Dr. Elaine Pagels & Rabbi Daniel Weiner Pt. 1

I'll be rolling world okay clear questions about what do we do with it today I was a kitchen sink question if you were no I mean again one of my great concerns is that one of my frustrating ironing a frustrating irony is the sense that that with my sacred texts as well people somehow feel that it's only legitimate incredible if you take it literally rather than understanding that it was written metaphorically that in many ways metaphor conveys truth and and elements of faith in a much more powerful way than just an empirical of dry historical account and somehow what was lost along the way you would think that we would evolve in terms of our understanding and interpretation with modern historicism and a scholarly approach native scientism but the notion that we've somehow regressed as a culture of segments of our culture has progressed and and feel that you can only appreciate the value of a text if it's if it's literal and understand it that way rather than under appreciating the beauty beauty of the metaphor it's hugely frustrating in general but more dangerous and pernicious when people see that statecraft and politics in a geopolitical understanding of the world should be somehow informed by this in order to ensure that it's fulfilled I'm not very concerned on many levels with of course and I think it has so much to do with the prohibition on studying religion in public schools I mean it's worse in Christian communities because there is so little study at least if you're gonna have a Bar Mitzvah somebody has to really dig a brew and study Torah but Christians I mean there's a great anti intellectualism on the part of many I mean not thinking about it is a virtue I'm thinking about it is it somehow considered an unrelenting religious thing to do which I don't think at all I mean we need to make a condition about this and there's is that an ongoing theme among Christianity the notion of of not studying tax or that became so associated with you know kind of antinomian approach to Judaism that it that it became a virtue he said of virtue over the years not to study the text ever is what you're doing and what's the last couple generations of Christian scholars doing so new and and distinct from 2,000 years previously of Christian well as you know people used to study things theologically but it really wasn't until the the Enlightenment that and the radical enlightenment that they began to read the Bible and say well let's look at this historically and literally now why why do we have these two accounts of creation juxtaposed in Genesis you know what's the pronoun so this kind of running so that is very new and the study of the Bible in that way historically literally is only about a hundred years old but I discovered recently that in Islam you cannot study the Bible that way if you talk about which sings in the Quran are are said by the Prophet this can be a capital of things so that kind of discussion or which sayings in the Bible the Jesus say which are added later no I mean this is Jefferson I don't know where Jefferson was way ahead of his time when you thought that he was but but scholars ask that question a lot you know and who wrote these things and why did John write this way but that we have so many people have no background in this or if they do it's a completely religious background it's not looking at it historically I mean wouldn't that be of what I mean in terms of the practicality that wouldn't that be a great role for mainstream particularly Protestant and and more forward looking kind of Catholic organizations and churches to kind of reclaim the mantle of a more thoughtful scholarly based biblical study I mean I think you know they're worried about flagging numbers a lot of these it more you know mainstream you know face wouldn't it be just a wonderful counterpoint to other things that are happening in the more fundamentalist evangelical communities but also you know and it kind of fill the vacuum for what they feel they're they're lacking wouldn't it be is that a credible thing to hope for a movement amongst mainstream Protestants to engage the text

Channel: Temple De Hirsch Sinai

Views: 7,154

Rating: 4.878788 out of 5

Keywords: revelation, religion, judaism, Premiere_Elements_8, weiner, pagels, spirituality

Id: viB1VAOndSU

Length: 4min 30sec (270 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2010