Guest Post: Fundamentalists and Sceptics both Misunderstand the Bible

Today we have a guest post from Stephen of Outside the Box and Emerging from Babel. We've been commenting on each other's blogs for a long time and he's always been thoughtful and open-minded.

I'll leave my response as the first comment.

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1. Premodern people

If you want to know what a premodern person looks like, don't suppose that fundamentalists constitute a contemporary case study. Paradoxically, fundamentalists (whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish) are a product of modernity.

In The Battle For God (there's a good review here), Karen Armstrong argues that fundamentalism arose in reaction to modernity. Two inferences follow:

1. Fundamentalists of the contemporary sort did not exist when the Bible was written.
2. Contemporary fundamentalists are thoroughly modernist in their mindset.

Contemporary fundamentalists are modernists because they attempt to read the scriptures literally, as if they were lab reports or newsreel footage. Sceptics read the scriptures that way, too, and find them an easy target for mockery.

If you want to know what a premodern person looks like, natives (Indians) provide a better example. I'm sure that Indians have been co-opted by modernity in many respects. But insofar as they have preserved their ancestral way of life, they also preserve elements of a premodern worldview.

In native communities, we see a mindset starkly different than that of fundamentalism. The difference is, Indians understand the literary genre, myth. Of course "myth" is our label, not theirs; they would perhaps speak of "our traditions" or "the wisdom of the elders". Regardless, Indians "get" myth in a way that fundamentalists manifestly do not.

For example, each Indian community has its own creation myth, often giving primordial animals a pivotal role. No one seems troubled by the fact that the tale circulated in one region contradicts the tale circulated in another region. No one asks whether Earth was "really" made from foam or mud, or whether the trickster is "really" a coyote or a raven. And no one feels compelled to take up arms to slay the infidel. It's all good seems to be the general attitude: because Indians relate to the stories as myth.

Even if the stories can't be taken literally, they have value because of the worldview they inculcate. They tell Indians how to relate to their world (e.g., respect Mother Earth; always give something back to her when you take something). They tell Indians what their place in the world is (man is not the focal point of creation, but just one of Mother Earth's inhabitants). And the stories inculcate not only a mindset but also a way of life. The stories look backward, and the way of life involves preserving the practices of the past.

If you told an Indian that her traditions have no value because they are not science or history, she would tell you that you have a queer value system.

2. Genesis 1-11 as myth

Contemporary Indian communities have many traits in common with the ancestral Israelites. The following examples come to mind:

• communitarian (not individualist) orientation;
• tribal organization;
• ruled by elders;
• focus on ownership of land as crucial to survival and community identity;
• traditional wisdom and mores expressed in narrative (not propositional) form.
• traditions passed down orally. (Indian communities still rely on the oral transmission of their most important traditions, even today.)
• the way of life involved preserving the practices of the past. (In Israel, the prophets introduced a future-oriented perspective. Even then, the prophets continued to point Israel back to its origins in the Exodus.)

I'm suggesting that the ancient Israelites probably regarded their origin stories approximately the same way as contemporary Indian communities regard theirs. I presume that they didn't take the stories literally. They wouldn't have been troubled by contradictory details. They wouldn't have insisted that this thing or that thing "really happened".

For example, scholars believe that there are two variant accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2. Both accounts insist that humankind is the focal point of creation. Genesis 1 makes the point by recounting that humans were created last — the crowning jewel of creation. Genesis 2 makes the point by recounting that humans were created first — thus taking precedence over everything else:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

When no bush of the field was yet in the land [or "yet in the earth"] and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up — for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land … then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground….

(Genesis 2:4-7a, English Standard Version)

Note that there is only one "day" of creation, not seven (per Genesis 1). And human beings were created before there was any vegetation (contra Genesis 1, in which vegetation was created on day three and human beings on day seven).

Sceptics might suppose that the editor of Genesis was sloppy, and didn't notice the hopeless contradiction between the above text and Genesis 1. This is a constant temptation: to suppose that "primitive" peoples lacked intellectual sophistication. More likely, the editor considered that he had two creation stories which approached the topic from two different vantage points, and he was loathe to lose either of them. The presence of variant details (was it "really" a coyote, or was it a raven?) was simply immaterial.

