Jonathan Pageau on Literal vs Symbolic interpretation of the Bible

You two are so deeply immersed in a post-Enlightenment materialism you don't understand how people thought before the sceintific revolution. Thinking was done very mythically. Myth is story used to express human universals. And yes, @Louanne Learning —symbolic thinking requires humans to do the thinking. Animal brains aren't set up for it. When he says always he means since we've existed. You're still standing outside of humanity, trying to interpret these ideas objectively, the way a scientist would. Nobody understood how to think like that in ancient times.

We didnt' have a Darwin, we knew nothing at all about evolution, or about any science. The bare beginnings of science were just getting started, in the form of mythology, religion, alchemy and astrology etc—it would be millennia before those would evolve into objective sciences. We told stories, and we used symbols. Dreamlike symbols. We hadn't yet separated dream from waking reality (which we now consider the only 'real' reality), and dream works in symbolism. It's the way we thought.

Today it takes a long time and a lot of effort and the crushing of a lot of modern assumptions to begin to think that way, or to understand it. I think I'm able to understand it because I've always been fascinated with dreams, so I think about them after waking, and I don't dismiss them as ridiculous meaningless gibberish the way most people do now. I credit them with some deep wisdom that the conscious mind lacks. But you need to understand the symbolic ways the unconscious functions in order to make any sense of them.

Principalities (Principles)
Having been brought up as an Orthodox Christian, Pageau often has trouble explaining what he means. I think he's been thinking this way all his life, and it feels so natural to him he often has trouble finding the words to explain it to people who weren't raised like he was. I can often see him getting frustrated with his inability to express what he's trying to say.

One example—I used to really struggle to understand what he meant by 'Principalities'. He uses the word a lot. Life consists of 'principalities'. Then one day it hit me—he just means principles!! Well, once you understand that, it clears a lot of things up!

Adam means Man, Eve means Woman, and Christ refers to what I've often heard called 'The Christ-Consciousness'. Esoterically it refers to an inner reality, not an outer one. Yes, of course Jesus was a real man who traveled and preached in the ancient Middle East, just as there was a real Mount Sinai, and quite likely Moses actually ascended it in order to go deep into meditation and prayer to recieve the Commandments from God. Symbol is far more effective when it merges the physical with the inner meaning. For instance the idea of the Commandments being carved on stone tablets. That part undoubtedly happened later. I doubt Moses sat on the mountain and chiseled stone tablets. But in a very real sense he carried down commandments from God that had already been solidified into stone. Don't we say something is 'carved in stone' if we mean that it's deeply embeded in the mind, so strongly that it's as if it really is carved in stone?

Who was Christ post-resurreaction?
Here's a mind-boggler. What does it mean that when Jesu was resurrected, before he ascended to Heaven (the realm of pure idea), none of the desciples recognized him when he spoke directly to them? Even Mary Magdalene, his closest and most cherished desciple by most accounts.

It would make sense if he wasn't physically the same man. If now perhaps the Christ Consciosuness is speaking to them through the body of someone else. Which gets across the idea (if you're mythologically conversant) that it's an inner reality, a state of mind or a state of being, that can exist in various people. If a dove came down from Heaven and lodged itself in Jesus' breast when he was being baptised by John, why couldn't it happen again, to others who have the same kind of insights, perhaps sparked by listening to Jesus' preaching?

Were the Commandments given to Moses all at once?
Another thought on Moses and the Commandments. It seems from the story that he was given all of them at once by God. But doesn't it seem more likely that he developed the ideas over a period of time, a lot of meditation and prayer, and a lot of bits and pieces of insigt from God, coming to him through his daily life activities? He was a leader of his people, and a judge. He would adjudicate over their disputes. He must have already had some ideas of laws like these in order to do that? Most likely it was through his work that he codified and developed them to perfection.

