How to read the bible

[sgttomas]

I think that Socrates is following the method of his namesake. So asking seemingly obvious questions can be part of the method to qualify statements.

Hm...quite the character. I like that.

-sgtt

[socrates]

Heh, I'm full of surprises. Welcome to Doxa

Might I turn my question in your direction and ask, for the sake of clarity, what you believe to be the correct approach to seeking moral guidance from the Qur'an?

That which has been interpreted through the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, his family, and his companions. This sunnah has been compiled by the scholars of the schools of sunni fiqh (jurisprudence), the agreed upon works of tafsir (quranic interpretation), and those who follow the way of the heart (tasawwuf/sufism). Therefore the correct approach to seeking moral guidance is to ask a scholar who knows the answer.

I know a few, if you would like to talk to them. Some have websites, even.

Do you believe that all the injunctions to be found in its pages are direct quotations from Allah, mediated by the angel Gabriel, and passed to humankind through the messenger Mohammad, such that ALL its rules governing behaviour are perfectly clear and unambiguous and perfectly valid?

I think the Quran already addresses this question in the passage that I enlarged, italicized and emboldened?

Peace,
-sgttomas

Thanks for the welcome. It is good to meet you sgt. I expect that taking up your kind offer of providing a scholar for me at some point might be very worthwhile. It is certainly not everyday that one has the good fortune to meet someone who not only has something interesting to say on moral guidance but actually "knows the answer" too. Do you know anything of the approach they use which allows them to discover these answers when others, perhaps you included and certainly me, would not be able to find them so readily?

Yes, I thought that your enlargment, italicisation and emboldening of the text might have been carried out to assist me with some clue. Would I be right in thinking that this means the Qu'ran contains two types of statement - the Muhkamat, whose meaning is perfectly plain and the Mutashabihat whose meaning is clear to no one except Allah, and that ALL the Muhkamat statements dealing with behaviour are perfectly valid?
If this is the case, I am interested to know how one should respond to the Mutashabihat. Since not even your scholars know what these mean, are we left with no other alternative than to ignore them and focus entirely on the Muhkamat?

Additionally, is there a set procedure for deciding which statements are which? For one cannot simply think - if its obvious to me, it is Muhkamat, because that would make your scholars redundant. Is it again, a case of asking these scholars?

This is turning out to be very interesting.

[Metacrock]

Hey Soc, glad to see you back. I hope you get involved in philosophy discussions on the adventure of faith board. But, please yourself. I do value any contribution you make. I remember your Socratic persona and method. It was greatly refreshing in comparison with most of us message board denizens.

I answer your question:

I would be interested to know how people here think one should approach the Christian text for moral guidance.

We should always approach the Bible as an encounter between human and divine, but written by the human in an attempt to relate what the human understands of the encounter. Even the redactors who have not had actual prosthetic utterance may have a sense of the divine all their own and that may color their work.

To make this assumption is to recognize the cultural filter through which religoius experience is filtered. Of course this implies distortion. So we have to find the universal aspects of he message as opposed to the cultural bound aspects. To do that we must start with understanding the culture.

then we can perhaps find the same aspects in other cultures or other faiths, but we should essentially find the same themes repeated in the body of work we call "the Bible" (it is a body of work not a single coherent work) and other Hebrew writings and other Christian writings. This means looking at the Christina tradition as a repository to enable comparison, so we can look for precedents of interposition, and we can assume universality through time as well as through space.

[sgttomas]

Thanks for the welcome. It is good to meet you sgt. I expect that taking up your kind offer of providing a scholar for me at some point might be very worthwhile. It is certainly not everyday that one has the good fortune to meet someone who not only has something interesting to say on moral guidance but actually "knows the answer" too. Do you know anything of the approach they use which allows them to discover these answers when others, perhaps you included and certainly me, would not be able to find them so readily?

Yeah, sure! Years and years of study of the classical works of source material and derivative knowledge, rhetorical techniques, quranic arabic language, and biographies of previous scholars taken from masters of the subjects who studied with people, who studied with people, who studied with the Companions of the Prophet, who studied directly with the Prophet of ALLAH, may ALLAH send peace and blessings upon him. Volumes of knowledge. Phenomenal memories - complete memorization of the entire Quran, its meanings and reasons for revelation, in addition to thousands of reported sayings and actions from the Beloved of ALLAH, Muhammad, may ALLAH send peace and blessings upon him. Pure hearts (in my case, but I assume better for you). And (in your case), belief in the prophethood of Muhammad, may ALLAH send peace and blessings upon him.

