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Respectfully,

Brian P.

Then I would get an intro to the Bible that takes seriously the fact that the Bible IS LITERATURE. Yes, that subject we all hated in school. Yes! We need to study literary elements and poetry, not physics, in order to get the Bible’s way of talking to us.

Then read Leland Ryken’s little book, How to Read the Bible as Literature (or Study. I forget.)

Then use scholars and commentaries by people who have studied the original languages in detail for their non-literal nuances. For their ways of using speech. Colluqialisms. Euphimisms. Idioms. Etc.

Then realize that preachers with no knowledge of these things may be sincere when they say they are going to give you the “literal” meaning of the Bible, but chances are you are simply getting their modernistic, rational, western, American biases.

Well, yes … but what was obvious hyperbole to one person is literal to another.

For example .. I’m a software engineer. I once had a manager tell me we were going to re-write a multi-thousand line project twice in two different languages in the space of six months. I laughed, because the idea is absurd, especially when you’re under a tight deadline. But he was NOT joking. He was absolutely serious. And it was done.

In a world where pointy-haired bosses exist, treating someone’s word as less than literal can be disastrous.

And that’s between two 21st century Americans in the same profession. When we’re talking a two-thousand year gap between two different cultures … it may be even greater.

Lemme give you a concrete example … I read the
Dec 27th entry on this web page

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_muttawa_archive.html#113557907723778178

Of a situation in Saudi Arabia where a man, as punishment for gouging out another man’s eye with a screwdriver, has been sentenced to have his own surgically removed. An eye literally for an eye.

What I find interesting is the comments attached
to the section .. this one on a portion of the Jewish which has the “eye for eye” command

“The entire section of the Torah that has the ‘eye for an eye’ section deals with monetary compensation for physical damages. The opening of the section is: “And if men contend, and one smite the other with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keep his bed; if he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.”

So the loss to the attacking party isn’t their eye – it is the monetary value of the loss of whatever limb was lost. It is a system for calculating personal injury damages. That is the way the Talmud and Mishna long interpreted that clause and it makes sense with a careful and in context reading of the text ”

In other words, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life” is not literal. It merely is a hyperbolic way of referring to financial compensation. Now, I would have thought from my reading that it WAS literal .. that a person WAS entitled to an “eye for an eye”, unless they were willing to accept some alternate form of compensation.

Well, if true, one has to ask just how much of the Bible one SHOULD take literally, if any? The bit about “thou shalt not commit adultery”? Well, clearly that’s a bit of exaggeration … no one REALLY cares if that happens. The bit about no witchcraft? Well that’s really over-rated … and there are “Christian Wiccans” who will be glad to tell you that.

See, here’s my issue: I am a literalist. I tend to take the Bible as written unless I have really serious cause to do otherwise. I am coming to the conclusion that this is not the best approach, because Jesus wasn’t always a very literal person when he was speaking.

So, recognizing that this approach is inadequate, the next question is, how do we avoid the trap of writing off every bit of the Bible we find uncomfortable as “hyperbole” or “metaphor” or “out of historical context”?

I do my best to base my life and my beliefs on the Bible. But if I’m not careful, I run the risk of making the Bible a thinly-veiled disguise for my own personal ideas gained who-knows-where. Accepting the bits I like and carefully excusing or airbrushing away the bits I don’t until my faith has little or nothing in common with Christianity as actually taught by Jesus.

I guess that’s the issue I’m struggling with:

Not wanting to be a literalist but afraid to get too serious about hyperbolic or metaphorical interpretations, for fear of going down the higher criticism route of making the Bible into a meaningless text from which I draw whatever meaning I want. Make sense?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I am not sure what you are getting at.

