Thursday 26 November 2009

Why did God choose text?

Given that TEXT is a highly unreliable and corruptible medium of communication, why did god decide to use TEXT as the primary means of conveying his message?

(He did not? He's chosen verbal means and man chose to scribble it down? Not quite; he commanded Moses to write it down, see here or here. And if he did not command any note taking (in Christianity or Islam), how else was man supposed to keep the communication for future generations? By oral tradition? They work real bad - they get distorted much quicker than text. We'd have as many versions of oral tradition as there are Bible interpretations today. If someone tells you and only you something crucial, you write it down. Effectively, god chose text.)

Problems with text:
1. It ages. Scribes have to (or had to) copy it over and over while making mistakes. (There are almost no two same hand-written Bibles in existence.) This corrupts the text.

2. Text implies language. Languages change (nobody speaks ancient Hebrew), meanings change. Requires translations into other languages which sometimes necessarily alters meaning.

3. Text is always ambiguous to some degree. Scientific papers are very good at not being ambiguous. (Any scientific paper which would allow for such a varied interpretation as the Bible does would be considered of unsatisfactory quality.)

4. Requires people to DECIDE which text is true.

5. Requires people to DECIDE which interpretation of the text is true or correct.

As a result of 4. people who believe in god do not agree on the correct text. As a result of 5. people who believe in particular text do not agree on the correct meaning.

Now, considering the immense possibilities god has, why not pick a better medium? Text is unreliable, corruptible and a text that allows for such a varied interpretation as the Bible does is useless.

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