For thousands of years humanity has been reading the same sacred texts; yet it still faces a fundamental problem concerning how these texts ought to be read.
The narratives in the Torah, the Gospels, and the Qur’an have largely been treated as though they belonged to a history book. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the other names have been taken as individuals who lived once in the past, and the events recounted around them as incidents that took place in a particular place at a particular time.
Over time this reading became so entrenched that the narrative itself and its interpretation became inseparable.
And so humanity found itself confronted with a strange picture.
On one side stand modern biology, genetics, paleontology, archaeology, history, and cosmology. On the other stands the word-for-word historical reading of narratives such as a first human depicted on a colossal scale, all of humanity descending from a single pair, Adam and Eve, the marriage of their children to one another, a flood covering the entire earth, people who lived for centuries, sacred lineages, chosen peoples, and communities regarded as divinely privileged.
Then, inevitably, two reactions emerge.
The first group tries to preserve the traditional historical narrative regardless of what the scientific evidence says.
The second group, unable to reconcile these narratives with scientific reality, begins to regard the sacred texts in their entirety as a collection of superstitions.
Perhaps the shared error of both sides is the same:
Reading the sacred text as the wrong kind of text.
The question that ought to be asked may be this:
What if these texts are not giving us the chronology of events that happened once in the past?
What if Adam is not merely a single person?
What if Noah is not merely a man who built a ship?
What if Abraham is not merely the biological ancestor of particular peoples?
What if Moses is not merely the leader of a particular historical society?
What if these names are the personified expressions — cast in a form the human mind can grasp — of the great processes and universal laws that humanity lives through again and again?
It is precisely here that the central thesis of the researcher and writer Bahaeddin Sağlam’s work, spread over many years, comes into view. Sağlam interprets a significant portion of the prophetic names in the sacred texts less as individual biographical persons than as archetypal expressions of eras, social processes, and human conditions. In his own work he associates Adam with the process of humanity and civilization, Noah with religious and social reconstruction, Abraham with the balancing of opposites, and Moses with law and social order.
Once this approach is accepted, a great intellectual door opens onto the sacred texts.
Because the issue is no longer an attempt to prove what happened thousands of years ago.
The real issue becomes this:
How does the law that this narrative represents operate today?
The most important feature of a law is not that it occurs once, but that it reappears whenever the same conditions arise.
Gravity did not operate in Newton’s time and then disappear.
Genetic principles existed before Mendel as well.
Natural selection had been at work for millions of years before Darwin described it.
In human and social life there are likewise recurring patterns.
Power concentrates.
Justice breaks down.
Social equilibrium is lost.
Institutions decay.
People polarize.
The system begins to produce crises.
Then a search for a new equilibrium emerges.
When we read the narrative of Noah and the Flood with this eye, the question is no longer “Did water really cover the whole world?”
The question becomes:
Could it be a universal law that societies, when they lose their moral and institutional equilibrium, bring about their own destruction?
In Sağlam’s interpretation, the story of Noah moves beyond history in precisely this way and becomes a recurring model of humanity. The ark is not merely a physical vessel made of wood, but a system of salvation that carries human beings and civilization through times of crisis. The flood, in turn, is not merely water; it represents the comprehensive collapse into which societies fall once their equilibrium has been lost.
When Abraham is examined by the same method, an altogether different picture emerges as well.
Abraham is no longer merely the ancestor of particular peoples.
He is the principle of holding opposites together, balancing extremes, and establishing a higher unity between different poles.
In Sağlam’s words, Abraham is a collective concept that unites opposites “in the crucible of unity (tawhid).”
Moses, too, ceases to be merely a leader who lived in ancient times.
He can be read as law, order, social organization, institutional structure, and the disciplined organization of collective life.
Adam, in turn, ceases to be a single biological male and becomes the common name of the humanity that attains consciousness, develops language, builds civilization, and assumes moral responsibility.
This shift in thinking and understanding may seem trivial, yet its consequences are enormous.
Because when you fix sacred figures at a point in history, you inevitably draw them into disputes over lineage, geography, and ownership.
But when you read them as universal archetypes, they can be no one’s private property.
Adam is all of humanity.
The flood as depicted in Noah’s story is the crisis of all humanity.
Abraham is humanity’s search for balance.
Moses is humanity’s need for law.
With this reading lineage stops being the focal point of the sacred text.
In its place appears the human reality.
There is a broader ontological framework within which this interpretation can be under-stood. We may call it the Infinite Software.
The word “software” here is not a scientific theory claiming that the universe is a computer program in the technical sense of the word. It is a philosophical model that allows us to understand the order, information, relations, laws, and continuity we observe in existence.
Modern science increasingly shows us that reality is not adequately described as a col-lection of isolated objects.
The relationships between things are often as important as the things themselves.
