[Magdalen] A useful approach to the Bible

[Ann Markle]

I find it arrogant when someone assumes THEY are the one to decide (for
everyone) what should be retained, what should be discarded or dismissed
from scripture.  Of course scripture was written by humans.  But what hand
did God have in it?  What parts were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and what
parts were not?  Who's to say that THIS is from God and THIS is not?
That's partly where tradition (the wisdom of those who came before me) and
reason come in.  I believe that scripture was written by heads that may
well have been wiser than mine, not some primitive people or primitive
mind.  Yes, parts are primitive -- parts are a collection of our most
ancient stories and poems.  That's also where our (collective, not
individual) reason comes into play -- what parts of scripture are true to
tradition, and especially true to the Gospel teachings?  What parts are
TRUTH and WISDOM?  I guess that's one reason I'm doing so well in AA -- I
assume that some people are wiser than I, and that steps and traditions
that have worked to save the lives of generations of alcoholics might just
work for me, too -- rather than dismissing anything that I find unpleasant,
and finding some rationalization for my personal dislike and dismissal.

And yes, I give scripture some kind of mystical authority that contemporary
humans do not have.  I'm a mystic (and glad to be one) -- so "mystical
authority" seems right by me.  I do believe that God's ways aren't my ways,
and I can only struggle to discern a little bit of the mind of God, and
that I dismiss something that I believe contains God's Truth and Wisdom at
my own peril -- with fear and trembling as some wise one once said.

Ann

The Rev. Ann Markle
Buffalo, NY
ann.markle at aya.yale.edu
blog:  www.onewildandpreciouslife.typepad.com

On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 11:13 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> ​Looking at him from the perspective of today, I find Hooker's opinion
> unconvincing. For that day, it's not at all surprising.  I think that
> today, knowing what we know about scripture, it has lost some of the pride
> of place it had back in the day. They had just begun to rediscover Greek
> and Hebrew in the West, and they still did not have the King James Bible.
> In Hooker's day, most scholars believed scripture was all handed down
> somehow from God.
> Today scholarship demonstrates that scripture is a human production,
> through and through. We know today far better than Hooker ever could have
> what the actual content and meaning of scripture is.
>
> Holding that scripture is somehow entitled to some mystical authority seems
> incredible when it contains material that shows it to be -- in those
> locations -- the words of humans and certainly not at all the sense of the
> Eternal one.
>
> And I really think we are here looking at matters that are far more
> compelling than merely things where you have one opinion and I simply have
> another.
>
> No, when scripture says it is appropriate to smash children's heads on the
> rocks, that refutes utterly any claim to divine inspiration. And that is
> merely one of dozens of such howlers.
> This is not a discussion where it is just a matter of opinion. We are
> talking numerous texts which, were they not hiding within the protection of
> the scriptural canon, would surely be universally be called inappropriate,
> if not despicable and horrendous claims and actions.
>
> In his introduction to his book, _Who Wrote the Bible?_, Richard Elliot
> Friedman gives names and dates in a history of the development of the
> modern view towards scripture (pp. 15-32). One thing which becomes clear is
> that at the time of Hooker, virtually everyone assumed the Bible was simply
> god-given. It would be centuries after Hooker before Biblical scholarship
> came to the conclusion that many hands produced the text that has come down
> to us, and any illusion of inerrancy has been dashed. Hooker knew nothing
> of what was learned in the centuries following him, just as the King James
> Version is unable to benefit from the knowledge of language and history
> unearthed since the companies ceased their work in 1611.
>