Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Fences: Mending or Rending

    Note: This sermon was presented on September 11, 2005 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola. Readings for meditation were Mending Wall, by Robert Frost, The Holy Qur’an 49:13a, and The Picket Fence by Christian Morgenstern, translated by Max Knight (links are to places on the web where the reading can be found).

    It was 4 years ago that we woke to the news of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the failed attack on one unknown target. That morning, all of our lives were changed. Those who felt complacent were shaken. Terrorism before that was largely something that happened somewhere else. It happened either to other people, or only to those people courageous, or some of us probably thought stupid enough, to travel to the wrong places. For most Americans, however, it was somebody else’s problem.

    Then the twin towers fell. Terrorism was no longer somebody else’s problem, something we could conveniently dismiss from our minds, assuming those responsible would take care of it. Terrorism and our national response to it became a topic of nearly everyone’s conversation and thinking.

    As a result of that day, many things have happened. Decisions have been taken. Diplomatic (and not so diplomatic) missions have been launched. We’ve launched two foreign wars. We’ve reorganized and combined government departments. We have had changes in our national laws, intended by their authors to increase our security and make us safer.

    To be specific, we did the natural thing. We started to build fences.

    My question to you is this: After all of these activities, are we safer now than we were four years ago?

    I’d like to suggest that you look at New Orleans right now as you try to answer that question. We have experienced four years of reorganization, which were supposed to have resulted in providing us with a new, extraordinarily efficient form of response to disaster. Besides being able to predict and thus prevent many terrorist attacks, we were supposed to be able to contain the results and prevent mass destruction.

    Well, we have had a disaster. It wasn’t a surprise attack by terrorists. It wasn’t an unpredictable natural disaster. In fact, I watched the development of the computer models and the projected paths of Hurricane Katrina as the storm approached, and the forecasts were extraordinarily accurate and clear. We had warning. Insofar as one can have time when a hurricane is approaching, we had time.

    But if the results appear to anyone to be exceptionally efficient, if those results are what one would expect after a crash program of reorganization, training, and planning, then I would guess that person has exceptionally low standards.

    The results don’t live up to the expectation.

    What is the problem? How can so much energy be expended in a cause with so little in the way of positive results?

    Let me suggest that what we are watching is simply all the reasons why political and social action often fail to achieve their intended results, but we’re seeing it in exceptionally large scale.

    Economist Henry Hazlitt, in his little book “Economics in one Lesson

  • Finger-pointing May Be Needed

    I just got in my e-mail an article by Don Gaetz, superintending of Okaloosa County schools. You can find the article at A Port in the Storm on Gulf1 web site.

    Now before I get to my point, let me first say that I am fully in support of what Don Gaetz said about the response here in northwest Florida. The actions I know of in response to Hurricane Katrina have been exceptionally good. The Okaloosa county school system, and its superintendent Don Gaetz are to be congratulated.

    But there is a problem with the response to this disaster. It has pointed out serious problems with our system, and our ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks. We need to improve quite a number of things, not the least of these being our ability to respond flexibly in an emergency situation. Flexible response is not a natural ability of the bureaucracy, but it is something that we need.

    This suggests one thing we need to look at: Keeping the bureaucracy from interfering with private efforts at relief. During a disaster career bureaucrats often try to keep up all the same standards of safety and health that they would outside of a disaster. It’s a nice thought. We don’t want to increase the death toll by being careless. But when the situation is bad, often the best way to improve it is to take risks. People who are capable of taking these risks and more importantly capable to deciding to take these risks should be permitted to take them.

    But real solutions aren’t going to be found during this short time following the disaster. We can talk about who should be fired, who should be moved, or who is doing a good job. But especially in the giant Department of Homeland Security, there should be an investigation–a professional investigation–to determine what went wrong and who was responsible. That is, who was actually responsible, not who can be made to take the blame. I would suggest that such a professional review could be reviewed by congress and by the executive branch, but an investigation by congressional committee would largely give politicians a chance to posture, rather than actually getting the truth. Let disaster response officials from various parts of the country be made into a panel to look at the situation.

