THE SEMANTICS OF BIBLICAL PROPHET LAND. or, Who said: "Bible Words are only Literal?" By Morrison Lee When I use a word,” said Humpty-Dumpty in a rather scornful tone, “It means just what I want it to mean – neither more nor less.” In this brief article I’d like to consider the claim that “the bible must be taken literally and only literally.” I’d like to begin with a parallel with Alice in Wonderland. It began when a seven year old girl peered at the mirror. At and Into. When Alice peered at her looking glass she only saw herself, however when Alice stepped into the looking glass, she entered another world that ran completely counter to her natural understanding, a 'non-logical' world of which she had no experience. It was a world of: bodiless smiling cats, where hookah-smoking blue caterpillars asked terse questions and feisty Dumpty eggs sat on walls, where rabbits checked pocket watches, crazy hatters drank tea at parties, people shrank and grew at will and playing cards played croquet - a magical wonder-world of logical-nonsense from the amazing imagination of Lewis Carroll, (Charles Dodgson) an Oxford Professor of Logic and Mathematics. The journey began when she stepped into the looking glass. The Rules of the Language Game. The philosophers of language tell us that each language has its own rules, ie. one cannot play another person’s language-game by applying rules from ones own language – like you can’t play cricket according to chess rules, soccer by the laws of tennis, nor cricket in a swimming pool. We must play on biblical ground. Making the rule that everything in the bible is literal-to-oneself is similar. It only allows us see ourself in the mirror. The problem of biblical literalism is it exchanges the camel-hide sandals for the modern reader’s tasseled, patent-leather loafers. It is for us modern readers to remove our shoes when we tread the Holy Ground of the inspired biblical prophets. We must abide by prophetic laws when we enter prophet Land. Counter Intuitive. The world of the biblical prophets is non-literal because it does not conform to our modern literal intuitions of how things should operate - we call this counter-intuitive. In the ordinary world our intuition informs us of what is ‘normal’ for words and ideas: we grow up with our rules for understanding patterns of meanings. Sure we can read heaps of bible history and make sense of it, but then there are those crazy poetic and prophetic books (like Revelation) that just don’t seem to fit the rule; they seem to run counter to the way we see things. Prophet Land is very much like the upside-down Wonderland of Alice. Here is the literalists' problem. It is a nightmare because the literalist measures ancient, Middle Eastern experience (couched in ancient Hebrew idiom) by their own modern, Western experience, which only accepts things known to them by their own experience. Are biblical meanings only literal-to-us? Let’s take a quick excursion around the imaginative world of Prophet Land. Meanings Not Literal. In old Prophet Land male ideas ruled. Here men can be worms, creatures can be people, and people can be fences, gates and walls. It is an ancient world with only six kinds of wheels, where clouds can be chariots, and above the clouds there is a garden. This ancient world foretold a super-highway from Egypt to Iran before there were any cars. In Prophet Land kings can be; trees, arms, kings as dust, foxes, and kings as craniums. Here the dead speak, skeletons walk around, and an entire nation is born in a one day. The prophetic world is a world without night, where men are bodiless and suckling babies teach wisdom before they can talk, while people are born in middle-age with circumcised ears. In Prophet Land a sea can be twelve things; a city of many languages, life, evil, a judgment, the enemy, death, trials, a basin, the sky, wicked men, the coming of Jesus, or a river, but 'the bible sea' cannot an ocean, but men who never go to sea can be islands Laws of physics not followed. The ancient world of Prophet Land cares not a jot for the laws of modern science. Here the literal laws of physics don't apply, and wheels within each other move in four directions without turning as they move, and in a time before air travel, people crossed rivers and walked on water without getting their feet wet, and one unschooled whale acted as a taxi to take a petulant prophet to where he didn't want to go. It is a land where the faithful defy gravity, rise weightless into the air, sit on clouds, and walk on water as easily as a stone path, and meat exists that cannot be eaten, where water flows but not from springs, and cedar trees grow tall without water, and in the sky heavenly constellations are tied together not by gravity, but by chains and cords that must be light years in length. Nature breaks natural patterns. In the Hebrew prophets the literal rules of maternity are suspended, and instead of babies, women give birth to dust, while lambs sleep blissfully beside their instinctive predator the lion, animals break the laws of speech and speak and teach, and instead of one head and a horn or two, beasts may have seven heads and ten horns! You won't find a strange beast like wandering around outside of a book! Men as Vegetation. In Prophet Land men are spoken of as vegetation: men as grass, men as branches, vines, men as trees, cedars, thorns and thistles, men as fields of wheat, men as corn, chaff, men as tares and seeds. Here in Prophet Land it is well acceptable for a man to become fruit, but he is well advised never to become a leaf. Men as birds and Insects. In Prophet Land men are spoken of as birds both flying and non-flying: men as doves and men as ostriches without understanding, men as owls, and men as pelicans as well as carrion-feeding eagles and vultures. In this world ants and fish and beasts put on the instructional robes of teachers to lecture humans, and men travel around like clouds of locusts. Terrestrial terms - Animate & inanimate. On the earth in Prophet Land men change their nature. The become animals and brute beasts - men as dogs, men as foxes, men as goats, men as lambs, men as lions, men as brute beasts, men as cattle and as vipers. In this wonderland of the imagination men are of the earth: men are high mountains, men as hills, men as valleys, men as stones, men as dust of the earth, as clods of earth, and men as pits. Here men are spoken of as; walls, fences, men as doors, towers, men and nations as ships, nations as women, and cities as plates. Aquatic terms. In Prophet Land angry men are violent and restless as wild waves of the sea driven into foaming crests by wilder winds, while others lie unseen and as destructive as hidden reefs, men as whales. Unfortunate are those fish caught in an evil net, and a poor spirit indeed is a spring without water. Celestial terms. The inhabitants of prophet Land are spoken of as