(November 25, 2021 at 5:09 pm)Angrboda Wrote:(November 25, 2021 at 4:48 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Terrible comparision maybe but I recently saw the movie about the CBGB club and the line where the owner listens to an underground punk band and says ..."yeah, there's something there". In other words he sensed some intangible quality in bands like the Talking Heads and and the Ramones. And the irony is that his club became an epicenter for new underground rock despite his original intention to platform country, bluegrass, and blues. That is how I as a mostly esoteric reader of Scripture feel about reading the bible...there's uncanny something there, behind the text or maybe woven into it. Hence my facination with Swedenborg, the Gnostics, and such...I am not reading for answers; but rather for the experience of particapring in the Divine. ...and no, God did not talk to a snake...that's just stupid.
When your culture has been steeping in its influence for two millennia, it's hardly surprising that it's going to ring some bells.
Yes, that is true. You have to know the language to interpret the message. I also get a lot from the Lotus Sutra and Lao Tzu but and less familiar with those sacred traditions. English poetry is also evocative.
The inner experience of life may indeed be embodied by quantifiable material processes (or not) but that says next to nothing about the content and significance of those processes. And it is true that there is as much risk of reading something into a text as discovering authorial intent. That challenge is part of the joy of reading sacred literature, not a reason to dismiss it.
<insert profound quote here>