    President Bush said that the results weren’t acceptable. At the same time he congratulated all those involved. Well, if everyone was doing things right, then the results would have to be acceptable. Somebody didn’t get the job done. Maybe there were many somebodies. I’m concerned with two possibilities: 1) That we will not manage to correct the very real problems that have been found, or 2) That we will place blame on people who were, in fact, doing the best that they could.

    People whose political friends are in power tend to tell us not to point fingers. Those whose enemies are in power tend to say, “Throw the bastards out!” What we need to do is investigate carefully and throw the right people out, while thanking and congratulating the ones who did not live up to justified expectations about their performance.

    Finally, I think we need to be more, not less demanding of our political leaders. Politicians make big claims and big promises, which they regularly fail to fulfill. We need to hold them to those promises, or use our power as voters to turn them out. I suspect that if we did start holding politicians to their promises they would make less of them, and start telling us more realistically what they can actually accomplish.

  • Scale from Literal to Figurative

    There is considerable debate in Biblical studies about what elements should be taken literally, and what should be taken figuratively. Several things tend to confuse this debate, including the perception that if one takes something any way other than literally, one is taking it less seriously. For many people, literal is equivalent to true or perhaps more precisely literal is equivalent to real.

    In reality, there are many types of expression, and they vary in how close one intends them to be to the literal truth. For example, in a parable, one may tell a story that is either fictional, or may be generalized from many life experiences–a typical experience, rather than a precise narration of a specific event. The parable expresses a general truth, and does so better because it’s narrative is typical. If the listener asks questions about the specific people involved (what happened to them later, why were they involved, and so forth), he is missing the point.

    A parable is also an example of an entire narrative in which the language appears quite literal, and yet the meaning is not found in finding the literal referents, but rather in the whole of the narrative. “Pilgrim’s Progress” is a more recent example. The language is literal in form, but the meaning is not to be found in the literal referents. Trying to find a literal “slough of despond” would be fruitless. Nonetheless the idea of a “slough” combined with the idea of despondence does convey meaning. Figurative language is not meaningless language. It is a different way of expressing meaning.

    Picturesque language can also be less precise and literal than technical descriptive language. For example, after hurricane Ivan I said that a section of woods looked like a giant had stepped on it. Now the woods had actually been destroyed by heavy wind, with many trees snapped halfway up the trunk. My description was not precisely correct, but people living nearby certainly understood what I was saying.

    We can also find specific example in the Bible of symbols with one-to-one relationships to their referents. Let’s take Daniel 8, for example. In verse 4, Daniel describes a “ram charging westward.” In verse 20 that ram is connected with the Persian Empire (through identifying the hors as the kings of Media and Persia). This is the most simple type of symbol. It’s almost as straightforward as just using the word for the item. We are simply one more remove from the literal meaning ram = Persia = the-territory-represented-by-that-name.

    Symbols can also add meaning. In Revelation chapter 5, Jesus is symbolized both by a sacrificed or slaughtered lamb and by a lion. Each of those symbols says something about Jesus in the author’s view, and they add understanding based on the nature of the symbols involved.

    Understanding something as symbolic or figurative language is not a license to claim it has no definite meaning, but it often does change the meaning a reader will derive from the passage. It may be difficult to be certain, but the effort is worthwhile. Whether we err in understanding something as figurative when it was intended literally, or we err in the opposite way, we will still miss the intended meaning.

  • Debating Science

    What is the best forum in which to debate scientific topics? How should advocates for science, specifically evolutionary science, determine how to approach such debates?

    There is currently a report of such a debate on the Citizens for Science web site (Friday night debate in Colorado Springs), in which Steven Mahone and Sam Milazzo debated Kent Hovind. You can read about the numerous problems with the debate, its moderation, its format, and fairness in the article cited.