beings above the earth: good men as predictable and reliable, as bright and stable as fixed stars in the firmament, while unreliable men are as empty clouds, the wicked fall out of favor as falling stars, and fall down from the heavens to the dust of the earth. Here unstable men wander as planets detached from the ordained paths of moral cause and effect, and empty men fill their belly with the East wind. Always and Only Literal? Modern literalism makes a rule that only concrete and literal terms are biblical, and yet the scholarly literature of Literalism cannot supply us with a uniformly-literal semantic base for biblical terms, and after 2000 years has not mapped nor even fully investigated the great diversity of non-literal language in the Hebrew prophets. For over two millenia a must-be-literal-and-therefore yet-future perspective of endtimes has denied -like terra incognita - that Prophet Land exists at all. Literalism's problem is that it limits biblical meanings to a single literal one, denying legitimate biblical meanings. This prevents further investigation into an ancient and highly imaginative Eastern civilization that is as far removed from us as wooden wheels are from steel roller bearings, with words as different in operation and complexity as arrows are from ballistic missiles. The cry 'Literal meaning only' demands conformity without biblical authority. Rather biblical usage gives biblical meanings, which then possess biblical authority. Where is the authority for a 100% concrete language? To my knowledge no language is all concrete without any figurative usage. It is literalism that impedes semantic research into the bible by limiting a range of biblical options. Conversely Rational Preterism is a past view that begins from induction to discover biblical use and determine biblical meaning: it measures the logical relations between literal claims and the logical relations that exist within the world of the Hebrew prophets. The above is a small sample of what happens when you step into the looking glass of the bible, when we remove our modern patent-leathers and walk in the rough, stringy, camel-hide sandals of the prophets. Each of the above examples has a book-chapter-verse correspondence in holy scripture. Prophet Land is either a semanticist’s playground or a literalist's worst nightmare. The Problem of endtime language. The present futurist paradigm is 2000 years old, yet it; . cannot unify the field, . cannot even agree on a method of agreement . cannot adequately account for figurative language, . cannot explain the failure of first century end-of-age promises . written in a first century book . addressed to a first century generation. Matt 23:36. 24:35; Lk 21:22; 28; 32. "All these things shall come upon this generation." Jesus. Futurism denies this. The Marriage of Literalism to Futurism. The blame for the problem does not lie with Futurism but Literalism. Futurism is only an accomplice to the train of circular reasoning that begins: Step #1. "Biblical words are always literal." Step #2. "We can't literally explain C.1st facts in the C.1st." This 'minor irritation' is solved enlisting the help of a special rule; Step #3. Invent Futurism. "Its gotta be future." Step #4. Why is it future??? (See Step #1. "Because its literal.") Observe this cycle of reasoning does not depend on any bible fact. It is simply cyclical. The circular reasoning of literalism. A closer look at this cycle reveals; Step #1 Literal; is an assumption, Step #2 It can't be explained is the absence of explanatory power. Step #3 is a deduction, a special, 'necessary' rule - like the epicycles and deferents of the old astronomy invented to explain an embarrassing lack of time facts. In rational thought there are two requirements for good theories; it explain the facts and simplicity. 1. An explanation must cover all the facts - but here literalism cannot explain all Jesus' first century time facts in the first century 2. The simplest explanation is always preferred - but here reasons, not facts are invented - futurist theory of 2000+ years that actually contradicts the first century time facts. The reason for theories. Theories are proposed to explain facts. Where there are no facts to explain no theory is necessary. A theory that has no facts to explain has no reason to exist. A theory that is suggested by no fact, answers no fact, and contradicts plain observable facts, can only be ignored. Another problem is that when a theory with no observable facts, (literalism) has to marry itself to another theory (futurism) with even less explanatory power than itself, then it is doomed to failure. In the History of Science, the invention of non-observable, non factual inventions, "special" rules - eg. phlogiston, spontaneous generation, the aether, epicycle, equants and deferents- are fatal to theories. Stanley Beck in The Simplicity of Science says simply but poignantly: "When theories do not fit facts, then theories, not facts, must be changed." The marriage of non-factual Literalism to a non-factual Futurism, is not a marriage made in heaven. They are both man-made doctrines. Conclusion Literalism claims dogmatically that biblical language is only literal and concrete. Preterism argues that biblical language contains biblical figures with biblical meanings demonstrated by biblical use, for ( as Isaac Newton says) "No more [bible] meanings are to be allowed than what the [bible] facts allow." (Theological MSS. On the Language of the Prophets.) It is claimed here that ancient Prophet Land actually exists, and it consists of counter-intuitive non-literal uses. The rigid logic of literalism commits Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concretism. The problem of the bible is that of a modern mind wrestling with an ancient book. Literalism, like Columbus' detractors who denied East can be reached by sailing West, and those who asserted the earth is still and the Sun really does go around us, and that space is curved, is too dogmatic. If the book of nature can sometimes (and often) defeat our concrete and literal notions, perhaps we might apply the same lesson of candor to the book of Revelation. It is for us to suspend our judgment until we have enquired of the ancient prophets first, through a patient inductive study of biblical terms. A first century bible cannot to be read in the same manner as a twenty-first century newspaper: 'only literally and concretely.' Paragraph.
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Author: Morrison Lee
Born in Australia, he has a background in Communications, Asian Studies, Theology, and Philosophy. From 1995-2001 Advocate and Counselor for PhD students at the University of Southern Queensland. Teacher in South Korea, currently writing on Biblical Semantics, Critical thinking, Psychology & Sherlock Holmes. Archives
May 2019
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