Yesterday, the discovery of the ancient Gospel of Judas was announced with much fanfare. It was a leading story on one of the TV news shows this morning and will be the subject of a National Geographic documentary this weekend.
Although the particular manuscript copy actually discovered was carbon dated to the 3rd/4th century AD, the original document was written as early as AD 140-180. Discovered in 1978, this ancient papyrus document may be the same Gospel of Judas referred to by Irenaeus.
In the 180's AD, Irenaeus wrote extensively on numerous ancient religious cults. One of these groups, known as the Cainites, thought they were descendants of “Esau, Korah, [and] the Sodomites.” Irenaeus wrote that “They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.”
Writing fictitious gospels was the “in” thing in the second to fourth centuries AD. Numerous second to fourth century gospels and documents were discovered in 1945, including “The Gospel of Thomas.” These documents, not including the Gospel of Judas, have been translated in a book called, The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James Robinson.
Anyone who has actually ever read the Nag Hammadi documents knows that they are usually so absurdly bizarre that they have virtually no claim to historical reliability—unless, of course, you think that women must become men in order to be saved, or that being female is a "defect," an "illness," or “madness” or that Jesus never suffered in any way and, in fact, was laughing at everyone while on the cross. Or perhaps you believe that the androgynous god "Death" begot seven androgynous female offspring named "Wrath, Pain, Lust, Sighing, Curse, Bitterness, [and] Quarrelsomeness." Hmmm, I wonder why no early church leaders considered these Nag Hammadi documents as part of their New Testament?
Still, the media is having a great time with this, partly out of their lack of knowledge and partly, no doubt, for ratings.
Although the particular manuscript copy actually discovered was carbon dated to the 3rd/4th century AD, the original document was written as early as AD 140-180. Discovered in 1978, this ancient papyrus document may be the same Gospel of Judas referred to by Irenaeus.
In the 180's AD, Irenaeus wrote extensively on numerous ancient religious cults. One of these groups, known as the Cainites, thought they were descendants of “Esau, Korah, [and] the Sodomites.” Irenaeus wrote that “They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.”
Writing fictitious gospels was the “in” thing in the second to fourth centuries AD. Numerous second to fourth century gospels and documents were discovered in 1945, including “The Gospel of Thomas.” These documents, not including the Gospel of Judas, have been translated in a book called, The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James Robinson.
Anyone who has actually ever read the Nag Hammadi documents knows that they are usually so absurdly bizarre that they have virtually no claim to historical reliability—unless, of course, you think that women must become men in order to be saved, or that being female is a "defect," an "illness," or “madness” or that Jesus never suffered in any way and, in fact, was laughing at everyone while on the cross. Or perhaps you believe that the androgynous god "Death" begot seven androgynous female offspring named "Wrath, Pain, Lust, Sighing, Curse, Bitterness, [and] Quarrelsomeness." Hmmm, I wonder why no early church leaders considered these Nag Hammadi documents as part of their New Testament?
Still, the media is having a great time with this, partly out of their lack of knowledge and partly, no doubt, for ratings.
8 comments:
Interesting take on the Gospel of Judas. Who decided that this gospel was any more fictitious than say the Gospel of John? The truth is there was a mutliplicity of beliefs in early Christian history and what we know as the "Bible" is an artificial construct, a compilation of scriptures that was agreed on by a committee, or more accurately, a series of committees. After centuries of wrangling a series of councils agreed on a canon, but even today Catholic, Protestant, Orthodaox and Jewish versions of the canon differ. In fact it wasn't until the Council of Trent in 1546 that the Catholic Church finally affirmed the Biblical canon they have today. When Martin Luther, translated the Bible he moved Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelations to the end because the thought they were "less canonical" and removed others. Evangelical Christians act as if the Bible was handed to us by God in whole. Yet as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient manuscripts shows us there are even different versions of the texts that are included in the Bible.
The Gospel of Judas appears to be one of the Gnostic Gospels, which present an alternative version of what the Church might have become. Elaine Pagels wrote an excellent book, called The Gnostic Gospels, on this early sect of Christianity, which lost the political battles to define the Christian Church. The fact that there are different biblical canons and different versions of the texts accepted in the canons belies the notion that the Bible can be interpreted "literally," especially when those "literal" translations are based on inadequate translations.