Fundamentalists betray a modernist mindset when they insist that the variant details Can too! be reconciled, and they set out to devise convoluted explanations to prove it.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis constitute Israel's prehistory. The narratives were told and retold (or re-enacted, as a kind of dramatic performance) in communal settings. Each performance would vary in small details, reflecting the individual storyteller's personality and artistry. This process went on generation after generation, until the stories were crafted into the (stylized) forms they now take. Only then were they compiled and shaped into a continuous narrative by an anonymous editor. (Moses? It's unlikely, since Moses was a man of action, not a man of letters; but in any event it doesn't matter — it's beside the point.)

Everything in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is myth, pure and simple. The traditions are nonetheless invaluable to people of faith.

3. Myth and history elsewhere in the Bible

What of the later chapters of Genesis, plus the rest of the Pentateuch and the later historical books? Here the division between myth and not-myth is not so straightforward.

The general picture — oral tradition, re-enacted with variant details over countless generations — still applies. Thus even the historical traditions that have come down to us are highly stylized.

And even when the oral traditions were set down in writing, it was only a sort of first edition. The editorial process continued unabated. Scholars maintain that the traditions were re-edited at critical junctures to keep them current in new historical circumstances. This process continued until the exile in Babylon, during which the Hebrew scriptures evidently took their final form.

Did Abraham even exist? Did the Exodus happen? Did Elijah defeat the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel? The only access we have to these events is through Israel's stylized traditions. We certainly don't have enough data to convince a "scientific" historian, because science always begins from a position of scepticism. Historians do not concede the benefit of the doubt.

In some cases, the appeal to myth continues to serve us very well, even in ostensibly historical settings. For example, the Akedah — the binding of Isaac. When God commanded Abraham to slay Isaac, Abraham was ready to obey. He didn't even pause to plead for Isaac's life, as he had for Lot's family when God resolved to destroy Sodom.

If we regard the story as history, it is morally repugnant. But what if we regard it as myth — a kind of morality play? We can then distance ourselves from a literal application: Obedience to God must be absolute, even if God asks you to murder your own child. We can instead focus attention on the moral progress which the story brought about: The descendants of Abraham learned from this narrative that child sacrifice is contrary to God's will.

Conclusion

I hate to leave the reader hanging at this point. There's at least one crucial question that I haven't addressed: What method shall we use to interpret premodern traditions in a (post)modern era? I could share a series of hermeneutical principles in response to that question, but the post is already too long.

At least I have made the following points:

1. Fundamentalists are modernist in their mindset;
2. Ancient Israel probably regarded its traditions approximately the way that contemporary Indians regard their traditions;
3. The process of oral transmission has distanced the texts from the actual historical events, and cast them in a highly stylized form;
4. Therefore the biblical traditions cannot be interpreted literally, like a lab report or newsreel footage;
5. But the traditions are still invaluable to people of faith: even if they are entirely (Genesis 1-11) or partially (Genesis 12-50) mythological in nature.

I don't suppose that any of Jewish Atheist's readers will assent to all of the above points. The point of view that I represent (influenced by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the Protestant Christian exegete Walter Brueggemann) is alien to sceptics and true believers alike.

Whether or not people find my perspective persuasive, I wanted to make the point that there is a "third way" on offer. This "third way" avoids the dichotomy that is usually represented in debates over religion: a literal reading of scripture (on the one hand) and a repudiation of scripture (on the other).

In my view, fundamentalists and sceptics both misunderstand the Bible because they apply a modernist mindset to it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

Single- and Double-loop Learning as Applied to Religion

LeisureGuy refers to Chris Argyris, a Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, and his notions of "single-loop learning" and "double-loop learning." LeisureGuy smartly applies Argyris's ideas to the mainstream media and I'd like to do the same for the ways that we think about the world.

First an introduction to the terms:

Single-loop learning seems to be present when goals, values, frameworks and, to a significant extent, strategies are taken for granted. The emphasis is on ‘techniques and making techniques more efficient’ (Usher and Bryant: 1989: 87) Any reflection is directed toward making the strategy more effective. Double-loop learning, in contrast, ‘involves questioning the role of the framing and learning systems which underlie actual goals and strategies’ (op. cit.). In many respects the distinction at work here is the one used by Aristotle, when exploring technical and practical thought. The former involves following routines and some sort of preset plan – and is both less risky for the individual and the organization, and affords greater control. The latter is more creative and reflexive, and involves consideration notions of the good. Reflection here is more fundamental: the basic assumptions behind ideas or policies are confronted… hypotheses are publicly tested… processes are disconfirmable not self-seeking (Argyris 1982: 103-4).

