Religious Scripture 235
2/3/09
From a tale to a religious text.
The uniqueness of interpretive communities is best illustrated by the tale of Samuel. The secular tale that became a sacred history. Here we have the story that was designed to be read by an educated few for entertainment purposes, specifically without altering the text itself through the stages of reinterpretation, that the interpretive communities, comprised of similarly educated individual transformed the genre of Samuel from Secular novel to sacred Scripture.
Research was done to uncover how this came to be. The religiously motivated scholars found a theological theme underlying the tale, while historically motivated scholars found a political explanation for Yahweh's characterization. Yahweh is the almighty for the Jews. Yahweh in the tale plays two roles, Yahweh as an uncertain backward, unpredictable, tribal god, Then through David who manages through a chain of overblown feats and daring deeds to seduce Yahweh into become a faithful, predictable, downright tamed patron deity. Both the theological and the political hypotheses, did not give a clear enough evidence for satisfactory explanation, thus failing in most of their manifestations. How can one explain the characterization of the almighty played in such a way? A characterization consistently at odds with the biblical of “God” in all the holy books in the world including Yahweh over all in the Torah.
The conclusion of this tale and how it came to be is purely accidental one. The author K.L. Noll says “disappear in ancient times, when the audience for whom it was composed creased to have use of it, or themselves disappeared” the story survived most likely because of the Judaean royal dynasty to commemorate persons and event in the life of that monarchy as the story took place than. What kept the story on the surface would be the oral tradition, since they seem similar to the so-called family tales that traditional societies tell about the rich and famous, such as dynastic rulers. Later in its final form the Samuel tale was written down and has been kept the same ever since.
This story cannot be taken as literal history because it is an origin tale. Origin tales are narration of a communities past that is accepted in that community only. The absence of research distinguishes origin tale from the genre of historiography as in this case. As any community would do text were put together by the Jerusalem literati. All the text was copied into a collection of scrolls that represented a Jewish library. This was done to simply render the texts preserved for the community of literati who wished to read them. They did not create the anthology to express a normative viewpoint nor the canon of the Religion. The Yahweh had an unintended consequence for the scrolls of the Hebrew anthology, but never the less has become a driving force in history. A unique thought that is quit unknown to religions of the book to be sure, but now systematized in a way unanticipated by those who wrote the novel in means of just a literature.
The real and ultimate consequence for the characterization of Samuel's Yahweh is not difficult to see. The defined deity who plays with Saul and David has become the Torah's creator, the god of the heavens and earth, the god of the Christians and that of the Muslims and the sustainer of the cosmos. That which has been written in these scrolls has become fixed. Had it not be fix it would have been obviously been modified the embarrassing aspects of Yahweh's characterization would simply been removed.
The Presupposition of the people plays an important role in their view, or how else would a non religious text over time turn holy, and become a divinely reveled component of a sacred anthology, the Hebrew Bible. K.L. Noll says “the Christian fundamentalist, the reformed Jew all believe that Samuel was composed for the purpose of proclaiming Yahweh's interaction with the people of Israel through his servants the prophets, Samuel, Saul and David.”This stance is not from the text but the long history of the texts interpretation. It's is a preposition that allows the believer to label the text no matter how it is defined as the inspiring words of god.
