When most people speak of hermeunetics, or rather the interpretation of documents, one must draw a strict line in the sand between documents of material, real-time function and documents that exist above and beyond humanity, transcendant of any legal binding. Looking at two separate documents, one being the United States constitution and one being the Christian Bible, it helps to figure out which one should be subject to deeper understanding which one should be taken “as is” in regards to society and life in general. in this essay/article, I will determine which one is taken literally and which one is not.
since 1776, the constitution has stood for the protecting the rights of Americans, or it still should be, rather, despite some discrepancies. This is a legal document, which is only beholden to the country it, or rather is, supposed to serve the general public of the United States since its inception. if one looks at statements, such as “shall not infringe” or “the right to a speedy trial” you see statements that abridge very clear definitions that unlike religious scripture, do not stand for anything other than what is provided, despite objections to the latter via certain sects of the Church to prove otherwise, nothing that should be seen as metaphors, because if the constitution was interpreted metaphorically, so many of its declarations would be lost in translation and would lead to an obstruction of justice, conversely, since America does not serve a theocracy, its much more sensible to take metaphor of passages in scripture since the law, as stated in the constitution’s first amendment, “shall not make any law” “respecting the establishment or prohibiting the excercise thereof” of religion. If interpreted literally, then it stands to be that something such as the Bible or Quran or Torah can be given a meaning beyond what is empircally stated, and can serve as a representation of something other than what is given, in return it lends that the metaphorical interpretation of religious texts can exist transcendent of human experience and act as a guide for general actions or a higher purpose than something that serves mankind in real time. Since the constitution is more or less a profane document, literal interpretation is important for expedient processes that would lend itself to making sure justice and retribution are settled in a timely manner whereas if we posit God’s time being something beyond human experience, biblical texts can serve a more open-ended and metaphorical interpretation that is more inline with the timeless nature of the Lord, as opposed to the immediate consequences of material law which affect us in “lived experience”, the relation of the two documents serving as one being steeped in immediate causes and one being an overall guide to general ethics. This would place something such as the Bible transcendant over profane law, where these sorts of documents are an umbrella over all material, profane laws of every nation, where one is timely, the other timeless, existing beyond the earth, a world where justice is served quickly on our earthly existence and one where God makes allegories to higher states of being and practices his justice through a complex code that something such as the Constitution does not address except through direct statements instead of symbols. Something like the 2nd amendment is a far cry from something like the allegory of Cain’s murder which should be viewed in an interpretation of facts given, rather than something that states facts in general, or does not have a deeper moral statement to make other than giving direct commands to its reader. Something such as The Tower Of Babel is more or less a reference or a symbol of something than a straight declaration of something that has real time consequences, something that must be taken as something that doesn’t stand for an object but rather a deeper meaning conveyed through a phenomenon that exists beyond our mere perceptions, a timeless, spaceless, eternal law that outstrips the immediate existence of the American constitution, which has existed for only a fraction of the eternal laws of the Lord. Its an example of the immediate, real time, material conception of law versus a transcendent, suprahistorical conception of law which extends beyond the fraction of history that humans have served, a very eternal, timeless exhultation of something suprahuman, extra-universal that mere human law that only serves a fraction of historical significance.
Drawing the distinction between the two in such a manner is important for a logical conception of laws that exist either within the universe or beyond it. Interpreting these two documents in reverse, with the Bible being temporal and the constitution being eternal would essentially make our laws everyone else’s and beyond (this would affect the trajectory of human history), and the Bible dictating immediate justice would push humanity back hundreds of years, at least as a legal document in the United States, and crucifiying people such as in the time of the Romans would give us barbarism while making the history of humankind beholden to permanent revolution, in extreme cases like with Leon Trotsky’s conception of communism, albeit without its reliance on socialism. Which curiously enough, sounds a lot like where we are today. A runaway capitalist system with constant social upheavals, and “crucifixions” of people who hold unpopular opinions in the west. No Bueno. A repetition of history caused by contextual misinterpretion. The careless reading of binding documents has caused history to constantly repeat ad nauseaum, so careful consideration must undertaken.
J./Adolf Stalin