On Tuesday, June 15, 2004, at 11:45 AM, paul childs wrote:
> But interpreting it wrong still got you on the wrong end of the
> bonfire.
exactly. we're all supposed to read the bible, but we're all supposed to read it the exact same way. there is still a privileged (the "literal") reading, and to stray from that is by definition not to be reading the bible literally (despite the fact that that reading isn't really very literal).
> My point is that modern American Protestants seem to have taken up the
> banner of biblical illiteracy voluntarily and with gusto, rather than
> having ignorance imposed on them as Catholics have.
and this is a direct result of the problem above: if there's only one true/proper reading (the literal reading, which we are all supposed to "experience" individually), you don't need to know the text. you just need to know the reading.
what matters is not that you think about the text, but that you internalize the reading. this takes us back to bush's inability to articulate any of jesus' ideas as a "philosopher" and his focusing on how he successfully internalized the privileged reading of the bible ("it changed my life").
j