Yes, I thought that your enlargment, italicisation and emboldening of the text might have been carried out to assist me with some clue. Would I be right in thinking that this means the Qu'ran contains two types of statement - the Muhkamat, whose meaning is perfectly plain and the Mutashabihat whose meaning is clear to no one except Allah, and that ALL the Muhkamat statements dealing with behaviour are perfectly valid?

More or less, though I can see it is possible we may not quite be on the same page regarding the Mutashabihat. But yes, the Muhkamat are perfectly clear and completely obligatory for a Muslim.

If this is the case, I am interested to know how one should respond to the Mutashabihat. Since not even your scholars know what these mean, are we left with no other alternative than to ignore them and focus entirely on the Muhkamat?

No, it just means that people who focus on trying to make Islam out of the unclear matters will deviate from the religion and end up nullifying the clear verses. For instance, many people claiming to be Muslims will say that it is not obligatory to pray as the Prophet prayed. This contradicts perfectly clear verses of the Quran. But it is certainly possible to gain knowledge from the unclear verses. They are allegorical and scholars can ascertain meanings from them, but they are not obligatory upon the Muslim to believe in or follow. They can be used for moral guidance or misguidance. And ALLAH guides whom He wills. And ALLAH bestows knowledge upon whom He wills.

The clear verses are sufficient to portray the characteristics of a Muslim and to convey the outlines of the Sunnah (ways, words, and inner condition of the Prophet) such that a person can understand the basic direction his faith should take him in. Whatever falls within those basic parameters is valid. So you can find scholars offering various opinions of the mutashabihat that by consensus are valid for a Muslim to follow, and we can do what our hearts lead us to. While there are others who take the allegorical verses and clearly deviate into error, and someone with a pure heart and guidance from ALLAH will see this and avoid it.

The "ahl Sunnah wa al-Jamma'a" (people of the Sunnah and Consensus) have formed the majority of Muslims and the vast bulk of scholarship. A definitive characteristic of belief and expression of required, recommended, preferred, neutral, disliked and prohibited actions and inner states of heart have been developed through this scholarship. This is justified by the Quran and the Sunnah, which describe how the religion would be carried on once the Messenger of ALLAH, may ALLAH bless him and grant him peace, left us.

So the definitive meaning of the Mutashabihat is with ALLAH alone, but there are valid interpretations that are useful and a broad (or less so) range can be acceptable for a Muslim to believe in. It is even possible to have contrary positions and traditional scholarship has accepted that both are correct, and ALLAH knows best.

Additionally, is there a set procedure for deciding which statements are which? For one cannot simply think - if its obvious to me, it is Muhkamat, because that would make your scholars redundant. Is it again, a case of asking these scholars?

The clear verses are very clear....in the Arabic language (so I've been told by scholars whom I trust, based on the wide recognition of the validity of their opinions with the corpus of Sunni Islamic scholarship, and also their personal character and manners). I'm just starting to learn arabic. It is quite an interesting language. One practically has to learn modal logic as a result of studying the basics of the language. That's a useful tool to have, and considering its absence in english until very recently, something that is sorely needed to think clearly.

Then there are some verses that aren't clearly unclear. Heh, which I can understand you were also thinking about this being a possibility - if not a necessity. This is dealt with in part by a scholarly consensus on what is Muhkamat and what is Mutashabihat. And the rest are dealt with by direct reports from the Prophet, may ALLAH bless him and grant him peace, who explained what is what. There shear volume of reports from the Prophet is staggering. The process of validation of these reports is brilliant. ...this is a large topic, so I'll wait to see what question you have now.

This is turning out to be very interesting.

I hope so! I have been continually more and more amazed by Muslim scholars and scholarship. It is truly unique, from everything else I've experienced.

Peace,
-sgttomas

[socrates]

Hey Soc, glad to see you back. I hope you get involved in philosophy discussions on the adventure of faith board. But, please yourself. I do value any contribution you make. I remember your Socratic persona and method. It was greatly refreshing in comparison with most of us message board denizens.

Thanks again. And yes, I will venture over to the other board too.

I answer your question:

I would be interested to know how people here think one should approach the Christian text for moral guidance.

We should always approach the Bible as an encounter between human and divine, but written by the human in an attempt to relate what the human understands of the encounter. Even the redactors who have not had actual prosthetic utterance may have a sense of the divine all their own and that may color their work.

To make this assumption is to recognize the cultural filter through which religoius experience is filtered. Of course this implies distortion. So we have to find the universal aspects of he message as opposed to the cultural bound aspects. To do that we must start with understanding the culture.

then we can perhaps find the same aspects in other cultures or other faiths, but we should essentially find the same themes repeated in the body of work we call "the Bible" (it is a body of work not a single coherent work) and other Hebrew writings and other Christian writings. This means looking at the Christina tradition as a repository to enable comparison, so we can look for precedents of interposition, and we can assume universality through time as well as through space.

