Literal Interpretation Vs. Critical Historical Interpretation

One of the reasons that religion has the potential to become overwhelmingly oppressive is not the scripture that religions spring from are flawed, but due to the way that later generations have interpreted and the dogmatic and theological tenets that spring from doing so from an altered cultural background. Many people like to take scripture as in the context of literal meaning, not taking the inherent fact to heart that their culture is not the same as the one in which scripture was originally penned. This can lead one to all sorts of skewed meanings and interpretations.

Every evangelical fundamentalist sect of Christianity that I have ever encountered seems to favor the literal interpretive mode of reading and applying scripture. This has led to the imposition of cultural paradigms into their belief systems, which all too frequently insert ethical standards that are far and above what the original texts mandated. While not always in error, in the resulting paradigms and values this injects into the morality of the Body of Christ, all too often it does create beliefs and practices that are extremely legalistic in nature to the exclusion of the meting out of grace and mercy that is inherent in the tenet of of salvation through faith and not by works. This all too often tends to temp God as it frequently relies very heavily on miracles to deal with the gray areas of humanity, science and culture to maintain validity. In short, all too frequently it conflicts with reality and comes into conflict with science and other aspects of human knowledge.

Some of the more liberal sects of Christianity have become increasingly adherent to the Critical Historical method of scriptural interpretation. I must note here that the term "critical" is being used in the empirical sense - not in the abstract of being dismissive of the correctness of scripture. Critical is used in the same sense as the term of "Critical thinking" in that it assumes that the pertinent framing of the scripture is being taken into consideration, not attempting to justify scripture in contemporary terms and values. This is a lot more demanding of the intellect of the individual studying scripture as not only must the be able to comprehend the words of scripture, but must back track and take a good look at the cultural referents that were in the time and place in which the scripture was penned.

So what does all of this mean? A lot of scripture uses allusion, parables, poetry and the grammatical conventions that were germane in the culture and eras for whom they were written. It uses terms that were common speaking conventions that were in no way terms of literal meaning, but were accepted withing the cultural framework as being these types of statements. A good example of this would be the statements of Jesus from Luke 18:24-25; "24 Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

On the face of this, there have been at least four descriptive assertions about what this means. One must remember that our scriptures are not the original texts and have been translated from one or more languages in order to be placed into linguistic relevance for contemporary readers. Using the example above, the first example is that there was a door in the gate of the city that was used by late travelers to enter the city, after the main gate was closed for the evening. Supposedly, this door was so small that it required that a camel be unloaded and made to walk through unencumbered. The problem here is that there are no historical evidence to support this assumption. Historical evidence points to the term plum to designate this type of door

There has also been an assertion that "the eye of a needle" was a mountain pass, so small and difficult to traverse that a camel was hard pressed to accomplish this. Again, the historical evidence is sadly lacking and one must take this assertion as being questionable at best. There is no known pass that fits this descriptive.

The third cause for this being a literal statement is inherent in the methods that Jesus used to teach and make His points when doing so. At the time Jesus made the statement He was nowhere near the city gates of Jerusalem, but near the coast. When Jesus taught by example, He used thing that were immediately visible, such as a fig tree, a mountain or a sea, pointing at them to reinforce His meaning. This would have made the use of a gate or the doubtful mountain pass a very unlikely teaching tool.

The most plausible meaning here is that Jesus spoke Estrangelo Aramaic, and undoubtedly, the original scriptures were written in the same language and later translated into Greek, and from Greek into English. In Estrangelo Aramaic, the word from which the term camel is derived, gamla, has three meanings: A camel, a rope and a beam. The very language, Estrangelo Aramaic, was all but forgotten until about one hundred years ago and our current texts were translated from Greek translations. Is it illogical to assume that a word with three meanings was incorrectly translated as camel when the context clearly meant needle? Who associates a camel with a sewing needle? The very term "a rope through the eye of a needle" still enjoys contemporary usage in many parts of the Middle East in this day and age, and the usage of the phrase is lost in antiquity. Is it not proper to take the meaning "it is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle", being a culturally used adage, then to come out of the blue with "a camel through the eye of a needle" which was not even considered as being in any way appropriate in that time and place? Either one would be equally difficult, but one would be a common usage of the language, just as "...do not count your chicks until they hatch" and other terms that enjoy common usage in this day and age? I have never heard anyone use the term "Don't count your elephants before they hatch" as it is a complete disconnect with reality.