    While I’m thankful to those people who are willing to walk into the den of lions, so to speak, and “debate” creationisim before a biased audience with a biased moderator, I question the value of this particular method of educating the public. Most of the people who attend these debates are already convinced on the issue, and in particular they are going to be folks who are convinced of some variety of creationism. Those who are convinced of the conclusions of evolutionary science tend also to realize that very little education is going to take place in a couple of hours of debate. If they have looked at Kent Hovind’s web site, or viewed some of his slide presentations before, they will also be aware that very little education will take place in a forum in which he participates.

    The reason for this is that a public, oral debate only functions well when the forum is carefully planned for fairness and when all participants adhere to a reasonable standard of documentation and support for their statements. If any participant is permitted simply to create one-liners and to concoct “facts” out of thin air, an oral debate will not provide a sufficient forum to find the truth about a particular issue.

    I faced this issue in considering debating the King James Version Only issue. Much like creation and evolution, the King James Version only debate is dominated by people who simply create their data out of thin air. I considered what I would have to do to prepare for an oral debate, and I concluded that the only way one could prepare for such a debate would be to become an expert on one’s opponent–not on the subject, on the person. The reason is simple: It is much easier to create falsehoods than it is to produce documented facts. It is also much easier to challenge documented facts than it is to challenge pure falsehoods, or very loosely supported claims.

    Why is this? In academic study, participants are used to expecting that participants in a discussion have some reason, some documentation, for their positions. One can research that documentation, discover issues of context, difficulties with the methods involved and so forth. For completely fabricated data, one first has to figure out how the data was created and what support one’s opponent will claim for that data, and then one must challenge that. In my field, the claim that the church fatehr Origen systematically corrupted Biblical manuscripts is a case in point. There is no evidence to support the claim whatsoever, but it is made repeatedly. In fact, Origen researched manuscripts, and some of these manuscripts annoy certain modern fundamentalist Christians. In an oral debate, before an audience of lay people, the claim sounds more convincing than the simple statement that there is no evidence for it. How do you prove “no evidence” in a few moments? Now if someone would make a claim and reference the source, then you could examine that source and show how it did not support the claim made.

    The Paluxy river human footprints are a good case in the area of creation versus evolution, or the repeated story of the discover of 12 foot human skeletons. The claim is easy; the refutation takes time, provided one feels it necessary to go beyond saying “Hogwash!”

    Oral debates are, in the hands of creationists, simply propaganda tools. The point is to provide the faithful with one liners they can use in challenging their friends on the subject of evolution. As a Christian, I find this approach particularly reprehensible. It is dishonest. It is rude. Its primary intention is to teach Christians how to be rude. For Christians who attend these debates, the intent is to make them feel out of touch, and make them question whether they can be both Christian and believe in evolution. There is no intent to educate.

    If you want to really understand the subject of evolution, you are going to have to study a great deal more than these debates will provide for. Unfortunately, much of the creationist literature is similar. It is designed as propaganda, not education. I think that the creationists (largely young earth creationists) fear the kind of discussion and education that would actually allow people to understand the debate, because once one understands the science behind evolution, even as a serious amateur, it becomes very clear.

    I grew up as a young earth creationist, and was educated in Seventh-day Adventist schools, surrounded by young earth creationists. I read all the young earth books, and I knew the one liners that were supposed to devastate evolutionists. In studying Genesis itself, I became convinced first that it could not possibly provide a chronology for prehistory. Even very solid archeological evidence went well beyond the kind of chronology Genesis could be stretched to cover, assuming one took it as narrative history. At the time, I did not immediately turn to evolution, however, because I simply did not know enough about it. I studied by reading, and by using roadside geology guides on my annual vacations in the American northwest. As I learned the facts, it all began to fall into place.

    One thing that became clear to me through this study was that the things that were said about evolution by my creationist sources were clearly wrong. I’m still simply an informed amateur at geology or in any of the life sciences. But when I’m dealing with a subject in which I am not confident, I tend not to trust people who make serious errors (or dare I say lie) on the subjects I can check. I’m not willing to assume that they are telling the truth on the more complex issues.

