Warning Agains Narrow Interpretation of the Bible
There are some Bible verses that have go such a part of secular culture that we receive them every bit generic platitudes, interpreting them in simplified, anachronistic ways. For example, on the forenoon of March 21, 2018, the nation's Capricorns were greeted with a biblical alarm when they checked their daily horoscope: "Judge not, lest ye be judged." That judgement, of course, comes from the Sermon on the Mountain in Matthew 5–7. Here's how the King James Version of the Bible renders Jesus's timeless maxim: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what sentence ye gauge, ye shall be judged."
The horoscope, penned by syndicated astrologer Jeraldine Saunders, clarified the pregnant of the cryptic verse in the next sentence. "It's not for you to say," wrote Saunders, "if someone wants to practise something that you consider foolish or dizzy."
In this digestible, secularized gloss of the verse, Jesus's imperative suddenly feels like a tolerationist bromide on par with "to each her ain" and "alive and let live." Or, equally one education scholar in 1964 called information technology, a "harmless aphorism."
But is that really all information technology is? Judging by the assortment of sources and intellectual byways opened up by the JSTOR Agreement Series for the King James Version of the Bible, the reply to this question is a definitive "No."
Best to brainstorm at the kickoff. Even in the early days of Christian thought, this verse proved tricky. It was ane that 2nd-century Christian theologian Tertullian returned to many times throughout his life. According to historian Jaroslav Pelikan'southward article on the early church father, Tertullian wrestled with Jesus's proscription in an eschatological frame. Given the close connexion between ethics and eschatology in Jesus'due south teachings, Tertullian concluded that the command to "guess not" is a reminder to us that sentence and penalisation are not ours to mete, just God's.
Yet even if judgement ultimately resides with a ability greater than ourselves, for centuries Bible readers have struggled with putting that estimation into practice, given how naturally judgement comes.
Nineteenth-century American Christians were especially torn. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that the verse had "an atrocious import" because information technology so definitively placed sentence not with "blind & weak" people just with "Him to whom judgement belongeth." And Abraham Lincoln famously used the poesy to great effect in his Second Countdown address when he noted of the Southward, "it may seem strange that any men should cartel to ask a just God'south assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let the states judge non that we exist not judged." Scholars accept debated whether Lincoln meant the verse to be a gesture of mercy or a satiric jab. If contemporaneous reports are any indication, the audience that day thought the latter, since this function of the speech elicited from them "a one-half laugh."
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-twenty-four hours Saints prophet Joseph Smith attempted to answer the poesy's difficulties in his translation of the Bible by rendering the saying as, "Guess not unrighteously, that ye exist not judged." Here, the critical interjection of the adverb "unrighteously" changes the character of the verse. No longer are we prevented from judgement in every example. Instead, Jesus places constraints on how nosotros gauge.
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To an extent, this view is in accordance with that of former president of the American Philosophical Gild, Jeffrie G. Murphy, although Murphy adopts a secular approach. In his view, the passage is non, in fact, "a prohibition against making any disquisitional moral judgments at all but is rather a caution confronting making final judgments of deep graphic symbol." In this reading, the poesy calls us to self-reflection and introspection, not quietism. Nosotros tin still laissez passer judgement, but earlier we do nosotros must practice farthermost restraint, scrutinizing ourselves in such a manner as to close the gap between ourselves and the person upon whom nosotros want to pass judgement.
Clearly, Jesus's maxim is one that lends itself to a variety of interpretations. It has been used to justify a broad-minded toleration towards the deportment of others, as a recognition of our ain moral limitations, or as a telephone call for deep and sustained cocky-analysis. A definitive respond eludes us. What is clear is that information technology demands we pay attention to one of the nigh consequential activities in our moral life–how we view and assess our fellows–one that is too often exercised like an unconscious reflex.
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Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church building History
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Knuckles University Press
Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (WINTER 1969), pp. 155-174
Brigham Young University
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Nov., 2006), pp. 45-62
American Philosophical Association
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Source: https://daily.jstor.org/nderstanding-a-misunderstood-bible-verse/
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