Thank you so much for your thorough reponse, Leolaia. It is thought provoking and highlights the unlikelyhood that a creator would rely exclusively on text to communicate with a human being.
As you so well point out there have been no "original" texts ever found. And the writings that we have now have seen many interested parties handling their transmission--who frequently have disagreed violently with portions they imagined were vital to the text's meaning.
Our faith gatherings squabble about translations and the other problems that you know better than I, but in groups I've been around we have never looked at the most primitive example of writing that we have found that is connected with the Bible. You may remember two month ago you commented on the thread showing a recently excavated potsherd found from the time of King David. Its expressions were obviously crude. But I was thrilled that these reveal that basic information was being conveyed outside of temples and public monuments. It was sort of religious, kind of a social document.
I took a picture of the potsherd to my last meeting with the elders--not that any of us could read the words--but because it seems patently ridiculous that any religious group should dictate to others the "fine points" of doctrine that live invisibly between the such crude pictographic expressions.
It seems that the writing form lacked the means to produce an effect clinically correct. It was unofficially translated by one scholar, giving the effect of Japanese Haiku; concrete images that elicit feelings more than vivid legal discriptions. I told the elders it seems ridiculous that we should permit anyone to prescribe the fine points of teaching that have broken people on the rack or caused JWs to be disfellowshipped.
Of course not all the present Bible is in this ancient paleo-hebrew or whatever it's called. As I understand it, if there ever were any original texts from which the OT was derived the aleph-bet changed and writing itself became more sophisticated. Buteven if it got easier to put across more complex concepts, the transmission of thoughts is still difficult.
When I examined, for instance, the development of the Trinity doctrine I became aware of the real hazard of going "beyond the things written" in terms of laying the gavel down on new doctrines and laws. In going beyond naming the dynamic of Father, Son and Holy Ghost a godhead called "Trinity", I saw theologians got tangled up in fine-tuning this controversial teaching. When tried to get into the mechanics there was a pitched battle over through whom the Holy Spirit arrived---From the Father and THROUGH the Son or--- through the Father AND the Son.The church split over this filioque issue, I believe? And who ever would have heard of it and fought about it! Religious leaders have a real nerve telling individuals what is the truth about God. Then punishing us afterward if we're too slow on the uptake.
At any rate, your information and comments makes the idea of buying doctrine wholesale from anyone seem a fool's errand. Conversation and discussion, yes. But the song"Faith of Our Fathers" seem like an anthem to a dark fantasy. We each have to answer---not to our fathers--- but to God. And looking back over my own experience with religion--even beyond that of the JWs, I think I am going to approach God with my own questions. Maybe he'll answer and maybe he won't, but I won't look for definitive answers from anyone else.
Thanks again for being so generous with you time. Maeve