    I say all this simply to point out that for people to become convinced that evolution is the explanation for the origin of the diversity of life we see on earth, they must learn a great deal. It’s fairly simple to say “God did it.” In fact, I’m quite willing, as a matter of faith and not of science, to say that God did do it. But the evidence is overwhelming that the method was evolution. Until I had the facts to support that position, I simply admitted I didn’t know.

    In order to get the American people to understand this topic, we’re going to have to improve their science education. That’s going to require something in written form, something that can be checked. It’s going to require them to work a bit at their own education. Perhaps we need some folks fighting the propaganda battle. But only a few real scientists are going to be comfortable doing that. They deal in facts; propagandists deal in persuasion and manipulation.

    Let the creationist crowd accuse scientists of being cowardly because they won’t face them in debate. People who are fair minded enough to be convinced will see through that particular ploy. And for the propagandists, and the very brave defenders of science, I wish you the best. But I think you’re often going to get the worst.

  • Not Taking the Bible Literally

    A group of people are gathered study the Bible. Various opinions are exchanged. “I wouldn’t take that literally,” someone says finally. Often, that is the moment that people move on. Not taking it literally is very often the excuse not to bother to figure out what a Bible passage has to say at all.

    Now before you decide that I’m a Biblical literalist, let me assure you that there are plenty of things in the Bible that should not be taken literally. But determining what in the Bible should be taken literally and what should not is a bit more complex than simply finding those passages that don’t make any sense, or that contradict modern science or historical knowledge, and then deciding that it’s not literal, so it’s OK. But what does “not literal” mean?

    But first, let’s consider what “literal” means. It’s not quite as simple as some think it is. “Literal” is not a synonym for “true” or accurate, though it is often treated that way. In fact, it is very difficult to define “literal” very precisely at all. We can think of a continuum starting with the most literal speech. “I am typing on the computer keyboard” is a literal statement, and also obviously true (though it won’t be by the time you read this!). On the other hand if I say “the butterflies of delirious joy are flitting through my consciousness” nobody is likely to take me literally. There is a state of mind that is described by this statement, but my consciousness is not a space, and there are no butterflies flying there. Between that we have more and less literal ways of expressing things.

    In addition to determining how literal or figurative the language is, we need to determine precisely what kind of literal or figurative language is being used. For example, Genesis 1 describes creation in seven days. It is important to know whether it is intended as a poetic description, liturgical language, or narrative history. It will mean very different things in each of these cases. Sometimes it is important to determine if a figurative passage is a parable, an allegory, a report of a vision, and whether it is poetic or not.

    Even literal passages can have different styles, and different focuses. Consider the difference between Samuel-Kings and the gospels. Both are considered historical narrative by their authors in some sense, but the presentation is somewhat different. Chronology is a key issue in Samuel and Kings, whereas theological theme, and the logical presentation of the mission of Jesus is emphasized in the structure of the gospels. If you look at the events of the life of Jesus in the four gospels you will find many chronological discrepancies, but if you change your perspective and look at it from a thematic point of view, the arrangement will make more sense. Both Samuel-Kings and the gospels are historical narrative, but the types of answers you can expect from each are different.

    The key point out of all that is simply that just because a passage is not literal doesn’t mean that it does not have meaning. Meaning can be expressed in many different ways. The problem for the interpreter is to be very careful to determine just what method of presentation the author is using. You will get the wrong message if you assume the wrong method of presentation.

    So how do you tell just how literal or figurative a passage is? Here are some pointers:

    • The key method is one we use in daily life. If the symbol won’t work or doesn’t make sense literally, it is likely to be figurative in some way.
      People hesitate to use this method with reference to the Bible, but it is usually quite applicable. Since we know through scientific study that the world did not come into existence in six literal days, we can guess that Genesis 1 is not, in fact, literally true. (But see my discussion of a change of cultural context below.)
    • Ask who the audience is, and what questions they might have wanted answered.
      It is very unlikely that the author is going to be answering questions that did not interest his audience. Much lousy Biblical interpretation results from failing to consider this issue.
    • Look first for the meaning of symbols in the cultural context of the readers.
      Since we can generally assume that the writer was trying to communicate with his readers, we can also assume that he would use symbols that they can understand. Only when known symbols have been exhausted should we look for ones that range widely away from the immediate cultural context.