I know you are going to say that the Biblical canon we have today was "inspired" by God working through the people who put the canon together, but then I must ask you why did He wait until 1546 to do this and why does He let the major denominations disagree on what that canon is today?
Comrade . . .
You said,
"The fact that there are different biblical canons and different versions of the texts accepted in the canons belies the notion that the Bible can be interpreted 'literally,' especially when those 'literal' translations are based on inadequate translations."
The fact that people accept different books into the canon has nothing to do with how literally they can be translated. WHAT is to be translated has nothing to do with HOW they are translated. You are confusing the object with the method. Having said that, you are correct though that there are different versions of the same texts. However you make it sound like these different versions say very different things. They don't. There are very minimal and very insignificant differences in the texts that we have multiple copies of. This actually means that we can have great confidence in the what we have in the Bible since over hundreds of years as we compare multiple copies of the same books we see that they are nearly identical. The minor differences do not detract from our overall understanding of the message. I will leave the discussion of what to include in the canon to someone more studied and versed than I in the historical process. I will say however that you insinuating that the just discovered single copy of the Gospel of Judas is as credible as the well-studied, historically accepted, critically dissected, multiple copies of the Gospel of John illustrates to what lengths you will go to water down and diminish what the Bible says and its credibility. How about actually reading it first, checking it's historical claims for truth, and objectively finding out whether it can be trusted before you give it the weight of scripture. I would hope that someone discovering the Unibombers Manifesto a thousand years from now wouldn't assume that it was scripture just because they found it.
Finally, you said:
"I know you are going to say that the Biblical canon we have today was "inspired" by God working through the people who put the canon together, but then I must ask you why did He wait until 1546 to do this and why does He let the major denominations disagree on what that canon is today?"
You make it sound like there was no scripture until 1546. The point is that the scriptures existed and were given the credibility of scripture from the time they were written. The councils didn't suddenly "make" them scripture. They recognized and placed together what was already known to be the historically accepted scripture by christians. Of course there were occasional dissents within the council which is why they had the council to historically and textually identify which could be trusted. Anyway, again I leave the whole process to someone better educated in it than I. As to why major denominations disagree it is quite simply that God allows us to believe anything we want. It doesn't change what is, it just means some of us are more uneducated or more deceived than others. Before you say it, I'm not being arrogant. I'm saying that I too could be in this category which is why objectively studying these things out is important. However the more I study the more I believe that I am correct in placing my trust in Christ and accepting the Bible as God's canon of revelation. Again, if I'm wrong and should be accepting the Gospel of Judas you're going to have to give some compelling reasons for why, not just assume it is credible because it was found.
Yes, the Canon was developed by consensus, but that fact underscores the inherent authority of the canonical documents. The various Councils got together to develop a common list that everyone could agree on. The canonical books were the ones used by the vast majority of congregations in early Christendom. The non-canonical were minority views, and for good reason.
The Gnostic writings are very similar in character to the mystery cults that were also very popular at the time - the idea of "secret knowledge" that is only available to intiates is seen today in modern mystery cults such as Scientology.
And it is a clear echo of what the Serpent said to Eve in the Garden: "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God."
Slimmons writes: "There are very minimal and very insignificant differences in the texts that we have multiple copies of."
I guess it depends on what you mean by "minimal and insignificant." According to Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, a former Evangelical Christian, there are approximately 300,000 variation between New Testament manuscripts. Although many of these changes are minor, some are quite significant and according to Ehrman represent a deliberate attempt to misrepresent what was originally written to bring it closer to established Orthodox notions of Christianity. You can find out what these discrepancies are as far as Jesus is concerned in his book "Misquoting Jesus."
Corrie writes: "The Canon was developed by consensus."
I don't know where you get that idea from. The early church councils were quite contentious and the books that were accepted into the canon often won on very narrow votes. The councils themselves were each made up of a few people so I have to ask you a consus of whom. No one who has studied early church history would agree with your characterization of there being a "consensus."
Back to Dennis' original post, certainly some of the Nag Hammadi documents are bizarre and did not have wide support but that was not true of all of them. Some believe, although it is admittedly controversial, that The Gospel of John was written as a refutation of the Gospel of Thomas, which would lead one to believe it was quite popular. Your interpretation of Thomas as believing "women must become men to be saved" is debatable. Many scholars say that he is actually saying the opposite. It is Peter who says "females don't deserve life" and Jesus is being metaphorical and ironic and not LITERAL when he says of Mary Magdalene, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven." In other words, he is challenging the prevailing view of society at the time that women could not be saved by saying they can if they assume the role that that particular society had reserved for males. It is actually a radical pro-female challenge to the status quo.
