GAVEL GAMUT
By Jim Redwine
www.jamesmredwine.com
(Week of 14 October 2024)
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE
The Bible contains some fine literature. There are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. My favorite is Ecclesiastes, that I learned about at church, whose authorship is disputed but whose ironic, sarcastic, hopeful philosophy rings of Grecian thought. When one reads Ecclesiastes, Homer’s Iliad and the plays of Sophocles, such as Oedipus Rex, that I was taught in high school, come to mind. Great literature is like that, one learns great thoughts from great thinkers regardless of their origin. Concepts of law, justice, perseverance and human frailty are at the heart of great teachings.
When a culture wishes its youth to learn these essential elements of human knowledge the example of Socrates is instructive. Speaking truth to power is our best hope for having our temporal rulers make the right choices. To speak such truth our students should study the lessons of history. And the best way to impart that knowledge is through the study of good literature. Of course, such lessons could be learned through experience such as war but if bad experience can be avoided by a society’s youth learning from the past bad experiences of others, that is preferable. Good literature may light our way.
By definition, good literature is not dogma. We want our students, and ourselves, to study, investigate, question, test, evaluate, doubt, prove, disprove, discuss, listen, debate, laugh, cry, honor, disavow, set aside, enjoy and most importantly learn from those who have already made mistakes and created good. This cannot occur if students are led to simply accept concepts as gospel. The teachings of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Christians during the Inquisition, and the Zionists in Israel are dogmas to be avoided.
Religion is based on faith. Education is the search for fact. All religions believe they know the truth with no examination needed. Educators believe there is no ultimate truth as each new discovery changes the facts. A free society can and should accommodate both religion and education but it must not conflate them. Most importantly, to safeguard religious liberty and democracy our federal, state and local governments must not put an imprimatur on any particular dogma. Protecting everyone’s right to believe as they wish does not grant license to anyone to behave as they wish. Law must both protect and defend, not endorse.
So, our public schools can, if they choose, teach from portions of the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Vedas or any other religious texts but must not elevate one over another; that can always be done by the religions themselves. That is their right and we must assure it. However, we will be on that slippery slope to theocracy, not democracy, if we allow our governments to decree or demand our public schools teach that any faith is fact and superior to any other.
It is likely that those who propose the indoctrination of America’s youth in any particular system of faith do so with the purest of intentions. They believe their faith is founded on truth and that America was founded on that truth. Both concepts are ill-founded. Faith is not fact; that is why it is called faith. America was founded by people who may well have been religious themselves but who had the lessons of the Enlightenment to caution them to keep religion personal and government secular.
And when it comes to the malleable minds of young public-school students who are required by law to attend, those who proclaim lessons from the Bible or any other religious text can be sanitized, have forgotten their own youth’s susceptibility to suggestion.
No, better to learn in school from good non-denominational literature and, even if religious texts may contain good literature, to leave such lessons to the home and temple unless it is clear to the students that any lessons from religious tomes are not an endorsement or condemnation of any particular system of belief.
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