      • ]

    • Expect more symbolic language in poetry.
    • Expect more symbolic language in prophetic oracles.
    • Expect almost exclusively symbolic language in reports of visions and dreams.
    • Don’t be afraid to use common sense and your knowledge of the physical world.
      Many Bible students are afraid that if they compare Biblical statements to their knowledge of the physical world, they will be denying the Bible. But your knowledge of the physical world is also a part of the context of God’s communication with you.
    • Ask others to justify their own conclusions on whether something is literal or figurative.
      Don’t allow the assumption that a passage should be taken literally unless it can be demonstrated that it is figurative. Each passage should be considered starting from a neutral position.

    I want to make one last comment about the changing context, because it applies directly to Genesis 1-11 (prehistory). It is quite possible that this passage was understood literally by those who first wrote, heard, and read it. There was no reason for them to believe that things had happened otherwise. The question for the interpreter is whether the passage is intending to provide us with the literal history. An alternate possibility, even probability, is that the elements of the story of creation were already present in the culture, and that the author of Genesis pulled these elements together into the story. For some discussion of the purpose, see my essay Genesis Creation Stories.

    Bottom line: Don’t be forced into accepting any claim that a passage should be taken literally or figuratively.
    Ask for supporting evidence.

  • Katrina’s Lessons

    There’s a new essay on Philosoraptor dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Carol Roper makes some excellent points though she is somewhat harsher on the government than I was. What is clear is that we must find out specifically who is responsible, and hold them accountable. Saying the results are not acceptable, but all the people are great simply won’t work.

    Read Katrina’s Lessons on Philosoraptor.

  • Disaster Response

    I’ve been following the news about Hurricane Katrina quite closely, and have noticed a large number of stories about how bureaucracy–generally people from the same offices that were created to aid in case of disaster–has been slowing down the response.

    A good example of this is the CNN story Katrina medical help held up by red tape, that tells the story of a mobile hospital and medical personnel held up because they could not get permission to enter the disaster area.

    Now I’m certain that the various people in the offices that have failed to find a way to allow these folks to get where they need to be have excellent reasons. They may be concerned about danger, or they may be wanting to make sure the hospital gets to the place where it’s most needed. But while they deal with those very good reasons, help is delayed.

    I hope that we, as a nation, learn some important lessons from the fiasco of the response to hurricane Katrina. President Bush said that the results were not acceptable, but then he went on to praise all the people involved in producing those results. Somebody, probably many somebodies, must take the blame for the situation that resulted. If the results were not acceptable, then the system failed. When a system of this size fails, it means that people involved in it failed.

    Various officials have complained that they did not anticipate that the disaster would be as bad as it was. But people prior to the event were talking about a disaster of even greater proportions! And this is a predictable disaster. No, we don’t know precisely where a hurricane will make landfall far ahead, but we do know the general area, and we do have an excellent idea before it hit. In this case, the predictions were quite accurate. The likely results could be known before it hit.

    Yet our disaster response system failed.

    We need to learn to think outside the box in terms of disaster preparedness and response. We are preparing for the likelihood of another terrorist attack. A terrorist attack could be more destructive, though likely in a smaller area, than Katrina. But more importantly, a successful terrorist attack would be predictable. We would not know in advance when it would happen, or where, or what the results would be. Unlike during the time that Katrina was approaching the coast, we would not be able to start prepositioning supplies.

    What would our response be in that case?

