Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

I think every belief ought to be questioned. Every idea ought to stand on its own two legs... not be propped up by some institution or ethos.

This strikes me as an extremely ideological statement. It says how people ought to think and how they should be in relation to their local institutions and ethos. It takes a stand against people with a different ideology -- for example, those who think they should be humble in the face of authority.

Why should we be humble in the face of an authority that actually has no access to the information claimed?

The idea that we have an individual responsibility to evaluate and pass judgment on all claims is historically associated with liberalism. (And here I'm using the term in its historical sense; American media use the word differently.) 

Well, it is true that no individual can investigate *everything*. But it is a good thing to educate yourself prior to taking what authorities say on faith. Do they really have access to the information they claim? Are they really self-criticising in the way that they should? Are they really looking at alternatives in a way required to make sure that what they are saying is true?

It's also completely impossible for any idea to "stand on its own two legs." Every idea we hold, or every new idea we hear of, is woven into a system of beliefs from the moment it comes to us. An idea will be propped up by some institution or ethos -- whether that's science, or religion, or a social ideology like liberalism.

And it is a good idea to question that network of beliefs to see if it is upholding ideas that are false and dangerous.

What you said earlier is also a sort of prime example of how liberalism approaches texts:

Treat it like Lord of the Rings or any other fictional work.

THEN see if there is any value in it. Like I said... just like we do with Greek mythology.

Approaching the Bible, The Lord of the Rings, and Greek mythology all in the same way is, to me, bizarre and consumerist. All of these works were created and used in fundamentally different ways. 

Yes, of course they were. And we should question whether they have been used in false and dangerous ways. For the Lord of  he Rings, that isn't so much of a problem. For the Bible, it very much is a problem.

The different parts of the Bible were written for different purposes, but have been treated and interpreted as sacred by very serious people for a very long time. The Bible as we read it now is not just the text -- we read it through the lens of all the interpretations that have come since it was new. The Lord of the Rings is a pastiche of real epics, written for children. For an adult to take it seriously now would indicate a serious developmental issue. Greek mythology has never existed just on its own. It is presented in other works, including Homer, Plato, Dante, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Freud, Nietzsche, etc. These are concepts woven into the fabric of Western thought, with varied and often contradictory uses. To know what the myths mean in any given context requires background knowledge, not just personal opinion. 

And it is always good to look at the literary criticism of any text to see if it gives insights into the text that you haven't considered.

The Bible was taken seriously be serious people just like the Greek myths were taken seriously by serious people. One thing we should try to do is understand why they did so. But it doesn't mean *we* should take those texts seriously in the same way they did. We can make our own judgements about the truth and usefulness of those texts and how we should interpret them today.

If we approach all of these things in the same way, we deracinate and devalue what it really is. To make it into some kind of Baskin Robbins "choose your favorite" is liberal consumer society at its worst. 

To detach a text from all of its history, institutional use, and social nuance, is to take away nearly everything it means. Then once we've completely deracinated it, and approach it with our own personal interpretation, we can easily use it to mean whatever we want it to. It easily becomes a method to reinforce prejudice, rather than teach something new. In fact this is the trouble with Bible reading today -- both fundies and fundie atheists just imagine it means whatever they imagine, and don't take the trouble to work on it.

It is doubtful that the Lord of the Rings is going to be used to reinforce prejudice.  But a great deal of historical tradition has interpreted the Bible in ways that has greatly encouraged prejudice. So it is probably a good thing to question the traditions and validity of the interpretations found historically. A good first step is to question whether the Bible is accurate in the stories it tells. Maybe we should move towards seeing it as one piece of literature in our tradition as opposed to a collection of writings that should be taken as factual.

It is probably not a good idea to start out looking at the Bible as pure fiction. Instead, we can approach it as we do any other ancient text claiming historical views along with claims of divine intervention. We ask who wrote it and why. We ask why it was promulgated and who it served. We ask whether those that wrote it misinterpreted what they heard or saw. We try to see what biases the writers had. We try to see the historical context of the writing. We try to see what message the author was trying to convey and why they chose the stories they did. We should ask what propaganda value it served to those who wrote it and those who continued to copy it. In a collection like the Bible, this should be done with each individual book as well as asking why the collection was brought together: who did it serve to do so? What other texts were eliminated and why? What other ideologies were ignored or suppressed when the choices were made?

And yes, as with other literature, we can ask how interpretations have changed over time. Just as we can look at how the Oedipus series has been interpreted over time, we can look at how the books of the Bible have been so. And this should be done.

I see a better model for reading the Bible as a mix of Homer and Livy. It is a mixture of history, ideology, moral stories, and flat out propaganda.

Let's face it. Serious people took the Greek mythology seriously tone time. For an adult to do so today would be at least unusual. perhaps the same should be true of the Bible? Maybe we should regard it as a collection of works from particular time periods that attempted to convey the views of one part of the society of the time, but that should not be taken seriously by adults outside of that?