And, given the polysem nature of texts, how is that to be executed, given that the text, at some point reaching a canonic (i.e. binding) status, can not be changed ad libitum, and given that not only the medium itself contains an irreducible element of ambiguity, but that this element is exacerbated by it being read by a multitude of different cultures, coming from differing backgrounds, and peoples over a millenia-long span of time?

You might as well demand that if god created a ship made of wood, it should never decompose, not burn, be translucent and weight less than a feather and be equally able to serve as a transportation vehicle at sea, on a 21st century highway, a himalayan trail and in the stratosphere. All the while being a real ship made out of real wood.

You're asking for specs that the medium -- normative text -- simply is unable to provide.

Yes, I thought that might be something like your response. Its not the same though , is it?

"If you dont do what I say, I will shoot you"

vs

"If you dont do what I say, something bad may/will happen to you"

Its also a concept of punishment, rather than being protected from something. God is defninitely the one who is dealing out the punishment.

You're kinda making my point for me here. If this is really the best an omnipotent god can do then I'm underwhelmed. An ancient, ambiguous text that relates to ancient cultures. I'd expect better to be honest.

So the Kindle-reference was actually meant semi-seriously? Oh boy...

So, given that text as a medium is unable to ascertain the clarity and unambiguity of message you expect of a text from God, what other means do you propose? Dropping kindles in the laps of believers (keeping in mind that these kindles sort of have to work in societies without electricity) with a personalized version of the same basic text to make sure that each person with his specific set of interpretational intuitions comes out at the same spot?


Yeah, wonder why he never thought of that, seems like such an obvious suggestion...

"Generational curse" doctrine is nothing new. The good news is that they can be broken.

Doesn't this view simply resolve the issue?

No, the kindle reference was tongue in cheek.

Just goes to show how easy it is to misinterperet something

Well, the point stands - what means of preserving (and passing on) of a message do you propose a God chose if he intents his message to be perfectly clear and entirely unambiguous, while foreseeing that it will be read by generations of people of ever-changing preconditions and circumstances?

Apparently it's not kindles (no electricity), but it can't be text either (ambiguous by nature). So what else?

I think Husker identified the point pretty accurately.

This is a pretty common theme. Some passage is proposed which when read plainly is not just disgusting but pretty obviously disgusting. So if you are a religious person in today's society with today's morality there has to be some defense mechanism to this because while they often don't say so, it seems that people probably agree the literal meaning is indeed disgusting. Usually these are all over the map, as we have seen in this thread. There is a big range of different (most of them rather ridiculous) defenses by which the plain and obvious meaning is NOT actually what it appears to be, but is in fact something else. God doesn't punish 4 generations later, he is just lying/mistranslated/contradicted elsewhere/whatever. This pattern repeats it self ad nauseum. And it is worth pointing out instances of this pattern.

Thought. Or he could just talk to me like the other beings.

Notice something? So I repeat:

Have I missed some relevant point or does your argument indeed boil down to:

1) If the text is read literaly, it is indefensible
2) It is necessary to read the text literally
3) The text is indefensible

Yes you must have missed the rest of the paragraph. I am obviously not trying to put forth a logical argument, that would be a bizarre misreading. I don't think there is any reason to suspect the text is at all divinely inspired or what have you, so it is not necessary to read it any way at all. Indeed, I am sure it is possible - as evidence ITT and elsewhere - that for every passage that seems barbaric on its face that there will be a multitude of voices chiming in about all sorts of alternate explanations.

Good, glad you made that clear. Since I don't really think the debate benefits from illogical arguments, I guess that clarifies your position in it.

Cute. But of course it doesn't address the point.

Actually, it's very similar. Your undeclared assumption is that God is either arbitrary or unreasonable in his commandments. Why does God prohibit idolatry? Could it be for much the same reason that he would warn against taking a road filled with murderous thieves? Maybe taking ANY sinful road is self-annihilation.

Correct me if I am wrong, but a view that the 10 commandments are merely warnings of activities that might have bad consequences is relatively nonstandard.

That's not my view - I didn't say "merely".

Fret, I am somewhat surprised that you think it is impossible to write something that is free from significant misinterpretation. I'm not sure if you have revealed your academic / professional background before but I just don't remember it, so what about something fairly universal instead: a recipe. I don't think it would be difficult to produce a recipe that could be translated into local languages and measurements, and could be followed by anyone that could read, no matter where (or when) they lived. Regardless of whether they had the skills to create the dish, they would all be able to understand the recipe. And isn't the Bible really just a broad recipe book for how best humans should be living?

If the "Word of God" is indistinguishable from something written by people, this does not inspire confidence that the Bible's origin is divine - unless scripture is not meant to be accessible to everyone.

PhD student in OT studies at a german University.

Well, for one I didn't say "significant" or "misinterpretation" (I don't think). Unless I'm mistaken I've used ambiguity and irreducible.

