Evangelicals often commit the argumentative fallacy of appealing to authority to justify their ethical or moral preachments. One hears their porcine whine of “this is what the bible says” and “the bible clearly says that…” much too frequently in discussions that one wonders if they are but cheer-leading their ignorance for the world to see.
There is no such thing as a “common sense” or “face-value” reading of the bible – every reading is an interpretative task which involves the interaction between the interpreter and the text. Even a spiritualised reading of the text does not erase away the fact that the haphazard biblical corpus is a product that is historically and culturally removed from the 21st century by more than four millennia. Any literary person will tell you that in order to understand a work of literature so far removed from our time requires much more than just a neanderthal reading. If you don’t know what the n-word means, it just proves my point.
Besides, the biblical corpus were not composed in English. We already have problems fully understanding the works of Shakespeare or Dickens even though they were written in English – how much more problems we should have when engaging the biblical texts!
Otherwise there is no need for Homeric or Shakespearean scholars, for example.
Perhaps many of the hardcore evangelicals are engineers and accountants who think the biblical texts are manuals that can be read literally. Pardon my distaste for the literary challenged. To accept the bible as scripture and thus “inspired” by God is irrelevant to the interpretative task – hermeneutics is always a literary enterprise which engages the human reason. Unless you are one of those intellectually-challenged megalomaniacs who believe they have a hotline to God.
When scholars say the bible is culturally bound, they are not rubbishing that the bible cannot speak out of its culture in ways that may be relevant to modern people; they simply mean that the texts speak out of their own culture, not ours.
For example, many of the teachings of Jesus and Paul about not having to care or worry about this-worldly issues have to be understood in the context of early Christianity’s apocalyptic mindset. The early Christians believe their world is going to end very soon (people don’t learn from history, do they?) and thus modern concepts like social justice and a concern for the world are not to be read into the new testament texts. The biblical writers could not care less about human rights, or about financial planning, or about climate change. The world is going to end, for goodness’ sake! This does not mean that one cannot deduce about human rights and the care of the planet by appealing to broad “principles” that can be found in the bible.
Another silly mistake is to assume that there is some universalism that underlie biblical statements on sexual matters which make them directly relevant to us in the 21st century. While sex is a primal and perennial concern for homo sapiens, sexual mores and attitudes are not. Many of the sexual prohibitions in the Tanakh as well as the Christian testament have more to do with ancient Hebraic taboos regarding national “purity” (“holiness” is to be set apart, to be different from the pagan world and not necessarily a moral issue). Homogenital acts in the ancient world are nothing like what we know today as homosexuality. There is no concept of same-sex sexuality as a sexual orientation or in the context of a love relationship. It is therefore a mistake to pontificate against gay marriage or gay rights today using the biblical texts. Even the Hebraic sensibility of adultery is different from ours – while we view adultery as a violation against the sexual exclusivity of an avowed marriage, the ancient Hebrews view it as an intrusion on their “property rights”. One has to remember that women – wives and daughters – are property in the eyes of Hebrew men. Besides, ancient Hebraic sex is procreation only – physical pleasure is incidental. With a small fledgling community like theirs, they need as much offspring as they can get considering the low mortality rate of human beings at that time. This is why extra-vaginal seminal ejaculation is a Hebraic no-no. It is ridiculous that the Roman Catholic Church still hold to this very biological and functional view of sexuality when the world has moved on. Such irrelevance spells the imminent doom of this antiquarian institution.
It is common for evangelical “scholars” (they are a disgrace to academic scholarship in my view) to harmonise biblical texts which are obviously literary contradictions. They have to since they mistakenly view the bible as a singular book, penned by the very hand of God through human instrumentation. The bible is NOT a book, but an arbitrary collection of discordant writings which have very contradictory ideas and teachings when interpreted in their own contexts. For example, no where can one find in the primordial account of Genesis 1 to 3 the teaching of original sin (as formulated by St. Augustine) – the erroneous idea that there is an inherited sin nature all human beings have from Adam’s disobedience. One can only infer this by reading back into Genesis the Pauline writings. Similarly the idea that the Aesopian talking snake is the Devil himself. There are numerous Christian teachings evangelicals take for granted as being foreshadowed or foretold in the Hebrew scriptures but there is not a sliver of evidence for them! Take the so-called prophecies of Jesus in the Hebrew Scriptures. Evangelicals make it seem that the Jews must be very daft not to accept Jesus as their messiah when their own Scriptures have so “clearly” predicted him. But is that really the case? Do your own reading. Don’t let your pastor do it for you – he is more than likely to fib about his own ignorance. Many of the “prophecies” the New Testament writers allege are nothing but Hebrew scripture rewritten to fit into their faith construct. Just read the “prophecies” in their own Hebraic contexts.
One must also note that the Gospel writers do possess the Hebrew scriptures themselves and use them when they compose the Gospels. It does not take a mathematical physicist to know they wrote the gospel narratives to fit their post mortem understanding of the illiterate Nazarene peasant. To claim that the gospels are historically accurate narratives is out-of-date and archaic scholarship. No bible scholar today accepts them as historically factual accounts, let alone the products of eyewitness testimony.
While modern biblical scholarship has more than sufficiently exposed this very discrepant corpus, evangelical theologians choose to ignore the facts of literary textual and historical criticism by blaming on red herrings like the humanistic or naturalistic worldviews of the modern biblical scholars. Yawn.
This diversity of views and morality thus calls into question the evangelical use of the bible which claims to know “what the bible says”. The bible doesn’t really say anything coherent about christian dogma, let alone ethical issues. There is a smorgasbord of ancient Hebraic, Greek platonic and Hellenistic as well as pagan concepts all thrown into the mix which we now label as orthodox christian theology. It is also important to realise there are numerous virgin-born resurrecting gods in ancient mythology predating Jesus’ time. Hmm.
I still read the bible everyday. It is a darn good read as an ancient literary work of fiction and a foundation document for much of western civilisation. I am sympathetic to the Judeo-Christian ethos in the same way I enjoy the richness of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Lewis’ Narnia, Rowling’s Hogwarts and Homer’s Iliad.
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Filed under: english literature, Good Books, interpretation, on the Christian bible, religious fundamentalism, theological education Tagged: a disgrace to academic scholarship, adultery, ancient Hebraic taboos, ancient literature, argumentative fallacy, Christian theology, discordant, discrepant corpus, early Christianity, English literature, ethics, evangelical Christianity, evangelicals, every reading is an interpretative task, extra-vaginal seminal ejaculation, eyewitness testimony, four millennia, gay marriage, gay rights, Genesis, Good Books, harmonise biblical texts, Hebraic sex is procreation only, hermeneutics, historical criticism, homo sapiens, homogenital acts in the ancient world, homosexual relationship, homosexuality, interpretation, Jesus, literary contradictions, literature, modern biblical scholarship, morality, national purity codes, on the Christian bible, original sin, procreation, property rights, religious fundamentalism, same-sex sexuality, sexual mores, sexual orientation, sexuality, Sparrows and Sandcastles, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog, Sparrows and Sandcastles by Chew Hongjie, textual criticism, the 21st century, the Bible, the bible clearly says, the bible for morality and ethics, the bible is culturally bound, the bible on sexual matters, the biblical corpus, the biblical texts, the Gospel narratives, the gospels, the interaction between the interpreter and the text, the messianic prophecies, the Pauline writings, the problem with using the bible for morality and ethics, the Roman Catholic Church, the tanakh, the teachings of Jesus, what the bible says 
