[quote="Canuckster1127"]
"Killing" in terms of destroying life, I'd not completely agree with. The admonition in the 10 commandments carries the idea of murder, in terms of taking a life without the benefit of law and justice, in the sense of a vendetta or with malice.[/quote]
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So by the Levitical law and Ten Commands, when God gives Moses the instructions of "Thou shalt not kill," that is actually interpreted as, "Thou shalt not kill unless thou doest it in the name of justice, self-defense, or war. Thou shalt be culturally aware and enforce what I dost say only in abortion, stem cell research, and wence a person doth kill with malice on thy mind. " (Taken from current Christian positions).
(Someone PLEASE say that "this isn't an accurate portrayal". Please.)
That's a rich example of hermaneutics and a complaint I have about fundamentalist Christians (those who beleive that the Bible is the inerrent word of God), where commonly their Biblical interpretations stress allegorical readings, frequently at the expense of the texts' literal meaning, while they read other bits of the Bible as literal at the expense of a potentially meaningful allegory. Why? Maybe to derive deeper meaning from the text.... maybe for the purpose of deriving an applicable lesson and teaching of morality.
Thus enters the hermeneutic circle! (Yay, my favorite!) Friedrich Schleiermacher, in his works on philosophy and theology, stressed the importance of the interpreter in the process of interpretation as well as the importance of the interpreter actually understanding the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding, for Schleiermacher, does not simply come from reading the text, but involves knowledge of the historical context of the text and the psychology of the author -- Which describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically ("Friedrich").
The Hermeneutic circle refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text, rather, it stresses that the meaning of text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context ("Hermeneutic Circle").
So here also is where I question the constant contradictions within the interpretations of the Bible - a more correct position as a fundamentalist, it seems to me, in order to avoid contradictions, should be to litterally not support any kind of killing. But since that is a maladaptive position to hold in this society (e.g., via war not being supported), the church has picked a stance, though inconsistant, and stuck with it blindly. I also feel it necessary to bring to mind how the churches mindset of "killing for the sake of justice" has been pretty bad for the world in the past 1000 years. But I do forget sometimes that Protestants have disconnected themselves from this past by blaming everything on the Catholics - my-oh-my how our minds slip.
"Hermeneutic Circle". Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaneutics on December 2, 2006.
"Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher". Retrieved from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/ on December 2, 2006
