w4tvq raises a nice point in distinguishing between religion and spirituality (in fact, he’s written a book on the subject, about which please
click here – and while I’m on the subject of who’s written what, another Open Forum member, windabove, is a poet who has submitted some of his work to TZF’s
Open Space; and there's some of ihavesayso's prose
here).
As I have previously noted, I am currently taking a university course about the Tanakh (the Jewish bible, which is more or less the same as the Christian Old Testament), and w4tvq’s comment brought to mind the following paragraph from one of
the course textbooks (which I am told is a classic in this field):
“To regard (scripture) as sacred is reasonable, but its sanctity ought to be impressed on us by study, rather than assumed beforehand. Too easily the vocabulary of religion -- words like righteousness and sin – tend to become mere slogans, devoid of meaning. To call the biblical writings Sacred Scripture is to put over them a curtain which can conceal their form and meaning. Such unthinking attribution of sanctity compounds the obscurity of the (writing). Any ancient library is hard to read and understand. Because the contents of biblical life and thought are already blurred through antiquity and distance, an unconsidered attitude that the writings are “sacred” can move the onlooker even beyond haziness into blindness itself.”
And speaking of scripture, here’s something interesting that I learned in class last week concerning the incident in the first chapter of Matthew, where an angel appears to Joseph, and tells him that the child which Mary is carrying was fathered by the Holy Spirit. The text (in the Revised Standard Version) continues, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son”. The reference to “the prophet” is Isaiah 7:14.
Clear enough, right? Except. It seems that the author of Matthew drew that line (“Behold, a virgin …”) from a version of Isaiah that had been translated into Greek from the original Hebrew. But in the original Hebrew, there is no reference to “a virgin”; in the original Hebrew, the reference is to “a young woman”.
What is particularly interesting about this for me is 1) if the foregoing is correct, one of the fundamental pillars of the Christian
religion (the virgin birth) may be based on a glitch in translation, but 2) my own sense of the spiritual process suggests that the “virgin birth” metaphor makes a lot of sense when applied to the “re-birth” that all seekers must go through and which virtually all spiritual traditions speak of in one way or another. That is, it is “the Holy Spirit” (however considered) that awakens a seeker from within and ultimately enables Self-Realization (however considered). Which raises the question: Did the translator make a mistake, or is the reference to "virgin birth" an intentional metaphor for what the translator had come himself to believe, experience, witness? (I say
himself because chances are, at that time in that culture, that he was a he.)
I am also reading
Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a charming and interesting book about punctuation (Yea, I know, how could I possibly find a book about punctuation either charming or interesting, much less both!), wherein is noted that some of the ancient biblical languages had no punctuation. Now, that bit of trivia may seem inconsequential, except that a comma here and a comma there can make a lot of difference, and over the centuries has apparently been the cause of much spilled ink and blood. Consider this example from Luke 23:43:
Protestant bibles read, “Verily, I say unto thee, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise”.
Roman Catholic bibles read, “Verily I say unto thee this day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise”.
In the first, Jesus promises the fellow who was crucified beside him that he will be in Paradise “this day” (today). In the second, the fellow is promised Paradise, but not told just when, which allows for the Roman Catholic concept of Purgatory.
Here are a couple of other examples where again the placement of punctuation by translators and editors, not by the original scribes, makes a difference:
“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord” and “The voice of him that crieth: In the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord”.
“Comfort ye my people” and “Comfort ye, my people”.
All of which reminds me of a tired old joke:
There were two priests representing two different religions who argued incessantly over whose religion was the better. Finally, one of them suggested to the other that the time had come for them to make peace. “After all,” he said, “when you come down to it, our differences are few. Virtually all of our beliefs and practices are really very similar.”
“That’s true,” the other agreed. “What’s more, we celebrate the same holy days, and we both read from the same scripture.”
“Exactly,” the first confirmed. “And most importantly, we both worship the same God.”
“Quite right,” the other concluded. “We do worship the very same God … You in your way, and I in His.”
Postscript, a few days later: We just watched
A Love Divided, a true story set in Ireland in 1957 in which a happily married couple and their quiet village are torn apart by religion (not spirituality, religion). In the end, love prevails (more or less), but it's hard to believe that this stuff is still going on in an otherwise apparently civilized country. Has mankind learned nothing?
In the timeless words of Sonny and Cher, "And the beat goes on".
Now I know less and less, and find I am annoyed by what remains to still clutter it up! Odd, how we accumulate, and then find, to our consternation, that it obstructs, rather than clarifies. I suppose that is one reason that babies are so endearing - they know virtually nothing, but they just grin and coo!