Opus 2026-369: Options to Figurative

Maybe we are asking the wrong question.  Maybe we should not be asking whether something in scripture is literal or figurative.  Maybe the option should be interpretive rather than figurative or literal.

At the core of the issue is the fact that everyone wants to make these judgements on their own and those judgements are usually rooted in the traditions that we are rooted in.  It would really be nice if the Greek and Hebrew had some part of their grammar that registered a scale of one to ten from totaly literal to pure word picture.

I have been reading in Isaiah and I must say that it is almost impossible to make any sense out of all the word pictures.  I can’t imagine being a Hebrew scholar and trying to put it all together.  What I find even harder to accept is the different solutions that people want to declare as settled.  The more I read the less I am willing to accept the eschatology of anyone.

Leviticus 26 also comes to mind.  I had my eschatological friend read me the entire chapter twice in one discussion.  This kind of thing is not only useless but insulting.  I can summarize the first 13 verses in a sentence and the rest of the chapter in another.  In the process I would lose none of the intended meaning.  These kind of people would also read the entire census of the warriors of the twelve tribes and consider it a mark of spiritual maturity.

In some things I would prefer to be immature. 

homo unius libri