Pax on both houses: Biblical Literalism: Not Only Impossible But Destructive Of Meaning And Souls

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Biblical Literalism: Not Only Impossible But Destructive Of Meaning And Souls

Recently, my attention was drawn to the pseudipigraha, a literary matrix routinely used by early Christian writers, including the authors of the New Testament. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudepigrapha

We now know that the four canonical gospels were pseudepigraphic documents - composite compositions whose various authors believed that putting an apostle’s name on their own work was in no way an abuse of truth (as our current scientific mentality would argue) but rather an act of homage, alignment and even submission to the lineage and witness of the "named" apostle himself.

It is ironic that fundamentalist Christians use "literalism" to confine themselves to epistemological traps, needless contraptions that make scripture less meaningful, when the original non-literal approach to sacred scripture was -- and, for many, still is -- more meaningful.

Notably, modern passion for biblical "literalism" emerged in the late 1800s, mostly through the destructive work of The Niagara Bible Convention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Bible_Conference

Recently, I posted about fundamentalism's conception of God-as-terrorist. Just as God is belittled and demeaned by representing "Him" as a deity who would create a Universe in which human beings might burn -- forever -- in a Lake of Neverending Fire," so too do they belittle and demean The Bible by shackling it to so-called (but intrinsically impossible) Literalism.

"Mistakes In Scripture: When The Bible Gets The Bible Wrong"