This is the second part of a two part series where I discuss the problems I see with two prevalent forms of fundamentalism (the first discussed Constitution and fundamentalism: http://amusingbeam.blogspot.com/2012/05/problem-with-fundamentalism-part-1.html ). In this part, I will be discussing biblical fundamentalism. I will be referring to sources more frequently here, as I cannot claim the expertise I could for the last installment.
Let me start by saying that I understand this is an extremely controversial topic, especially the stance I am taking. My goal is not to offend, but it is instead to discuss why I think a fundamentalist approach to the Bible (and, in some respects, any text) has insurmountable problems. I think that most Fundamentalists I know are quite willing to discuss why they believe their hermeneutic approach is the correct one, so my hope is that they are equally sanguine when someone explains why that pathway seems problematic.
Here is the short version: We don't know what words should be in the Bible, and even if we did, words are imperfect tools, incapable of delivering perfection.
Definition
General philosophy
That is not the only way to have a religion, though. Many of the worlds religions have had historically little to do with scriptures. There is nothing innate in believing in a deity that also requires that you believe in a holy book. You can well believe that your god (or gods), if they choose to communicate with humans at all, do so in other ways--direct experience, nature, meditation, etc. "Scripture" need not enter into the religion AT ALL.
Even if some words are considered holy, inerrancy of that scripture is not a logical requirement. In fact, it is a recent addition to Protestant Christian doctrine, stemming mainly from movements in the 19th Century. Most Christians believe that the stories in the Bible were, in some way, inspired by God, but they also believe that humans have had a hand in those words, thereby making them imperfect. (I'm not bothering to cite a source there, but plenty could be found, if anyone questions that.)
As an important aside, many Catholics have long argued that Protestants elevate the Bible in an idolatrous manner -- their argument is that only God is perfect, and to worship the Bible as perfect is misguided. Because the Bible is neither perfect nor exhaustive, the Catholic Church believes that customs and traditions of interpretation are needed.
At a more basic philosophical level, it is not difficult to imagine that ultimate truth may be more elusive than whatever could be contained in a simple series of relatively short books.
Problems with translation
Why do you prefer that translation? My guess is that you probably haven't put much thought into it. If you did, there may have been factors like how easy it is to read, how eloquent it sounds, what version the church you attend generally uses, the version your parents suggested, etc. If you were really into the issue, you might have done research to decide which is the BEST translation, and relied on what someone else said to pick it.
But ... wait. The BEST translation? Doesn't that mean that some translations are better than others? That they say different things? Of course it does. Shouldn't that give fundamentalists pause? I mean, how can you believe in the inerrancy of two mutually exclusive things? How can two translations peacefully coexist?
What's worse, though, is that you are probably thinking of translations of the Bible being like translations of, say, the latest Stephen King novel. You push the novel into a translator, and out pops the Spanish version. Different translators might make different translations, but it all goes back to the same base.
That's not how it is with the Bible. We simply don't know what many of the words actually were. More on this soon.
Which books?
That leads us into the second biggest problem: Which book are we talking about?
The problem we will deal with multiple times here is how to know what the actual Bible is. One sub-problem is the canon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon) First, let's remember that the Christian Bible is two different collections of books: The Old Testament and the New Testament. For the purposes of this argument, let's ignore the Old Testament (though the exact same problems arise there) and focus on the New.
Do you read something from the Protestant tradition? Roman Catholic? Eastern Orthodox? Amermenian Apostolic? Coptic Orthodox? Ethiopian Orthodox? Syraic Christian? These are all living churches with active members. They are relatively consistent (excepting the Ethiopian Orthodox) ... now. There are one or two differences ... now.
If you look back, though, there were wildly different traditions. The first canon was by Marcion of Sinope ... but, oops, he was a heretic. Lots of our best, earliest manuscripts attempting to create a canon include Clement (I and II), Barnabas, and other books.
What about the Apocrypha? Is that part of the Bible? Should we follow Martin Luther's lead and remove Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelations?
