To: GrillSgt who wrote (14789 ) 2/10/2003 9:07:20 AM From: briskit Respond to SGT, or can I call you Grill? There has been some interesting research and thought done on biblical texts since the contributions of rationalistic (and anti-supernatural) inquiry produced by the Enlightenment. Reimarus and Lessing declared faith and reason to be completely incompatible, and further that the data of history are incapable of yielding "eternal truth." Spinoza and others began much of what turned out to be ground breaking work on the texts. The 1700-1800s compiled many of the observations you note here. These observations and the results of the even more radical "history of religions school" served to free biblical texts from orthodoxy, ecclesiastical dogmatics and inter-faith polemics. At the same time they demonstrated the immense gulf between "us and them", the self-understandings, cosmologies, etc of ancient peoples. We don't need the benefits of the most modern attempts to interpret and determine (possible) relevance of the examples you cited, however. Even the New Testament texts utilized interpretive principles 2,000 years ago which addressed the concerns mentioned in the list. Of course, I know you can present other lists from the New Testament for discussion. Perhaps if nothing else I'd suggest that you can read about more recent discussion of those inquiries in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, particularly the articles on biblical criticism, theology, and interpretation. It's actually interesting to see the various philosophies and historical forces interacting and debating. BTW, it was not the conservatives, but the radical "purely historical" history of religions folks who liberated the interpretation of the bible from rationalistic interpretations, as well as other externally derived philosophical methods, Kantian, Hegelian, Ritschlian, etc. I recommend the reading. The result is that the data in biblical texts becomes clearer, and the difficult question of modern relevance is much better defined. Sorry to go on and on, but I've been doing some of that reading lately as a result of reading Solon's thread. I've benefited from the stimulating contributions here.
