ApostateAbe

There is an aphorism within conservative Christian Biblical scholarship that I have appreciated, and they call it the "Golden Rule of Interpretation." With some minor variations, it goes like this:

When plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense or it will result in nonsense.

The acceptance of this rule (at least on the surface) is how I think conservative Christians have one significant upper hand against liberal Christians. Whereas liberal Christians tend to interpret the Bible creatively and metaphorically to find any interpretation that matches modern sensibilities, conservative Christians more often interpret the Bible the way the original authors plausibly intended.

The downside is, of course, that conservative Christians are also compelled to believe the claims of the Bible according to their interpretation. Because of that, they make plenty of exceptions to that rule. For example, don't actually leave your family, oh no, because Jesus was actually speaking hyperbolically. Don't believe that the sky is as hard as a bronze mirror as it seems to say in Job 37:18, because it actually means... something else.

If you are not bound by that tradition of belief, then you are even more free to interpret the Bible as it is plainly written.

Still, I have some objection to the phrase, "common sense," in that aphorism. Some variations make it, "good sense," but this is hardly better. The fallacy is defaulting to modern sensibilities instead of the sensibilities of the authors. Instead, I propose "ancient sense."

When plain sense makes ancient sense, seek no other sense or it will result in nonsense.

The point is that the plain interpretations tend to be most probable if they seem to make sense from the known perspective of the authors or the immediate society of the authors. That is true, I believe, not just for Biblical interpretation, but for interpretation of any sort of texts--fiction, poems, letters, or corporate memos. I don't see any reason to treat the Bible any differently.

JonA

I have to disagree with you on this one. One of the hallmarks of conservative Christianity is absolute ignorance. Conservative Christians are not the type to bother learning anything realistic about the context or setting of the ancient writings. I see no way how they could, without this knowledge, ever hope to 'interpret the Bible the way the original authors plausibly intended'. The same goes for many liberal Christians as well, however.

Especially in the United States, most Christians have no interest in acquiring the knowledge required for interpreting Biblical texts within their original time and setting.

I think this is evidence of what I was saying above: Ignorant Christians in general tend to read into the Biblical texts whatever they'd like the texts to say, having little if any concern for what the texts actually say.

And this method of interpretation flies in the face of mainstream Christianity, which is not concerned in the least bit with the original authors or their original intent, but is, instead, only looking at the Bible and asking "What's in it for me?".

I think the methodology you mention is a good one, but I don't see it being practiced by any large number of Christians today, conservative or liberal.

Jon

ApostateAbe

JonA, I have no serious disagreement.

Bronzeage

This is true of most people, whether they are Christians or not, and whether it is the Bible or any other text.

ApostateAbe

I think a pretty good example of how conservative Christians more often (not all the time) stick to the original intentions of the text is demonstrated by the popularity of young-Earth creationism in the United States among conservative Christians. Young-Earth creationism does not help the conservative Christian cause. If there is any one thing that makes the conservative Christian belief system seem loony, that would be it. There is little or no interest in Christians believing that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago if it were not actually the same thing that ancient Jewish nomads believed, wrote down, and were affirmed by the New Testament canon (i.e. Luke 3:38).

Toto

This Golden Rule assumes that the writers of Christian literature were simple minded literalists who never saw the need for metaphor or allegory.

I think this rule is useless for any intelligent understanding of Christianity.

ApostateAbe

The rule makes no such assumption, because it is conditional: "When..." or "If plain sense makes ancient sense..."

Passages that are metaphorical or allegorical very much tend to make very little sense when taken literally even from an ancient perspective, and that is how it is we can discriminate our interpretations. That, or you can decide that anything is metaphor according to your own whim.

Toto

Yes - it assumes that Christians could never invent something with different levels of meaning.

Or you can actually examine the possibility of a metaphorical interpretation without using some silly apologist rule to exclude it.

ApostateAbe

"...different levels of meaning." There is that postmodernist point of view coming to the surface again. Yeah, I guess I am assuming that overlapping levels of meaning are improbable for religious myths, though I would love to review a rigorous justification of that approach.

Toto

No, it's not. You betray your basic lack of knowledge of both postmodernism and ancient thought.

If I had time, I would dig up the quote from the early Christian who said that everything could be viewed on three levels, the highest of which was the allegorical.