The Gospel is a collection of stories and assertions originally written in languages that I don't know (Greek, Aramaic, ...), translated into English at various times by various people using various methods, resources, predispositions and levels of ability, and having different varieties and stages of English as the target language for translation.
While I can't read the original text myself, my general knowledge about human language leads me to take this as an unavoidable fact: the original text contains a number of statements and expressions that are open to numerous understandings and interpretations, due to vagueness, ambiguity, or the very abstractness of some of the things being discussed. This has been borne out in the multiplicity of mutually incompatible creeds that are all founded on the same scripture.
I also know that each translation into English is subject to the same multiplicity of meanings, and incompatible sects are seen to arise from a single English translation.
Having multiple interpretations does not make a text meaningless, and does not in itself devalue any given meaning that a person finds in a text. But the important point for me, for my relationship to scripture and to "believers", is that this text by itself does not carry authority, and any given interpretation of it cannot claim authority based only on the notion of being "from scripture."
A lot of sectarian incompatibility stems from applying the text in different ways to matters not discussed directly by the original writers. This kind of extrapolation tends to cause the worst abuses, and repeatedly demonstrates the danger of attributing authority to the text.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : slight phrasal adjustment for clarity
Edited by Otto Tellick, : ditto
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
™ Version 4.2