Just as Adam was Mankind rather than a single individual, it makes more sense if Moses actually came up with the list of commandments over a period of time. And I'm sure many other people were having the same kind of ideas at the same time, and had been for centuries if not millennia. It isn't that hard to realize that stealing is bad, and murder is bad, and all the rest. Most societies have come up with very similar laws. Does it make sense that nobody understood any of these rules at all until Moses climbed the mountian, and then suddenly he just understood all of them out of the blue? Not likely at all. People would have come up with versions of them since Neanderthal days, or maybe moreso when we started to settle down in agricultural times rather than being nomadic. Nomads don't have much of a concept of property rights, those develop in agricultoral societies where land ownership is vitally important, because farmers need to have the right to protect the land from vandals and claim-jumpers, otherwise everyone will starve.

In fact, the idea of a dying and resurrecting god is a concept of agricultural societies. These kinds of gods didn't exist in pre-agricultural times. It stems (pun) originally from the fact that the crops, the staff of life itself, imbued with all manner of magic, died every winter and grew again in the spring. There are countless myths of gods who were slaughtered and, where their blood fell on the ground, life-giving crops grew every year.

Everything profoundly important, that meant the difference between existing and not existing (as an individual and especially as a society) was imbued with powerful magic. Dionysus was a dying and resurrecting god, just as Christ would be after him. At his ceremonies it was said the Maenads (wild dancing priestesses) would dance themselves into a mad frenzy and culminate the ritual by tearing one of the congregation limb from limb (a very mythological idea) and stomp him or her into the ground, literally pulping the body the same way grapes are mashed to make wine.

When you think about these things, it becomes clear (If you're not deeply invested in materialism) that it's all representative. A wild story about mashing human grapes into the earth, so Dionysus can resurrect at that spot? Growing from the earth, similarly to how Prometheus took the living Earth and shaped it into Man and Woman? Weren't Adam and Eve also made of earth? These are all ideas from a pre-scientific time, when nobody knew how the world or people or animals came into being, and when they'd think about those things their minds conjured up these powerful dreamlike images that aren't literallly true, but that incorporate principles of existence. Life grows from the earth (if you live in an agricultural society), but you must fructify the earth first. I think the idea of mashing people into it was a holdover from earlier human sacrifice ideas, but that was the same thing. The idea of killing someone, or an animal—the best of your herd—to satiate the gods and ensure a good herd next year, or a good crop, or what-have-you, is very mythological and very superstitious at root.

And even then some people took it all very literally. It doubtless seemed like literallly killing an animal or a person might be far more powerful, might really get through to whatever the gods are, and placate them. What more could you possibly do, aside from offering yourself as sacrifice? Which some people did as well. Or an important part of your body? Like foreskin perhaps? Or labia? Or to scarify yourself painfully, to embed symbolic images into your very flesh, like carving stone tablets?

I know none of this will convince some people, and I don't mean to convince anybody who's committed to materialism. In part I'm still just developing my ideas and my understanding of this. It's a quest, a passion, a mission, that expresses itself through an obsessive need to keep thinking about it, reading about it, and writing about it (which is what really develops the understanding).

Some seeds fall on stony soil, where they can't take root and there isn't enough nutrient for them to grow and flourish, But occasionally one will fall on good rich soil where there's enough sun and rain to sustain its growth.

Jordan Peterson's Biblical Lecture Series
For anyone who's interested in these ideas, this is probably the best place to really dig into them. It should help explain how to see religious ideas metaphorically, as the most important life principles put into the language of mythology. Well, the Jonathan Pageau video above is an amazing starting point as well, but Peterson has developed his ideas largely through conversations with Pageau, and also has been thinking about this stuff for decades. And he's a lot smarter than I am (they both are).


Peterson also has taken a great deal of time preparing these lectures, and explains things in great depth. Far more so than I can in a blog post I put together in 20 minutes or so. If you really want to try to engage with these ideas, I recommend watching the entire video series, or at least the first one.