What is apparent in all of this is that, while scripture may be inherently correct in their original iterations, translations into later languages are not always quite as succinctly accurate as we would wish them to be. One problem here is that language controls the symbols, dictation the "map" by which we envision reality. A good example of this would be the word "abomination" which in contemporary terms is all too often construed to mean "...sin so vile it makes God want to puke..." to quote one preacher. Cultural values and prejudices also play a very large part in how things in scripture are assigned meaning and weight. In the book of Leviticus, the word that translates to abomination in English, toevah is used to define things that are unclean, not religiously acceptable according to the philosophy of the Children of Israel. It does not implicitly imply ethically unacceptable. The texts of Leviticus define birds that eat flesh, the mixing of fibers in clothing, the eating of pork (cloven hoofed, but not chewing its cud) as being abominations. Other defined abominations include eating seafood that does not have fins and scales, tattooing ones body and planting two types of seed in one field. To do these things was to take into one's body things that were an abomination or creating an impure condition - making one unclean and not able to practice one's religious duties until one was ritually cleansed.

The primary import of the codes of purity were to set the Israelites apart from the Gentile cultures they were living amongst. It was a part of the covenant that God made with the Children of Israel when He chose them to be His people. A part of this was to behave in ways that set them apart from the Gentiles and not behave in the same manner. (See Leviticus 18: 1-5) The eating of pork (the pig was used in the worship of the god Tammuz among the Babylonians), the wearing of mixed fibers, the the eating of things like shrimp and mussels were all considered to be unclean. The same thing can also be said for male orgasmic emissions, giving birth and menstruation and tending the dead - all of which would make a person unclean for a time - requiring ritual purification before a person would again be allowed to pursue their temple obligations. The point here is that we now have a very skewed notion, as a culture, about what abomination really is, and use our own cultural preferences to define our cultural prejudices, defining them as horrible sins within our theology, but not really adhering to Biblical truth in doing so.

The Sin of Sodom, at least in my lifetime, has been put forth as meaning one of wanton homosexuality, with particular reference to penetrative anal sex. If one reads the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, especially in the King James version, one walks away with the feeling that it was the overwhelming lust of the men of Sodom to "know" the "strangers" that were staying with Lot. In this context, it is assumed that they wanted to have anal sex with them. This appears to be further supported by the fact that Lot offered his daughters "who had not known a man" and they are rejected. This seems to be a blatant, lustful desire to have penetrative sex with the two angels - over the idea of having sex with the women. OK... So that is pretty much the current perception of the sin of Sodom: Homosexuality. However, does this logic really stand up to the scriptural and cultural definitions of what was actually occurring?

In the time of Lot, there were no flight and hotel packages available to the traveler, regardless of wealth and means. One relied upon the hospitality of strangers to stay within the city walls, under the protection of what law and order was available of the time. It was considered the duty of a host to protect those to whom he had granted hospitality, right up to, and including defending them to the death if required. In this light, Lot offering his daughters to the crowd makes sense. The men of the city were not interested in sex with the "men" that visited with Lot, they were out do deny them hospitality, to dominate and demean them by raping them, reducing them to the status of women and putting them in their place. One must note that in verse 9 of chapter 19, the people are mad at Lot because he was an alien and dared judge them. In short, their sin was arrogance and treating visitors inhospitably, not inherently sexual in nature. One must remember that rape is not about sex, it is about abuse and domination. To think otherwise is to also neglect a further definition about the sin of Sodom that occurs in Ezekiel 16:48-50: "48 As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it."

Sound a bit thin? Then consider what Jesus said to His disciples as He sent them out to proclaim the word: Luke 10: 10-12: "10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go into the streets and say 'even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.' I tell you on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town."

This line of reasoning will definitely be continued later.

From the outside in: Some personal observations

Life is never easy – not for anyone. We all come into this world with some degree of impediment – or have undergone traumatic experiences – that have or will forever change our ability to function as an individual.

For some, the challenges are things on the order of coming into the world with an impairment of one of the major senses, be it hearing, sight, or the ability to smell. For some, the ability to think or reason is impaired. Others experience developmental defects, be it things like a deformed limb, a cleft palate, distorted spine, or an extreme variance in size from small to extra large. Some are born without the ability to walk and will never have the normal range of mobility of our species. Other experience learning things like bipolar disorder, anxiety. Some are born sexually ambiguous, having genitalia that have developed incompletely female nor in any regard male. There are also hermaphrodites and AIS children. There are things like Siamese twins and things that are simply unimaginable. The point being that every part of the human organism is subject deviant development and catastrophe. Many times, a developmental issue will not exhibit until a later stage of life, yet the seeds of the calamity are inherent in the individual from the point of conception. For others, injury and diseases are the causes of the impairment or defect.

