Amedeo

Saying that it is a work of fiction because YOU have no evidence of the reality of a book character, or because you cannot see the possibility of a reported event does not amount to speaking truthfully, unless you HAVE evidence that a character never existed and that an event of the reported kind cannot possibly happen.

Since this thread is about Jesus walking on water, one may at least ask whether such a thing can happen.

You know that air can support an aiplane as long as a plane in the air moves at a certain high speed. Water can also support a man who is running at a certain high speed. Water can also support a stationary hollow body such as a boat or a human body that is lying flat. What seems impossible is a slow moving erect body such as the "walking Jesus."

If the water-walking Jesus was indeed walking, then he was exerting energy on musles and bones, and A FORCE WAS APPLIED TO THE WATER ON WHICH HE WAS WALKING. If you become weightless (as when you are in an area between two large masses), you may easily fly above a surface, but if you get in touch with the surface, your movement is actually slowed down, etc. etc.

So, if one claims that Jesus walked over the sea-surface and reached a boat, and there was no huge mass above his head, then he was NOT being weightless, and it is predictable that he would sink. Now, somebody may imagine that he made himself weightless without the need of a counter-gravitational mass, but if he was literally walking, as claimed, he would not get to the boat which some of his disciples. That is a physical impossibility which not even a divine magician can alter. A divine magician may carry Jesus over the water, but the scriptural claim was that he was walking, which is not the same thing as being taken by a devil to the top of a mountain.

We know that the leisurely walk on water cannot happen, and we know that a man can NOT be taken to the top of a mountain by a bodyless agent, that is, an agent that does not have wings to fly and arms to hold a man in the translocation. The motion of the transported body cannot occur, unless a bodily force is applied to that body. (Of course a man can move his arms by simply willing the movement, or so it seems; and a man might get an erection at the mere though of penetrating another body, but voluntary acts do not affect things outside our bodies. Wishful willing does not lift weights or carry bodies, including our own.)

Thus, the reported events -- the walking on water or the being carried to a mountain top -- are either fictions (imaginative inventions) or hallucinations or dreams. Well, we have a story that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream. What does this mean? it mean that the story teller or dream reporter does not know the difference between a dream-person and a real person. What we call real entities and dream entities or hallucination entities are all the same for a child or a primitive [uncritical] mind: they are all real entities for him. Perhaps our evangelical narrators should have said, "And then in a dream So-and-So saw Jesus walking on water," and "In a dream So-and-So saw Jesus being carried to a mountain-top."

As a matter of fact, consider the tremendous implications of the story or report that a devil carried Jesus to a mountain, or to the pinnacle of the temple, or elsewhere:

The report tells what happened, but who saw what happened and reported it??? There was nobody watching, because, if there was, then it could NOT have been reported that an invisible agent (a devil) carried Jesus here and there. And there was nobody on the pinnacle or of the mountain top to hear and report the conversations between Jesus and the devil [a talking bodyless thing!] So, we must conclude that either the temptation events were dreamt up by somebody, or Jesus made up a story and told it to his disciples.

If you read the Gospels with critical care, you will notice that after the report of various events, there is an interesting explanation as to why the events happened. So, we read the Jesus was born in Bethlehem, IN ORDER THAT the (Bible's) prophesy might be fulfilled. The Gospels (biographies of Jesus) do not say that he was born in Bethl. and, lo and behold, this event fulfilled a prophesy. And what prophesies are they talking about? The prophesies in questions are facts about the messiah to come. So, his birth in Bethl. is now mentioned as proof that he was the messiah.

When certain other facts of the life of Jesus are mentioned, other kinds of explanations are given. For instance, Jesus was born a king, other kings came to pay homage to him, as a king he was a thread to King Herod (who, therefore, ordered the slaughter of new-born babies at the time of Jeus's birth [before Herod died, that is, BEFORE 4. B.C.], and so forth. The point is that the reality of his kingship is proven by the genealogy that traces Jesus, through his blood-father Joseph, to King David. But in the Jesus-messiah story, Jesus was born of a maiden (in fulfilment of a prophesy) and, as the dream-angel informed Joseph, it was God himself that fathered the child Mary was carrying.

The contradictions in the stories about the life and nature of Jesus exclude the possibility that all of them are authentic reports [of his deeds, his social statuses, the circumstances of his birth and his death, and so forth].

Who did the reporting about the various episodes of Jesus's life (which eventualy some Greeks collected, edited, and compliled)? We can suppose that Joseph reported his dream to Jesus's disciples. We don't know who reported the dream or fantasy that Jesus walked on water. Probably Mathhew compiled and reported a genealogy of Jesus. Most certainly Jesus reported [preached to his disciples] the story about the devil's temptations and their conversations which nobody else had heard. Most certainly Jesus reported what he said when he was alone in the garden of Ghetsemani. Jesus was a scholarly rabbi and knew his Bible; so, most likely he collected the pieces of information as to what the life of the messiah had to be, and he preached that the facts of his life conformed with the foretold messiah.

