Ye gods, man. You objected to me coming into the post and now you're deliberately trying to bring me in again? Where's your logic?

However, I made it clear why I posted and what my purpose was. You chose to ignore my advice. Nothing I need say now: you've amply proven the validity of my concern.

Dear IamJoseph.. that was a very sound couple of posts re Genesis! Well done. Curae.. yours also felt good to read.

Pericles, now ur being overly pedantic. Don't try to separate "Objective meaning" from "Has meaning"..to do so is meaningless.

By "objective" meaning, and known meanings, we are speaking about the reality of the human/linguistic dynamic. If you argue against this, (and for the sake of trouncing me you actually might) you are arguing against all things rational. We humans define "objective" so.. it is subjective.. that is the 'duh' bit.

A judge would reprimand you for playing with words in an unproductive and vexatious manner.

Today, I had an interesting and blessed time with some men with long black bears, olive skin and white robes, from various Middle East countries at the Mind Body Spirit exhibition in Melb. We had our 'Religious nutter' stall there, and those white robed gentlemen had one also. You might call it:

John 14:6 meets Surah 9:30 .. and I'll explain what occured in a new topic I plan to launch soon.

I accepted a Quran from them, and.. (to be continued in new topic)

Dear Romany,
ur always welcome to partipate. I'm still mystified about your harsh but vague criticism.

If I failed to convey the purpose of the thread, I'm sorry. My experience today completely validated 100% actually it was 110% that all I've been saying from the Quran is absolutely spot on, based on very friendly conversations today with those white robed men from 'The heartland'

Strange how the soft left is out of touch with reality, yet so confident of it's waywardness being 'correct' :)

Curaezipirid,

Thank you for your comment. I look forward to re-reading it and responsing later this week.

All,

The poem I cited a few days back is entitled , "There Are Many Worlds", Lecretius, 1st Century BCE, from De Rerum Natura, Book II, trans, Winspea, in Davies 1995. It may have been based on the Greek the ideas of thinker, Epicurus, four century BCE?

What I find interesting is the secular Roman poem is not a code. The poem makes arguments, brings justifications and draws conclusions. In a way, the poem is democratic to the extent that most people can understand it, without special interprentation. That is, the poem states, we are not alone in the universe, for the various stated reasons.

The Bible seems to require a religion priest to interpret. Councils establish dogma. The "flock" is passive.

Much of the OT adopts the style of a Rabbanical mystery. The Word of the Judaeo-Christian god is opaque.

The final backflip, to surpass all previous backflips, Boaz.

>>Pericles, now ur being overly pedantic. Don't try to separate "Objective meaning" from "Has meaning"..to do so is meaningless<<

Let me remind you, that this thread began as follows:

>>It seems that one of the biggest barriers we face in bring our various passionate discussion to a point of agreement is this area of 'how' do we interpret a document?...In each case, one needs to examine what type of literature the document is 'claiming' to be. (i.e.. internal claim in the document itself)<<

Thus began your quest for texts to have some form of intrinsic meaning, discernible to all, derived only from the text itself.

Was this not your original, stated, intention?

Now we all know that your real objective was to establish a further bridgehead from which to vilify and excoriate Islam.

But even with this ulterior motive, it is essential that you keep within the rules that you set yourself.

Sadly, you have not done so, in that you failed in every argument you put forward for your position that a given text must have a meaning that is common to everyone who reads it.

So now you are reduced to trite, meaningless verbiage.

>>By "objective" meaning, and known meanings, we are speaking about the reality of the human/linguistic dynamic.<<

I challenge you you say that again, in English, in a way that has any meaning at all.

Objective or subjective.

And furthermore,

"......because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld

:-D

Curaezipirid et al.,

[1.] Josephus. I have not read any Josephus cover-to-cover, yet, I can appreciate why his observations are important to Christians. He treats Jesus favourably and does provide historical confirmation of the existence of Jesus, outside of the Bible. There are a few curiosities about Josephus, though.

- Josephus seems to have remained an orthodox Jew.
- He may have been a Roman collaborator. He escaped situations where all those around him were killed.
- One cannot dismiss re-engineering of his writings. Given sub-point one.

[2.] Interpretation. As mentioned to Boazy, on this thread,I posit, there is a tacit by explicit co-existence [Polanyi] regarding contextualised meaning, concerning how personal knowledge is held and is exhibited.

Herein, I guess contributors to this thread would have perhaps a greater knowledge of matters, first century, than the person on the street.

Moreover, we bring our own tacit convictions to the thread in the interpretation of selection and interpretation of data. Said convictions are highly cultural in nature, and, maybe, even histographical in form.

Regarding the latter, I am on the OLO record suggesting that Peter Sellick a.k.a. Sells [writes regularly for the Article section], accepts fourth century dogma and is in opposition to methods of interpretation, post the Enlightenment. Alternatively, I hold to examining source documents in their contemporary contexts and maintaining the post-Enlightenment methodologies flowing from the Great Divergence [c.1760], i.e., applying a scientific epistemology to techniques employed in an investigation. Two different people: Two different approaches.

Albeit, each person is unique, there could be sufficient similarities between various people to suggest at least two classes of people, theistic and secular. Where one sits depends greatly on how one manages and reviews knowledge.