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.