Here is their illustration of the difference between the two techniques.



I've taken the liberty of modifying the chart to discuss beliefs:



I believe that most Orthodox Jews (and other traditionalist groups) engage only in "single-loop" learning. For example, given the assumptions that God is good and God wrote the Torah, they reasonably conclude the Torah is good. Fine. Here's where it gets interesting. Some piece of data comes along that appears to contradict the conclusion the Torah is good. To reference my previous post, I'll use the example of the Torah commanding the stoning-to-death of adulterous women. Most Orthodox Jews will not question the assumptions that God is good and God wrote the Torah. They will instead go back to the interpretation stage and find a way to reconcile the new data with the old assumptions.

There's nothing about single-loop learning that makes it necessarily incorrect. In fact, if we didn't use it most of the time, we'd never be able to get anything done. However, there is a great danger to depending on it to the exclusion of double-loop learning. If one of our assumptions happens to be false and we don't know it yet, we can waste a lot of time and make a lot of incorrect conclusions if we stick to single-loop learning.

It can be scary and disorienting to question one's assumptions but it's clear that sometimes it's the only way to reach a correct conclusion. I think that people who leave their faiths (or join faiths!) for intellectual reasons are more willing to ask themselves the hard questions. (Or, in some cases, life's events practically force them to ask the hard questions.)

If we're interested in the truth and in good results, I think we must frequently do a sanity check on our underlying assumptions (to the degree we are even aware of them.) Then again, if we aren't concerned with the truth and are happy with the results, it might be reasonable to not look at those assumptions. Perhaps it's unfortunate for those of us who care more about what's true than about what's useful.

Even if we don't habitually question our assumptions, I think there are some warning signs that we are engaging in single-loop learning when double-loop learning is called for. For example:

1. We are having great difficulty coming to reasonable conclusions. (e.g. my husband loves me and he beats me so his beating me must be a form of his love.)
2. We can reach satisfactory conclusions, but the interpretation is so convoluted that it strains credibility. (e.g. the epicycles in the Ptolemaic system of geocentrism.)
3. We finds ourselves having to do a lot of interpretation too often. (e.g. my child would never use drugs and his strange behavior today was because he was stressed out. And the same was true yesterday and the day before that and the day before that...)
   

In my opinion, thinking Orthodox Jews should stumble upon these warning signs quite frequently. Just off the top of my head, I can think of an example for each of these. The problem for believers in an omnipotent and good God who causes destructive "acts of God" (tornadoes) or allows large-scale human evil (Holocaust, Rwanda) falls under #1. The day-era argument for a literal Genesis falls under #2. And the totality of Orthodox Judaism falls under #3. (For example, any Orthodox Jew active on the skeptic blogs has had to satisfy him- or herself with separate interpretations for the age of the universe, evolution, biblical authorship, the lack of evidence for an Exodus, etc. instead of the single, simple, and obvious (with a different assumption) interpretation that the Bible was written by imperfect men.)

I guess this is all just a fancy way to describe Occam's Razor, but coming at it from a new direction is pretty interesting.

What If Rabbis Were Supreme Court Justices?

From the Passover Haggadah:

Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaryah said: "I am like a man of 70 years, and yet I was never able to merit to prove that one is obligated to mention the Exodus at night, until Ben Zoma explained it thusly: It says in the Torah, 'In order that you shall remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt, all the days of your life.' 'The days of your life' refers to the days; 'All the days of your life' refers to the nights." And the Sages [i.e all the other rabbis -JA] say: "'The days of your life' refers to this world; 'All the days of your life' indicates the time of the Messiah."

Many people, including many Orthodox Jews, ridicule the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade because of its reliance on a "penumbra" of rights in the Constitution that weren't spelled out. But how much more ridiculous are the bulk of Orthodox interpretations of the Torah?

I'd love to see what the Sages would have done with the Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Justice Ben Azaryah said: "I am like a man of 70 years, and yet I was never able to merit to prove that one has the right to a public trial in civil cases until Justice Ben Zoma explained it thusly: "It says in the Constitution, 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.' 'Criminal prosecutions' refers to criminal prosecutions. 'All criminal prosecutions' refers to civil suits." And the legal scholars say: "'Criminal prosecutions' refers to criminal prosecutions. 'All criminal prosecutions' refers to military tribunals."