Welcome Friends.
These are outlines of the talks that can be found on multiple podcast platforms, including, Spotify, Google Podcasts, I-tunes Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Podbean.
I. Why this podcast?
A. The world needs to come together. What can bring us together? Search for Wisdom!
B.The Source of wisdom is in our past. Humanity's greatest book of wisdom is the Bible. 1.6 billion people worldwide read the Bible. It is what shaped our institutions, our notions of Right and Wrong, Beauty, and Ugliness. It is at the core of our human identity.
C.The Bible has in it much that is good, and wise, and beautiful.
II. It is fashionable now to claim that we had moved past the Bible, that it is misogynist, oppressive, and filled with violence, the cause of greatest inhumanity that man had shown to man. Yet, the greatest pains brought by men to their brothers were in the 20th century, the time of abandonment of religion and growing Biblical illiteracy, when, as Nietzsche said, "God is dead". On the contrary, the Bible contains great spiritual gifts, profound wisdom, and the keys to human fulfillment.
III. The World is more fractured than ever.
A. As we get to know one another, we are sometimes repelled by what we see, disgusted by what we encounter - all well-known psychological mechanisms. Sometimes we elevate the differences, sometimes we rail and at them or downplay them.
B.The Bible is a common heritage of humanity and it has the power to unite us.
C.Yet, much of what we understand when we read it is peculiar and bound by our individual backgrounds, and we divide on what it teaches: by the traditions of interpretation, by faith, by cultural backgrounds, by past histories. How can this be overcome so we come together?
D. Examples of interpretive traditions:
Jewish
Christian
Modern Academic
Halachic - the place of the Law
The role of the original language rather than translation
Allegorical
E. Finding common ground by focusing on what it tells, not what it says
1) The Scripture invites us to interpret it from inside by using a variety of techniques
2) it leaves lacunae by leaving out crucial details and using a variety of techniques, such as presenting apparently contradictory information, varying expressions, planting grammatical and stylistic inaccuracies, using specific words and not other words or terms, split-screen presentations, changing villains and heroes midway, and many others.
3) This forces us to reconcile, reconstruct, and we become co-authors of the evolving tale. Through the power of subliminal suggestion, through setting the stage with certain assumptions and then enrolling us in completing the story, we accept those assumptions and become convinced without being preached to or didactically taught.
4) If we understand the techniques and modes of presentation, we can bring out the teachings and what is being told from the subliminal to the level of the mind and clearly understand it. You need not even be a believer to participate in this process, just to have respect for the greatest book ever written and trust in its wisdom, subtlety, and skill.
5) Much of this approach is based on Eric Auerbach's seminal first chapter of Mimesis and a number of newly emerging schools of interpretation.
“Books are not made to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
― The Name of the Rose
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