Interpreting Scripture or Rationalizing

It was pointed out to me that our interpretation of scripture is uneducated and misguided. I made a comment,”his interpretation sounds like all he’s doing is rationalizing for god”. The answer:

“Absolutely not. It would be called rightly interpreting the Bible, Jim. Ignoring the cultural context, genre, analogical language, or explanatory scope would be superficially treating the text, thus, reading it wrongly.” More rationalizing, or no?

I need an excuse for this “scripture” please. Or is it the interpretation of the original I’m struggling with?

“Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him. And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly. Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.”

‭‭Judges‬ ‭19:22-29‬ ‭KJV‬‬

Correct interpretation? It is only a religious zealot that would not defend his daughters life to his own death.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

55 thoughts on “Interpreting Scripture or Rationalizing”

  1. How do you then interpret Judges 20? In Judges 19, the Levite offered his own daughter and concubine to be raped. The concubine was raped repeatedly until she died. The man that offered her then cut her up and spread the body parts around. Is he held responsible? No. Instead, as we read in Judges 20:9-10 “But now this is what we’ll do to Gibeah: We’ll go up against it in the order decided by casting lots.  We’ll take ten men out of every hundred from all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred from a thousand, and a thousand from ten thousand, to get provisions for the army. Then, when the army arrives at Gibeah in Benjamin, it can give them what they deserve for this outrageous act done in Israel.” Then thousands upon thousands of people died in battle. Seems reasonable.

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    1. You make connections? On your own? Lol. It does take “belief” which is rarely correct until you have all the “fact” in any accusation of litigation. Things we believe 2nd 3rd or has passed through infinite hands is rarely told as it was. I was a medic in the city and often the press was there. On rare occasions I could even tell that was the call I was on when I watched the news. They were never accurate, but “belief” by the gullible often harbors public conviction

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      1. Great point. A story passed just once, from one person to another, is at risk of being incorrect. The fact that the Bible is not a group of eyewitness stories, but is instead a written down account of oral tradition, should give us all pause when reading it. I just always find it to be laughable when certain Christians on here say that we are unable to interpret scripture properly. That’s why we need Jesus….or them. They can be a substitute and set us straight. That’s why churches exist. To tell all of us who are incapable of proper interpretation what we need to know.

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  2. One of my favorite bible passages. It’s got it all! Homosexual gang rape, violence, heterosexual gang rape, inter-species rape (angels ain’t human), misogyny, hints of incest and Yahweh acting like the big, violent baby he is. LOVE IT!

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    1. In this particular passage he won’t give up his male guest for them to have because that would be evil. So off goes the daughter. The real crime I guess is to be born a woman of a religious family

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        1. Homosexuality according to the Bible (that oh so reliable holy text) is an egregious sin that God despises. Offering your daughter in place of a man to be raped? That’s okay because it is heterosexual rape. Got to keep it clean and Holy. God-tested. God-approved. Amen.

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          1. Not sure if you follow Danica’s blog, but I really liked what she said, paraphrasing: ” I couldn’t align myself with something that justified committing horror and atrocity on others”. Good to see you Ben. Hope all is well there in the NE.

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            1. I don’t follow Danica, but I will check it out. Good to see you as well. New England is cold and boring as usual this morning.

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            1. Yes. Forced marriage after rape was a great story too. Then killing all the men after they agreed to adult circumcision and couldn’t defend themselves. Noble and righteous heritage to be proud of for sure.

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            2. Sometimes it’s hard to discern the subtle difference between:

              “Oh God! Please don’t! Stop!” and
              “Oh my God! Please don’t stop!”

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  3. I’m failing to see how any of the stuff he mentions negates your point. Unless I’m mistaken, your point wasn’t that when that passage was originally written, the people involved thought it was moral to do such things. Rather, by any measure of common sense (hopefully) in possession of people today, they’d be appalled at such a state of affairs.

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    1. They have to dance and wiggle their way around these issues of the unchanging perfect god of love by clarifying time, custom, perspective, but I matter how you slice it is wrong.

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  4. If I’m understanding the blog-post and the contention — and this is a guess on my part — this has to do with the value of a human being, even a concubine, versus social status?

    Anytime there is a reference to the Jewish Old Testament, I go to the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible. I do not use any other “versions” (especially any as late as the 17th century King James Bible, biased to James and the Church of England!) because in my years of study at seminary if you want to get the purest text/manuscript from the oldest original — which will contain MORE contextual language and meaning — then you read the Tanakh for the Old Testament in Hebrew and the Greek New Testament with a side-by-side Greek/English lexicon.

