Our Way of Looking at & Things versus The Bible’s Way of Writing
The “man on the street” today uses modern expressions such as “physical reality” – yet he is not referring to technical entities – which the ancients could not and did not understand, but he is still “thinking” in much the same way as all the ancients thought in this area. All the people read of or hear of tree, water, “earth”, and think of and “come from” the objects of our “experience in this world” (as we say) “the hard stuff” - only one aspect of which is the modern discovery of “physical reality”. That is, in fact “physical reality” is an entity that can be considered to be “the objects of our experience in this world.”
But what causes us to make the assumption (unconsciously) that the Bible is the same as any other literature? Why couldn’t the Bible be different from all other literature – not only in its content – but even in the manner of its “writing”? In all other writing when we read of tree, water, earth and even verbs, we do – and are supposed to “bring in” and “use” and “start with” our experience with these objects “in this world”.
But why couldn’t the Bible be different? Why couldn’t it be coming from a different and higher view and use of “our” terms than we do? When the Bible speaks of tree, water, earth, etc. it is initially referring to a “universal” and higher idea of these objects than that of our experience with these objects in this world.
The Bible is Godly thinking – that is much “higher” initially than our “normal” way of thinking.
When the Bible speaks of tree, water, earth, etc., there is indeed (and necessarily) at least continuity with our “worldly” use of these terms. But we are wrong in our assumption that our starting point (in understanding Scripture) must be our experience with these objects signified by these terms in this world!
When the Bible speaks of vine, there is indeed continuity with (more on this later) the idea of vine that we have “developed” in this world. But the Bible initially (with no need for “symbolic talk”) is coming from a much broader “definition” of “vine” than we ever could suppose – When the Bible speaks of vine – it is immediately coming from a universal “vine in itselfness” idea (German “daesin”) only one version of which is our severely limited idea of vine “developed” in this world. But the Bible is different. Its “definitions” and ideas are fundamentally different and much broader than ours. And the Bible also speaks of “the true vine” which is a third reality that is different from either “vine in itselfness” or our worldly idea of vine.
But our goal must always be this “vine in itselfness” or “water in itselfness” etc. rather than our hopelessly limited experience with these “objects” in this world.
All this is very foreign. But this – and this alone – is what we should have realized long ago – and thus avoided the historical metaphor/allegory errors.
Only in this way is there any hope of “comparing spiritual with spiritual”. At present, we are still changing the Scripture to “compare physical with spiritual”. This would eliminate the “need for” our metaphor approach – which has caused so much trouble.
We need to read the Bible far differently than we have ever done before!
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I am quite skeptical that reading and understanding the Bible could happen if it was speaking in language that is fundamentally different than ours. The incarnation of Jesus, I think, provides evidence that we must be spoken to in our own language. I also think that it is possible you are confounding the metaphysics of Platonic idealism with some spiritual way of writing. "Treeness" rather than individual trees is not what I would see as Biblical, but rather a manifestation of a certain questionable Greek philosophical tradition.
My main concern, however, would be that our reading of the Bible would be unmoored from any constraints imposed by language, history, and literature. It seems safest to take the Bible as inspired but using language and concepts which would have been understandable to the people of the time. One of the miracles of language, in my opinion, is its ability (even in non-Biblical contexts) to say things that have never been said or thought before despite these constraints.
I think that it has actually been commonplace in Christian history to do what you are suggesting (if I understand you rightly) and theorize on the nature of the text apart from regular linguistic, literary, and historical considerations. An example of this would be the way many Christians think about "love" (ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω). For many, they start with the concept of divine unconditional love and read it into everything. φιλέω then becomes a human type of love. Once these meta-ideas are established, it doesn't seem to matter how the authors actually use the words. Historically, it has been shown that in Greek literature there was a shift from φιλέω to ἀγαπάω both in religious and non-religious texts (see the Septuagint and Plutarch as examples). In addition, linguistically, it seems that there are clear passages in the Septuagint where the Hebrew word אהב is translated by either term, sometimes when talking about the same event (see Genesis 37:3-4). People also tend to ignore the fact that in John φιλέω is used of God's love for Jesus as well as Jesus love for the "beloved disciple". In terms of the famous debate in John 21, regarding Peter's love for Jesus being downgraded from ἀγαπάω to φιλέω, I think that the literary style of John is ignored. If you analyze John 21, you find that not only is there variation for the word "love", but there are several words for "fish," "drag," and "know". The a priori view that ἀγαπάω is fundamentally different from φιλέω, in my opinion, does not do justice to the reality of the text. People also seem to forget that a good way to find out what love is in the Bible is defined in 1 Corinthians 13; why define it abstractly apart from the text when you can read a definition in the text? more to the point, if the definition of ἀγάπη was so obvious to the Christians of the time, why would Paul take such efforts to define it for them?
To repeat, I don't think the Bible could communicate to us if its concepts were "higher" or "other" than ours. My own take is that we must interpret the Bible like we would any other literature if we are to take it seriously as inspired scripture. I hope that these comments address the concepts you are considering.