According to the March of Dimes, one in every thirty births has some type of prenatal developmental defect. This is nothing new, and development may also be hindered or skewed by things like polio and a host of other diseases that destroy the ability of certain portions of the human animal to develop properly from conception to adulthood. It was the scourge of polio myelitis that gave rise to the March of Dimes, as every spring and summer, hosts of young and old alike were physically devastated by the scourges of this viral infection that attacked various parts of the skeletal and nervous systems of the afflicted. Research eventually isolated the viral agent of this disease and suitable vaccinations were developed to prevent this natural enemy of the human organism to be contained and virtually eliminated. Even now, things like type 1 diabetes (childhood onset) are now being investigated as having a viral etiology – for the simple reason that it has been with mankind for as long as records have been kept and is a lethal affliction that generally lead to the demise of the affected individuals prior to reaching the age of procreation without proper medical intervention. In other words, if the root cause was strictly genetic, it would have pretty much bred itself out of existence as very few of each generation would have been able to procreate, thus weeding the gene out of the genome. Other afflictions, such as color blindness, do not have the lethal potential of type 1 diabetes and are less frequently lethal to the individual, allowing a significant percentage of the population afflicted with this to survive to the age of procreation, passing the gene along to future generations.

So where is all of this leading? Simply stated, we live in an age where science is beginning to determine and classify many types of afflictions of the human organism that were attributed to karma, God’s judgment, or a host of other philosophical etiologies that are not germane to the reality of the world. The world is not restrained to black and white answers in many of these situations, and it would seem that many of various religious beliefs are simply not comfortable with answers that seem to conflict with their religious texts. Even so, some religions hold that the afflicted are in some way paying for bad deeds from previous incarnations. Some believe that the afflicted individual is somehow responsible for their afflictions by reason of some sin or lapse of propriety on their part. These are positions that I, as an individual, have a hard time dealing with. The truth is that there are just too many variables to contend with when it comes to the development of any given individual from conception to birth – not to mention the things that occur during an individual’s lifetime that may tip the tables against them in more ways than can be imagined.

My purpose in starting this blog is to haul a host of situations out from the darkness of ignorance into the light of day. We live in a world with a lot of opportunity and resources, yet many are denied to develop to their full potentials as those around them are simply too uncomfortable with them. Being xenophobic in their response to things that seem to contradict what they perceive as normal, or have been indoctrinated by religious and philosophical tenets that render them incapable of making the intellectual stretch to recognize that all they are seeing is some individual that has had the misfortune to develop, in some form that defies the acculturated norms of their culture. They will dismiss the “knowledge of man” as being folly, falling back on comfortable interpretations of their scriptural texts, denying evidence to the contrary, and letting this be the gold standard that allows them to deny others their humanity – with the full faith and credence of their own conscience. It has been said that religious faith frequently makes one like an hour glass. As the heart fills, the head empties. This is a sad commentary on those who hold to Christian fundamental religious beliefs, for the simple reason that it defies the tenet that God gave mankind free will and the ability to reason in abstracts.

These are gifts of the spirit that God intends us to use, yet when one sees the suffering of others, it is all too easy to send the inconvenient away and try to explain away these things in “back and white” answers that are simply not true. We do not live in a monochromatic world, but a world of numerous spectra and every shade of color imaginable. For many, they see white as being pure light, when in fact, they are seeing a multitude of colors that combine to give the impression of seeing one pure color. A simple view of a prism splitting white light into the colors of the spectrum should be sufficient to demonstrate this, yet they still doggedly hold onto their illusion of purity, denying the diversity of color that makes white possible. Black, on the other hand, is the absence of all light.

To take this step further, we as human beings are only capable of seeing a very narrow segment of the electromagnetic spectrum which is visible light. Light ranges from infrared light, below the band of visibility of the human eye, to the ultraviolet that supersedes the partial spectrum of what we can see. Thus we believe the things we see, through the filters of our own experiences, and frequently fail to see things as they really are. Our mental filters frequently deny us a true vision of what is before us, and we will blindly and stubbornly label things into convenient boxes of purity and defilement for the sake of our own peace of mind. I am reminded of an old saying from my youth, and one which may be as old as the earliest societies of mankind: “Do not believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see. The hand is quicker than the eye.” Thus we stumble blindly on, “seeing through a glass darkly,” judging things only partially perceived, yet in no way understanding them to any significant degree. If they are comfortable, or make life easier for us, we accept them and use them for our convenience. If they are uncomfortable – or inconvenient – we deny and vilify them to give ourselves some degree of comfort amid the chaos of life.

