Puritanical Victorianimosity October 28, 2009
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Church Leadership, Core Values, Critical Thinking, The Bible.Tags: Biblical interpretation, Values
7 comments
It always amazes me when fairly modern interpretations of scripture are represented as “traditional” or “ancient.” Most moralizing uses of scripture are as recent as the Victorian era (1837~1901), and many date back to the Puritan era (1550s~1660s) but almost none have anything to do with their original meaning. Most of our Hebrew and Christian scriptures had a practical, ethical, provisional, or regulatory function — the moral and valuative aspects have been layered on over the past 500 years using a modern, Western, educated, materialistic, and privileged-class spatula. Most writers of our holy scriptures would hardly recognize many of the meanings we draw from their writings today.