And yeah, taking your recipe as an example is actually a good way to make exactly that point. So I start translating that - and since we're taking it as an analogy for the "bible as recipe"*** there are a couple of problems, as a precise and faithful translation is key:

- It mentions an ingredient named Wrutzenputz. Neither I nor my colleagues have ever heard from it. We've checked all historical accounts of the time - no mentioning of that term in any of them. So, perhaps an error in transmission, perhaps a fruit gone extinct, perhaps it's not an ingredient and I misread the entire section as being about a culinary work process, not an ingredient. Further research into the matter reveals a number of more likely vs. less likely hypotheses, but no slam dunk.
- It also says "stirr gently" at one point. What is meant by that, exactly? Stirr slowly? With care? Is the "gently" just ancient redundancy? If I find further evidence of the latter, what (if any) does that imply about the other such terms "let boil up shortly", "sear resolutely", "add pepper as needed"?
- One section reads "chop onions, peppers and apricots" - is the order of these important? Would I be sinning if I chopped peppers first? Thus, assuming I translate into a language that sees a clear difference between "chop first the onions, then the peppers, finally the apricots" and "chop three things in whatever order: onions, peppers, apricots) - which is a more faithful rendering of the original? And once again - further research into how the ancients phrase ordered items and such reveals no entirely conclusive answer.
- One of the more bizzare ingredients is "fermented milk". That leads to a long debate whether I really need to add sour milk or whether it's just due to the lack of facilities that the ancients couldn't use cheese proper. Indeed, ancient recipes never seem to mention cheese, which would indicate that it either didn't exist or wasn't seperated conceptually from fermenting milk. Otoh, the verb used with fermented milk is not "cut", so it apparently wasn'T a solid substance. But cheese IS fermented milk - so can I basically translate as I want and chose whatever when I cook? Or do I have to stay as historically accurate as possible? In particular since simply writing "fermented milk" runs the risk of contemporaries (who can't tell Roquefort from Leerdamer anyways) not even knowing what that is. What if they understand "fermented" as "seasoned" and use, say, cinnamon milk?

- Overall a dispute has been dividing the culinary world over whether the recipe is actually intended to be read as a recipie at all. Citing both the relevant untastiness of the resulting dish and some examples of contemporary poetry (the reference to Pablo Nerudas Oda al Caldillo de Congrio has all but revolutionized the scholarship of ancient recipie translation), the argument is being made that what seems to be a recipe is to be read as poetry, not a cooking instruction.
- Opponents argue that the text is clearly a recipe, i.e. belonging to a certain literary genre. Hence it is to be interpreted - and tranlsated - according to the rules of that genre.

Etc. You see where I'm going with this. No text is ever entirely unambiguous. That is not a deficiency of the text, but a simple characterstic of it. What happens if you try to eliminate that ambiguity can be seen in law: Relatively simple intuitions about justice are attempted to be applied to an ever-changing world. Words are intended to have precise and unequivocal meanings. That leads to texts that are both hard to read, to the extend that they actually lose their understandability to laypersons and eventually are still ambiguous - which is why there are legal commentaries about laws, why courts actually grapple with how to apply laws to real-life scenarios etc.

And the underlying argument of all of this is, of course, that if texts are inherently ambiguous, then most of the more naive arguments against biblical interpretation (i.e. that it often differs in opinion, that the text is rarely simply taken at face value etc.) lose their sting and seem like statements about what-texts-really-never-CAN-be.

***regardless of how fitting I find that analogy in itself.

This is precisely why I don't like to be drawn into arguments concerning specific interpretations of parts of the bible, or the Talmud or any other religious text. If there is no christian god then the bible is pure fabrication and if there is a christian god, the bible may still be pure fabrication, so yes, I'm guilty of what you accused me of earlier, I can't see the point of even beginning to study it in any detail. That you have a PHD in OT studies is both impressive and bemusing to me. I wonder how many atheist have similar PHDs.

This only makes sense if you can see the bible exclusively as a religious text. Unless you are equally unable to see how someone might devote his life studying greek tragedy, cuneiform literature, or hieroglyphs (after all, all of these incorporate lots of talk about gods and such), you are making a very peculiar exception for the bible here. You will find few literary scholars who - regardless of their religious identity - will question that the bible, and in particular the OT, is one of the most impressive and important pieces of literature of all of mankind. It seems that your predisposition regarding its truth as a religious text blinds you to its merit as a piece of literature.

I am equally bemused how people would willingly bear what must be a truly comatose kind of boredom that comes with writing a PhD in economics.

More generally, though, you should realize that your decision to refrain from earnestly engaging a biblical debate should also lead you to refrain from using biblical examples as arguments for or against anything.

I don't think any "frustration" in biblical debate stems from appreciating that someone uses academic background to make their point. Rather the frustration stems from obvious fact that the applicable method is often cherrypicked because it yields the desired result. Apologetic debaters will often arbitrarily jump between claims of "literary context", "historical context", "linguistic context", "philosophical context", "allegorical context", "literal context" and so forth.

