• Have you read, or do you know someone who reads, Scripture from a Marcionite perspective? What question does a Marcionite reading attempt to answer?
    I suppose I have heard people talk about “God in the Old Testament” as if this were a distinct from what we read in the Gospels.

    Why does James say a Marcionite reading of Scriptures is a mistake?
    It sets up the God of the Israelites as an inferior foil for understanding the superior God of the Christians. Not to mention the question of consistency that would face people who define their “One God” over and against some other people’s “One God,” the practice is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and lends itself very easily to justifications of violence against the “barbarians” who worship the wrong “One God”.

    Have you read, or do you know someone who reads, Scripture from a fundamentalist perspective? What question does a fundamentalist reading attempt to answer?
    Yes, plenty. They attempt to reconcile a depiction of God’s righteousness with all the violent acts attributed to God in the Bible.

    Why does James say a fundamentalist reading of Scriptures is a mistake?
    Fundamentalism assumes that Scripture are meaningful in themselves and by themselves apart from readers. Fundamentalists claim falsely that an objective bias-free reading predates any readership and is available to cautious readers to uncover. The truth is that scriptures only take on meaning when they are reader and that readers are always employing a particular (i.e. not universal) interpretive key.

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