On Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 7:00:51 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote: > > On Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 6:08:11 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 5/23/2019 3:37 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote: >> >> The Torah, Tanach and to a degree as I understand the Christian New >> Testament are mythic narratives meant to bring meaning to various aspects >> of inner mental space or psychology. >> >> >> I think you impute to much cleverness there. A lot it is, or was, >> intended as real history providing both provenance and justification for >> whatever ethics was being pushed at the time. >> >> Brent >> > > The writers of these narratives were rather clever. These are done in a > literary "shape-shifter" fashion so that they can be interpreted in a wide > range of ways. The book of Exodus, or Shemot (שְׁמוֹת) in Hebrew Shem = > name and Shemot is plural or means the list of names, has the children of > Israel leave Egypt (Mitzrayim) in the narrow place (Mezaryim), narrow in > one meaning because of the Nile. They are lead to the Red Sea where the > water is separated and crash, where red is symbolic of blood. Also remember > one of the plagues on Egypt was the Nile turned to blood. This is a birth > motif, and certainly one message is this is a metaphor for the birth of > Israel. The Torah is packed full of this sort of thing, and it involves a > lot of word play. > > This is not to say there are not literal meanings as well, which in > different ages are rather different. The American conservative Protestant > idea about Christianity is a peculiar redaction on the whole meaning. I > can't say about the Koran and what Islamic scholars think. It is not a > subject I have delved into, nor am I ever likely to. Samiya has posted some > curious stuff that equates Koranic passages with meaning about atoms and at > one time if I recall about the Higgs boson. So the writers there were > clever enough to make the narratives and poetry shift metaphors and > retranslate meaning into different forms as the world learns and matures. > It really is one reason these scriptures have remained so culturally and > socially powerful for many centuries. > > My religious background is Judaism and Catholicism. I ended up choosing > Judaism, simply because it is in a way more intellectual, it is more fun, > and Catholicism has it perks here and there but it is also rather grave and > grey. I generally consider myself quite agnostic about the idea of an > infinite disembodied entity that created and controls everything. The idea > simply runs into contradictions. I can still go to the minion, where it is > the same reason the fiddler stays on the roof (Issac B Singer) --- > tradition. If I were Catholic instead I think it would be the same thing. > > LC >
The advantage for being raised Protestant is that the only next step is atheism - the ultimate Protestantism. Protestantism (in the US) today is split: A collection of (sometimes) church-going virtually-atheist liberals, and the Republican Party. @philipthrift -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/36e2d76e-c237-4d43-90d6-a38bf3c246ae%40googlegroups.com.