The atoms that make up a DNA molecule are present in many other substances as well. What makes DNA extraordinary is not only which atoms compose it, but the information and organization those atoms carry.
A cell is not merely a heap of molecules.
A brain is not merely a heap of neurons.
An ecosystem is not merely the sum of its living creatures.
What makes a system a system is that its parts operate within particular laws and relations.
For this reason it is inadequate to think of existence as consisting of matter alone.
Matter exists.
But order exists too.
Information exists.
Relation exists.
Pattern exists.
Feedback exists.
Change exists.
Continuity exists.
The structure that all of these together constitute may be conceived, as a concept, as the Infinite Software.
The connection Sağlam draws between the Logos and software is also meaningful at this point. Heraclitus’s concept of the Logos expresses the order and the law at work within universal becoming. Sağlam brings this closer to the contemporary notion of “software” and calls particular attention to the organization of information in living systems.
When we look at the sacred texts again from this perspective, a very powerful concept appears:
The sacred narratives are story-form expressions of the operating principles of Infinite Software at the level of the human being and society.
In physics a law takes the form of an equation.
In biology a law becomes visible in the structure of the organism.
In sociology a law emerges in social patterns.
In sacred narrative, the same underlying reality is expressed through persons, events, conflicts, and symbols that human beings can understand.
In that case Noah must appear again and again.
Moses must appear again and again.
Pharaoh must appear again and again.
The flood must appear again and again.
Because if these are not merely historical persons and events, they are the outcomes the human system produces whenever certain conditions arise.
And it is precisely here that the timelessness of the sacred text acquires its meaning.
Not because it endlessly repeats the past;
but because it can display the same laws anew in every age.
When the sacred text is read like a history book, yet another problem arises.
The archetype turns into a biological ancestor.
The universal principle turns into an ethnic inheritance.
Moral responsibility turns into a claim of privilege.
And in the end the sacred narrative, which ought to bring people closer together, begins instead to harden the boundaries of identity.
Societies that see Abraham as a historical and biological ancestor can construct a relation of descent upon him.
But if Abraham is an archetype, no one owns him.
A nation may say, “Abraham is our ancestor.”
But no community can say meaningfully, “Balance belongs to us alone.”
A community may say, “Moses is our prophet.”
But no one can say, “Law belongs only to our society.”
Here is where the difference between the historical reading and the archetypal reading emerges with all its political consequences.
In the first, the sacred figure produces identity. In the second, he produces principle.
In the first, lineage matters. In the second, conduct.
In the first, one is asked “whom you are descended from” In the second, “which principle you live by”
For this reason the archetypal reading of the sacred texts is not merely an academic or theological matter.
It bears directly on world peace.
Because one of the most dangerous ideas in human history is the idea that metaphysical truth is the property of a particular group.
“We are the chosen.”
“Our lineage is sacred.” “This land was given to us by God.” “We are the true representatives of the truth.” “The others are in error.”
When this idea is made absolute within any religious or ideological structure, the other side is no longer composed merely of people who think differently.
They are perceived as people who stand against the truth itself.
Political disagreement is thus sanctified, effectively transforming it into a holy war.
And a conflict that has been sanctified is far harder to resolve than an ordinary political conflict.
Because economic interests can be negotiated.
Borders can be negotiated.
The sharing of resources can be negotiated.
But once one of the parties begins to see its own demand as God’s immutable decree, the space for negotiation rapidly disappears.
The problem is not the existence of the sacred text.
The problem is the mode of reading that turns a universal text into an ethnic and political title deed.
At this point a very important reversal appears.
Modern people often regard the sacred texts as ancient narratives incompatible with scientific fact.
Adam and Eve.
The Flood.
People who lived for hundreds of years. Extraordinary events. The multiplication of humanity from a single family.
When all of this is presented as literal history, it is hardly surprising that a person educated in modern science should move away from the text.
But perhaps it is not the text that is superstition.
It is the way the text is read.
If Adam is the archetype of humanity’s attainment of consciousness and civilization, there is no need for him to conflict with biology.
If Noah and the Flood are a law of social collapse and reconstruction, there is no need for them to conflict with geology.
If Abraham is the universal principle that balances opposites, the date of his birth ceases to be the essence of the message.
If Moses represents the archetype of law and order, the religious significance of the narrative does not depend entirely upon the discovery of an archaeological inscription bearing his name or the ruins of his palace.
This view does not diminish the sacred text. On the contrary, it rescues it from the appearance of superstition and myth.
Because now there is no need to give up the sacred text in the name of science, or to defend the sacred text in spite of science.
The two can examine different levels of the same reality.
Science investigates the mechanism.
Sacred narrative can display the pattern at the level of meaning and human conduct.
