Knowing that passions run deep on this matter, I have what I believe to be a very simple premise for a discussion of HOW to read the bible.
Terry has labored over the last couple of months to demonstrate (in my view, conclusively) that the bible is far from unaltered, and often mistranslated. These facts, inconvenient as they might be for believers, are nonetheless, a problem for those who claim that the bible IS the word of god.
This is not what I wish to discuss... Rather....
Jehovah's Witnesses come from a tradition of "reading in" or "adding meaning" to the scriptures. No one JW outside of the Governing Body is allowed to do this.
But why is it necesarry?
Because according to the GB, Satan, though not as powerful as Jehovah, is powerful enough to hide and obscure the meanings of God's own inspired word.
Thats the basic JW view in a nutshell.
For many other Christian religions and views, it all comes down to semantics, tradition, and interpretation. On those "testy" scriptures that often cause arguements, both sides will often say that Jesus and Paul talked of not twisting either scripture or its meaning....
Which leads me to ask, isn't it possible to "twist" the meaning of a scripture if one is determined to NOT read a scripture literally?
Isn't reading the bible literally the only way to NOT twist scripture?
Why can't individuals read the bible like any other book and draw their own conclusions, whether their conclusions are from a literal view, or, if they seek to attach symbolic meaning to passages. (not unheard of, as other works of literature frequently inspire the same kind of symbolic introspection.)
In short, my opinion is that the only remedy to the "twisted scripture" problem is to simply take each book, with each verse, and take it literally. This puts it in context, and gives less control to superstitious attempts at transforming seemingly harmless passages into something that seems as relevent as CNN.
Discuss.....