When it comes to the “knowledge of mankind” many of us are all to likely to dismiss the inconvenient, as we are taught by scripture that “the wisdom of man is folly.” We will accept things unseen on the basis of faith, yet when something has been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, we will frequently assert a “basis of faith” and deny the knowledge, seeking to maintain an illusion of clarity within our own spiritual comfort zones. This is not, and can not be a holy thing, just a self deception and a contradiction of what the infinite has arrayed for our spiritual growth, if we have the faith and intellectual honesty to meet the demands that such spiritual growth exacts of us all. I would venture to say that if you start grabbing scripture and easily find a place of spiritual comfort, I would assert that you have failed to wait on the Lord to show how He can use a thing to show His glory and might. God has stated in the Bible that He can use “all things for the good of those who love Him,” yet when someone takes this literally, conservative fundamentalists will cry “evil” and deny the individual the right to determine the path that their faith will lead them on in their own spiritual journey.

I guess that one thing that leads many astray is this. We rely on absolutes and dualities for way too many of our spiritual paradigms. We see things that resemble a form of evil, and automatically label what we see as being such. Conversely, as the scripture tells us that we must stay in community to stay on the path, we frequently listen too much to each other and do not listen to those not associated to our own perceived little community of spiritual safety, thus placing ourselves within a spiritual stasis, and denying the spiritual growth potential that the unusual and unorthodox grants us – if we have the faith and honesty to step forth boldly in faith.

OK. Now I have defined the outer boundaries of the playing field that I intend to work with. Now I will define the subject that I will be dealing with. As I mentioned earlier, the human organism is subject to biological deviation in all aspects of the organism. I mentioned AIS children, and those born sexually androgynous. I mentioned that not all developmental defects are such that they are readily apparent to casual observation. In fact, it is only the most hideous of physical deformities that readily stand out. Now we shall get to what I will be dealing with throughout this blog. A prenatal development issue that has been with me throughout my entire cognizant lifetime, and has caused me more pain and despair than anything else that I have ever had to deal with. I am referring to what is now becoming increasingly known as primary Harry Benjamin Syndrome (primary HBS). I use this term as I wish to make it absolutely clear that I am not referring to things like transvestism, homosexuality, or any type of fetish. This is the true form of the transsexual. This is the one in thirty-five thousand births* that absolutely has a total revulsion to their own genitalia, their brain having developed into the form of the opposite sex during the first trimester after conception, and requires both hormonal and surgical intervention to acquire full curative relief from the affliction. We can not change the brain, but we can at least give the afflicted the relief of having a body and endocrine balance that the brain can tolerate.

The DSM IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders), and by assumption, the DSM V, call this condition Gender Identity Disorder, and assert …”studies suggest that some traumatic event in early childhood may be cause of the condition…” Attributing a behaviorist etiology to the condition. They define the treatment prognosis as being “mixed at best” and further assert that “working towards the patient’s acceptance of their biological gender as an unrealistic goal.” They then go on to suggest that “controlling the depression and anxiety that accompany the disorder should be the primary focus of supportive treatment.” In other words, a lifetime of antidepressants and antianxiety medications, being simply a symptomatic approach to treatment, at great expense to the patient and their prescription and medical plans, with no definable hope for a long term quality of life for the patient. Thus speaks the voice of experience from having been through such.

Conversely, medical science, through an increasingly refined, non-experimental approach of hormone replacement therapy, and surgical intervention, is now showing a 98% long-term curative result. This is practiced according to strict protocols, using known therapeutic agents, with predictable results. This has even gone to the point where the American Medical Association has issued Resolution 122, which states that this life-threatening affliction is treatable by known therapeutic agents with an outstanding success rate and should be covered by both private sector and public health care coverages, just as other prenatal anomalies are routinely treated. The only point of contention here is that many religious groups decry this as homosexuality, transvestism, and fetishism. Even the DSM states that GID (aka primary HBS) is a separate diagnosis. Treatment for transsexualism has been specifically written out of many coverages and legislations on the basis of purely religious political agendas. This is nothing more than a gross breach of human rights and should not be tolerated by anyone who has any form of rational conscience.

