It‘s a tree that bears no fruit. Well-looking but not nourishing. It‘s traditioned literature for a reason. But reject the meaning and consume whatever you like, everyone
I’m going to claim brain fart. I’m horrified to find I had thought that it was about, like, modern Israel. Dumb.
OTOH, it sounds like you are suggesting taking interpretations like that; reading things into the text and adopting the symbols for our own purposes. Blindness wasn’t a metaphor for depression. You have to insert that as a modern reader. The text doesn’t fully support it and you have to creatively interpret at times. I don’t think that’s very satisfying.
When the original authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their words in the original Greek, they were not imagining blindness to be a metaphor for clinical depression. Or even for feeling sad, if that is what you mean. While many people understand these passages as referring to literal blindness, blindness is often used as a metaphor in the Bible, for example for ignorance, pride, deception, and unbelief. You can attempt to take it as a metaphor for the modern concept of depression (which of course they did not even possess) but to do so, you are clearly reading into the text. And it’s not clear how the message of Jesus is meant to cure your depression, the way it can presumably cure you of spiritual ignorance, unbelief, etc.
I’m trying to understand if you are advocating reading into the text intentionally, but it’s not even clear if you’re aware and accept you’re doing that at all.
It‘s a tree that bears no fruit. Well-looking but not nourishing. It‘s traditioned literature for a reason. But reject the meaning and consume whatever you like, everyone
I’m going to claim brain fart. I’m horrified to find I had thought that it was about, like, modern Israel. Dumb.
OTOH, it sounds like you are suggesting taking interpretations like that; reading things into the text and adopting the symbols for our own purposes. Blindness wasn’t a metaphor for depression. You have to insert that as a modern reader. The text doesn’t fully support it and you have to creatively interpret at times. I don’t think that’s very satisfying.
You mean depression is not just a modern word but a modern concept (it did not exist before)?
When the original authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their words in the original Greek, they were not imagining blindness to be a metaphor for clinical depression. Or even for feeling sad, if that is what you mean. While many people understand these passages as referring to literal blindness, blindness is often used as a metaphor in the Bible, for example for ignorance, pride, deception, and unbelief. You can attempt to take it as a metaphor for the modern concept of depression (which of course they did not even possess) but to do so, you are clearly reading into the text. And it’s not clear how the message of Jesus is meant to cure your depression, the way it can presumably cure you of spiritual ignorance, unbelief, etc.
I’m trying to understand if you are advocating reading into the text intentionally, but it’s not even clear if you’re aware and accept you’re doing that at all.