Patterns of Spirituality

Biblical Interpretations

Ah, what a psychological stew this is. The original material was written in Aramaic, then Origen produced a book by comparing the Aramaic with Hebrew scriptures, eventually this was translated into Greek, then into Latin. The council of Nicea in 325 AD removed references to reincarnation theory, since they thought it would make the common peoples too fatalistic. And eventually again the Latin was translated into medieval western languages. When Wycliffe first translated the Latin bible into English, the clergy tried to suppress it since they did not want the common people to read it and make their own interpretations. The clergy wanted the common people to remain dependent on the clergy.

Each translation is an interpretation which loses something of the original meaning. And now in modern times, when personal experiences of the higher aspects of spirituality are very rare, we get bibles in modern English which are worse than the old versions. Any aspect of the spiritual life that the translator has no experience of, he is unlikely to be able to translate accurately. What will a translator make of the gospel of Thomas (from the dead sea scrolls) ; without an understanding of the psychic structure of a human person, that gospel will be largely meaningless to a modern Christian.

One writer that I admire in his approach to understanding the problems of biblical linguistic interpretation was Maurice Nicoll - he was a disciple of Gurdjieff in the early part of the 20th century. Nicoll was a good psychologist for his times, and wrote several books. One was "The Mark ".  If you can get hold of his books he is worth reading.

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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