I ran across this Sam Harris quote the other day:
And the creationist will perhaps applaud, and agree, But it's simply false. When you start to read early exegesis, it becomes quite amusing. You have stories in the Talmud of Adam pushing Eve into the Tree of Good and Bad, to see if touching it, led to any repercussions. The early exegete was unblushingly liberal.
So I just wanted to turn to the past for a minute:
"One of the most famous stories in the Talmud is about a group of rabbis who are debating a point of Torah. One of them, Rabbi Eliezer, seems to be winning because he keeps calling on miracles, including a voice from heaven, to vindicate him, and each time, the miracle occurs. The other rabbis do not accept this. Miracles are not an answer. Rabbi Joshua actually tells heaven to stay out of it, reprimanding the heavenly voice with a line from Moses, "It is not in heaven" (Deut 30:12). The wandering Elijah later reports that God laughed and said, "My children have conquered me [or, outvoted me]."
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." Hillel
"What is the Torah?" asked the Bavli, "It is: the interpretation of the Torah"
And here is Augustine, who once again seems not to age:
"Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Whoever finds a lesson there useful to the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived." (Saint Augustine)."
I could continue with even more thoughts of the past, from Origin, to Maimonides, Zohar, to Philo.
But I'm curious as to why the shift? And what exactly is the cause of the Biblical Literalism movement? What exactly was it about Modernism, that such believers ran to it, to re-write the whole bible? And it seems even more bizarre to me why the rejecters of science, are the one who attempt to interpret scripture scientifically.
And the creationist will perhaps applaud, and agree, But it's simply false. When you start to read early exegesis, it becomes quite amusing. You have stories in the Talmud of Adam pushing Eve into the Tree of Good and Bad, to see if touching it, led to any repercussions. The early exegete was unblushingly liberal.
So I just wanted to turn to the past for a minute:
"One of the most famous stories in the Talmud is about a group of rabbis who are debating a point of Torah. One of them, Rabbi Eliezer, seems to be winning because he keeps calling on miracles, including a voice from heaven, to vindicate him, and each time, the miracle occurs. The other rabbis do not accept this. Miracles are not an answer. Rabbi Joshua actually tells heaven to stay out of it, reprimanding the heavenly voice with a line from Moses, "It is not in heaven" (Deut 30:12). The wandering Elijah later reports that God laughed and said, "My children have conquered me [or, outvoted me]."
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." Hillel
"What is the Torah?" asked the Bavli, "It is: the interpretation of the Torah"
And here is Augustine, who once again seems not to age:
"Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Whoever finds a lesson there useful to the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived." (Saint Augustine)."
I could continue with even more thoughts of the past, from Origin, to Maimonides, Zohar, to Philo.
But I'm curious as to why the shift? And what exactly is the cause of the Biblical Literalism movement? What exactly was it about Modernism, that such believers ran to it, to re-write the whole bible? And it seems even more bizarre to me why the rejecters of science, are the one who attempt to interpret scripture scientifically.