just another thought on yesterday's blog. In the Jewish bible, both poetry and science are aspects of their faith. Since everything comes from God then all must be given back. Some parts of the bible are poetry and others are very God-centred science. (The saturday psalm: You made the streams flow between the hills. You fixed the number of the stars.) God as source of all.

Reading that today I wondered if this is all still legitimate. Why do I have absolutely no trouble in reading this? To me there is a way in which it is still true - but there is another important point here. It isn't true from a 'scientific' viewpoint because God obviously does not directly cause the grass to grow or streams to flow down valleys: all of those things happen because of the natural laws of physics. Nor do I advocate the idea of 'intelligent design' which is far too simplistic and turns God into a sort of huge architect which isnt how it is at all . . . . to me though, the most essential aspect of God has to be his imminence and any way in which we can both celebrate and proclaim this through poetic use of language becomes essential . . . . nothing does this better than the psalms. 

And that has to be the crux of the matter. When I speak of Jewish God-centred 'science' I really mean that their 'science' is really all poetry in that they use language figuratively and not objectively and perhaps this is the great Divide between the Jewish way of thought and the Greek. Although Greek poetry does many of the things that Jewish poetry does (without being in any way God-centred of course) Greek scientific and philosophical thought is something altogether different and quite foreign to the Jew. To the God-centred Jew how a stone actually came into being is of secondary importance. The only significance of a stone is that it was created by God. It is God only who is important. To the educated Greek, the stone is a stone and needs looking at as a stone, not as a part of God's creation . . . . .This is what I meant yesterday by 'intellectual freedom'.

And so any idea of 'science' in the ancient Jewish tradition is subjugated to a poetic intent towards God which is what, I suppose, the ancient scriptures are.