Bible as Allegory

[Moksha]

This is from philosopher Bill at Beliefnet. It struck me as being thought provoking and so I am posting it here for your consideration:

This view of the Bible, as allegory, is a modern one. For most of the last two millennia, the vast majority of its readers have considered it as factual as the phonebook. While common sense ought to tell us there are no talking snakes, fruit that makes you wise or waters above the sky, the Bible never separates the factual from the figurative. In fact, throughout most of those two millennia, to question the literal truthfulness of the Bible was to betray a damnable lack of faith. Copernicus hid his findings - that it's the earth that revolves around the sun - in the appendix to his book. When Galileo went out of his way to publicize the contents of that appendix, he was nearly tortured by the Inquisition (and spent the rest of his life under house arrest).

In the West, we cringe at the barbarity of Islamic Fundamentalism and its effect on Islamic theocracies. But it wasn't that long ago when Europeans were burning witches, beating up on Jews, torturing heretics and waging Crusades. Even on this continent, Christianity - the same Christianity that gave us "love thy neighbor" and "turn the other cheek" - was used to justify invasion, occupation, enslavement and - in Puritan New England - the Salem Witch Trials. If you compare the Qur'an to the Bible, it's not the texts that differ so much as the attitude of the reader. In the West, scientific and political revolutions have changed the way we see the world. Where once it made perfect sense to assume that whatever we found in the Bible must be - ipso facto - a literal fact backed up by the Bank of God, that view has been modified by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution.

Even today, in the dawn of the 21st Century, we still have people working their way through the halls of government, trying to get Creation Science turned into part of the required curriculum in public school. In fact, until recently, science teachers in Florida were to avoid using the term, "evolution," and replace it with the phrase, "change over time" - so as not to offend those who still believe that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God.

The only reason people today look at the Bible as allegory is that they've done the math and it's the only way to retain any faith in the text. We know today that neither snakes - nor donkeys - can talk. Even if they had enough brains to speak, they lack the rest of the hardware to pull off much of a conversation in Hebrew. We've seen what's above the sky, and it's not "upper waters." We know the water is blue because it reflects the sky, which is blue because of what the atmosphere does to white light. Unlike the author of Genesis, we see no reason to link fish and fowl, nor is there a biologist alive who thinks that birds existed before there were worms a/k/a "creeping things." One of the more amusing things we now know is that the kind of wind tunnel it would take to part the Red Sea would not be one you'd want to walk through. We also know that no star could literally fall to earth. Lambs do not beget spotted offspring by looking at spotted things. It's unlikely that Noah found every land creature on seven continents and stuffed that animal into an ark that size, let alone that each migrated through hostile biomes to return to his place of origin.

In his day, Joseph Smith took a lot of heat for saying, "We believe the Bible to be the Word of God AS FAR AS IT IS TRANSLATED CORRECTLY." Back then, it was widely considered heresy to suggest that any part of the Bible was anything less than a crystalline miracle of perfection, God's infallible and inerrant Word. If Joseph Smith ended up rewriting various passages, it was in a good-faith attempt to save the Bible from itself. Just as Joseph dropped to his knees in the Sacred Grove - to ask which church he should join (not whether any church was true or whether life has any meaning) - Joseph continued to believe that the Bible, as originally drafted, was the "Word of God," but that there had to have been mistranslations along the way in order to create a document so rife with issues. For Joseph and others, it was easier to believe in a monk on the grassy knoll than to believe that, perhaps, the Bible was no better than the people who wrote - none of whom were perfect.

In fact, if you look closely at the Bible, you end up with anything but a monolith. The Documentary Hypothesis, itself, is based on the idea that variant names for God, along with redundant passages and conflicting accounts, are the result of the pooling and ultimate redaction of at least four sets of rival scripts. Why do some portions of the text refer to God as Elohim while others refer to him as Jehovah? Why do some passages go into great detail while others are loosey goosey? Why do the rival histories of 1 and 2 Samuel, along with 1 and 2 Kings, differ from 1 and 2 Chronicles? Whether it was the famed Ezra or someone else, it's evident that the Old Testament, in its current form, is a redaction, a redaction that probably doesn't date back as far as one might think.

