Knowledge Without Understanding is Futile



We have increasing amounts of knowledge. Mistakes are still being made about what it means.

While the link is about an area in science, the difference between knowledge and understanding applies to many areas, including religion.

Many Christians pride themselves with the volume of scripture they have memorized. Others know from memory where in the Bible to find various topics. Such people have knowledge of the Bible.

Understanding the Bible, however, is something else entirely. To understand the Bible it is necessary to know what was going on in the tribal or secular world during the ancient times when writers committed their thoughts to paper. It also requires one know about the changing world which played out in the centuries that followed. The original writing was recopied countless times and whenever it was edited the changes would have represented whatever changes in thinking had occurred.

Christian people my age have spent their lives hearing the Bible explained by scholars, preachers and pundits trained by others who were inside the faith. This invariably included, I am sure, beliefs the the Bible is "the word of God" and that the events discussed actually happened.

In recent decades a new field has grown up in theology called "Critical New Testament Studies" or scholarship. This approach treats the Bible as it would any other writing that had its source in ancient times. It looks for the motives, often self serving, of those who wrote the Bible.

There is the overriding class issue. At that period in history nearly all the population was illiterate. Perhaps only 1% could both read and write. That those who wrote the Bible were vary wealthy raises the question as to why such people were writing about religion and what they intended to accomplish with this writing.

With the growth of Critical New Testament scholarship we can expect the future will hold more understanding of the Bible and every bit as much knowledge.

Comments

  1. little helperAugust 26, 2019 at 7:21 PM

    Yes, I agree that "the difference between knowledge and understanding applies to many areas including religion". Many instances have been noted and responded to in the past on this very spot.

    Both in some religious communities, AND atheism; Hyper literalism, language,(Greek, Hebrew, later Latin), translations, not understanding Hebraisms , Not recognizing the types of literature (history, poetry, prophetic, and apocalyptic,) bias, agendas, unfounded dogma, and context abuse, (Intentional or not) has proven to be a real problem.

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