This is also the direction Sağlam proposes at the end of his text: that the sacred texts be taken out of the category of historical material and evaluated as “eternal archetypes and abstract laws,” and reread in the light of contemporary knowledge.
The intellectual change involved here is exceedingly simple:
Look not at the person, but at the principle he represents.
Look not at the event, but at the law the event demonstrates.
Look not at the past, but at the recurring pattern.
And perhaps a great problem that humanity has failed to solve for thousands of years may begin to be solved by exactly this small change of mind.
World peace is usually thought about in terms of states, armies, borders, treaties, and economic interests.
All of these are important.
But at the deeper levels of the conflict lies the way the human mind makes sense of the world.
If one person regards another as ontologically inferior to himself, the peace treaties that are signed may prove temporary.
If a society considers itself more valuable than others in the eyes of God, the idea of equality can never fully take root.
If a group regards the sacred past as its own genetic property, history can easily become a foundation for political entitlement.
For this reason real peace does not begin only at the negotiating table.
It begins in the human mind.
And the first change of mind may be this:
To take the universal principles recounted in the sacred texts out of the ownership of peoples and sects.
To give Adam back to all of humanity.
To give Noah back to all of humanity.
To give Abraham back to all of humanity.
To give Moses back to all of humanity.
To give Jesus back to all of humanity.
And to take the moral and human principles that Muhammad represents out of their status as the identity marker of a single community and to evaluate them within the shared intellectual heritage of humanity.
Because an archetype has no race.
A law has no nationality.
Truth carries no passport.
The Infinite Software does not run for one people and halt for another.
Gravity does not distinguish between Muslim and Jew.
DNA does not distinguish between Christian and Buddhist.
The laws of nature do not classify people according to their ethnic origins.
If existence is fundamentally governed by universal order, then human moral consciousness must also move toward universality.
Perhaps the greatest value of the sacred texts becomes apparent right here.
They need not be the sacred history books of the past.
They can be timeless guides prepared for situations that humanity will meet again and again.
In that case a flood is not something that came and went thousands of years ago.
It occurs anew in every civilization that collapses.
Pharaoh does not die.
He reappears in every system where power is centralized without oversight.
Abraham does not remain in the past.
Every polarized society needs Abraham again.
Moses does not withdraw from the stage of history.
He becomes a need once more in every society where law collapses.
Nor is Adam a distant human being who lived at the beginning of the world.
He is the human consciousness reborn in every generation.
It is only in this way that the true universality of the sacred text can be understood.
The choice before humanity may be simpler than we think.
We can go on reading the sacred texts as historical records of extraordinary events that took place in the past.
In that case we will be compelled to defend narratives that are in constant conflict with modern science.
We will continue trying to explain a single first human being, a single sacred genealogy, extraordinarily long lifespans, and narratives difficult to reconcile with what is known about biological and human history.
As a result, one segment of people rejects science.
Another segment rejects the sacred text.
Some may transform these historical readings into foundations for claims of ancestry, privilege, superiority, or political entitlement.
The second path may be far simpler.
Without changing the text, change the way it is read.
See the concept behind the person.
See the law behind the event.
See the model of humanity behind the narrative.
And notice the common order operating beneath all of them:
The Infinite Software.
In this perspective the sacred text is not the enemy of scientific thought.
Nor is science its rival.
Science investigates how the laws of existence operate at the physical and biological level.
The sacred texts, meanwhile, can be read as symbolic guides describing how the human being living within that same existence is to cope with power, morality, law, fear, the ego, society, and mutually opposing inclinations.
What appears today as primitive superstition may then regain meaning.
And more importantly, the sacred text ceases to be a historical document serving to prove the superiority of any nation.
It becomes the common mirror of all humanity.
Perhaps the first great step toward world peace is not a new political treaty.
Nor is it a new religion. And certainly not a new scripture.
Perhaps all that needs to be done is to reread, from another level of consciousness, the texts that have been in our hands for thousands of years.
Because the issue is not to change the sacred texts.
The issue is to rescue them from historical ownership and restore them to their universal meanings.
This is the first domino.
When that piece falls, the idea of a “sacred lineage” is shaken. Then the idea of a “superior people” is shaken. Then claims of historical ownership backed by sacred justifications are called into question.
Then the idea that the other side is ontologically less valuable begins to dissolve.
And in the end a person begins to see the one before him not as a member of some other sacred history, but as another human being of equal worth, living within the same universal system.
Perhaps the firmest foundation of world peace is no more complicated than this:
Recognizing that, rather than claiming ownership of the Truth, we are all jointly subject to it.
[1] This review was prepared by AI based on the ideas and interpretations presented in researcher and author Bahaeddin Sağlam’s article, “A Short History of Knowledge and the Sciences.” It is not an original article by Bahaeddin Sağlam; rather, it is an independent work created to explain and evaluate the main views, concepts, and interpretations presented in his article.