Concepts and Knowing

From Poetry and Prophecy, Dust and Ashes, on plough.com:

Biblical inerrancy is a modern doctrine, and these kinds of reactions, too, invite the accusation that I am judging an ancient text by standards not native to it. Indeed, I am. This is a necessary step in a process called "reading." My disgust and confusion are forms of information; they measure my distance from the text's world. A reading that entered fully into the text's thought-world, that required no haggling or silent dissent on the way, would be a useless exercise - you could bring nothing back from it; it would dissolve like a dream. Nor are such objections simply modern. Alter's notes detail many instances in which medieval and early-modern textual critics tried to smooth away the violence and contradictions of the text.