1) Hyperbole is everywhere in communication and you use “common” rules of interpretation to sort through them all the time. When someone says “I’m starving to death,” we all usually can decode that.
2) Hyperbole comes in two forms: obvious and subtle.
Cutting off your hand is obvious, unless one is a Muslim or Eric Rudolph’s brother
“Let no crude comment be spoked” is subtle. I agree. That is what I said it was an invitation, and that means there are no rules.
3) I don’t see the Bible or the teaching of Jesus as a new set of rules a la the Pharisees. So yes we do have to follow our conscience, examples of others, common sense reading of the Bible, evident Reason (Luther’s word.) That’s all quite normal.
4) I happen to believe the “gauge out you eye” text is an invitation to not look at women as merelyu sexual objects. I don’t think it is a rule.

sorry I couldn’t be of more help.

DawsonL you are right in what you say about the above passages – but that isn’t quite what Michael is talking about. Consider that if a new translation of the bible was to be published with those very words translated literally the moral guardians in the church would be up in arms regardless of the motivation.

I note with interest your phrase

“In these cases, it’s clear that the hyperbolic negative can be an invitation to right speech, or it can be a rigid standard. I believe it is an invitation to right speech”

I have to ask:

It seems to me that Jesus frequently uses the hyperbolic in his speeches, and it shows up
elsewhere as well.

Can the principle of hyperbolic negative ALSO be extended to OTHER other portions of scripture, such as “if your eye offends you pluck it out”?

That when the author or speaker made this statement, he did NOT mean it literally but
instead meant it as a hyperbolic call to right living?

If this is so, then a follow-up: When do we know where to draw the line with this principle?
How do we know when a commandment or statement is NOT intended as hyperbola but is instead
meant as literal, rock-solid application, as certain as the law of gravity?

And PLEASE don’t answer by saying “common sense”. In the first place, I have none.
Common sense is often merely remembered tradition, and we saw how far that got the
Pharisees. In any case, what is “common sense” to us 21st century Americans may not have
been “common sense” at all to 1st-century Jews.

Many thanks for any help you can give.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Eph 4:29 talks about edifying the body. Sometimes to edify the body you might have to look the men’s group in their metaphorical eye and say “God is not interested in half-hearted, half-assed attempts at playing church” or even the more blunt “Do you folks even give a damn about the bible?” (That one I said to the High School Sunday School class on fine morning.) They are “coarse” words but like dung sometimes they happen.

Eph 5:4 is in the context of moral living. The coarse jesting and filthy talk that is spoken against is referring to dirty jokes and speech that is sexual in nature but out of context. Years ago a co-worker and I had a conversation about how to have good marriages. He said, “now this might be a little crude, but sometimes you just need to tell your wife she has a great ass.” I blinked and laughed and agreed. However, if I was to go to his wife and say “you have a great ass” I would rightly get my teeth slapped right out of my head. First by her, then by him and then by my wife! There are things I will say to my wife in our marriage bed that I would NEVER say in front of anyone else. Not because the words are bad but because to use the words in public would devalue my wife. Words spoken in passion to your wife that bring life and joy in one context would bring embarrassment and pain in another context and would run afoul of the scriptural admonition that God (not Paul) gave us in Eph 5:4

I think it is good to note that, depending on your view of the inspiration of scripture, it wasn’t Paul who wrote about dung or asking his opponents to castrate themselves, it was God. It was God who said our “righteousness is like menstrual rags”. Was God wrong to “cuss” or use coarse language? No, because His use fulfilled Eph 4:29. He had to make it clear what He thought of certain behaviors by using language that was fitting for the occasion. Even the Song of Solomon doesn’t violate Eph 5:4 because a) He drops a cloak of metaphor of some of the more juicy parts and b) He knew that there would be those in later times that would call God’s gift of sex dirty. Therefore, He had to insert a passionate love poem into His Word.

The last several discussions have covered a lot of ground from do we let the “nannies” dictate church life, to the emasculation of the church, to a Christian version of George Carlin’s infamous “Seven words you can’t say on TV.” I haven’t always agreed with everything said but I have spent a delightful couple of hours over the last week being forced to look at what I believe and decide what is culture and what is God.

May the blessings brought by the babe in manager be with your and your family not just this day but every day.