Hopefully you see the problem. Even if we accept that some books are inspired by God, how do we know if the right ones were included in the canon? There are places in the text of several books that refer to other letters that the apostles wrote, for instance, but that were not included. (Corinth, to name just one example, evidently had a wide variety of letters going back and forth from Paul.) Colossians instructs them (us?) to read the letter written to the Laodiceans. As far as anyone knows, it no longer exists.
So, which canon do we follow? Probably not simply the Jewish. The Protestant canon is more divergent than people like to think (it starts with Martin Luther, right?). What about Mormons? Jehovah's Witnesses?
Honestly, how can we know which is right? Catholics can say that the customs and traditions of the Church tell them, but what about Protestants? If you are sola scriptura, what process do you use to choose? (Interested in this problem? Check out http://www.thelostbooks.com/list.htm for an overwhelming list.)
Translations, take 2
Let's slip back into discussion problems with translations again, but this time with a vengeance. Something rarely discussed (in my experience) is that multiple sources exist for each book. Those sources ALWAYS disagree, sometimes just with the scribal equivalent of typos, sometimes with important verses added or deleted, sometimes with important verses changed. We pull different parts from different sources, depending on what has survived and what the biblical scholars think is the best version.
In case you missed that, let me repeat it: the best manuscripts we have, the oldest and most reliable versions of the scriptures, disagree. Most of the disagreements are trivial, but many are not.
We need a bit of history. The reasons that Jerome wrote the Vulgate translation in the 4th Century were (a) the pope wanted a Latin version, and (b) there were so many CONFLICTING Bibles available that the Church wanted to create a standard version. After the Vulgate was published, the Western world focused on it as the "true" Bible for a long, long time.
Finally, in the 16th Century, Erasmus produced the Textus Receptus, based on Greek manuscripts. Sort of. He could only find a few, and some were so bad (notably Revelations) that his deadline kinda forced him to just make a translation from the Vulgate back into Greek. We all understand deadlines.
Then, King James used (the descendants of) the Textus Receptus for his translation.
Then this guy Mill came along and pointed out that, of the suriviving original manuscripts ("original" just meaning old -- ALL of the manuscripts are several generations of copies from the true originals), there were about 30,000 known discrepancies. Unfortunately, there weren't that many Greek manuscripts to compare. Currently, the manuscripts we have differ in more words than exist in the entire New Testament. Truly.
This isn't a new problem. As early as the writing of Revelations (or an early copy), scripture already included a mandate not to make changes: "I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book; and if anyone removes any of the words of the book of this prophecy, God will remove his share from the tree of life and from the holy city, as described in this book." According to many scholars, this is not saying (as some have interpreted it) that you have to accept or believe everything as it is written -- this is warning copyists not to make any changes!
Early Christian writers talked about this frequently, and had to argue with non-believers. Among many intellectuals, it was evidently thought that, if someone pointed out an inconsistency, Christians would simply change the scripture to match what was orthodox. Scholars still think that, today. Take a look, for instance, at Bart Ehrman's Miquoting Jesus (in particular here, Chapter 6: Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text).
To summarize (this comes from Ehrman, as well), we do not have any original manuscripts of any of the books of the New Testament, but we have over 5000 surviving copies. Most are CENTURIES removed from the originals, and they all contains mistakes caused by scribes--purposely or not--altering the text. Though most of the changes don't matter, some are very significant.
What do I mean by significant? The doctrine of the trinity. The position of women in the church. The story of the adulturess. Whether we can speak in tongues (Pentecostals find that important) or handle snakes. Whether Jesus sweat blood.
Words can't be perfect tools for communication
And now for the biggest problem: How words work. There is a problem with how fundamentalists approach the Bible that shows, in my opinion, a lack of understanding with how words actually function. For a text to be perfect, there would have to be definite meanings for words. I'm not saying that a word couldn't have multiple meanings (though that does cause problems) ... just that words would have to really MEAN something in a way that would allow perfection.
