Monday, November 03, 2008

The Queer Bible Commentary (actual name)

A friend of mine brought to my attention this Bible commentary, called the "Queer Bible Commentary" (official title). Amazon.com's description of the book includes the following:

Contributors draw on feminist, queer, deconstructionist, utopian theories, the social sciences and historical-critical discourses. The focus is both how reading from lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender perspectives affect the reading and interpretation of biblical texts

One thing worth noting - how one reads or interprets something does not directly affect the truthfulness of the sentences that are included therein. For example, if on a bright, sunny Wednesday, one reads the sentence "today it is raining" from a weather report written on a rainy Tuesday, he or she may think "hey this is wrong! It's not raining today!" But it does not mean that it did not rain Tuesday. The individual's worldview-influenced evaluation of the weather report does not affect the factual nature of the report itself, and the same should be applied to other readings. It does not matter what side of the issue you stand on - the fact is that the Bible has an intended meaning, it's not just a story book with some fun stuff and whacky, vague theories - it actually has an intended truth in each part. No one should approach it with the mentality that one reading is right for one person, but another completely opposing reading is right for the other. In other words, someone is right, and someone is wrong, and in order to receive a more accurate reading, it should always be read in context.

On a side note, the commentary is apparently from a day before the term "queer" was used most often in a derogatory sense, which is why a book that is very "PC" is also ironically very non-PC in its language.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home