You have taken a phrase out of context.
When you assert that the whole Bible has to be used as context, it is hard for me to do anything else.
My FIRST interpretation,
the one that will give me the most insight,
is to assume "the speaker" is talking to "a dove " and I may not yet know what a "Dove" is.
In other words, your immediate response to the passage is that you don't think the the word
dove should be taken literally as meaning a
dove --- a bird of the family Columbidae. That is a non-literal interpretation which I confess had not occurred to me.
I will assume the speaker is talking to a dove ...
... but that dove doesn't mean dove ...
... until I read the content before and the content after the phrase. But holding
on to the most literal interpretation of the content will always
reveal more about what is intended, than automatically dismissing the most obvious meaning and jumping on to
"What ANY idiot can see is the REAL meaning, especially in light of....":
But in this case the first non-literal interpretation that popped into
your head is not the "most literal interpretation"
nor the interpretation that reveals most about what is intended.
If you go the OTHER way, the process is the same.
What is that word in the Greek?
Where is that Greek word used and what did that Greek word
mean in the other places it was used. Same process. Start from where you are and work outwords.
It's Hebrew, and in other contexts it means dove.
Now, If you assume the bible is a collection of stories from 40 authors, handed down by word of mouth over countless generations until the original story is completely reshaped, then its natural to question each sentence and assume it's only vaguely related to the original intent and immediately begin guessing at its actual meaning.
If you assume that it's the unaltered word of God, it's still fairly natural to try to figure out what it means.
When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise. (David L. Cooper, The World’s Greatest Library Graphically Illustrated. Los Angeles: Biblical Research Society, 1970)
But this is not what you have done. So far from taking the word "dove" at its "primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning", you have leaped to the conclusion that it
doesn't mean dove.
Meanwhile I, while taking the word "dove", to mean "dove", am reading the whole phrase as a metaphor.
And Cooper, so far from advocating rigid literalism, is merely saying that literalism should be the
default assumption. Which is fair enough.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2