This Edinger book is full of good stuff. Within 8 pages, he succintly dismantled for me the weirdness that surrounds biblical scholarship. He writes, in regard to the Apocalypse:

An immense amount of scholarly work by biblical scholars has gone into the study of this text. Practically all of these scholars, however, have been contained in the myth itself: so they have been trying to understand their own mythological container. As a depth psychologist, I find it very interesting to observe how individuals come to intellectual terms with mythological texts in which they are still contained. There is, quite frankly, a lot of twisting and squirming; for the problem is a bit like that of fish trying to understand the properties of water - the medium by which they are surrounded. Yet it is not really possible to understand of to perceive the subject as an object until one is outside of it; one has to get outside of the container before that becomes possible.

This to me speaks volumes. It’s not just an excellent summation of blindspots in biblical scholarship, but it highlights a common problem in all disciplines (even Jungian psychology, to some degree). Instead of the Bible, think about how what Edinger’s thoughts could be applied to politics. From all political fronts, you have just this enormous amount of chatter about all the little details of the system. But the thing is, they are all trapped within and thus blinded by the system to some extent. Republican, democrat, libertarian, green - once you step outside the differences seem so minimal and silly. But while you’re inside of it, it seems enormously important, and such things consume you.

There are a couple places I think this analogy breaks down though. First is that you can never be free of all systems and models of thought. So you step outside the box labelled “Bible” and the box labelled “Civilization” - you’re still contained in some other myth. It’s inescapable. And it’s not always bad. Think of driving a car. The only way you can really understand how to drive a car is while you’re contained within it. I guess the point of what Edinger is saying though is that the only way you can understand the traffic patterns, is by seeing them from a helicopter (which is, incidentally, another container).