Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Bible or ‘says’, or is it ‘Reads’?

As I understand the transformation that is happening within the Protestant Church’s since middle 1900s is that scripture is being defined as the “literal Word of G-d”. Leaders of various Christian movements are using the pulpit as a platform to define what the Bible is telling us to do, ‘The Word of G-d’, “the Bible Say’s”. These church leaders give us their interpretations of various snatches of scripture, lifted from the core of the written history and acts of holy men and how they describe their lives with the life of Jesus Christ. With that said, the history during which the texts for the New Testaments were compiled as recollection was more likely written using terms and words that had several different meanings and connotations at the time it was written on paper.

We have seen how the meanings of words in our language have shifted meaning during our own lifetimes. Of how the word ‘gay’ has been redefined from the adjective meaning of the 1st syn. ‘Merry, blithe, festive, gleeful, jolly’, or the 2nd syn. “Lively”, as in ‘alert spirited, vivacious’ to the 5 syn. ‘Homosexual, homophile, inverted queer, uranian, as found in the 1976 edition of Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus.

From Wikipedia’s definitions: By the mid-20th century, "gay" was well-established as an antonym for "straight" (which had connotations of respectability), and to refer to the lifestyles of unmarried and/or unattached people. Other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress ("gay attire") led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures.

Or this: One of the many characters invented by 1950s TV comic Ernie Kovacs was a "gay-acting" poet named Percy Dovetonsils. In one of his poems (which were always read to an imaginary off-screen character named "Bruce") he mentions the expression "gay caballero".

By 1963, the word "gay" was known well enough by the straight community to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Man-Hunting.

So the meaning of terms and definitions can shift and change over a relatively short period of history. So with the difference of almost 1900 years between the times the Gospels were put down on paper and the different understands of terms, phrases, and words, to the present; where we preach the literal textural readings of lifted texts from the old and new testaments. Our tunnel interpretations’ of the meaning and connotations of words and phrases we garner from the literal reading is quite different from the original written word. So in order for us to have a better understanding of our readings of the Bible, we should be encouraged to better understand the history of the world and its direct influence on the men who dictated or wrote their own understanding of their history and influence that Jesus Christ had on their personal lives.

So let us break the violence perpetuated by a small number of 'Christian' warriors who have draped the cloak of judge, and executioner upon their shoulders in order to justify the religious violence inflicted upon those person who don't subject themselves to their ideology of Christian beliefs.

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