All Things Beautiful TrackBack The Gospel Of Judas
Comrade: you wrote: “Interesting take on the Gospel of Judas. Who decided that this gospel was any more fictitious than say the Gospel of John?”
Good question. Even the most critical of scholars will acknowledge that there are historically reliable elements in the Gospel of John. There are people, places and events in the Gospel of John that can be verified historically or archaeologically. The same cannot be said for the Gospel of Judas, except for the fact that there really was a Jesus who had disciples, one of whom was Judas, etc. Interestingly enough, the Gospel of Judas seems to put men who sleep with other men in the same category as those who sacrifice their own children and “commit a multitude of sins and deeds of lawlessness.”
Comrade wrote: “The truth is there was a mutliplicity of beliefs in early Christian history.”
The numerous scholars who repeat this mantra endlessly are incredibly misleading. First, if this “multiplicity of beliefs” argument simply meant that the earliest Christians didn’t see eye-to-eye on every last detail of faith and practice, I would agree completely. Some of the earliest Jewish-Christians thought that circumcision was necessary for salvation, a view the church rejected. Some Christians thought head coverings were important for women while others did not. There was also disagreement about eating food offered to idols, etc.
But the idea that there were widespread, and widely divergent versions of Christianity in the very earliest church comes from at least two different lines of thought. First, there are those like Burton Mack who argue that the Q gospel (a hypothetical construct derived from Matthew and Luke) must have been produced by a “Q Community” that saw Jesus as just an ordinary man. The problem is that when reconstructed (it doesn’t actually exist, it has to be literarily reconstructed) “Q” does not present Jesus as just an ordinary man at all. In response to this problem, Mack and others argue that “Q” MUST have, therefore, have undergone later editions that added the exalted views of Jesus! (See my article: “Kloppenborg’s Stratification of Q and its Significance for Historical Jesus Studies.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, (46/2 June, 2003), 217-232). So the idea of a “Q community” is shear guesswork based on the hypothetical revision of a hypothetical document!
Mack does the same thing with the hypothetical “Pre-markan miracle stories” and the pre-markan pronouncement stories, etc. etc., hypothesizing that each of these hypothetical documents must have had divergent Christian communities behind them! For an in-depth analysis of this nonsense, have your library interlibrary loan my article "A Review of Who Wrote the New Testament?” Bibliotheca Sacra (April-June, 1997) 205-221).
Second, some scholars base the idea of multiplicity of beliefs” on actual documents like the Nag Hammadi texts. Some scholars imagine that these documents represent legitimate alternative views on Christianity. Anyone who has actually read the Nag Hammadi documents know that these texts would actually be closer to the pantheistic ideas of Hinduism or Buddhism than to the Jewish monotheism in which Jesus and his apostles lived. The four New Testament Gospels were regarded as sacred by the earliest church because these Christians sincerely believed that they honestly and accurately told the story of Jesus, whom they believed to be the very Word of God. In their minds, that made Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the very Word of God also. By contrast, Nag Hammadi texts don’t even swim in the same worldview ocean as the New Testament Gospels and it is no wonder orthodox Christians never even considered them for inclusion in their emerging New Testament.
Comrade wrote: “and what we know as the "Bible" is an artificial construct, a compilation of scriptures that was agreed on by a committee, or more accurately, a series of committees.”
Well, actually, the vast majority of these writings were agreed on by consensus long before any of these “committees” ever met. For example, Irenaeus, writing in the 180’s AD, addresses this issue over two hundred years before the first official church council addressed the issue of canonicity in AD 393.
Irenaeus extensively quotes from and alludes to New Testament books, clearly believing them to be inspired by God. In fact, he quotes from every book in our New Testament except for Philemon, James, 2 Peter and 3 John (about 6 pages out of about 260 pages), and he even calls this collection, “The New Testament.” In addition, Irenaeus always just seems to assume that his readers will agree that these books are Scripture—he never sees a need to even argue the point. Not only that, but what drives him nuts is 1) although the “heretics” appeal for their authority to the same New Testament writings that Irenaeus does, they rip passages and words out of context and interpret them say things ENTIRELY different from anything that could be imagined from the context. For example, they take Paul’s use of the Greek word for “peace” and turn it into the proper name of one of their gods! By the way, we now know, from the Nag Hammadi documents, that Irenaeus was entirely accurate in this analysis.
