Interpreting A Complex Text
Dean
I am increasingly bemused by the number of people I meet who seem to think that the text of any document, especially one long and complex, can be easily interpreted. I find this to be true of laws, of the US Constitution, of the Bible, of the Koran, or of anything else: do people really think anything so complex and with such a rich history can be read in a straightforward and indisputable fashion?
This article on judicial interpretation got me thinking on that. Some people seem to think that the way to interpret various complex documents is "obvious." Such people increasingly astonish me.
I'm astonished!
People have a tendency to pay far more attention to the film running in their heads than the reality in front of their noses. It's just so much easier to ignore facts that don't fit the script than to have to rewrite that script.
The Bible wasn't meant to be complicated. It was meant to be understandable by the common man.
It was the gnostic heresies that tried to move the Bible into the realm of the elect. As something that could only be properly understood by the learned.
Something the Catholic Church does to this day.
Recall Yeshua rejected the learned of His time and, instead, took His Word to the common people and relied upon the common people to spread His message.
The Bible is complicated for those that wish to make is say things it does not.
I don't even know where to begin with the Catholic bashing comment.
You're a weird dude, Kevin.
As for Kevin's comment: somewhat in his defense, the Septuagint and the Vulgate were both produced by the early Church to help make the books of the Bible more accessible to the common man. At least, those few who could read could at least read aloud from them to the vast majority of people who couldn't read.
But even then, most people still couldn't read, and having a complete copy of the scriptures that you could read from would have cost the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in today's terms. Until Gutenberg came along, it took over a year just to produce one whole copy. Not to mention the cost of materials before they invented paper.
But here's a news flash: it was the Catholic Church that produced the canon and the scriptures, and preserved it for over a thousand years before there was any printing press. Kevin wouldn't have a Bible to bash Catholics with if it weren't for the Catholic Church.
Also, the Church has no hidden teachings. Rather, it goes out of its way to make copies of the Bible and the Catechism widely available and cheap (including free on the internet in multiple translations), and to have regular classes and public talks and magazines and books to help educate the common man that it doesn't charge a dime for. It was also that same church that fought off the Gnostics--there was no other church at the time.
If Kevin would like to learn some time about the Catholic faith and where it comes from and what it teaches, he can ask and I'll be happy to give him sources he can consult, or to talk to him myself. But as the old saying goes, it's not the lies so much that are a problem, it's what people 'know' that just ain't so.
Anyway, anyone who thinks the Bible is utterly straightforward and easy to understand can just look at all the fundamentalist Christians who wildly disagree with each other (not to even go into the Catholic/Protestant divide) to know that that's just a silly thing to say.
It says something about someone's character that they think long and complicated documents are as simple and straightforward as shopping lists.
The early Christians understood the perils of translation, which is why the early Church settled on two "official" translations--the Vulgate and the Septuagint--and stayed with that. Otherwise they'd have to teach their people to read three different languages. Not to mention all the other difficulties.
Muslims kinda short-circuit the whole translation issue by saying, "look, if you really want to understand it, either learn classic Arabic or talk to someone you trust who knows it." Which doesn't settle all the arguments between Muslims (ha! like that's even possible) but surely must cut down on a lot of that. Just watching Christians squabble over scripture must be a bit amusing by comparison.
(None of this is endorsement of the Koran, merely an observation.)
Then again, I deny being Discordian.
The Reformation was a centuries-long, extremely bloody affair. Although I never cease to be amazed at so-called Christians who accuse me of "attacking Christianity" when I point out simple facts like this.
Ryan
I offer that it relates in part to the number of sects. That is, during the Thirty Years War there were only really two sects contesting, with a handful of minor sects (sound familiar?). People could spend years without encountering someone of another sect except in battle. My understanding is that The Last Valley does a fair job of capturing that period.
The US today has something like 20,000 Christian sects. Only the most insular and xenophobic sects manage to avoid outside contact. The vast majority are constantly exposed to and must somehow get along with people of different sects.