    Let me suggest some things that may be out of the box, but may be necessary in case of another disaster:

    • Let rescue people enter the area before it’s perfectly safe.
      I know it’s standard wisdom to try not to lose rescue workers to the hazards of the disaster, but we may not have that luxury. There were and are people who are willing to risk their lives to help others. We should let them. The people in the area have no choice.
    • Start moving toward the area immediately.
      In a hurricane, the supplies and rescue vehicles can follow behind the folks with the chain saws. It won’t be organized, but it will be fast. Organize the next phase, but get something started.
    • Be willing to spend money on prevention.
      We should examine closely economies that were made in the budget for the New Orleans levee system. We should also look at our environmental policies. Some folks are saying that about 10 billion dollars might have been of substantial help in rebuilding the land area and wetlands in the Mississippi delta. If true, we’re definitely paying much more than that now!
    • Plan for worse scenarios.
      Apparently the worst scenario that Homeland Security had for a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast was category 3. Oops!
    • Look at ourselves to see if we really do care less for the poor–the folks who couldn’t get out of New Orleans.
    • Investigate thoroughly what went wrong, and implement the solutions.
      This can’t take another four or five years either. I’d be very surprised if we don’t have another natural disaster and terrorist attack both before that long. The government needs to change gears!
    • Be personally prepared to act.

    I’m not an expert on disaster, and I’m sure real experts could take me apart on some points, but those real experts had years to plan, and I think it is evident that they failed.

    It’s up to us, the voters, to force a change!

  • Has the Bible been Repeatedly Translated?

    I have repeatedly heard the claim that the Bible has been translated many times, and that as a result of this, one cannot be certain of what it says. This is used in two different ways. First, skeptics claim that one cannot rely on the Bible because such translation will introduce errors. Second, there are supporters of the scientific reliability of the Bible who will claim that if it is just translated correctly, then we will discover scientific accuracy. In this second view, most or even all claims of scientific inaccuracy are the result of translation errors.

    Let’s look at the basics of the process of translation, and the history of the Biblical text to see if these claims are justified. I’m largely interested in the second claim, which is often used in arguing in favor of creationism of one sort or another.

    Distinguishing Copying and Translation

    To someone who has studied the process of textual transmission and translation, this claim appears naive on the face of it, because it tends to combine two portions of the process into one. Very often the answers to it are equally naive. Before answering, we must define it more precisely.

    When an ancient text was written it was copied by hand, if at all. Copying by hand has a strong tendency to result in errors, and in fact in all cases in which we have a substantial number of copies of a single text, we find that there are significant errors in copying. We have no autographs (original manuscript as penned by the original author or his scribe) for any of the Biblical texts, and thus all copies we have will contain some errors.

    Christians respond to this reality by pointing out the very large number of manuscripts of all or part of the New Testament that are available. This does indicate that there is a strong likelihood that we have a fairly accurate representation of the text of the New Testament. But because we do not have the autographs, we cannot attain absolute certainty. I also need to digress here just a bit to touch on another argument that is frequently used in favor of Christianity, which is simply that the number of copies of the New Testament text in some way indicates that the contents of these texts are reliable. But one can have perfectly accurate copies of a totally false document. The number of copies indicates something about the popularity of the source text, but not about its accuracy.

    Both Orthodox and some conservative Jews will maintain that the texts of the Hebrew Bible were copied under tightly controlled conditions, with strict rules, and thus are to be absolutely trusted. This argument fails for two reasons. First, the texts in question were written well before there were rules for copying them. Any claim that places the Rabbinic rules for copying earlier than the 2nd century (and this may be optimistic) must be regarded as a faith claim, and not one supportable by objective evidence. I do not mean to disparage such a faith claim, but it clearly will not have impact on someone who does not share the same faith. At the least, documents of the Hebrew scriptures were likely copied over a period of centuries before such tight controls were created. Second, there is strong evidence based on the Dead Sea Scrolls combined with the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures) that indicate that there were substantial variations between different versions of the Hebrew text. These variations were comparable to those of Christian New Testament.

