“Well, the Bible has that too,” is a common response people have when you try and discuss the question of weird passages in the Quran. It is a pretty solid way to shut down the conversation. This is not because it is necessarily a good point of contention, but because it reveals a wide chasm of understanding that must be bridged before the conversation can be resumed. It reveals a lack of knowledge of the individual nature of religious documents and an assumption that “Sacred Scripture” is a genre in which you can find the same general similarity of content, form, style, and intent.
Genre : a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.
“genre,” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2019. Web. 13 September 2019.
Sacred scripture is an incredibly diverse category. If I was to submit a definition for “scripture,” it would be “any writings set apart and given authority by a group of people to determine their culture.” The nature of the writings can have a lot of variety, and furthermore there is even more variety in how its adherents set about interpreting and implementing it. I wish I could tell you something about all the Sacred Scriptures out there, but my experience as of writing this is only with the Bible, two-thirds of the Quran, and a smidge of Book of Mormon. But material in the Christian Bible alone is diverse enough to examine the variety I’m describing. So let’s take a look at the Bible: what genres does it contain? What materials does it use? What attitudes do its adherents hold about those materials? And why does this matter when comparing religious documents?
Continue reading “Sacred Scripture is Not a Genre”
twopennyposts 