Second, it drove Irenaeus nuts that the “heretics” would add their recent fictional creations to the books that Christians accept as sacred. Irenaeus argued that Christians could trace their writings back to the original apostles and followers of Jesus himself, whereas the “heretics” were coming up with fictional gospels to support their nonsense that no one had ever heard of before.
I could also discuss the significance of p45, p46 (about AD 200), the Mauratorian Canon (about AD 170-200), or Origen (AD 184-254), but this is already getting too long. Suffice it to say that by the time these “committees” as you call them, met in the fourth century, the vast majority of the New Testament (especially the four gospels, Acts and Paul’s letters, had been agreed on for over 200 years! Furthermore, none of the Nag Hammadi documents were ever even considered in the discussion—they were simply so far out of the historical line of Christianity, with virtually no claim to historical reliability, to even be considered.
So when some scholars (who know better) to make it sound like there was virtually no agreement on the New Testament before these “committees” met in the fourth century, they are being incredibly deceptive. Certainly as late as the early fourth century, there continued to be discussion about the boundaries of the “New Testament” (should the Didache, 2 Peter, 3rd John, etc. be included in the core), but the essential core had been agreed on for a long, long time. In fact, there is evidence that Christians considered Paul’s letters to be inspired by God as early as the first century and that the four gospels were considered sacred by early in the second century (which is amazing since the Gospel of John wasn’t even written until the end of the first century)
Comrade wrote: “Yet as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient manuscripts shows us there are even different versions of the texts that are included in the Bible.”
They were not different versions of biblical texts, but Hebrew copies of biblical texts (other documents such as Pesherim, or commentaries and rules for living were also discovered). Actually, before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, the most ancient Hebrew copies of the Old Testament in existence were copied about AD 1000. The copies of the Old Testament found at Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) dated from about one hundred to 250 BC and were remarkably similar to the AD 1000 copies given the centuries of copying! One significant difference was the Book of Jeremiah, which is significantly longer in the Dead Sea Scrolls version.
Comrade wrote: “The Gospel of Judas appears to be one of the Gnostic Gospels, which present an alternative version of what the Church might have become. Elaine Pagels wrote an excellent book, called The Gnostic Gospels, on this early sect of Christianity, which lost the political battles to define the Christian Church.”
I’ve read Pagels’ book. I always find it amazing that critical scholars can, out of one side of their mouth, argue so forcefully that we really can’t trust the New Testament Gospels because they were written so long after the death of Jesus (40 to 70 years by the longest estimations); but out of the other side of their mouth, they place so much emphasis and affirmation on gospels (and other Nag Hammadi texts) written from 100 to 300 years after the time of Jesus—as if these later texts should have the same weight of authority! What makes this especially puzzling is that most of these Nag Hammadi writings are so bizarre that no one—not even the critics—would accept them as being historically reliable representations of the historical Jesus (with the possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas which of which over half consists of quotations and allusions to the New Testament Gospels!).
Not only that, but most of these Nag Hammadi documents present a very polytheistic worldview, with multiple levels of gods, aeons and archons. The worldview represented by these gospels is as far removed from the worldview of early Christians and Jews as Christianity is from the worldview of Buddhism!
They say that history is written by the victors. Iranaeus was the chief critic of the Gnostics. You neglect to mention that in addition to citing most of the books of the present-day Bible he also cites such non-canonical works as The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistles of Clement. So things were still being sorted out even then.
The Gnostics, of course, weren't the only "heresy," which, by the way, comes from the Greek word for "choice." There was, for example, Marcion, who preached a Manichean version of Christianity. There were sects that emphasized the humanity of Christ and did not see him as divine. There were the Aranists who rejected the Holy Trinity. The Council of Nicea was called specifically to battle Arius' ideas. To say they "didn't see eye to eye on every last detail" is an incredibly gross understatement. There were very stark disagreements on some of the basic tenets of Christian belief. To argue that these fundamental disagreements were "hypothetical" is absurd.