John Barleycorn Must Die
Here's a nifty treat that demonstrates how mythological thought works. And it's very agricultural to boot. I first came across this in the form of a song by Traffic:

But Lo and Behold! It originally was an old folk song. Here are the lyrics (from the Traffic version):

There were three men came out of the West,
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die.

They've ploughed, they've sewn, they've harrowed him in,
Threw clods at Barley's head,
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead.

They've let him lie for a very long time,
Till the rains from heaven did fall,
And little Sir John sprung up his head,
And so amazed them all.

They've let him stand till midsummer's day,
Till he looked both pale and worn,
And little Sir John's grown a long, long beard,
And so become a man.

They've hired men with the scythes so sharp,
To cut him off at the knee,
They've rolled him and tied him by the waist,
Servin' him most barbarously.

They've hired men with the sharp pitchforks,
Who pricked him to the heart,
And the loader he has served him worse than that,
For he's bound him to the cart

They've wheeled him around and around the field,
Till they came unto a barn,
And there they made a solemn oath,
On poor John Barleycorn.

They've hired men with the crab-tree sticks,
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he has served him worse than that,
For he's ground him between two stones.

And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl,
And he's brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl,
Proved the strongest man at last.

The huntsman, he can't hunt the fox,
Nor so loudly to blow his horn,
And the tinker he can't mend kettle nor pots,
Without a little Barleycorn​

So much brutality and torture!! What's the point of it all? Well, as it turns out, it was a metaphor for the making of liquor from barley.

Here's a quote from This Site:

When you first listen to the song you may think that you landed in the midst of a Middle Ages inquisition session. The lyrics describe all kinds of brutal methods inflicted by three men upon a poor fellow named John Barleycorn. However a closer look reveals that the distressing lyrics are actually a metaphor to the process applied to barley in order to produce beer and whiskey. While it has its roots in old folklore tales about the Corn God and religious symbolism, it is really a satire on legally prohibiting the production of alcoholic beverages while still needing the drink to get on with everyday life, as revealed in the last verse
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A barleycorn is a 'corn' of barley (a chunk or a nodule, a lump in other words). It's a myth about fructifying the earth with the blood of "John Barleycorn" so the barley will grow and they can make some liquor. I'm willing to bet there were rituals involving the pouring out of beer or whiskey on the ground where the harvest had been reaped. And lots of drinking! It would all be very Dionysian, and undoubtedly originated from exactly those kind of rituals.

From Wikipedia:

Kathleen Herbert draws a link between the mythical figure Beowa (a figure stemming from Anglo-Saxon paganism that appears in early Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies whose name means "barley") and the figure of John Barleycorn. Herbert says that Beowa and Barleycorn are one and the same, noting that the folksong details the suffering, death, and resurrection of Barleycorn, yet also celebrates the "reviving effects of drinking his blood".
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Also from the same page:

"John Barleycorn" is an English and Scottish folk song[1] listed as number 164 in the Roud Folk Song Index. John Barleycorn, the song's protagonist, is a personification of barley and of the alcoholic beverages made from it: beer and whisky. In the song, he suffers indignities, attacks, and death that correspond to the various stages of barley cultivation, such as reaping and malting.
​

I don't know about you, but I'll drink to that! Literally as well as metaphorically.

Prometheus' Garden
Trigger warning—lots of crude clay full-frontal nudity, if that sort of thing bothers you. Seems kind of appropriate here though.
Here's a clip from Bruce Bickford's clay animation Prometheus' Garden, wherein the magical clay of life (earth) gives birth to living beings who grow, and, where they die, new ones spring forth in the endless cycle of death and resurrection.

Bickford, besides looking a lot like a Biblical prophet in his later years, was obsessed with these mythological ideas and had to bring life to them in his medium of choice.

The right and wrong hemispheres
There's a deeper issue here than just materialism and literalism, though these are all closely related.