    However, for me personally this is still not sufficient for high degrees of accuracy. One must also have a basic-to-above-average understanding of the Jewish culture surrounding the various books of the Tanakh at the time of each composition (11th-12th century BCE to 3rd-4th century CE) and also the same for the Judeo-Christian culture surrounding the various gospels, epistles, and narrations (Acts) at the time of each composition (2nd century CE) Greek New Testament; which involves more than just the Greek language or culture!

    So the answer that this ‘biblical scholar'(?) gave you Jim…

    Absolutely not. It would be called rightly interpreting the Bible, Jim. Ignoring the cultural context, genre, analogical language, or explanatory scope would be superficially treating the text, thus, reading it wrongly.

    What does it really mean? What is this person’s point of reference when they say all of this? 🤔

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    1. Rightly in this case is his way, which is the current school of theologians all cut from the same “accepted schools of thought” which requires you fall in line to make excuses for god. That requires a lot of concessions to get you into the right cloth. You found it all out too, and walked away from it. That is a good man sir. Integrity!

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      1. Ahh, I see. “Concessions to get you into the right cloth.” Interesting and sounds all too familiar… whether discussing admission into a tupperware group, book group, military special forces or intelligence group, political group/party, corporate business division, or religious group like the Branch Davidians or People’s Temple Guyana. What’s the “cloth” for this week? 😒 🙄

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    2. It saddens me to have to write this, Professor Taboo, but I disagree.

      If the KJV of the OT was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me.

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    1. I was a King at rationalizing as a Mormon. None of it was me. It was all church spew indoctrination. After walking out of it you find who you really are and with most people it’s a 180 on everything. Politics, sexuality, social issues. Everything!

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      2. On the Mormon issue, is it true that if you’re a good enough guy in the eyes of the Mormon church, you can eventually get your own planet? Whenever I think of Mormonism, I think of the show “Battle Star Galactica.” Tribes of humans leave Kobol, their central planet, and occupy other worlds in the galaxy. I’m not well versed in Mormonism, but several have told me this show loosely borrowed ideas from the Mormon church , and the show’s creator was Mormon. Not trying to be funny, for once, I’m just curious.

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        1. Yep. It is in the doctrine all about becoming gods and having your own worlds. It is downplayed as a progression in the next life, but it’s in there. The show was ripe with Mormon theology but then again, so is the force and a lot of Star Wars. That should’ve clued me in right there.

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          1. Yeah, in those shows and movies such things are fun cause they’re not real. The shit people believe in the real world as “truth” is seriously insane and far scarier. I’ve heard arguments that, when truly looked at, Mormonism isn’t “true” Christianity. God was an astronaut who married Mary and they had Jesus, and, if I remember correctly, Lucifer was his twin? They got them the old fashioned way, by boinking, and Jesus isn’t really seen as the same guy as his pops though he’s powerful and stuff, too. Now, that ain’t nuttin’ like Evangelical Christianity AT ALL. In order to fit in politically, Mormons push up the Jesus stuff, “Oh, yes, we believe in him,” and down play the other stuff. Mitt Romney comes to mind. I hate that crap. Man, if you’re gonna believe in crazy space man shit, the go for it! Don’t down play it! Why believe in nutty shit then apologize for it by down playing it? Mormonism seems to be more like Scientology than “real” Christianity, IMO. Any way, sorry for the tangent. 🙂

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            1. The Mormon Jesus is a tad cooler than the mainstream jesus. That’s why all the contention. Our Jesus is better than your jesus. It’s good to argue two different Wrong points. Takes your mind off the trivial starvation and death in the world

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            1. No but, but, but they didn’t discover the secret crystals yet. Actually don’t need to make anything up. If you read the discourses of Brigham young and others there is enough atheist entertainment to last quite a while. It’s important to introduce all this gradually from birth so you acclimate to it. If not the whole picture is pretty stupid.

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            2. Well, there is the sworn testimony of known people claiming to have seen the tablets and they supposedly went to the grave without renouncing it; which is superior to Paul’s 500 anonymous witnesses, no?

              But as far as building a religion goes, I think L. Ron Hubbard got it right — lie big and lie hard. Too bad he didn’t use the money he made to fix his teeth. Guess he ended up buying his own BS about having superpowers.

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    2. The highlighted portion reminds me that not only is this kind of stuff getting condoned whenever an imaginary entity does it, but also that it’s okay for this entity to pick excruciatingly painful methods of enforcing its will rather than utilize its godlike powers in a more efficient fashion. This being allegedly created the cosmos, and yet it can’t wink disobedient people out of existence and replace them with more pliant servitors? He’s arguing that not only did they need to get punished, but they needed to suffer.

      But no, dirty atheists aren’t to be trusted because they don’t have homicidal Yahweh pulling their puppet strings.

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    1. The only clear solution here is for Mel to walk away from the scriptures he is defending. That is the only thing you can do to see clearly that you have been duped and aligned yourself with a despotic system of control and horror it’s entire existence.

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