That God’s creation is recounted, that God’s thoughts are read, that God’s feelings are expressed, that God is quoted verbatim, that God is said to be speaking (when, in fact, He is being spoken for) points to either the remarkable arrogance of the biblical contributors or their unshakeable conviction that their access to the deity was total. The fateful, and perhaps even unwitting, manipulation performed by the Hebrew Bible is to have convinced its readers that what stands in front of them is not a hodgepodge of texts worked over by countless men positioned across time and motivated by mundane political and theological interests. Instead, it presents itself as a self-evident treasury of the actual words, thoughts, actions, political opinions, and future aspirations of Yahweh. From early on, apparently, interpreters wholly swallowed this argument. As Kugel observes, even prior to canonization, ancient exegetes assumed “all of Scripture is somehow divinely sanctioned, of divine provenance, or divinely inspired.” Not only has the text convinced its readers of its awesome God proximity, but it has also convinced them that they are the intended recipients of its message. Jacques Berlinerblau The Secular Bible. Why not believers must take religion seriously
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:11:54 +0000
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