Modern people who interpret religious works literally are trying to apply left-brain logic to something created through right-brain poetry
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Myth is a right-brain product, like poetry and the other arts. It comes from the creative hemisphere, the one that seeks connections and patterns, not the one that criticizes and dissects. The left brain analyzes, the right brain synthesizes, which means to put together. The conscious brain structures, which take things apart in order to study them, are not good at seeing things holistically.

This is the reason so many people are utterly unable to understand all this as symbolism and as reality at the same time. The right brain does that natively, the left brain simply is not properly equipped to do it at all.

What's required is a shift from left-brain logical thinking to right-brain mythical/symbolic/holistic thinking.

And remember, I started this blog (and have posted many times) about the difference between what I call Narrative and Poetic story. Or more properly maybe it should be Prosaic and Poetic. These two modes seem to correspond quite well with the two hemispheres. The Order Mind and the Chaos Mind, or Yin and Yang.

"Only women have the power of creation." Not without some help from a man. Only gods can create alone.

But yes, in many religions it seems the god of creation is a woman.

Wow. Ok... some parts of that make sense. Other parts—maybe Ronco has a sale on word salad spinners?

"Someone else can symbolically feel like he owns your house one morning" This would make sense if you take out the word symbolic. There's nothinbg symbolic about this situation. Were you trying to demonstrate that you have absolutely no idea what a symbol is? Believing you have the right to trespass on someone else's property has nothing whatsoever to do with symbolism, or with anything I've said here. Can I have some of what you're drinking, it must be good stuff!

With the stoning example you showed that laws are as real as stones, as long as the majority of people agree to uphold those laws. And laws are not real physical things, they're ideas that govern our behavior. We live by laws today, enforced not by stones but by guns and prison bars. But the Law is a system of thoughts and ideas that we all agree to live by. The guns and bars are just there to enforce the agreement.

In the days when the great religions were being created, our ancestors were struggling toward objectivity. It wasn't yet possible—we hadn't developed logic and reason enough yet, but we kept moving toward it. We were firmly ensconced in the right brain, in dreamlike creativity, and hadn't yet learned how to fully harness the potentials of the new left-brain apparatus that allowed us to start thinking abstractly.

Ah screw it—there's no point trying to straighten out this kind of gibberish. There are parts of what you said that make sense, but the rest... it's a lost cause. And as I keep saying, I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I'm just showing people that there's another way to interprret these holy books—in the same spirit they were written in, which was not one of logical scientific objectivity but more of poetic dreamlike discovery of the most profound and powerful human truths, that took millennia for our ancestors to discover and wrestle with and finally make sense of. The holy books are the record of that, and created the foundation on which logic, reason, and science could be built. As much as the logic-lovers hate this, the conscious mind is a recent outgrowth of the much older and much larger unconscious, which thinks in metaphor, symbol and dream-imagery. The enitre edifice of logic, reason and science had to be wrestled forth from that over a period of millennia, and the Bible is a big part of that story.

How you interpret the Bible is not the most important thing
Ultimatley of course it makes no difference whether you interpret the Bible literally or metaphorically—the conclusions are the same. Interpretation is just the medium we use to reach those conclusions.

Whether you believe Adam was one groovy dude or a collective representation of early Man, the moral of the story is the important thing. Of course it's hard to understand exactly what it means, no matter how you interpret it. There are a number of possible moral conclusions that could be drawn from it. But the stories in the Bible are definitely there to prompt us to think as profoundly and deeply as we can about the consequences of our decisions and actions. To consult the inner judge (or outer judge, doesn't matter 'where' it might be), and to carefully consider your options and proceed with great caution. The stories show many different moral situations, the choices that could be made in them, and the consequences of wrong choices.

Whether he lives inside of you or outside is far less important than the fact that God is the thing that knows right from wrong, that we should listen to a lot more than we do, and that will punish us severely for not listening. I think the most important thing, in a broad general sense, is how you choose to align yourself to that judge.