Three religious, a rabbi, a Jesuit, a mufti, met, not to renew the politeness of interreligious dialogue, but for “ sweep in front of their door “, And examine themselves the” painful verses From their tradition, those who are regularly invoked by fanatism to maintain religious conflicts. A pile wish ?
What is a painful verse ? It is a verse that encourages hatred of the other, and in particular representatives of the two other great monotheistic religions. David Meyer, who directed this collective work, immediately specifies-and perhaps a little quickly-that a painful verse is a verse which apparently contradicts the most universal and indisputable teaching of the sacred text: the love of neighbor. Consequently, reducing this appearance, forcing the text to the unity, and submitting the recalcitrant verse to criticism, is the task that the believer must impose any holding session, before even claiming to meet the believers of other religions.
The method followed essentially consists in reducing the roots of the conflict by making the share between what is history and what is the eternal. Without a doubt, religions were born in the conflict. Any new church is formed in the cut and schism: the Jews against the Amalecites, the Christians against the Jews – at least those who do not accept the message of the Gospels (conflict which transpares especially in the 4e Gospel, that of John), and finally the Muslims against the Jews and the Christians who did not accept the reform proposed by the new prophet (conflict which transpares especially in the last suras of the Koran). It is therefore not surprising that the sacred text retains traces of these original conflicts. One of the main arguments, common to the three authors, is to bring these schisms to history, and not to project them on religion itself and its universalism.
Three and a half centuries after the excommunication of Spinoza by his Jewish community in Amsterdam, is it not comforting to see the rabbi David Meyer reproduce more or less, and apparently without his knowledge (in any case, the name of Spinoza does not appear) the lesson of the lesson of Theological-political treaty who was scandalous in his time to have raised a critical look at the Holy Scriptures ? To put an end to the controversies and the wars of religion, Spinoza already proposed, already, of bringing religious dogma to a very simple moral nucleus (faith consists in practicing justice and charity), and of interpreting the rest in the light of this universal teaching, in particular by explaining the apparent contradictions of the texts by the history of their context, and of the vicissitudes of the text itself. Times have changed, it is now the theologians themselves who have learned to implement this critical look. Soheib Bencheikh hears “ to tear out “The sacred book” In the context of its revelation and its transmission in order to identify the temporal from the eternal and the conjuncture of the universal. Thus, the Koranic message would better serve humanity and participate in the moral and spiritual enrichment of our common society ».
We cannot contest the good intentions of such a company, but the question of the criterion proper remains indefinite, to the point that one could sometimes send to David Meyer the criticism that Spinoza addressed to another Meyer, his friend Louis Meyer who in a book entitled The interpreter of the Holy Scripturehad already exercised the painful verses of the Bible. These verses, it was not so much in his eyes those who seem to invite to hatred of the other, as those who seemed to contradict the science of time, that of Galileo and Descartes, contrary to the teachings of Genesis on the formation of the world. Louis Meyer therefore proposed to adopt for one and only criterion of interpretation human reason: when the sacred text seems to contradict it, it is necessary to interpret in another way-in a metaphorical way-sacred education. In doing so, he exposed a serious objection: if reason is enough to make the truth known, what the Bible is for and what becomes of revelation ? To which Louis Meyer replied: the Bible is used to cause reason, to invite him to ask questions that she would not be asked on her own. It is remarkable that David Meyer, as well as Soheib Bencheikh, take this idea exactly when they pose the modern tolerance as a prior To any interpretation of the text, and conclude that the sacred text is made, precisely, to provoke reason, to encourage it to seek by itself solutions to difficulties, instead of falling asleep in a dogmatic sleep to wake up fanatical. The painful verses then reveal themselves, writes David Meyer, not only dangerous, but “ also the most magnificent in tradition “, Insofar as, by transgressing,” by rebelling against the primary meaning of some of these verses “,” The underlying truth of these same passages can appear to us and enlighten our life with a light of humanism so central in our tradition ». Thus, all the texts explicitly inviting to fight, even to massacre purely and simply the impious, foreigners, etc., we must, we are told, be taken in a symbolic sense of inner combat. For example, says Yves Simoens, the “ Jewish From the Gospel of John, does not designate a Jew, but a Christian, as he is not yet open to speech. Or, according to David Meyer, Abraham ready to sacrifice his son on divine order is not as usual, the model of faith, but on the contrary a counter-model, that of a blind and fanatic faith. In the end, we are told, painful, the verse is only apparently ; Otherwise, it is not a verse. Historical data, a moment recognized in their painful aspect, are a little too quickly absorbed by an allegorical and rationalist interpretation which seems a little too convenient to convince.
Faced with this disarming (but disarming, optimizing, is it in the literal sense ?), We are sometimes tempted to ask what right, in the name of which we should impose on the text revealed the values which are today those of the Western. To read the subtle exegetes of rabbi, we are of course seduced by the inventiveness and richness of the glimpses, but at the same time, we are concerned about seeing the sacred text reduced to being only one expression among others of a kind of universal humanist or rationalist wisdom, whose other religions represent other flagships alongside wisdoms and declarations of human rights. Same impression by reading the beautiful flights, “ sincere and daring “, According to his own expression, by Soheib Bencheikh against fanaticism. The latter goes so far as to quote Nietzsche (“ There are no facts, there are only interpretations », P. 138): Zarathustra’s father would no doubt be rejoiced to be considered as an authority in terms of Koranic exegesis ! In short, the argument loses rigor what it gains in fervor. Basically, in this fight against fanaticism, we sometimes have the feeling that one only opposes one rhetoric to another, and that the fight is more of incantation, even denial, than demonstration. The abandonment of the letter, even animated by the best intentions in the world, is perhaps more risky than it seems in the first place. And this is where Spinoza should be reread: religious violence is first of all violence against the text and its literality, and reason does not have any privilege on the most aggressive passion. Let us recall what he writes about the rationalist interpretation of the Bible, as recommended by a maimonid:
If the way of seeing Maimonides was the true, the vulgar who most often ignores the demonstrations, or is unable to apply himself, should be able to admit anything about writing that on the authority or by the testimony of men philosopping, and it would therefore be necessary to assume that philosophers are infallible in the interpretation of writing ; It would in truth be a new ecclesiastical authority, a new priesthood or a kind of pontificate which would excite in the vulgar laughter rather than veneration. (Theological-political treatyChapter VIItrad. Pressn).
This is what particularly threatens the hyper-hermetic exegeses of the Jesuit Yves Simoens (who unlike his two colleagues, never says “ I »). David Meyer admits his perplexity, then after several readings, finds them a very charitable excuse: the Catholic Church would have long undertaken the work of criticism that the two other confessions do only attend. Does this mean that this work must end by such acrobatics ? But perhaps also the almost abstruse subtlety of the Jesuit gives more the idea of the religious fact, its mystery and its pump, than the beautiful tolerance of the other two, which seem so much to adhere to the spirit of their century that one ends up wondering what separates them, apart from history.
These objections are of little weight with regard to the generosity of the company. Precisely because none pretends to hold the monopoly of revelation, the book led by David Meyer evokes the famous parable of the rings in Nathan the sagethe playing play, emblematic of the Enlightenment: which teaches the three monotheistic religions to bury the causes of ancestral conflicts to take care only of the education of its own children.