Conclusion
Add those word problems into a translation. Then add in the canon issues. Then the fact that we don't know what the original words were. And now you can see why I think a fundamentalist approach to the Bible does not make sense. The Bible is a collection of copies of copies of books by various authors, and by reading translations of our best approximations of them we get to come closer to sharing experiences with them. That closeness is a wonderful human experience, and I treasure it. For me, that's enough.
What do you think?
Let me start by saying that I understand this is an extremely controversial topic, especially the stance I am taking. My goal is not to offend, but it is instead to discuss why I think a fundamentalist approach to the Bible (and, in some respects, any text) has insurmountable problems. I think that most Fundamentalists I know are quite willing to discuss why they believe their hermeneutic approach is the correct one, so my hope is that they are equally sanguine when someone explains why that pathway seems problematic.
Here is the short version: We don't know what words should be in the Bible, and even if we did, words are imperfect tools, incapable of delivering perfection.
Definition
By fundamentalism, here I am meaning a belief that the Christian Bible is the inerrant word of God, and that the Bible should be read literally (as opposed to metaphorically or symbolically). The term Fundamentalism comes from a series of books published in the 1910's, and the Fundamentals cover more ground, but I think it is safe to say that the literal inerrancy of the Bible is the principal core. That is certainly what I am discussing here. Another way of saying this is to say that every word in the Bible has a 1:1 correspondance between itself and the meaning (or meanings) intended by God; there is a discoverable, correct way to read the Bible.
General philosophy
Before I delve into practical problems, first I want to address some core religious philosophy that may be a hang up for some. Christianity--especially Protestant Christianity--is a "religion of a book," meaning that most Christians believe that the words of the Bible are holy, touched by God, and that a basic part of how to worship includes understanding the Scripture.
Problems with translation
So, let's start with the first problem. Take a swing over to http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Bible/BibleType.htm and pick whichever translation you prefer.
Why do you prefer that translation? My guess is that you probably haven't put much thought into it. If you did, there may have been factors like how easy it is to read, how eloquent it sounds, what version the church you attend generally uses, the version your parents suggested, etc. If you were really into the issue, you might have done research to decide which is the BEST translation, and relied on what someone else said to pick it.
Which books?
That leads us into the second biggest problem: Which book are we talking about?
So, which canon do we follow? Probably not simply the Jewish. The Protestant canon is more divergent than people like to think (it starts with Martin Luther, right?). What about Mormons? Jehovah's Witnesses?
Translations, take 2
Let's slip back into discussion problems with translations again, but this time with a vengeance. Something rarely discussed (in my experience) is that multiple sources exist for each book. Those sources ALWAYS disagree, sometimes just with the scribal equivalent of typos, sometimes with important verses added or deleted, sometimes with important verses changed. We pull different parts from different sources, depending on what has survived and what the biblical scholars think is the best version.
To summarize (this comes from Ehrman, as well), we do not have any original manuscripts of any of the books of the New Testament, but we have over 5000 surviving copies. Most are CENTURIES removed from the originals, and they all contains mistakes caused by scribes--purposely or not--altering the text. Though most of the changes don't matter, some are very significant.
What do I mean by significant? The doctrine of the trinity. The position of women in the church. The story of the adulturess. Whether we can speak in tongues (Pentecostals find that important) or handle snakes. Whether Jesus sweat blood.
- The doctrine of the Trinity: There is exactly one place in the entirety of Scripture where the doctrine of the Trinity (three persons that constitute one God) is explicit, and that's called the Johannine Comma: 1 John 5:7-8. It shouldn't be there, though (and many modern manuscripts have changed it to match Greek manuscripts). It is in virtually no Greek manuscripts, and Erasmus didn't add it to his first addition; there was such a public outcry that he said he would include it if a Greek manuscript could be found containing the verse ... and, wow, someone found one. I mean, made one.
- The woman taken in adultery: The story exists in a grand total of one passage in the New Testament (John 7:53 - 8:12). Scholars have no doubt it wasn't original. It's not in the oldest, best copies, and it includes language used nowhere else in John (indicating that a different author wrote it). So, that part of the Bible is a later addition.
