Sunday 21 February 2016

Scripture and Hadith

It's all in the interpretation.
As in most things we interpret what we hear and what we see by modifying things to fit our own interpretation. And so you have interpretation piled on interpretation such that the original preposition is lost.

 The Bible and the Koran are scripture or revelations which are handed down through the spoken word and then interpreted by scholars who define meaning through their own perception of what was meant. Any telling of a story gains embellishment by the teller, who's understanding of what he has heard or read is influenced by the persons background and education. Education can get in the way of any 'homily' by reading too much into the message and intellectually contriving issues that were not present when the story first broke.
The Koran like the Bible seems to be both clear and controversial, depending on who, or in which context it is being quoted. Deep hostility is generated by a set of wrong headed presumptions which we often bring to anything which has a component of 'faith based interpretation' in it.
To the non believer even the starting point is wrong and creates a 'disconnect' between the value of what is said or written. If there is a 'truth' revealed in scripture, perhaps, as non believers we should rejoice that some sort of definitive value has been reached, no matter how circuitous the human connection by which it arrives
One of the issues a non-believer has with organised religion is the pressure put on the human being to accept or be damned.
In some ways it seems almost fascist to preach in such a totalitarian way, demanding absolute subservience to an idea ! The 'truth' of that idea is after all obscured until after death when no one can confirm or deny whether God exists but we, on this side of the great divide,are left  firmly with Hobson's choice, heavily weighted by its prescription.
In both the Koran and the Bible there are contradictions which scholars tussle over as to the meaning and the intent. Given that at the time they were handed down as "Gods word" and only a tiny number of people were literate, the stories must have seemed like a lectures in pure magic !!

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