note is that when literalism failed in reconstructionist Palestine it was symbolism that allowed the literal interpretation of the Torah to exist.

As we already have seen, in early Christianity it was realized how difficult a literal interpretation of the Gospels would be as coming from God. By the time the Gospels were canonized they had been harmonized and literalized to an extreme, and these efforts had failed. Origen provided a method of symbolic interpretation that allowed readers to see characters, events, and plots as spiritual narratives involving God and his Church. Regardless of which method was right, Origen provided a method that would stretch into the next millennium. Origen had no problem accepting that ever word of the Bible was literally put there by God, as long as the meaning of those words could be spiritually or symbolically interpreted. And regardless of which method was right, the Bible was cannonized nonetheless.

Hence, the problems with literalism were already known by the time of canonization and it did not hinder the process at all. The canonizers knew that the Bible contained unique and exclusive propositions to each narrative that did not provide a consistent and coherently unified whole, intellectually speaking, but the Bible was canonized nonetheless. This leads to a few historical conclusions.

The first is that the Bible was merely canonized as a political move in order to give power to the Church that was having to compete for power with ever new and changing government powers. The second is that this happened because the canonizers were symbolists. They saw no threat to their religion or to their Bible by solidifying "literalism" as long as it could be partnered with symbolism. Or there is a third possibility where they believed that the literalness of each piece added to the canon did not conflict with what the spiritual interpretation of what "a book from God" renders. Thus, literalism could never encapsulate something truly inspiring.

It does not seem likely that we ought to abandon literalism, simply because the Bible was canonized with that it in mind. It also does not seem likely to think that God's people were simply pawns of a social and cultural system. Perhaps, canonization could be traced to political factors, but that does not seem to negate any belief that this book came from God. Thus, it seems that the best and most comprehensive historical evaluation of the Bible is to accept that symbolism and literalism were equally important to the earliest believers in the Bible. The relationship between these two is hard to define for us two thousand years later, because we live in an entirely different world. It does not seem sufficient to simply disregard literalism for our own day.