Well then! I now is a good time for me to announce that I am a prophet, and God himself has spoken to me. He has told me that he doesn't exist, and has commanded me to spread the word.
Our new denomination is to be known as Christian Atheism. We will uphold most Christian values and the separation of church and state. We accept evolution and human nature, and we value logic and history.
We will not hold ourselves to be morally superior, but instead we will recognize that everybody else is inferior.
I don't know: the 'originalist' approach seems most sound; 'the living constitution' most specious.
The justification for the 'Living constitution' is deep--How could you otherwise defend the indefensible--"... some would support the doctrine of the "living Constitution" with an assertion that the original framers could not come to a consensus about how to interpret the Constitution -- or that, indeed, they never intended any fixed method of interpretation. This would then leave future generations free to reexamine for themselves how to interpret the Constitution.
You think they might have left a note to that effect, no?
Dean: What you say about the Quran would be right if your factual assertion were true. The Quran--to the dismay of many--is not actually in 'Arabic' as it was understood in the 7th C. Analysis has found that it contains vocabulary and syntax of up to 11 languages. Among these are Amharic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Persian, and lesser languages.
This is why there are verses in the Quran that simply don't make sense without tortuous exegesis. The exegetes try to make foreign words and grammar 'fit' into classical Arabic. In fact, there are some words that appear only in the Quran and once only. Grammarians try to find a way to link those words with other roots, but the labor of that work is usually pretty obvious. Some parts of the Quran, notably the chapters beginning with a few stand-alone letters remain a complete mystery.
I've read of Luxenberg's work before, but I haven't read it as of yet. However, it seems like a stretch to consider it a fact as opposed to an interesting theory. Anyway, English has words from German, Latin, French, Greek, and even Arabic, but it's still one language.
Maybe Jibreel was a polylingual snob.
Therefore a word showing up only in that book means nothing in and of itself.
Further, given the nomadic nature of the people and there proclivity for traveling trading, that the language in any given islamic book shows major links to other languages is not dispositive.
Most importantly, there is little need for speculation on the point. All we would need to do
is to see how Islamic scholars treated the language of the text in the years shortly following the Koran's publication, and in the years following those etc...
Those scholars would be in position to know, and
I would take their view as definitive, unless i were to assume them to be liars or fools. Which i don't.
Letters of Marque and Reprisal were issued in the undeclared naval war with France (The XYZ Affair) yet Congress did not declare war. The court found that within Congress' powers as 'less than full war' was a common means for states to combat one another.
This is the way things are when imperfect men have to decide what can or cannot be done.
Are you familiar with this article from the 1999 Atlantic magazine: What Is the Koran?
Your suggestion about consulting Islamic scholars is problematic, and perhaps idealistic, if you mean Muslim Islamic scholars. They are under great pressure to avoid deep criticism of the book. One recent attempt resulted in the Egyptian scholar's being deemed an apostate by Al-Azhar and told that his marriage must end. He and his wife fled to France.
Most others simply are not going to question what is considered the true, authentic, irrefutable word of God. Call it avoidance of blasphemy or avoidance of the appearance of blasphemy, no deep critical research of the Quran is going on in any Islamic nation at the present time.
I understand how a new understanding of the Qur'an could challenge traditional understandings of Islam, but why would it necessarily be a threat to Islam itself? Just because it was (perhaps) written in a more composite language than early thought doesn't really make it any more or less likely to have been revealed by an angel, does it?
John: I don't refute any of that, really, except that textual criticism of the Koran _does_ occur. Not as often as it should, but then, the Islamic world is still emerging into the modern era, and has a lot of things to overcome that have little or nothing to do with the religion, which ultimately is firjly rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Or so I see it, anyway.
I think Posner has been good at criticizing muddled views of the law on both the Left and Right, including the originalists, so I'll quote him again:
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.