Thank you for the provision of such an interesting and sophisticated answer. This was not a surprise.

Let me check that I understand you. So on reading something like, let us say, Leviticus, the first task would be a historical enquiry, the purpose of which would be to understand the cultural mores of the time well enough to see how these may have distorted the human / divine encounters that took place. Once we can see the influence of purely 'cultural' influences, we can subtract them from the written word in order that we may see clearly the divine message. It could perhaps be described as the task of clearing the lenses of bronze age dust so that the divine light may shine forth brightly. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

[sgttomas]

Let me check that I understand you. So on reading something like, let us say, Leviticus, the first task would be a historical enquiry, the purpose of which would be to understand the cultural mores of the time well enough to see how these may have distorted the human / divine encounters that took place. Once we can see the influence of purely 'cultural' influences, we can subtract them from the written word in order that we may see clearly the divine message. It could perhaps be described as the task of clearing the lenses of bronze age dust so that the divine light may shine forth brightly. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

I'm curious about this approach of Metacrock's also. When the Bible depicts the Word of God as "God said", "The LORD said", "This is the Work of the LORD", etc. ...does it just mean, "God suggested"?

Honestly.

?

-sgtt

[met]

Let me check that I understand you. So on reading something like, let us say, Leviticus, the first task would be a historical enquiry, the purpose of which would be to understand the cultural mores of the time well enough to see how these may have distorted the human / divine encounters that took place. Once we can see the influence of purely 'cultural' influences, we can subtract them from the written word in order that we may see clearly the divine message. It could perhaps be described as the task of clearing the lenses of bronze age dust so that the divine light may shine forth brightly. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

I'm curious about this approach of Metacrock's also. When the Bible depicts the Word of God as "God said", "The LORD said", "This is the Work of the LORD", etc. ...does it just mean, "God suggested"?

Honestly.

?

-sgtt

but if you say no, then the Biblical problem becomes ....does God keep changing his mind?? ....

[Metacrock]

Let me check that I understand you. So on reading something like, let us say, Leviticus, the first task would be a historical enquiry, the purpose of which would be to understand the cultural mores of the time well enough to see how these may have distorted the human / divine encounters that took place. Once we can see the influence of purely 'cultural' influences, we can subtract them from the written word in order that we may see clearly the divine message. It could perhaps be described as the task of clearing the lenses of bronze age dust so that the divine light may shine forth brightly. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

Yes that's a good way to put it. Also we have to decide about the genre. Is it meant to be a serious work or is it a spoof perhaps, a parody, mythology or history? In the Narrative structure one often finds universal aspects emerging though katarsis. So the next step would be to seek out the universal themes, because that's where we are going to find the universal ethics. So we need to undersatnd it as literature.

[Metacrock]

Let me check that I understand you. So on reading something like, let us say, Leviticus, the first task would be a historical enquiry, the purpose of which would be to understand the cultural mores of the time well enough to see how these may have distorted the human / divine encounters that took place. Once we can see the influence of purely 'cultural' influences, we can subtract them from the written word in order that we may see clearly the divine message. It could perhaps be described as the task of clearing the lenses of bronze age dust so that the divine light may shine forth brightly. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

I'm curious about this approach of Metacrock's also. When the Bible depicts the Word of God as "God said", "The LORD said", "This is the Work of the LORD", etc. ...does it just mean, "God suggested"?

Honestly.

?

-sgtt

but if you say no, then the Biblical problem becomes ....does God keep changing his mind?? ....

Yes but most of the bible s not such a passage. I tend to view those passages as meaning "the prophet is speaking forth what he takes to be the word of God." If it differs from other such utterance or from historical fact God is not chaining his mind the redactor is editing the redaction.

for example the command to slaughter the Amalekite infants is put over as a prophetic command. Yet I think there's good evidence that its' an emendation.

So while I sit up and take notice of those segways "thus says the Lord," or "the word of the Lord came to him saying," that's the real claim of inspiration, not so and so beget so and so, nevertheless, I don't accept them uncritically.

[sgttomas]

Yes but most of the bible s not such a passage. I tend to view those passages as meaning "the prophet is speaking forth what he takes to be the word of God." If it differs from other such utterance or from historical fact God is not chaining his mind the redactor is editing the redaction.

for example the command to slaughter the Amalekite infants is put over as a prophetic command. Yet I think there's good evidence that its' an emendation.

So while I sit up and take notice of those segways "thus says the Lord," or "the word of the Lord came to him saying," that's the real claim of inspiration, not so and so beget so and so, nevertheless, I don't accept them uncritically.

Yeah, that's fair; I don't know that you can do better. But what distinguishes those utterances from the Quran, or what Joseph Smith brought?

-sgtt