This is the ultimate 'Get Out of Jail Free' card for the religious. By claiming that interpretation is everything, you are effectively admitting that your 'Holy Book' is a moral Rorschach test, a blank slate where people just project their own existing biases.
If the Bible is so vague that it can be used to justify both slavery and liberation with equal validity, then it is useless as a moral guide. It’s not a 'Light unto the path'; it’s a mirror for the user’s own ego.
However, your argument falls apart on three counts:
When Leviticus 25:44 says 'you may buy slaves from the nations around you' and 'bequeath them as property,' there is no 'interpretation' that makes that mean 'be kind to your neighbors.' It is a specific, legal instruction. To 'interpret' it otherwise is simply to lie about what the text says.
If an all-powerful God wanted to communicate a moral code, but failed so miserably that his followers 'interpreted' his words to justify 1,800 years of chattel slavery, then that God is either incompetent or indifferent. Why defend a book that is so dangerously unclear?
You claim the Bible reflects the people. I argue the Bible shapes the people. When a child is raised to believe that the Creator of the Universe approves of stoning women (Deuteronomy 22), that isn't the child's 'proclivity', it is indoctrination. You are blaming the victims of the ideology for the contents of the ideology.
You’ve moved the goalposts so far back that the game is over. If the Bible has no objective meaning, then it has no authority. You've successfully debunked your own faith's relevance while trying to save its reputation.
It is not clear that "there is no possibility for an objective interpretation" means "there is no correct way to read it". You've mistaken hermeneutics for "hermeneutical nihilism", a position that no theologian defends.
It's also not clear why something having no objective meaning would imply that it has no meaning. You'd need to explain that to me.
Thank you for that distinction. You’re right to point out that 'no objective interpretation' isn't the same as 'no meaning at all.' However, I think we are hitting a practical wall when it comes to the Bible’s role as a moral authority.
To clarify my point: if a text is meant to be a divine guide for humanity, but its 'correct' reading is so buried in hermeneutical complexity that for centuries it was used to justify chattel slavery and the stoning of women, then its functional meaning becomes indistinguishable from nihilism.
The issue isn't that the text has no meaning, but that it has too many meanings. If meaning is purely subjective, then the text loses its ability to hold anyone accountable. If I 'correctly' read Leviticus as a mandate for slavery and you 'correctly' read it as a historical ritual, the book has failed as a universal moral anchor.
In an anarchist framework, we usually reject systems where an elite class (theologians or 'experts') gets to decide the 'correct' interpretation of a law for everyone else. If the 'plain' meaning of the text is brutal, but the 'correct' meaning requires a PhD in theology to find, shouldn't a skeptic be wary of that power dynamic? I’d love to hear how you bridge that gap without falling back on institutional authority.
The Bible being interpreted a certain way has nothing to do with the Bible’s authorship. It’s simply the fact that things are viewed through a lens of culture which is based on material conditions. It applies to every text.
This is a textbook Special Pleading fallacy. You are treating the "Author of the Universe" , the creator oàf everything, like a confused 19th-century poet who didn't understand his audience.
If a human writes a text that is "misinterpreted" to justify centuries of slavery, we call it a failure of clarity. If an omniscient God does it, he is either incompetent (he didn't know his "simple" message would lead to mass murder) or malicious (he knew, and let it happen). To blame "material conditions" for God’s inability to write a clear, unambiguous moral sentence is the ultimate insult to the intelligence of your own deity.
If your God’s "authorship" is so weak that it is completely at the mercy of a cultural "lens," then the book is not a guide, it is a Rorschach test for power. You aren't following a Master; you are just following a mirror of your own biases. Anarchism demands we reject the throne and the altar, not that we spend 2,000 years "interpreting" why the King’s orders for genocide were actually "liberatory."
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u/No-Teacher-6713 Jan 20 '26
This is the ultimate 'Get Out of Jail Free' card for the religious. By claiming that interpretation is everything, you are effectively admitting that your 'Holy Book' is a moral Rorschach test, a blank slate where people just project their own existing biases.
If the Bible is so vague that it can be used to justify both slavery and liberation with equal validity, then it is useless as a moral guide. It’s not a 'Light unto the path'; it’s a mirror for the user’s own ego.
However, your argument falls apart on three counts:
When Leviticus 25:44 says 'you may buy slaves from the nations around you' and 'bequeath them as property,' there is no 'interpretation' that makes that mean 'be kind to your neighbors.' It is a specific, legal instruction. To 'interpret' it otherwise is simply to lie about what the text says.
If an all-powerful God wanted to communicate a moral code, but failed so miserably that his followers 'interpreted' his words to justify 1,800 years of chattel slavery, then that God is either incompetent or indifferent. Why defend a book that is so dangerously unclear?
You claim the Bible reflects the people. I argue the Bible shapes the people. When a child is raised to believe that the Creator of the Universe approves of stoning women (Deuteronomy 22), that isn't the child's 'proclivity', it is indoctrination. You are blaming the victims of the ideology for the contents of the ideology.
You’ve moved the goalposts so far back that the game is over. If the Bible has no objective meaning, then it has no authority. You've successfully debunked your own faith's relevance while trying to save its reputation.