I hate this thread! (was: Was Jesus a good guy?)
Bruce Alderman baa@southwind.net
Mon, 15 Dec 1997 19:33:23 -0600 (00882257603, jpdl0QcrBwZD092yn@southwind.net)
CLAIRE
>>Jesus made many metaphorical statements in the Bible. Why should his
>>statement about hating your family be interpreted literally?
AUSTIN
> Thus, it seems to me that the starting, default position for
> interpreting any statement is to take it literally - to take the
> person at their literal word. To go *beyond* that is what requires
> some sort of argument. After all, if the starting point were always
> a metaphorical reading, we would never be able to rely on what
> people say and would always be searching for hidden meangings.
> Human language is construted such that everyday discourse is
> normally meant to be taken literally. We communicate efficiently by
> virtue of the fact that we intend to say what we mean and are
> understood to mean what we say.
BRUCE
Okay, I'll take a stab at this one. Language is actually too complex
to divide all statements into distinct "literal" and "metaphorical"
categories. We often use idiomatic expressions within literal
statements. For example, I could open my newspaper and read, "Sunrise
7:38a.m./ Sunset 5:12p.m." These statements are designed to convey
factual information, and to be interpreted literally. Yet the terms
"sunrise" and "sunset" are metaphors: the sun's apparant motion is an
optical illusion caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis.
If my friend is baking bread, and I ask, "How long until the bread
rises?", my friend will understand that I am referring to a literal
rising of the bread. If my next question is, "When does the sun rise
tomorrow?", my friend will understand that the word "rise" is an idiom
in this context, even though the statement is a literal one.
Our language, like any language, contains a number of idioms which all
native speakers understand intuitively, due to repeated exposure to
those phrases. We don't even need to think about the fact that the
sun does not rise in the same way that bread rises, in order to
understand the questions in my previous paragraph.
It is the same way with Jesus' statements about "hating" our families.
The original hearers understood it as a figure of speech; they didn't
need to be explicitly told that this was not a literal hatred. In
this context, it simply refers to a lesser love. All Christians
through the centuries have understood the passage the same way. This
is not merely a modern re-interpretation to explain away a difficult
passage. (In fact, even with this interpretation, it is *still* a
difficult passage).
BTW: When you read the first sentence of my reply, did you take it
literally?
--
Bruce Alderman baa@southwind.net
I don't take the Bible literally; I take it seriously.