The same goes for the New Testament. Upon closer inspection, the Four Gospels are not four witnesses to the same events but four different versions of those events, four competing visions of the original Christian message, as if Christianity had lent its name out to four competing marketing firms. The accounts don't just differ. Their contradictions, as well as their exclusives and their omissions, show selective spin. None of them are eye-witness testimonies - as their scope inevitably exceeds anything a single witness could have experienced. Was Matthew really there when Mary and Joseph were dating? Why don't we have a gospel from either of them? If Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, who was there when he met the Devil? Who was at the court of Herod when Salome dance for him and ordered the head of John the Baptist? If Jesus' disciples fell asleep while he was praying, who recorded what he prayed?

If you look closely at the New Testament authors, there are divisions between them. Paul has a very different idea of salvation from that of Peter, James and John. In arguing that salvation is "by faith" and "without works," Paul seems to contradict the words of Jesus when he said, "Not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he that does the will of my father." Either way, Paul takes bragging rights for standing up to Peter, when the latter hesitated to fraternize with uncircumcised Christians in front of his Jewish peers. Peter, on the other hand, warns his readers that some of the things Paul wrote about were hard to be understood, so hard in fact that if you didn't already know the Gospel, you could end up losing your salvation. James was a bit more blunt about it. "Believest thou that Jesus is the Christ?" he asked in his general epistle, "Thou doest well. The devils also believe, and tremble." To James, "faith without works is dead."

It's only with the distance of time - and the realization of gaps between the ancient record and the results of modern science - that we begin to wonder if the "Word of God" isn't truer in spirit than in letter. Knowing what we know now, we're forced to either deny its flaws, deny the conclusions of science or find a compromise between blind faith and disillusionment. But look how long it has taken to come to terms with the third solution. St. Paul had his moments but he also thought that women should cover their heads, keep quiet in church, look to their husbands to explain the hard stuff they couldn't understand and otherwise remain subordinate to the man - for it was Eve who was first deceived by the serpent. And while that hardly makes St. Paul a gangsta in sandals, b-slappin' his way Heaven, it also explains why St. Paul considered it better to be celibate and single.

Freed from the pressure to see things through the right pair of spectacles, I call 'em like I see 'em. St. Paul was an obvious sexist. He was gentler than others but his attitude toward women reflected the values of the day and not necessarily the "Will of God." Given the number of times Jesus appeared with women (Mary, his mother; Mary Magdalene; Mary, the sister of Martha) - it's unlikely that Jesus would have sanctioned some of St. Paul's more prudish utterances. I have no problem reading a text - like Romans 9 - and concluding that St. Paul was speaking out of turn. I'm not a Protestant, reading every passage with an eye toward how it can help me or hurt me in a running firefight with all of my Protestant - or Catholic - rivals. When scripture violates reason, I go with reason.

This ability to pick and choose what I'll believe has some people foaming at the mouth. If I were Catholic, they'd call me a "cafeteria Catholic" because I don't force myself to approve every utterance from on high, simply because it was an utterance from on high. As often as I can, I give every voice the amount of thought I think it deserves. But at the end of the day, I'm the one who has to decide whether this faith or that one will help me build paradise or simply entertain me along the way to nowhere. Purists conceive of religion as a straitjacket, one that binds the individual to the will of God, the most obvious example of which is Islam, which literally means "submission." More often than not, it's more of an ornamentation, a style, a logo people wear, a flag people fly, that expresses their desire to live a better, classier, more wholesome life.

[DigitalShadow]

Given my predisposition to science and the scientific method, if I were to accept the Bible, it would most likely be as allegory.

[Moksha]

My own position is that many parts of the Bible are what I refer to as Sacred Allegory. I understand that the stories of the Bible were written to be understood on several levels. Much like the story of Santa is meant to conger up images of a kindly old man giving presents to children, to adults its meaning is to reinforce the spirit of giving - a very religious message. The Jewish midrash looks to the various meanings and level of scripture. They knew that some parts were the law and other were lore.

Another level for me is the Sacred Covenant material. For example, those scriptures such as the words of Jesus or the Ten Commandments, that have a direct bearing on our behavior and beliefs.

Another level is Simple Allegory. This would include the tribal warfare and barbarity of the Old Testament that for whatever reason, was blamed on God.

[Vanessa2]

Many of the differences in the Bible are not in competition with each other as mentioned, but complement each other. Some of the differences that don't quite match up are represent differences in culture and perspective. I have been sports referee for many years and where you are standing at the time makes a huge difference in whether you make a call or not. The people who wrote the Bible are writing from their cultural/perspective/world view. It is how they understood the word of God, not how God gave his words. Certainly, the Bible is the word of God, but that does not mean it is free of men's imperfections.

As I read all that, it made me very grateful for modern revelation.