- Speaking in tongues, etc.: The last twelve verses of Mark were also late additions. Our two oldest and best manuscripts do not contain them. The writing style is very different from the rest of the book. The transition to the next passage is very odd (reintroducing Mary Magdalene, for instance). While some scholars think there might have been a different ending that was removed, almost none think these twelve verses belong.
- Jesus sweating blood: This isn't as obviously significant, but it is my favorite because of its oddity. Luke 22:43-44 disrupts Luke in an odd way -- it takes the generally stoic Jesus and makes him incredibly worried. Elsewhere in this gospel, Jesus is always completely unflappable, except for right here. Most of our best manuscripts do not include the verse. A winning argument for me is that the verse breaks up the literary structure of the passage. It appears to be designed to be what's called a chiasmus ... but that verse throws it off. By analogy, it would be like having a couple of unrhyming lines in the middle of a limeric.
- Women in the Bible: In the early church, women were very significant (discovered the empty tomb, could be apostles, etc.). Paul mentions Phoebe, a deacon in the church of Cenchreae; she carries his letter to the Romans. He calls Junias "foremost among the apostles." Huh? But doesn't he say, in 1 Tim, that women should have no authority over a man? Well, scholars are pretty sure Paul didn't write 1 Timothy. But, scholars agree he DID write Corinthians, and that letter says for women to keep silent in church. True, but those verses might not have originally been there. They sort of float among the early manuscripts, leading many scholars to conclude they were marginal notes that later scribes added to the text proper. If you remove the verses from chapter 14, it actually makes the text read better. More importantly, he explicitly tells women to speak in church earlier in Corinthians (11:2-16). Would he flat-out contradict himself in that short a span, in one letter? There are other, likely altered, scriptures that change the power structure to a more patriarchal one.
Words can't be perfect tools for communication
And now for the biggest problem: How words work. There is a problem with how fundamentalists approach the Bible that shows, in my opinion, a lack of understanding with how words actually function. For a text to be perfect, there would have to be definite meanings for words. I'm not saying that a word couldn't have multiple meanings (though that does cause problems) ... just that words would have to really MEAN something in a way that would allow perfection.
Words are not a one-to-one with what they signify. A great deal of theoretical work, by luminary language theorists such as Saussure, Lacan, and Derrida, shows in great detail how the simple view of one-to-one fails. These guys are the Einsteins and Hawkings of language theory, by the way; ignoring them would be like taking a course in literary giants and failing to mention Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer.
To put it another way, we don't have dictionaries sitting in our heads, with the "denotative" meaning attached to words. We have memory nodes that connect to other memory nodes, and each word is a sort of sum of those connections, in each of us. These connotations are not secondary to meaning -- they are actually how words work, in our mind. Another theorist -- Stanley Fish, who wrote a book entitled Is There a Text In This Class? -- argues that texts are really changing agreements between interpretive communities.
What you do when you write is to take a bunch of thoughts (not by any means completely in words), attempt to put those thoughts into boxes called words that reflect, in your mind, something like what you had going on in your mind, and place those words on some medium (such as paper). When people read it, they try to figure out what was going on inside the author's mind, but readers have their own connections. We try to make the connections more and more similar through clarifications and corrections (such as dictionaries and parents), but ... they change. Otherwise, we would all be speaking the same language (or a very small subset of the original languages).
So, every person that reads a text gets something slightly different from it. That is not solely because of intelligence or education -- that is because experience fundamentally shapes what words mean to people. The word "rape" means something very different to a victim than to a non-victim. "Father" and "daughter" mean different things before and after a girl is born. "Rosy-fingered dawn" means something very different to you after you read The Illiad. You can never hear the question "What's in the box?" the same after you watch the movie 7even.
Words are, by their very nature, too slippery to be conduits of perfect truth. That doesn't mean that they are useless -- far from it. Finding new meanings in Jane Eyre, or Paradise Lost, or King Lear is a wonderful journey, and I feel closer to the authors as I take it. But I don't think they could convey anything close to perfectly -- we just have a better approximation of a shared experience now.
