EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

For how long have we read the Bible literally?

I learnt an astonishing fact today.¹ The habit of reading the Bible as though it is historically true (especially the New Testament) started during the Protestant Reformation which began in 1517 and lasted more than a century. For the first 1,500 years the New Testament like all scripture was read with common sense, as Origen and St Augustine had recommended. If the apparent meaning of the text clashed with normal understanding, they were told to respect the integrity of nature, observation and science. Karen Armstrong, the religious scholar, explains in a book review that shortly before the Reformation the printed page arrived with its appearance of precision and exactitude. This helped make religion seem “logical, unmediated and objective.” Until then, most people had only heard scripture, meditating on its meaning with a cognitive flexibility now rarely used. She writes:

“Today, believers and nonbelievers alike tend to read Scripture with a dogged literalism, but in the premodern period traditional exegesis in all three monotheisms [Jewish, Christian, Islamic] was a form of intense creativity.”

She even adds that “... like art, the truths of faith rely on intuition rather than logic [my emphasis].” So, please don’t read art literally either. It’s more than what it first appears, deeper and more truthful.

 

1. All citations are from Karen Armstrong, "Embracing the Uncertainty of Faith" (book review of The Norton Anthology of World Religions), International New York Times, Dec. 20/21, 2014, p. 19