The Bible and Wisdom, 6-26-2010

 Before reading Aristotle, I began re-reading The Bible. I began again on The Bible because I had been reading The Brothers Karamazov.

I found my King James version hard to follow, as I found about everything too hard to read in the early days of my incarceration. My mind wandered far from the printed page. The genealogical tables of St. Matthew and Genesis blurred in front of my eyes.

The halfway house's bookshelves had a modern translation of The Bible. This was the Oxford Catholic Bible. No idea how it came to the Volunteers of America. The Catholics (and the Orthodox) recognize a few more books than do the Protestants. I worked my way through the New Testament with the King James version. This Catholic Bible opened the Old Testament to me. I started with 1 Maccabees - one of those books denied Protestants. It is good history, and I can see why it was dropped from our Bible.

I did not wish to appear as one of those having a jailhouse conversion. Too often, too many have crisis calls to faith. I have been interested in returning to the church for many years now, but I was tepid, and did nothing. We will see what happens when I am disgorged from the federal prison system. That is the true test of any jailhouse conversion. Meanwhile, I will write on the subject of religion while avoiding any zealotry.

Reading The Gospel of St. Mark and St. Paul's Epistles, including Hebrews, have reconciled me to the Church as an organization. St. Mark provided an insight into the cause of my problems. I hardened my heart. About the Church, its failings and its aspirations, I strongly suggest reading Hebrews.

Is it safe to say that a person hardens their heart with bitterness? I do not want to confuse my particular mindset with broader truths. 

I found this in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chapter 5, §10:

Bitter people are hard to reconcile,a nd stay angry for a long time, since they contain their {angry} spirit. It stops when they pay back the offense; for the exaction of the penalty produces pleasure in plac eof pain, and so puts a stop to the anger. But if this does not happen, they hold their grudge. For no one else persuades them to get over it, since it is not obvious; and digesting anger in oneself takes time. This sort of prison is most troublesome to himself and to his cloest friends.

Ah, but what if the anger is directed at existence, at one's own failings? What modernity has over the ancient Greeks is the reaction of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre to the problem of the Nazis desolation of Europe. I see in myself a bitterness breeding an anger I let fester until the only solution for the offensiveness I then felt about myself was suicide.

Depression, whatever its causes, loves seclusion.  Bring it out in the open and those causes will be dealt with. Silence leads to actions of which you may not like the consequences.

I have gone on at too great a length about the Bible, but not wisdom. Specifically, I have avoided The Wisdom of Solomon, sometimes just known as Wisdom. Reading this made me think of a book on the virtues. This is one of the books omitted from the Protestant Bible.  

Consider this passage from Wisdom, 6, 9:

To you, therefore, O princes, are my words addressed that you may learn wisdom and that you may not sin.

I wonder what Protestantism would be like if we made a seeking of wisdom as important as the form of church service?

Those not having read Wisdom, should do so.

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