As the Church consolidated its power it did its best to erase history, which is why the discoveries at Nag Hammadi and of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been so important to scholars. Unfortunately, they can only give us a glimpse of these times. You can argue all you want about the superiority or validity of the doctrine that was ultimately adopted by the Church but to act as if there was no dissent from this doctrine or that we know for sure that it represents the most accurate depiction of Jesus' teachings and intentions is something you really can't prove. The Gospel of Thomas and the canonical gospels, it is theorized, drew on a common source, which scholars call Q, for Quelle, German for "source," which if it existed would probably represent a more accurate version of Christ's teachings.
The point is that orthodox Christianity was one of a number competing belief systems and it just happens to be the one that won out. If these "heresies" were so marginal, why is so much of early orthodox Christian writing consuming with fending off these ideas? Why were councils like the Council of Nicea called to ward them off? Your version of early Christianity is just the one that the victors wrote and there is much evidence that it is not an entirely accurate one.
Finally, my whole point in this exercise is not to claim that the Gospel of Judas or Thomas is more accurate than the canonical gospels or that Gnosticism is closer to Jesus' teachings than orthodox Christianity. My real point is that when you take a handful of verses from the Bible and claim that a literal interpretation of those verses represents God's position on a particular issue like homosexuality or abortion or illegal immigration or the death penalty as many conservative Christians try to do, that you are treading on very dangerous ground. You may, for example, try to tell me that Paul had a very definite opinion on homosexuality or the the death penalty (and I dispute that you have interprated it accurately) based on two or three vague, possibly mistranslated sentences but to extrapolate that to a political position that you claim has the weight of God behind it when Jesus doesn't even mention the issues and the evidence that God has taken your position on these issues is thin at best, then I would have to say that instead of basing your political philosophy on Christ's teachings, you have in fact done the opposite: you have twisted Christ's teachings to fit your own preconceived political philosophy. This is nothing new of course. In the 19th century some preachers took a few verses from the Bible out of context to justify slavery. I think history has proven them wrong. You may disagree. So when you talk about early Christian heresies as being patently false, it is very similar to your positions on current "heresies," for example, Christians who don't believe homosexuality is wrong and oppose the death penalty. I am happy to say that this is a battle you have not won (and there is much evidence that you are losing). It remains to be seen which victors will write this history.
Comrade wrote that Irenaeus “cites such non-canonical works as The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistles of Clement. So things were still being sorted out even then.”
You’re absolutely right! The exact boundaries of the New Testament continued to be worked out long after Irenaeus’ time—whether Hebrews, Revelation, 2 or 3rd John, the Didache or Shepherd of Hermas, for example, should be included. But long before Irenaeus’s time there seems to have been strong consensus on the core of the Gospels, Acts and Paul’s letters, and were the (almost) undisputed core of the New Testament, and there is no evidence that the Gnostic Gospels like those discovered at Nag Hammadi under ever under consideration by the mainline church.
Comrade wrote, “There was, for example, Marcion, who preached a Manichean version of Christianity.”
Are you seriously classifying Marcion as mainline Christian—Marcion, who thought the God of the Old Testament was an evil demiurge? This completely removes Christianity from its historical Jewish base.
Comrade wrote: “There were sects that emphasized the humanity of Christ and did not see him as divine.”
The interesting thing about the Nag Hammadi documents is that, contrary to modern hype, not a single one of them present Jesus as just an ordinary everyday human being! Virtually all of them view Christ as some kind of a divine being.
Comrade wrote: “There were the Aranists who rejected the Holy Trinity. The Council of Nicea was called specifically to battle Arius' ideas.”
Yes, you’re absolutely right. By the fourth century AD Arius had gained a huge following and, were it not for Athanasius, that giant of the faith and one of my heroes, a black man who suffered intense persecution from the Arian “Christians”, the entire history of the church might have been different. But when most scholars speak of multiple Christianities, they are generally not talking about Athanasius and Arius! See below.
Comrade wrote: “To say they "didn't see eye to eye on every last detail" is an incredibly gross understatement. There were very stark disagreements on some of the basic tenets of Christian belief. To argue that these fundamental disagreements were "hypothetical" is absurd.”
I’m not denying that there were “very stark disagreements.” The difference between my view and what modern revisionists imagine is this: In my view (the traditional view), history actually supports a model of early Christianity that would look more like a big tree with dozens of branches growing out of—and falling off of—the tree. Many modern revisionists would use a model of Church history in which Jesus’ disciples really didn’t care much about him at all and, therefore, the result was supposedly numerous entirely independent and even contradictory “Christianities” with no one model predominating (this is precisely Burton Mack’s model promoted in his book, “Who Wrote the New Testament.” I expose this nonsense in my article "A Review of Who Wrote the New Testament? In Bibliotheca Sacra. (April-June, 1997) 205-221).
