“If the tales within the scripture are recycled myths from older prototypes, and the tales differ so wildly from the original versions, what does that say of the scripture? Can I even put my faith in the scripture?”
Scripture is not Revelation
Firstly, I’m unwavering and vigilant to never confuse scripture for revelation. Scripture by definition is a finite text (oral or written) in a specific time, locked in the course of time as a generational inheritance of worldly knowledge generated from the world and handed down with the aim of teaching moral guidance in the form of stories. It is unlike revelation which originates from beyond the world, is infinite and eternal in the ephemeral moment of my encounter with it, and cannot be “handed down”. The moment I begin to talk about some revelation to Muhammad (or any prophet) in the past, I am no longer talking about revelation; it becomes scripture. I’m scripturalizing his meeting with revelation. I can neither confirm nor deny any event surrounding that meeting as it has passed forever beyond any and every avenue of knowledge I have been equipped with.
Scripture is mythical by definition
Scripture relays events from beyond the reader’s direct avenues of knowledge and reason. From some point in the past. Scripture evades the very faculties of receiving knowledge about the world I’m put in. It would be foolish to insist a reader believe in the factual historicity of events beyond their faculties of knowing, let alone the outrageous and extraordinary tales of the paranormal. Anyone saying I must confirm or believe in some past event is deeply conflicted about reality. It is a cognitive dissonance on their part, and I would be foolish to follow their misguidance and delusion. I can only read the scripture as a product of this world. This is unlike revelation.
When talking about scripture, we use literary and textual terms terms like verse and passage. We talk about how it references other things, sometimes within the text, sometimes outside the text (see linguistic anaphora). We may talk about the scripture as referring to some extra-textual referent; some event or element outside the text and in the world. We may even try to put the scripture “in conversation” with some other text, perhaps other scriptures, or a constructed “text” like a baseball diamond, or a Smash Mouth cover. However we talk about it, it is a static object over which I – the observer – can evaluate and measure it to some standard. This is unlike revelation.
Revelation is timeless, eternal
Revelation is not objective; it is necessarily subjective. It prioritizes and valorizes subjectivity. Revelation has no time, no end or beginning. It is not in the past, nor from the past. If its emergence is located in some past as a genesis, it becomes genetic, inherited, reduced to finite scripture bound lockstep with the passage of time. Revelation is perpetually in the ephemeral present – the non-finite space between finite past and future – an unveiling exposé from some infinite source/destination simultaneity. This is what the Quran says: the One revealing the revelation is both the source and the destination of all He reveals, including me and my own existence.
أَأَنْتُمْ أَنْشَأْتُمْ شَجَرَتَهَا أَمْ نَحْنُ الْمُنْشِئُونَ
Are you producing its tree, or are we the Producers?” Reality 56:72
وَأَنَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ الْمُنْتَهَىٰ
“To your Lord is the destination” The Star 53:42
Reading scripture for scripture suddenly seem rather trivial. To be continued…
