I realise, of course, that you personally initiated this thread, but why oh why does "the truth" always and only ever end up in the area of Biblical scholarship, as though it has neither relevance nor credence outside this field? Your responses in this thread all seem to point in that direction only.
also,there's a psalm that mentions david at the right hand of God. psalm 110:1 'the Lord says to my Lord: sit at My right hand, until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet...Thy people will volunteer freely in the day of Thy power; in holy array (ressurrected), from the womb of the dawn....' to me this is a poetic way of saying - 'far into the future.' the 'womb of the dawn' meaning a new birth to spirit life.
At least one can endeavour (albeit arguably with no small degree of surprise) to appreciate that, at last, you are willing to admit of poetic expression within the Bible rather than mere literate statement of fact; that said, I wonder to what extent you are prepared to admit of the kinds of literary merit in the Bible that belong in the areas of poetic expression, allusory reference, fantasy, imagination, etc. (and I stress here that I use none of these in any pejorative sense).
Perhaps somemore in-depth consideration of certain passages in the Bible may help and encourage you to broaden your appreciation of the work as literature with especial reference to those notions alluded to above, rather than merely as some inviolable and inflexible 2,000-year-old (and therefore well outmoded) handbook for living.
I'd be interested in your take on this.
To return to a broader consideration of the notion of "the truth", in may be worth noting that, in chapter 8 ("Rome", pp. 136-137) of his book "Alone" (Chapman & Hall, London, 1921), the Scots writer Norman Douglas (1868-1952) wrote:
Therefore the sage will go his way,
prepared to find himself
growing ever more out of sympathy
with vulgar trends of opinion...
He scorns to make proselytes among his fellows:
they are not worth it.
He has better things to do.
While others nurse their griefs,
he nurses his joy.
He endeavours to find himself
at no matter what cost,
and to be true to that self when found -
a worthy and ample occupation for a lifetime.One may reasonably presume that Douglas either had in mind or was subconsciously recalling the lines
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any manwhich, of course, are found in Shakespeare's
Hamlet.
How and to what extent (if any) this/these can be taken as impinging upon "the truth" as you refer to it - i.e. a notion of something capable of "setting one free" - is hard, if not actually impossible, to say with any certainty, especially in the absence of a more specific definition of such "freedom"; "freedom", after all, cannot merely exist
in vacuo as some kind of stand-alone state - one has to be free
from something in order to claim freedom, surely?
Best,
Alistair