Comrade wrote, “As the Church consolidated its power it did its best to erase history, which is why the discoveries at Nag Hammadi and of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been so important to scholars.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls show, among other things, that our AD 1000 copies of the Old Testament were remarkably accurate, given 1,200 years of transmission. What the Nag Hammadi documents show is that Irenaeus and Hypolytus were right.
Comrade wrote: “Unfortunately, they can only give us a glimpse of these times.”
That’s true—but that’s true of all history. What modern revisionists want to do is to throw essentially thrown out the sources we do have and to re-write history based on what the revisionists imagine must have happened according to sources that have been lost. It would be like me trying to argue that Jesus was really Norwegian. Why don’t the Gospels present him as Norwegian? That must be because they hated us Norwegians and tried to erase all evidence of his Scandinavian heritage. They failed to erase the evidence completely, however, because the gospels portray Jesus and his disciples as fishermen and Norwegians were good fishermen. This, of course, is absurd, but no more absurd than trying to recreate church history based on what must have been written in all the lost evidence. Mack imagines that there must have been a Q community, a Christ Cult community, a Thomas community, a pre-markan pronouncement community—all with opposing views and all just as valid as the Christianity spread by Jesus apostles!
Comrade wrote, “The Gospel of Thomas and the canonical gospels, it is theorized, drew on a common source, which scholars call Q, for Quelle, German for "source," which if it existed would probably represent a more accurate version of Christ's teachings.”
You may be surprised to learn that Q does not present Jesus as an ordinary everyday teacher at all! In Q, John the Baptist announces Jesus as one who will “burn the chaff with unquenchable fire” an eschatological reference to end time judgment—something God would do. According to Q, Jesus identifies his ministry with Isaiah 35:35-36—a foretaste of what God, according to the context of Isaiah 35, would do in the end time. According to Q, Jesus claims a relationship with God that no one else has. According to Q, Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem—something that actually happened 40 years after Jesus’ prediction. You’re right—I think Q represents a very accurate version of Christ’s teachings! But notice that this is also exactly what the Gospel writers taught. It was not as though the hypothetical Q community was an entirely different version of Christianity, as the revisionists imagine.
Comrade wrote, “My real point is that when you take a handful of verses from the Bible and claim that a literal interpretation of those verses represents God's position on a particular issue like homosexuality or abortion or illegal immigration or the death penalty as many conservative Christians try to do, that you are treading on very dangerous ground.”
So, if I understand you correctly, what you’re saying is that you think God hates homosexuals and illegal immigrants and wants to kill them all? You’re probably thinking I’ve just lost my mind—how on earth did I get that out of what you just wrote? Well, you’re teaching me that I can’t take what I read—or what you write—LITERALLY. My point is that I’m quite sure you want me to take what YOU write literally, but you don’t seem to want to take literally those parts of the Bible that you disagree with.
Comrade wrote: “You may, for example, try to tell me that Paul had a very definite opinion on homosexuality or the the death penalty (and I dispute that you have interprated it accurately)…”
It seems to me that you are trying to argue, on the one hand, that it is dangerous for me to base my politics on my interpretation of the Bible because I can’t ever be sure that my interpretation is right, but on the other hand, you are defending your interpretation of the Bible as “right” and seem to think that I should fall in line and follow your interpretation. Why is it dangerous for me to interpret the Bible literally—which, ironically, does not mean I think everything is literal. It only means that I try to determine what the original authors were trying to communicate to their readers—So why is it dangerous for me to interpret the Bible this way, but somehow its not dangerous for you to interpret the Bible your way?
I think I understand your concern. I’m not among those who think they are getting direct audible revelation from God. I’m fully aware that my interpretation of the Bible might be wrong and am also fully willing to change my views if someone gives me good reason to believe that I have misunderstood what the original writers were trying to communicate— or if I have wrongly applied what they wrote to 21st century life. But just to say that I shouldn’t take it “literally” doesn’t do it. And it especially doesn’t do it when someone expects me to arbitrarily adopt their non-literal view just because it fits our current culture of political correctness.
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