Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[JairCrawford]

Is there any pattern to or commonality between the things that strike you as less than genuine?

In some cases yes. The two most common elements when it comes to the canonical gospels specifically that stand out to me are:

1. The random “sermons” injected into the dialogue in John. Most of the teachings in said sermons are just fine, and I don’t have an issue believing that Jesus taught said things, but within the context of the dialogue it’s put into, it often comes across as too clunky and weird to be read literally. I mean… John has Jesus praying in Gethsemane, and in the middle of praying he goes into a sermon, mentioning himself in the third person multiple times, even though he’s the only one there. That’d be pretty awkward if it was meant to be taken literally.

2. Some of the things that Jesus is described as saying in Matthew. This one’s a bit more juicy IMO because Matthew has Jesus saying some pretty intense theological statements that are often times unanimously contradicted in the other 3 Gospels. So, whenever that happens, I look at it as 3 to 1 and take it more with a grain of salt.

For instance; Matthew has Jesus explicitly instruct the disciples not to preach in any non Israelite town. That statement is solely unique to Matthew IIRC. I know it’s not in Mark or John. I’d have to double check Luke again but I’m pretty sure it’s not in Luke either. What I do know is Luke, Mark, and John deliberately describe Jesus going and preaching to gentiles. So Matthew is decisively outnumbered here.

[The Grand Nudger]

He talks to god the father, not himself. IIRC, there are alot of verses in matthew where it might appear that jesus is refering to himself in the third person as well - but it's actually narrative foreshadowing. The son of man will do this, the son of man will do that. He predicts his death and resurrection this way. So that much at least is common in the narrative overall. Ironically, any part of John where jesus is still referring to god as a distinct entity from himself is without a doubt more true to the original narrative that the author of john revised.

As far as teaching the gentiles, I think that probably expressed a difference of opinion between the authors of matthew and mark. By the time the rest are written it's a moot point as christianity is becoming a huge success with gentiles no matter who got that one right.

[JairCrawford]

He talks to god the father, not himself. IIRC, there are alot of verses in matthew where it might appear that jesus is refering to himself in the third person as well - but it's actually narrative foreshadowing. The son of man will do this, the son of man will do that. He predicts his death and resurrection this way. So that much at least is common in the narrative overall. Ironically, any part of John where jesus is still referring to god as a distinct entity from himself is without a doubt more true to the original narrative that the author of john revised.

Right it’s just the prayer goes from sounding like a prayer to sounding like he’s preaching a sermon to God. Hence the awkwardness. Compare this to the Gethsemane prayer in Mark where Jesus is greatly distressed and begs the Father to take the cup of suffering from him… That makes much more sense in the context of Gethsemane to me.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's the story of a man struggling with god, just as israel had struggled with god.

[JairCrawford]

It's the story of a man struggling with god, just as israel had struggled with god.

Come to think of it there is a pretty strong struggling imagery there that could be a callback to Jacob/Israel. I hadn’t thought of that connection before. That’s pretty cool.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yet another service we provide.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Well, satori aside, it's like the scene from the Incredibles which I posted in response to Neo where Syndrome says, "When everyone is super.... no one will be." Religion seems to require the sacred. Sacred literally means set apart. If there is nothing separating the phenomenon and the mundane, then how can it be sacred?

In context, I was talking about the possibility some kinds of meaning (like the principle of non-contradiction) could be essential aspects of reality and the danger of sucummbing to the false binary that either everything is meaningfull or nothing at all has meaning, similar to the way eliminative materialists do not have room in their theory of mind for mind. As it relates to this conversation, I do think there is a danger in going too far in reading too much into a text and making up stories only tangetaly suggested by circumstances. Accepting the possibility of erring is part of the risk, not a reason to not try.

[Belacqua]

I do think there is a danger in going too far in reading too much into a text and making up stories  only tangetaly suggested by circumstances. Accepting the possibility of erring is part of the risk, not a reason to not try.

Very much agree with you here, as usual.

The idea that texts are interpretable, and their meanings may be multiple, may evolve, may even come to contradict one another -- does not mean that just anything goes. There are better and worse interpretations. Even the most hard-core "Death of the Author" Barthes-fan has to accept that some interpretations have no support in the text whatsoever. And some new interpretations may ring true and be valuable, while others are just dumb. 

A huge part of these texts' value is that we argue about them.

So the fact that meanings may not be fixed, and that we can read for our own interpretation, doesn't actually let us off the hook at all. We don't all get prizes just for participating. 

In fact I think it puts more responsibility on us when we read texts that are powerful, and have been influential in history. To do a good job we have to know the web of various interpretations that have already been given, and have some knowledge of why those have been saved and not forgotten. The text is not alone -- it is a part of a web of interpretations that come along with it.