When doing this, defending faith can be masked as arguing correct method. It's an easy trump card, and I dare say it is used a fair bit.

For example; in the recent thread where Matthew 5 was debated it was rather obvious from an observer that you and AaronW did not agree. AaronW was harping on "lust" being the correct word for Matthew 5:28, and you were hinting fairly strongly that "lust" was quite likely a wrongful translation from the greek text. Yet, for all this, you never debated eachother. Maybe neither of you were paying attention, maybe it just wasn't interesting to either of you... who knows. However, it certainly looked like like the claimed motive of arguing correct intepretation was in fact not true.

No, because as I pointed out, its god who is doing the annhilation, not us.

So in your example the correct analogy would be

"A man is going down a road filled with thieves etc. God tells him not to do it. He goes down the road, and gets beaten up or maybe murdered by the thieves. God then punishes him with eternal torment/annhilation."

You said,

Are you suggesting that if the nation practices idolatry, that the suffering that follows is just earthly suffering, caused by others? That they will be welcomed on death by god, with open arms? That all he is doing is saying "dont do that, or you will get hurt"? With no specific threat of eternal torment in the afterlife?

My interpretation of the bible is that god is specifically threatening everyone who disobeys him with eternal torment in the afterlife. Am I wrong in this interpretation?

Well, just as a general comment, when you accuse someone of arbitrarily cherrypicking something, you should be capable of pointing out why exactly it's arbitrary and why it is cherrypicked. So, the critique you're suggesting here is certainly not generally unfounded, yet it gains it's strenght from your own position of expertise. If you don't have that, or are unwilling to invest in it, your objections will inevitably suffer in preciseness.

More generally, though you didn't explicitely say or deny that, it's certainly possible for a text to have a literal, historical, allegorical and linguistic contexts which indeed are, to a degree, unrelated from another. The historical context in which something was written, for example, and which is relevant to a historical reading of a text is fairly irrelevant to an allegorical reading. This in itself is no argument for or against either a historical or allegorical reading, or a mixture of both.

Finally, the ones generally most capable of differentiating between relevant and irrelevant contexts are the experts (of the text). This is why I suggested in my very first response that OP consult an exegetical commentary on Ex. (Which also implies that I don't consider myself an expert on Ex)

Minor point, the actual term in dispute was a verb - epithymeo. The general translation of that verb as "to desire" was also not really under dispute. What WAS under discussion was the interpretation of the verse (and to what degree that interpretation might have repercussions on the translation of the verb). We both agreed also that there are obvious sexual connotations to that verb in the given context. Where we might differ - and we never got around to discussing that (partially also because I, frankly, don't feel the need to pit my precise interpretation against someone elses and try to find a winner) - was to what degree he or I agree on "lusting" being an appropriate interpretative rendering of the basic meaning of "desiring" in that passage.

Correct, because as Aaron acknowledged in post #101 (and the linked quotes therein), both of us were under no dispute what connotation that verb had in the context of Mt5.

So there was no reason to debate each other; Aaron indicated in #32 that he understood what my initial point of objection was. Moreover, I discussed a point of yours, while he shortly after engaged uke. I objected to your claim that the verse in question was indication that "quotes like... make it clear that even arousal is sin", while Aaron objected to Uke's methodology of approaching the entire question (which he layed out in #107). We had different issues, with differen posters.

It's both.

This commandment and its punishment is not about our eternal state.

The text is about what will happen to Israel when it practices idolatry - it doesn't specifically address any other nation nor does it concern who will or won't go to heaven.

The Bible says all are guilty before God and will be punished in the afterlife unless they repent and accept God's forgiveness in Christ.

"greek tragedy, cuneiform literature, or hieroglyphs" are hugely diverse, far ranging subjects (in comparison the the OT) that don't have the high level of focus that studying just one part of one book has. I can see why someone would devote their life to that, although I'm not sure how we came to be discussing a lifetime's study when we were originally discussing your PHD. Is that hyperbole by you?

Yes, perhaps I am making an exception for the bible, but is that really surprising given the nature of this particular book? I wonder how many people devote the kind of time you have to studying it who have no motivation beyond it being a "piece of literature" i.e. are not Christians or who don't have any kind of religious motivation?

I can't argue against the bible having been hugely influential over the centuries but "impressive and important" we'd have to agree definitions for, before I'd agree. From my perspective, the bible is evidence of the huge capacity humans have for self delusion and represents centuries of oppression, cruelty and the suppression of scientific learning, and and is nothing to be considered 'impressive'. Ditto for 'important'.


Me too. A better comparison with studying the OT though might be doing a PHD on the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I think I can use biblical arguments on a level consummate with my level of knowledge. As I said though, I try to avoid it generally because of the possibility that we might as well be discussing whether or not Sherlock really could play Cannon in D on the violin.