I can almost see one of your faces and see the glint in your eyes as you read through this post.
As I have progressed through this latest book I have had a more sinister thought creep into my brain. Being mostly protective of the scriptures because of my background I shoved it aside for a while, but it persistently nagged at me. I got to bed this morning about 2 or 3 minutes after midnight. Not too bad considering I didn’t leave work until just about 9 pm. Got home and had a snack and watched some medical TV, then went on to bed after my obligatory shower.
But it is 2:30 and I am back up putting down on paper some thoughts I don’t want to risk to more sleep for fear of them fading.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I wondered if the Jewish fathers were reluctant to have their oral tradition penned to paper because of a fear of a dynamic story becoming static words on paper.
I have not found any substantiation for that idea, but have, instead, been stumbling across a number of points made by this author that I want to quote, and see if you don’t see in the passages what began to emerge to me.
I can do this at this time because I don’t work today or tomorrow. Not because I have the holiday off because it is a holiday, it is one of the store’s biggest sales days of the year, but rather because of luck of the schedule rotation.
Let me first put forth 4 assumptions about scriptures that was emerged in the years BCE. I presume you know that BCE is Before the Common Era, or BC, meaning Before Christ, but a more politically correct statement of time when considering those who believe that Christ was not the Messiah.
1. It was assumed that the Bible was a fundamentally cryptic text. In other words, it wasn’t to be believed literally, but was allegorical.
2. It was assumed that the Bible was a book of lessons directed at the readers of that time. It was not fundamentally history, but rather a guide to daily living.
3. It was assumed that the Bible contained no contradictions or mistakes.
4. Lastly, it was believed that every word and phrase was divinely given by God as text to be related by each author.
Now it gets to the point that began to awaken a large dragon in my brain.
I quote, “…the very idea that Scripture has layers and layers of significance entered into the popular imagination. In Medieval Europe, the Bible became a vast, mysterious, and infinitely complicated world. The front and back of this book were held together by hidden correspondences between Old and New; the most fundamental doctrines were nestled inside apparently innocent narratives, indeed inside a single sentences made up of words that seemed to be talking about something else entirely.
To enter the world of scripture’s mysteries was thus a matter for trained professionals; only a priest or a monk schooled in the ways of fourfold interpretation, and especially in the interpretations of his processors, could say for sure what this or that scripture meant. It never occurred to ordinary people to try their hand at interpretation-to begin with they did not own their own Bibles, and they could not read.”
This lead, the author, continues, to an attitude towards scriptures called auctores in Latin. It means both author and authority in English.
The meaning of the Bible was left to the auctores. Their interpretations could never be challenged. Auctoritas was all powerful and unquestioned: the Bible meant what the authorities had always said it meant.
Ding, ding, ding. Wait on the siren. There’s the factory whistle. What do we have in many churches today? A new wave of auctores.
Rather than allowing the masses to interpret what modesty is, we will tell you what modesty is. Instead of you deciding what you will listen to and watch we will tell you what you will listen to and watch.
We have come full circle. We may look like we are living in the 1940s, but we are behaving like we are in the Medieval ages.
I realize this is NOT what I was hoping to find in my research, but it certainly answers many other questions.
The Jewish leadership didn’t want nor would allow private interpretation of the sacred text; and that mindset carried on until it was the persuasive attitude where ever the Bible was used by Medieval times.
Scary what you might discover when you begin to question.
