Quote:There are standards. There is a framework and a history and there are recognized people who have influenced the field.
The fact that it is a long and complicated history, that people still disagree, that some people do it badly, does not mean that the whole thing is arbitrary.
It seems that the main point I need to make is: it is good for us to know what we're talking about. If a poorly-informed Christian says that everything in the Bible was always meant literally, he is wrong. If a poorly-informed anti-religion type says that all Christians believe in talking snakes, he is wrong.
The standards need to have been there since the Bible was written. There are several methods used in Biblical Hermeneutics, and it seems that not all of them met that criterion. It is, therefore, logical to say that the basics of interpretation themselves can be considered arbitrary, since some of them were first used years after the Bible had been written. The standards themselves, only the ones not meeting the criterion above, can be considered arbitrary, which makes the interpretation arbitrary as well. By definition, "arbitrary" means not following a system or not based on reason. What I find plausible is that the only valid reasons and/or system are that the standards were suggested by the Bible, or that those standards were being used before the Bible had been written, because, in this case, we can be sure enough that the Bible was meant to be understood according to those standards. Otherwise, it seems more like we are making up standards to make the Bible seem plausible. This is what I consider arbitrary even if there are standards. I did a brief research on the internet about the history of Biblical Interpretation, and it seems that some methods of interpretation were suggested and used hundreds or thousands of years after the Bible had been written. I will look it up again.
Quote:Hermeneutics means interpretation, which means that there is something to interpret first, and then people read it carefully. The field grew up over centuries, and is one of the reasons that our tradition has a very rich way of reading texts. Modern secular hermeneutics owes a great deal to its religious forebears.
Like all fields, it didn't appear out of nothing. Ways of writing and reading that far predate the writing of the Gospels or the final assembly of the Bible used expressive tropes, and doing hermeneutics requires that a person know these. The many various authors of the Bible and other texts assume and demand that we will make a tiny bit of effort in reading them.
It seems that some the methods did not predate the Bible's final assembly, but will look this up again.
Quote:Thank you, yes, that's what I've been saying.
The author's intent may or may not be relevant, if we even know what it is. The richness of the text often comes from the many interpretations that have been offered after.
I find William Blake's interpretation of the Book of Job to be very wonderful, and almost certainly at odds with the original author[s].
Quote:Who said anything about proving a god exists? Non sequiturs R us.
As an atheist, I feel that we should read and write intelligently, that we have a duty to speak accurately even about our "enemies," and that it would be silly to reject the beauty and wisdom of European culture, even though I have different metaphysical views about the people who wrote it.
It could be thought that what you were trying to prove was that the mistakes in the Bible should have been interpreted differently using different methods of interpretation until finding a plausible meaning, and that the meaning finally found was probably the one meant by the authors, and, therefore, the Bible is correct.
If you meant that any ancient literature, including holy books, should not be completely abandoned by non-believers, and that morals could be derived from some of the myths without believing in myths, I agree. Methods of interpretation, however arbitrary they may be, can actually help with deriving meanings that were most likely not meant by the authors. This, also, works with any other book about Mythology and ancient literature.
