COMMENTARIES | 2007-03-19
I was sitting in a bar in Moscow with a Syrian who was explaining the differences between Sunnis and Shiites. In the midst of his discussion, he mentioned the different Holy Texts, and then explained that each of them also have tens of millions of commentaries on them that are also part of each major segment of the Faith.
I laughed, and it embarrassed me and infuriated him. I did manage to explain why I laughed, but it wasn't easy. It was a BAD mistake.
I certainly was not laughing at him or his faith. But telling ME a religion has commentaries hit me sideways. It is like someone saying, "I can't find my shows. That is, I cannot find my LEFT shoe and my RIGHT shoe." If someone said that to you, and you had just been drinking, you would naturally take it as a joke.
A big-time defense lawyer was addressing law students and a student asked him if what he had been talking abut represented justice. The reply was, "Don't be CHILDISH. Law has nothing to do with JUSTICE."
If you quote the Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." and point out that not only does it state flatly that ARE other gods, but that you can worship them, you will be considered childish. That is what JHWH SAID, but if you are learned in the commentaries, you should realize that that is not what he MEANT.
In order to transform an institution into a form of Wordism, commentaries are indispensable. Commentaries use the old "We COVERED that" argument. So conservatives no longer use the "old argument" that "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."
Actually it is absolutely true. I have had a LOT of contact with felons on several continents. I have not met one single criminal in the most fanatically gun-controlled environment on earth who had the slightest problem getting hold of a gun. You do not keep weapons from people whose whole busy is to do illegal things by making guns illegal. This is a matter of logic, but it is also a matter of PRACTICE.
So how do liberals keep all respectable conservatives from using the statement, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns?"
Very simply: They call it "the OLD argument that 'If guns are outlawed, outlaws will have guns.'" This means it is a childish argument, something that has already been covered."
Yes, it is childish. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." This does not sound like the words of someone who thinks all salvation lies within the pages of Scripture known only to the priesthood.
But that is a childish way of looking at it.
So when that Syrian told me about all those commentaries, and how so many of them are regarded as overriding something that the Koran got wrong, I would be willing to bet that Mohammed himself would not be let into either a Shiite or a Sunni mosque, any more than Christ would be welcome in any church today.
Theologians often say that it is amazing how much alike the Great Religions are. It certainly doesn't amaze ME. As institutions get older, they follow institutional imperatives. All institutions have to survive in the same environment. This is a common phenomenon in biology called "parallel evolution." The marsupial saber-toothed cat looked amazingly like the saber toothed tiger, but the saber toothed tiger is far more kind to a field mouse than to that marsupial look-alike.
In the end, if you don't listen to me, your institution will look like every other institution. No matter how different Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed were, the institutions built on their names will eventually be run by commentary.
But I shouldn't have laughed.