In his new book, Why Are Jews Liberals?,
[Norman] Podhoretz describes how liberal Jews—rabbis and worshipers alike—routinely cherry-pick passages from the Torah to buttress favored social policies,
writes Wall Street Journal reviewer Richard Baehr.
It has been my impression that virtually all people who believe in the divine provenance of the Bible routinely cherry-pick passages that accord with their own mores. But I may well be mistaken and would certainly have to defer to the experts. In any case, the patriarchal, pre-capitalist, tribal society of ancient Israel is so fantastically remote from our own era that it is not immediately obvious to me that Reaganite supply-side conservatism is more in accord with the Torah than FDR’s New Deal. The hermeneutical challenges in deciding how the human authors of the Old Testament would have regarded a public option in health care, say, dwarf those of first discovering, then applying, the “original intent” of the Constitution. But again, I may be wrong.
It has been my impression that virtually all people who believe in the divine provenance of the Bible routinely cherry-pick passages that accord with their own mores.
yes. e.g., “literalists” are fine with metaphorical/allegorical interpretations when they are necessitated by the demand that the text exhibit some coherency or veracity, not to mention when those passages don’t align with their politics. e.g., christians who believe that capitalism in keeping with the root and spirit of christianity.