On the other hand, I would be cautious about ignoring the problematic passages based on their incompatibility with a subjective and romantic interpretation of the “text as a whole” - this seems to be very common in liberal interpretations and is basically the other side of the coin. There are pretty fundamental conflicts between the morality of the Qur’an and Bible and modern ethics that don’t disappear when you look at the broad picture.
Well, you need interpretive principles, either way, and better interpretive principles than “everything is literal unless we don’t like it.”
A lot of it becomes an empirical question: what is most likely to be authentic? what is least likely to be authentic? what is most likely to be intended as a general teaching? what is most likely to be intended as a one-off answer without general applicability?
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But Atheism leaves me cold!
Seriously, it’s an aesthetic judgement on your part to denigrate subjectivity and romanticism. Most people consider them to be an integral part of the human experience.
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Of course, but replacing that with “the only things that matter are the elements that we like” is not much of an improvement, hermeneutically speaking. With regard to the Bible, you can’t dismiss large parts of the Old Testament by claiming that it’s a different covenant or something - the same god who sent Jesus also banished King Saul from the throne for not taking the command to commit total genocide literally, destroyed practically the entire human and animal population, established in the Torah that soldiers could take women as prisoners of war and generally treated rape as a crime against male property. In the New Testament, Jesus often talks about hell and Paul made a number of objectionable statements. Even where some of these oppositions to women in leadership or homosexuals are seen as cultural, there’s still the problem that this would make women in leadership wrong in certain cases. However you explain Romans 1, it still says that people who do sex in the wrong way are worthy of death, as part of a grand introduction to a treatise on God’s justice and the Christian faith.
When it comes to Islam, Rezar Aslan points out that there are Christian churches in Syria and Egypt - which makes sense, since Christians have been in those countries far longer than Muslims have. There’s still the issue that apostasy is considered a crime to be severely punished in the Qur’an and is considered to be worthy of death numerous times both in lower ranking texts and by a very large number of scholars over the years. He claims that there is no shred of evidence that Muslims are trying to bring Sharia Law to America, which is refuted by a later caller who claims that all good Muslims want to bring Sharia Law everywhere. Both are using the ‘no true Scotsman’ argument, but Rezar Aslan is wrong if he claims that there are not sincere Muslims who want to bring Sharia Law to the US, based on their interpretation of Islamic teaching.
There are other issues, but the point is that I don’t disagree that Muslims or Christians can be good, moral people; this does not entail that I agree that their holy books are a good source of morality or that the religion is essentially good at its core. There are many things to learn from both traditions, but the reason I bring up the problematic issues is that that’s where the problems will come up. Sharia Law is about everything “from honouring one’s parents, to helping the poor, to being good to one’s neighbour”? Wonderful, and I don’t want to stop anyone from doing those admirable things. Christianity is about loving your neighbour as yourself? Great, that’s a wonderful principle to live by. However, none of these are specific to the faith and there are elements of teaching in both traditions that directly contradict these good teachings.
I’m not trying to make anyone into an atheist, but I do object to be told not to worry if I express concern about an element in the canon of a faith that has been widely interpreted in a harmful way both by past and present adherents and teachers. Most people I know where I live are Christian or Muslim, and I attend church at times with my family, who are Christians. We do have very different bases for morality though, and occasionally we’ll have friendly discussions about it. Neither of us believes the other is dangerous or crazy and we’re all willing to listen, so it’s generally a positive experience for everyone.
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Actually, I’m more of an atheist. From my perspective, there’s little point in arguing that certain religions are more logical than others, because they all miss the mark.
As Gunnery Sergent Hartman says:
There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2M4ilVaAmI
But I’m expressing a refrain that’s common enough in this world that anybody attempting a sociology of religion must take into account-- there’s another dimension to human thought and experience that religion is far more suited to.
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Further, I’d say nobody gets any points for being an atheist either - I don’t find beliefs about the existence or not of a deity correlates much with the amount of humanity people show, although opposing a majority belief has some correlation to critical thought. As far as subjectivity and religion is concerned, I have to agree - but I don’t think that necessarily sits well with the way Abrahamic religions are constructed.
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It’s not like those are the only two options.
It’s not like anyone who doesn’t assert that the Jewish scriptures are literally true and/or inerrant would want to bother asserting that they have been superseded.
Myths and legends tend to be screwed-up. Why would Jewish myths and legends be any different? Of course Iesus was Jewish, and he referred to these myths and legends and he got involved in disputes over the law. But I’m not Jewish and I don’t feel either the ability or the obligation to address these myths and legends.
No, well it depends on a lot of translation and interpretation…
Yes, your point being?
If we exclude the pseudo-Pauline epistles, then Paul’s commentaries are the earliest surviving Christian texts, but aside from details about his life and his opinions, they are commentaries.
These examples just show why we need interpretive principles. I offered a few, but not specific to Christianity. I would suggest putting Iesus at the center, and trying to find the authentic acts and sayings and putting those before myths, legends, certain false prophecies, commentaries, faked commentaries, etc. as one interpretive principle. And it’s not a new one. And putting them into the cultural context.
After reading jerwin’s link above, I think part of the problem might be that early Muslims did put Mohammed at the center, and did try to find the authentic acts and sayings, and didn’t preserve as much of the cultural background and commentary.
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They aren’t, I just said that they were common and fairly similar approaches from opposite sides of the spectrum.
Jesus’ Jewish nature was central to the way that he’s presented. Without a knowledge of Jewish belief, a lot of his actions don’t make much sense, or at least you only get a very superficial meaning. When you talk about getting to the true Jesus and moving aside the myths and legends, I find it difficult to know what you’re even talking about. Without all of that, he’s just a man - not divine, nothing particularly special. No public records, writings or physical relics. There is nothing that we know about him that is not myth and legend. Paul never even met him, and nor did any non-Christian writer. With the Jewish myths and legends, he has meaning and context. Early Christians had a non-standard interpretation of the old testament, but that’s part of what makes Jesus so fascinating.
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