    Translation

    The second part of the issue is translation. If the Bible had been successively translated from one language into another, with each new translation made from a translation, rather than from the original languages, then indeed this complaint about the accuracy of the current text of the Bible would be justified. Certain translations of the Bible have been made in precisely that way. The Douai-Rheims version long used by Catholics was a translation of the Latin Vulgate, which was a translation from the original languages.

    Most modern versions, however, are made from texts in the original languages. Note the difference here: I did not say original texts, I said texts in the original languages. This is an important distinction. It is quite possible that errors have been introduced in copying, and indeed we have good evidence that such errors have been introduced. Textual criticism is to some extent an art, but it has many scienfic aspects, and it allows us to examine the texts and provide the most probable readings, but it also can show us that there have been a substantial number of errors in copying.

    So how accurate is translation? Any translation introduces some inaccuracies. Words in different languages have different semantic ranges, and thus the translation can, and indeed will, introduce ambiguity. There will also be some difference in the understanding of even a modern person who reads the source languages. I read Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, but my context cannot be identical to that of an ancient person who was writing the text. I can easily misunderstand their intent, because an overwhelming portion of my life differs radically from theirs.

    Coming to the Point

    In graduate school I started to study other ancient near eastern cultures. I took courses in Ugaritic (a predessor of Phoenecian), Akkadian (Babylonian/Assyrian), and Middle Egyptian. A number of things about the literature of the Bible, especially as it relates to creation stories, became much clearer to me when I did so. It became clear to me that one could explain all of the Biblical references to facts about the physical universe in terms that related to the ancient near eastern cosmology.

    And this is my point. Irrespective of what possible errors in copying and translation one may assume happened to the text, they need to be corrected using the best evidence possible, and not based on the assumption that they must be in accord with modern scientific understandings. Under normal conditions, we assume that a person uses a word in a way that relates to their own context, their own world, as they understand it. If the Biblical references can be understood in the same way, there is no reason to try to force them to mean something else.

    For example if we have waters above the heavens, and waters below, that makes excellent sense under a system in which the earth is round and flat (like a dinner plate) and the heavens are above it as a dome, with some of the waters held above. Since all the symbols and statements make good sense within that cosmology, why should one try to force the meanings of individual words to fit a modern scientific understanding?

    The fact that the Bible can be understood fully within the context of its own world makes it totally unnecessary to find modern scientific explanations. The Bible is a prescientific document, and their is no need to try to force any other sort of meaning on it through claims of translation errors or copyist errors. Both of those varieties of errors do, in fact, exist, but they are not likely to help make the Bible into a scientific document.

    For more information on Bible translations, try my book What’s in a Version?, and my page Translation FAQ.

    For more information on Biblical criticism, see What is Biblical Criticism?.

  • Welcome!

    Welcome to Threads from Henry’s Web.

    I am starting this blog to replace the series of essays that I have been posting on my web site. The blog format brings me kicking and sceaming into the 21st centry. All kicking and screaming aside, it will allow me to create new essays more easily, and also to make more entries that point the way to some of my other activities on the web and various news stories of interest.

    See the links section to the right of your screen for the index to the old “Threads” entries.

    Blog entries will work together with my other posting and will include the opinion essays, lectionary comments, and other new material on Bible study and moderate Christianity.

    Comments are always welcome!

  • 2nd Sunday of Easter, 2005

    Second Sunday of Easter

    April 3, 2005

    I didn’t manage to restart these notes before Lent as I had planned and stated on the web page, but they are restarted now. I am no longer including my working translation so I can focus more on the interpretive process. Where I have worked such translations over enough, they will be found on my Totally Free Bible Version page, a project to work on Bible translation in public with input from anybody and everybody and the result free to anybody. Whether there is an entry there or not, I will include a link to a translation of the passage on the Bible Gateway, normally from the Contemporary English Version (CEV). I apologize for the long break in posting these notes, and hope the new style will be helpful.

    At the bottom of the page is a form for posting response notes. This will allow readers to add their own comments and thoughts.

    (more…)