There are no answers in Genesis

[Anomalocaris]

There's another reason why memorable, open-ended symbols are preferable to conceptual explanations. That is, in some areas, keeping the symbol active and multivalent is better than converting it into a simple moral message, as in an Aesop's fable.

This was worked out in detail in the Byzantine church during the iconoclasm controversies, but it's relevant to all kinds of religious writing and non-scientific literature.

It's related to the long-standing tradition of apophatic theology, mostly used in the Eastern Church but known in the West as well. The idea is that any concept we can use to describe God will be at best misleading, and quite possibly wrong. So for example if we assert that "God exists," the apophatic theologian will dispute this, saying that the word "exists," as understood by people, doesn't apply to God. If we say that tables exist and politicians exist and distant planets exist, we have a good idea of what the word "exists" means, but since God does not exist in the same way as those things, it's misleading to use the word.

Likewise when someone says "God is good." We have a fairly clear idea of what "good" means, and if we tried hard we could draw a circle and put in it the name of all the good things, and exclude from the circle all the bad things. But this doesn't work for God, who, being infinite, can't be excluded from any circle. Nor can he be limited to what our definition of "good" is, since the human mind is finite and God isn't. The human mind understands by dividing this from that, good from bad, but God being One has no divisions.

So in nearly every case, a conceptual description of God will be unacceptable.

This is why an open-ended symbol or image is better. When we engage with such a character -- even a fictional one -- it isn't reducible to a single coded meaning. (Again, this is why rich symbolism is not the same as allegory, which has one-to-one references.) A character like Job, for example, is to be engaged with almost like a real personality. He is not reducible to a single conceptual meaning. He behaves in ways we might not expect or approve of. He has an open-endedness that takes him beyond mere conceptual reference and more toward the way we engage with a living character.

This is why the iconodules finally won their debate with the iconoclasts. It was felt that pictures, rather than explanatory sentences, were less likely to be misleading and more likely to be something we can engage with in the proper open-ended way. Your icon of Mary can be engaged with almost as an individual person. You can love it, hate it, be confused by it, be frustrated by it, still value it, just as we do with our friends.

Similarly, in the 9th century, Kobo Daishi brought esoteric Buddhism from China to Japan. When people complained that the esoteric sutras were too hard and the cosmology and epistemology of the sect were beyond them, he said that one grasps more of the religion by looking at the paintings than by reading the sutras. Not because the paintings are comic-strip-like explanations of the doctrines, but because they prompt meditation on aspects of religion that are not to be exhausted, grasped, and then considered finished with.

So when the characters of the Bible are NOT reduced to allegorical, Aesop-like moral exemplars, they are fulfilling their purpose more effectively. They remain in the memory as open-ended, suggestive individuals. This is what keeps them alive and relevant.

Their purpose of filling out the sales collateral of an overreaching, hucksterish, and when they can get away with it, murderous cult.

[Belacqua]

Reading this morning about Tertullian, who has a slightly different take on the literal/figurative debate.

He does believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible, as far as I can tell. He opposes the movement already active in his own time (c.200AD) to read important parts of the Bible as only figurative.

Still he thinks that the important reading of each episode is as a figurative foreshadowing of a later, more spiritual message. He says "carnal things come first as a figure of spiritual things."

He gives the example of Moses not being able to enter the Holy Land himself, sending Joshua to complete the journey. Tertullian assumes this is a true historical event. He also says that it is significant to us because it is a "figure" of how the Mosaic law, while it was important for one step in history, is not sufficient to take a person all the way to Heaven. Jesus (who has the same name as Joshua) is required to complete the final step which Moses began.

So that's interesting to me how literal/figurative is not mutually exclusive, and even strict literalists can give more weight to the figurative.

Obviously there are many later Christians, especially in the more mystical traditions, who don't care about the literal part as Tertullian does. Some say they don't even care if Moses was a real historical personage -- that the role of the character is as a type or figure pointing to a spiritual truth.

[Belacqua]

Splendid essay in this book by Erich Auerbach:

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Link removed.

Really an incredible depth of scholarship, such as you seldom see any more. He wrote it in Istanbul, while fleeing the Nazis.

He shows beyond doubt that allegorical interpretation is at the heart of Christianity, from the very beginning. What he calls "figural interpretation" takes the events of the Old Testament as "types" or foreshadowings of their true (for the Christians) spiritual meanings. So the author of the Book of Acts, and Paul, in his letters, accept (or at least don't question) the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, but put all the importance on an allegorical reading. So according to these Christians, right at the beginning, a literal-only reading of the Old Testament would entirely miss the point.

Of course this is polemical. They intend to show Jews that the message of their own holy book has only later been revealed. And to show Gentiles that a book of laws and history for an unimportant tribe in the Middle East is in fact an allegorical message for the whole world.

But it's clear that allegory is what the first Christians valued in reading scripture.

[Jehanne]

@Belacqua

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical person, but was a complete crank, a nut job. I believe that he was an apocalyptist who believed in a flat Earth and that an angel from Heaven would descend from the sky to liberate the Jews from the Romans. When he took his message from Northern Galilee to Jerusalem, the Romans crucified him without so much as a historical footnote.

And, so, what's the point of the Bible for someone like me, apart from its value in Shakespearean literature?

[Ahriman]

@Belacqua

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical person, but was a complete crank, a nut job.  I believe that he was an apocalyptist who believed in a flat Earth and  that an angel from Heaven would descend from the sky to liberate the Jews from the Romans.  When he took his message from Northern Galilee to Jerusalem, the Romans crucified him without so much as a historical footnote.

And, so, what's the point of the Bible for someone like me, apart from its value in Shakespearean literature?

There isn't one, obviously.

[Jehanne]

@Belacqua

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical person, but was a complete crank, a nut job.  I believe that he was an apocalyptist who believed in a flat Earth and  that an angel from Heaven would descend from the sky to liberate the Jews from the Romans.  When he took his message from Northern Galilee to Jerusalem, the Romans crucified him without so much as a historical footnote.

And, so, what's the point of the Bible for someone like me, apart from its value in Shakespearean literature?

There isn't one, obviously.

I value the Bible as literature, especially, for historical purposes.

[Ahriman]

There isn't one, obviously.

I value the Bible as literature, especially, for historical purposes.

Historical purposes? It's not a historical text.

[Jehanne]

I value the Bible as literature, especially, for historical purposes.

Historical purposes? It's not a historical text.

How would you classify it?

[Ahriman]

Historical purposes? It's not a historical text.

How would you classify it?

OT as Jewish wisdom, NT as Christian wisdom. Pretty simply really. But certainly not historical.

[Jehanne]

How would you classify it?

OT as Jewish wisdom, NT as Christian wisdom. Pretty simply really. But certainly not historical.

I see the Book of Revelation as being apocalyptic literature and not as wisdom literature.