Sunday, October 04, 2009

I'm turning my bible, like all my books, into an altered book








I'm drawing like mad in my Bible, which shouldn't surprise my friends. The bottom drawing is a favorite, Yahweh walking on the vault of heaven. Remember, the ancients, up through the early renaissance, believed that the earth was part of a physical reality that was within reach, that one place was reasonable placed near another - in many ways just the opposite of today's assortment of facts: we live on a rock covered with a thin atmosphere suspendend in space orbiting a sun incredibly distant from the stars, which are not intelligent celestial bodies but fussion reactions blazing away with immense gravitationally induced heat amid a cold, empty space. No gardens of the hesperdies, arcadia, golden lighted dances among the spheres, musically playing above the orbit of the moon. Even young earthers can't deny the facticity of where the earth is and how it's situation is uterly descrepent with the observation of scripture. Scripture's observation is all right with me, just like the Illiad's observation is - I'm not expecting scientific verification in ancient texts; I expect these texts to reflect the milleu they were written in. They operated with the best knowledge they had, which was direct observation. If anything, this shows the flaws in direct observation. The Holy Spirit could have been sending a zillion volts of knowledge into the minds of the yahwest and priestly source, and they would have still operated on the ancient paradigm - it's the way they had been wired through their experience and the absorbtion of common knowledge.
I still like the image though. Much like CS Lewis in his Discarded Image: God tromping around on the vault of heaven like an old man in the attic looking for some old photos; and how wonderful to think that the stars were celestial bodies filled with conscousness and intelligence, as we are but immortal and all knowing, influencing us with their various powers according to the time of our birth and time of day; that there needs be no Progress, because all is made perfectly right and decreed as such by the immutable decree of God, the unmoved mover who moves as he is beloved. It's nice to think that, but it doesn't reflect the facts. And so scripture doesn't reflect facts, as such, but retains an inerrancy, a very small 'i' inerrancy, as it exists in light of the life of Christ as revealed in our minds and sealed on our hearts by the holy spirit.
I'm having a great deal of fun with the song of solomon.


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