--- In [email protected], Angela Mailander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Read the Bible again. Whether or not it is characterized by a fundamental dualism depends on the reader, not on the text. Also, whether or not you are calling it monotheistic depends on how you interpret the devas. Most translators have been translating that term as "gods." But if you take them to be "fundamental impulses of nature," then "angels" would be a better translation. Not angels in the modern popular sense, which gives them human bodies and goose wings, but in, say, the sense in which St. Thomas Aquinas described them, which is as "impulses of nature."
This is o so true. The fact is the bible is written in such a way it is open to any interpretation (if not all interpretations) rendering it meaningless. Arguing fine points is futile. The only credible critical approach to the bible is a deconstructive one. One has to take into account the reliance of the reader's subjectivity drawing from the amorphous text. Then take into account the anthropological/historical context of the original authors in order to fully understand its limitations. What sort of primitive thinking dreams this stuff up? As we have seen from history any other critical approach to the bible has been dangerous. Whole peoples have been annihilated for professing their interpretations of this text. s.
