Friday, August 17, 2007 at 12:12am
The woman who knew everything
Column: Interesting Times
She knew Absolutely Everything. Leaning over the table at Café Pasqual's last night, voice raised over the noisy babble of the pre-Indian Market crowd, she insisted that the Celts were actually Assyrian tribes, that Goddess worship had been shut down by the male-dominated Bible and that broken Sumerian statues showed that. The Pashtun Afghans, she declaimed, were the same peoples who had perpetrated that sacrilege and that at some deep level we all know that, hence our shock when the Taliban destroyed the ancient and priceless Buddhas of Bamyan.
Of course, no one else at the table of 10 wanted to or could dispute her certainty. I was surely the only other person at the table who had an acquaintance with the Bible, and she was 30 minutes into her certainty about how the Bible was totally revisionist before I opened my mouth to speak. "Well," I said hesitantly, "it's all very interesting, but my interest is in the texts themselves and how they influence domestic and foreign policy in the United States." This did not sit well with her. I had the sense that she did not understand that thought. And so she went right on with "Do you know what the Bible says about homosexuality?"
"Not much," I replied, flashing back in my mind to the few texts that comment on sexual relations. What the biblical God says and wants is a challenge and discussion that usually goes nowhere in fostering understanding between peoples and something churches and peoples still struggle with in private and public. It was not an argument I wanted to enter into over dinner. "David loved Jonathan more than women," she said.
That was not my remembrance of the text; I thought that 1 Samuel said that Jonathan loved David and "his soul was knit with him," but the Land of Infinite Detail was another place I did not want to visit. Dessert was coming.
Though I am aware that some people take that text on Jonathan and David to indicate a homosexual relation, I don't take it any way other than how it was written. This bothered my dinner companion. Her thought was a popular one; without supposition, without rewriting, how could one find anything in the Scriptures worth knowing? After all, the thought goes, the Bible was written over time by at least hundreds of scribes. "Who do you think wrote the Old Testament?" she asked. While I found it odd that, as a Jew, she would call the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament, and did ask her that, I also warned her that, in fact, I assumed that Moses wrote the Torah. That was the remark that stopped the conversation — for a moment. "Who was Moses? Who was his mentor? Who named him?" I answered with the Bible accounts, but still she was not happy.
Remembering that she who controls the agenda controls the outcome, it was time for me to say what was on my mind. As evenly as I could, I told her, as I toyed with my ginger crème brulee, that I found it difficult to converse with her as she was so Certain. What I prefer in a conversation is an interchange in which each person expresses their point of view and then they pursue that line of thought together. Adding that it was perhaps naïve to assume that no one else might know anything about the topics she raised, I suggested that I did have some small acquaintance with the Bible texts, though again I said that the history did not interest me, the texts did. After all, there is only so much time, only so many decades, and focus is essential.
It all ended well. Or, at least I think it did when we said our goodbyes and she looked at me and said, "No one else has ever told me before that I was shutting down conversation." I think she meant it. Will there come a time when disputes over what the Bible means are a dead letter? When each person can hold their own beliefs, follow their own interests and not impose their will and ideas on everyone else at the table of Life?
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Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.
Of course, no one else at the table of 10 wanted to or could dispute her certainty. I was surely the only other person at the table who had an acquaintance with the Bible, and she was 30 minutes into her certainty about how the Bible was totally revisionist before I opened my mouth to speak. "Well," I said hesitantly, "it's all very interesting, but my interest is in the texts themselves and how they influence domestic and foreign policy in the United States." This did not sit well with her. I had the sense that she did not understand that thought. And so she went right on with "Do you know what the Bible says about homosexuality?"
"Not much," I replied, flashing back in my mind to the few texts that comment on sexual relations. What the biblical God says and wants is a challenge and discussion that usually goes nowhere in fostering understanding between peoples and something churches and peoples still struggle with in private and public. It was not an argument I wanted to enter into over dinner. "David loved Jonathan more than women," she said.
That was not my remembrance of the text; I thought that 1 Samuel said that Jonathan loved David and "his soul was knit with him," but the Land of Infinite Detail was another place I did not want to visit. Dessert was coming.
Though I am aware that some people take that text on Jonathan and David to indicate a homosexual relation, I don't take it any way other than how it was written. This bothered my dinner companion. Her thought was a popular one; without supposition, without rewriting, how could one find anything in the Scriptures worth knowing? After all, the thought goes, the Bible was written over time by at least hundreds of scribes. "Who do you think wrote the Old Testament?" she asked. While I found it odd that, as a Jew, she would call the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament, and did ask her that, I also warned her that, in fact, I assumed that Moses wrote the Torah. That was the remark that stopped the conversation — for a moment. "Who was Moses? Who was his mentor? Who named him?" I answered with the Bible accounts, but still she was not happy.
Remembering that she who controls the agenda controls the outcome, it was time for me to say what was on my mind. As evenly as I could, I told her, as I toyed with my ginger crème brulee, that I found it difficult to converse with her as she was so Certain. What I prefer in a conversation is an interchange in which each person expresses their point of view and then they pursue that line of thought together. Adding that it was perhaps naïve to assume that no one else might know anything about the topics she raised, I suggested that I did have some small acquaintance with the Bible texts, though again I said that the history did not interest me, the texts did. After all, there is only so much time, only so many decades, and focus is essential.
It all ended well. Or, at least I think it did when we said our goodbyes and she looked at me and said, "No one else has ever told me before that I was shutting down conversation." I think she meant it. Will there come a time when disputes over what the Bible means are a dead letter? When each person can hold their own beliefs, follow their own interests and not impose their will and ideas on everyone else at the table of Life?
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen.