All that really needs to happen now is for a group of Crusoe fundamentalists to arise, and insist on living on desert islands with pre-literate companions…
…the novels of Tom Robbins, for example, have been at least as rewarding as my Bible fixation
Wilkie Collins’ 1868 novel, The Moonstone
When I first read The Moonstone
So an interesting question is posed; can humans make a book scripture simply by treating it as such? And have we done so with the books generally acknowledged to be inspired, such as the Koran or the Bible?
The example of scripture that seized my mind was the Bible, and during the several years I struggled to weaken its hold on me I was eventually forced to conclude that yes, I was making scripture of a fairly ordinary set of documents, mainly by approaching them with exuberantly circular reasoning. Since I began with the assumption that the Bible was inspired, I further assumed that all its many logical flaws, inconsistencies, and historical and scientific errors were resolvable. And when, by dint of religiously fervent research and mental restructuring I was able to resolve flaws, I viewed my inventive resolutions as yet more proof that the Bible was inspired.
But here’s the thing: a similarly reverent approach to just about any sufficiently complex book will yield similar results. My own experiments with the novels of Tom Robbins, for example, have been at least as rewarding as my Bible fixation. Whether a similar approach would work with the books of Harold or Anthony Robbins is an experiment I’ll leave to readers.
This probably sounds like I’m attacking religion, again, but in fact I have no beef with those who look to holy writ for spiritual guidance, and will even concede that the world’s various bibles are inspired. But all art is inspired. And to blindly insist on the primacy of some books over others, without acknowledging the role that humans play in the creation of sanctity, is the opposite of enlightenment.
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Angus,
We got to talk sometime. You have great insights into the nature of inspiration, but there are times that I wonder whether you have let your time in Christian fundamentalism color your entire view on the range of Christian faith. From my own standpoint, I will freely admit all the many logical flaws, inconsistencies, and historical and scientific errors. Those in the Christian faith that try to make those work have seriously deluded themselves and live in a la-la-land that I am quite frankly ashamed of. The problem is this: They missed the point. It was never meant for logic, history, or science. It was meant to give insight into faith, into the spiritual meaning within life, a meaning that Christians find revealed in the life of Jesus. We call this group of writings canonical, because we say that this gives the best insight (albeit through horribly human writers and human lives) into what the Christian faith is all about. Those that try to make it speak to history or science need to get a life – or at least a brain.
We can talk anytime David, just email me on Facebook or thru this site for my cell number. I suspect we aren’t as far apart as it might seem from what I’ve published so far. My feelings about Christ, Christianity and the Bible are complicated, and I keep coming back to Crowley’s glib quote: “I don’t blame the man for the religion foisted upon him after his death.” I do take issue with most of Paul’s influence, and religious bureaucracy strikes me as nearly always pernicious, but there are plenty of individuals who seem to get at core spirituality via the Christian apparatus. And of course there are passages of great beauty in the Bible, and even in Paul’s letters. Everything is holographic and we must, at all times, preserve ironic distance.
cheers,
Angus
Angus,
I’ve left a couple comments on your blog. This may seem a bit off topic, but since I suspect much of the Bible is fiction, I would recommend a book to you. “Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend” by Christopher Moore.
It is both wickedly funny and perversely profound.
By wickedly funny I mean laugh out loud page by page funny.. And by perversely profound, I mean even though this is a work of fiction, I think it may be closer to the truth than the events recorded in the Bible.
I haven’t read any of your books, but from what I’ve read in my short time at your blog, I suspect you will really enjoy this…
Bryan
May He protect us all.
May He nourish us all.
May we work together with great energy.
May our study be thorough and fruitful.
May we always be friends.
—Upanishads
Thanks Bryan. I haven’t read Lamb, but it’s been recommended to me several times and I’ll be getting to it. I do have a Christopher Moore story though; when his first book, Practical Demonkeeping, came out I was working in Cambria, California. This is where Practical Demonkeeping was set (thinly disguised) and settings and people in the book were easily recognizable—Christopher didn’t have a lot of friends in town after that.
cheers,
Angus
I suppose calling the Bible a work of fiction was a bit strong. I do however, consider it full of mythology, in the way that Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts view mythology. Jesus as mythology is probably enough for another essay of its own.
There are those missing years of Jesus in the Christian Bible from when he was about 10 to his return shortly before he was ‘hung out to dry’. That is what the majority of Moore’s fictionalized novel recounts. So it is in that spirit that I said it may be closer to the truth.
There are some documented accounts (which you may or may not believe) that support Jesus didn’t spend those missing years just ‘growing in stature’, but travelling to India, China and Tibet. And who’s to argue that he didn’t travel with his best friend Biff…
I thnk it would make a great movie.
Actually, the Catholics have a way of approaching the Bible that avoids your circularity: The Bible, as a historical, human document, establishes the claims of the (Catholic) Church to be the community that Jesus Christ founded. The authority of the Church, not only from the Bible, but also from the remembered and lived Tradition of that community of faith, that Christ is God, that he intended to found and keep the Church faithful by giving the Holy Spirit, making the Church under the Pope and Bishops infallible. That Church, the only one with all the notes or marks of the Church of Christ (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic) is the Catholic Church, is also the one that established the canon of the Bible, deciding definitively what is included and what is not, among inspired writings. Because of that, we can then trust that Church to definitively interpret the scriptures.
And, further, that Church has come to realize that, much as we might like to believe in totally inerrant Scriptures, we simply cannot. It was not written or intended to be a science text, or a modern, carefully researched history. It is a history, in the Classical sense, of God’s involvement with a people, showing them how to live.
So, we say, it is not inspires simply because we treat it as such; rather it is inspired because God intended it that way, and we recognized these writings as the ones that best told our experience of God.