Conclusion
Add those word problems into a translation. Then add in the canon issues. Then the fact that we don't know what the original words were. And now you can see why I think a fundamentalist approach to the Bible does not make sense. The Bible is a collection of copies of copies of books by various authors, and by reading translations of our best approximations of them we get to come closer to sharing experiences with them. That closeness is a wonderful human experience, and I treasure it. For me, that's enough.
What do you think?
Really, there is no problem. Yes, I can appreciate if that sounds simplistic, but it's more in the interest of brevity.
ReplyDeleteThe things you enumerate: the imperfect nature of words, translations and trinity are the old wheel-spinning rut of best-selling book stuff by Erhman and others.
You are correct words are imperfect and as such incapable of delivering perfection. It is the dialog of discernment and the resultant understanding which delivers perfection; the completeness by which anyone is able to coherently express their own understanding of a word in context of a passage or a life situation.
As many times as I have heard anyone reject my teaching because of a particular Bible translation in my hand I have been just as quick to ask for their own translation. Why? Because the point to be made can be just easily made from any translation. Yet, the translation scramble remains a favorite to create the impression the presenter has any understanding or in any case to create the desired confusion in the faith of those who have heard their words.
Personally, I have no need, use or desire for the term trinity. It suffices for me as a reader of the New Testament that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are allude to, spoken and manifested in different ways as different, distinct entities. I have no problem with any who uses it. I do reject the favorite charge often made that I am merely parroting what Constantine and the council of Nicea delivered to the church. This is a common falsehood and error.
It is a falsehood because the council merely acted on what it acknowledged was already common knowledge and practice throughout the churches all over. It is in error I am able to speak of and teach the realities of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as they are presented in scripture without any reliance on a document from the Nicean council. If, and I emphasis IF, what the council determined and what I speak and teach are the same it is not because of the council, but because, as I said, the NT is permeated with these things. There is no need for a catchy and perhaps well-intentioned term coined a body led by a emperor with little to no knowledge of scripture.
For some reason, I never received a notification about your post, Gil.
ReplyDeleteYour understanding and mine about what was occurring in the time of of the Council of Nicea are very different. My reading of biblical history is that the Council came together precisely because there were so many heresies and disagreements about what should be in the canon that the Church wanted to snuff it by promulgating an "official" version. Personally, I find it implausible that anyone that has not studied the original texts could make the claim that they do something besides follow what the Council said. For instance, have you read the Book of Barnabas? Have you considered tossing Revelations, like John Luther did? Perhaps you have, but I know of very few people that would feel okay adding or subtracting a single word, much less an entire book, from the Bible they have been handed.
"It is the dialog of discernment and the resultant understanding which delivers perfection...." How? And, more importantly, how do you know that? I am uncertain that any human can hold, or even recognize, perfection.
As to the fact that most of the textual problems do not change the gist of what is said. I believe I said as much. "Most" is not "all," though. You are okay with thinking of the trinity as three different persons, but if you do not believe they are all one godhead, you are guilty of the heresy of tritheism. That is a big deal, to some people.
Whether the Bible says you can speak in tongues is really important to Pentecosts, for example. How the Bible treats women should be important to everyone. Biblical scholars have vehement debates about these topics -- not about "intepretation," but about textual construction. Are the words actually there? Can you show, through textual evolution, an obvious effort at disenfranchising women, textually? That should make a big difference, I would think.
Of course, the ultimate problem is that we don't have the original text. Large doctrinal issues may be in the letter to Laodicea (which is supposed to be read, according to Paul's letter to the Colossians). Removing Revelations should change many of our views of the end times. How can anyone say that they know for certain which works were or were not part of the canon? I have heard people assert they can, but I have not seen anything that amounts to a reasonable approach.
So, in general, I don't think that what you said refutes my points ... but I do appreciate the thoughtful debate. (I also wonder how you saw my post....)