Quote from stu:
But just what were the writers of the Bible attempting to convey, if the meaning was intended to be so variable and inconsistent?
in my opinion, if i may respectfuly suggest, that's where your thinking goes astray. assuming there is supposed to be some obvious, consistent message from disparate writers scatttered across continents and millenia is about the same as going to home depot, buying hammer, and assuming the CEO of Stanley wants you to build a house with it.
Talmud - basically a record of Jewish arguments over scripture - at one point refers to Tanakh - what c'ians call the "old testament" - as being a collection of stories for women, children and the feeble-minded. yet we preserve it - because the value isn't in the writing, it is in the reading and deconstructing.
scripture isn't going to give you the answers - but you shouldn't expect it to because it was never meant to.
Israel -> "to struggle with G-d".
abraham is important not because he was the "first" monotheist - but because he challenged G-d. because he was the first to demand from G-d a covenant as tought as the one people believed G-d demanded of them. if you want to get ultra-allegorical about it, abraham is important because he is the first to create a god in his own image rather than assume he is a reflection of a godly image.
struggle.
argue.
challenge.
create.
life is not static. anything static -> dies.
beliefs should not be static.
consistency -> staticism.
let go of the idea that scripture is meant to tell you "something" and look at it as a tool to initiate a never-ending process. that there is more than one path is a fundamental tenet of judaism.