Untreated, primary HBS has one of the highest suicide rates, and 70% of the sufferers of this affliction, that seek the only know curative therapy for the affliction – gender transition – are routinely discriminated against in every aspect of life, denigrated to less than human status, and even murdered with virtual impunity. Rarely are the murders of transsexuals even investigated once the victim is identified as being transsexual. Even if the perpetrators of these frequently brutal and violent murders are successfully prosecuted, they are usually charged with lessor offenses as it is the perception that transsexuals are “child molesters and prostitutes” or the transsexual panic is cited as the case. This is in fact nothing more that bigotry. One could just as easily claim an abundance of skin melatonin, or a lesser degree of this trait as a cause of "panic." This concept that we are sexual perverts flies in the face of reality, as many who suffer primary HBS are basically sexually dysfunctional. Even when the individual is sexually functional, they will try their best to be a model citizen in their attempt to fit into the pattern of “normalcy” that society imposes on us all. The sad thing here is that this results in a lot of broken families when the pressure and unrelenting force of primary HBS becomes too much for the individual to bear and they either suicide or transition, having tried and failed at every other approach. The problem here is that primary HBS is not a psychological illness, but a matter of physiological etiology. When the individual comes out and tells friends and families, this almost always ends up in disastrous results to the familial and personal relationships that the individuals have. Those being told automatically assume that this is a snap decision, as frankly, we try to do everything in our power to resist this without letting on that we are dealing with an issue of this type or magnitude. Even so, the social stigma attached to this is such that many families, spouses, friends, and offspring are simply unable to cope with this. There is something inherently wrong with a culture that can not accept that this is not an easy thing for anyone to accept within themselves – and consider it to be a “mere choice of ‘alternative’ lifestyle.” Try walking up to some individual who has lost the use of his legs and ask him why he “chose this style of life in a wheelchair.” Yes, there is a conscious choice involved here. Does one want to die, or does one want to live and still have some quality of life, continuing to support those they love?

In closing, let me state that I do have an agenda here. It is called survival. It is also called correcting a great wrong being done to a very small minority at the whim of those religious leaders and MBA executives of medical insurance companies who feel the need for absolutes and paired dualities where none exist, but are strictly artificial ideological paradigms, not supported by empirical knowledge, or are driven by the need to contain costs of medical coverage. The former is merely the imposition of religious tenets into the laws of a land that supposedly maintains religious freedoms. The latter? A simple case of penny wise pound foolish. Consider the long-term costs of treating the individual with expensive psychotropic medications, and the stress related afflictions and self-destructive behaviors, missed time from work, disability insurance payments, and other tangible/intangible costs that living with this affliction will incur over the lifetime of the individual.

Isn’t it time that we haul this out into the open and take a look at the costs, not only in the realm of the mundane financial, but in terms of the broken lives and families that will continually occur as long as outmoded, and now shown to be false, paradigms are allowed to adversely affect a small demographic with unchecked impunity

*This figure, cited in the DSM, appears to be horribly understated. Lynn Conway has summarized that if there is a male population of 100,000,000 males in the United states, and there are 40,000 transsexual females who have undergone SRS, then a more accurate figure would be 1:2500 births.

An Introduction - of sorts!

Hi All,

My Name is Joanie and I reside on the left coast of the U.S. in a smallish town of about 140,000. (Small for the basic metropolitan area I reside in that is!) I am a liberal conservative in some respects. Believe me when I say that the previous is not mutually exclusive, as I am very conservative when it comes to governmental/private finances but with a liberal social policy in many regards. The reason for this? In 1969, after undergoing a severe period of depression and anxiety, I was diagnosed with severe Gender Identity Disorder. I started off my life as Jack, but have now moved on to the opposite side of the gender divide and am a much happier individual for doing so.

My interests are amateur astronomy, HAM Radio, electrology (licensed n my state of residence), jewelry making, Celtic music, and fine woodworking.

My past work experience has been one of starting off as an apprentice general machinist for one of California's largest aerospace manufacturers, moving into quality control for flight hardware, programming numerical data bases for digital design, NC machining and automated Coordinate Measurement Machines (CMM) programming. Later positions included Quality Engineer for electromechanical flight control systems. I have worked extensively with radar and laser target acquisition systems and weapons platforms. I have extensive past experience with quality inspection, test, and qualification of new large frame aircraft and was a key player in many FAA Standard Type Certificates (STC's) for many of the U.S. manufactured commercial air transports, as well as various military transport, fighter, surveillance, and special purpose airframes and modifications thereof.

A lower back injury in 1995 put an end to my career in aerospace, but I have also worked in the capitol equipment industry, for the hard drive media manufacturers, and done extensive technical writing in both aerospace and related manufacturing disciplines.

Anyway, I am interested in religion, ideology, semantics, and the way that they inflict xenophobia and bigotry into the cultures that they infest. My hope is that someday mankind can surpass ore values that engender these paradigms, moving on toward core beliefs that are life affirming at their core, and get past a lot of the historical attitudes that have divided mankind for so long. We are a the culmination of our individual cultures histories and I, like Loreena McKennitt, firmly believe that there is more of history with the potential to unite mankind, than to tear us asunder.

My best regards to all,
Joanie