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scooper
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Subject: Literalism
After reading John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (reviewed here), I wanted to read the Bible more nearly as Jesus and his first followers would have read or understood it. So, I bought a copy of The Jewish Study Bible published by Oxford University Press. This contains the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, together with marginal commentary drawn from some 2500 years of Jewish Bible interpretation and translation.
And the rewards started to come on the first page. It turns out that the Hebrew word translated as "firmament" in the King James Version (KJV), "dome" in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and "expanse" in the JPS Tanakh actually refers to a piece of metal hammered thin. God makes this "firmament" on the second Day of Creation (Genesis 1:6-8) to separate the waters above from the waters below and calls it the sky.
Now, it has been a very long time since anyone thought the sky was made of metal. This leads me to think that there must be a very long tradition of not taking this passage of the Bible literally. Indeed, even the Christian Fundamentalists who claim to take the Bible literally enough to justify Young Earth Creationism do not teach their children that the sky is made of metal. This is one more bit of evidence that biblical literalism is an oxymoron - that literalism is un-biblical.
As Rabbi Heschel once said,
And the rewards started to come on the first page. It turns out that the Hebrew word translated as "firmament" in the King James Version (KJV), "dome" in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and "expanse" in the JPS Tanakh actually refers to a piece of metal hammered thin. God makes this "firmament" on the second Day of Creation (Genesis 1:6-8) to separate the waters above from the waters below and calls it the sky.
Now, it has been a very long time since anyone thought the sky was made of metal. This leads me to think that there must be a very long tradition of not taking this passage of the Bible literally. Indeed, even the Christian Fundamentalists who claim to take the Bible literally enough to justify Young Earth Creationism do not teach their children that the sky is made of metal. This is one more bit of evidence that biblical literalism is an oxymoron - that literalism is un-biblical.
As Rabbi Heschel once said,
I think God wants us to bring our minds to our scriptures."The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith."
Because there is more to Religion than pleasing your Imaginary Friend.