For us readers, a Jesus biography (a gospel as it stands) may consists largely of Jesus's AUTO-biographical teachings or -- to speak journalistically -- reports. Now, then, if I read that Jesus brought Lazarus back to life, I ask not whether he actually did this or not, for, to begin with, I ask, WHO SAYS SO? Who is is reporting? It is possible that Jesus made the report to his audience and that there never was anybody who saw the happening of the events which Jesus describes.

Am I suspecting that Jesus invented tall tales about himself ? And that he demanded blind faith in HIM, exactly because there was no evidence for what he was claiming?

It is instructive to read an episode (in John's Gospel) which I consider a historical report, wherefore I firmly believe that there existed a Jesus of Nazareth who tried to convience the Israelites that he was the expected messiah as well as the King of the Judeans [thus described on the cross]. Well, one day Jesus was complaining to a brother of his that people did not believe him. His brother said to him: If you REALLY do the things that YOU SAY you do [namely the miracles that you claim to have performed], go to Jerusalem on the Passover, and do them in front of everybody. (Surely they will believe you.)

So, his brother knew what Jesus had been saying or claiming to have done, but obviously he himself did not know whether Jesus really performed miracles and gave him a piece of rational advice. Jesus mumbled something and walked away. Probably under his breath he said, Do not tempt thy Lord and thy God.

Boro Nut

I lean toward the linguistic explanation. Not 40 miles from me is a city called Newcastle, populated by a recessive strain called Geordies. They are similar to humans in many respects, but due to congenital malformation of the vocal cords they cannot utter comprehensive sentences. When a geordie says he is 'Gan tuh walk' what he means is he is going to work (aye, a likely story). So if a geordie was to brag that he 'walks on water' (pronounced wattuh), he is probably just doing community service at the boating lake or ice rink. And that is only 40 miles away.

Consider then how different it must be in Palestine, over 2000 miles away. It's entirely conceivable that a simple phrase like 'I'm going to walk on water' could mean 'Oi Pete, watch this' or 'Come on in, it's lovely' as opposed to the more literal biblical interpretation that it's all made up.

Boro Nut

k_smith123

We are dealing with allegory. "Water" is a metaphor for "writings", while "walking" is a metaphor for allegoric interpretation. The failure of Christ to sink means that his interpretations are superficial and do not expose the true hidden meanings. Philo's allegoric interpretations are an example of "walking on water".

Steve Weiss

The Christ figure itself is symbolic and does not apply to an actual historical figure. The same applies to numerous other figures in the bible.

Toto

Chili diversion split and locked here

Amedeo

Philo invented the exegetic method which can be called the "You can eat the cake and have it, too" method of interpretation. This method allowed him to keep on thinking that the Bible accounts are truthful and to explain away the many Biblical statements about the occurrence of various events and many conceptions {theories about the nature of various things} which are false [in the light of all the learning he had acquired from Greek philosophy]. He simply said to himself: Many accounts in the Bible [which he understood to be erroneous] are not to be taken literally; they are just allegories or metaphors. So, we could say that the story of the parting of the waters for the safe escape of the Israelites did not speak literally (the Bible did not assert that any real water was parted); the Bible narrator made up a fable (like Aesop's fables) to impart a moral lesson or to make people understand the power of the Israelites' chosen god.

Many Christians theologians seized upon Philo's method so as to explain away the falsehoods and the immoralities in the Old or the New testament.
Philo's method is (unwittingly on his part) a method to discredit human verbal judgments. He has virtually proclaimed that what has been asserted is not what has been reallysaid, or: verbal judgements are metaphorical judgments (in some cases).
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Interestingly, one discredits a judgment of mine when he claims that my judments do not have a literal value. So, for example, if I assert to the world that George murdered somebody, George may turn around and say to me: " You are deceiving people, for you are making it seem that I literally murdered somebody, while your assertion is a mere allegory. Meanwhile, by that assertion to people, you are defaming me." If I insist that my judgment is truthful, he will turn around and say, "What is truth?" In other words, my insistance that my assertion was literal is a mere interpretation of mine.

For instance, Freedman's assertion that three German Zionists induced President Wilson to join England in the war against Germany is taken [by Zionists] to be defamatory of Zionists. The fact that Freedman had direct knowledge of the event he asserted to the world is irrelevant (to the Zionists). For the Zionists, Freedman made it appear that he was speaking literally whereas his judgments have only an allegorical value -- you see, not even God speaks literally. In effect the Zionists in question do not recognize that there are true judgments, or literally articulated judments... at least when we make judgments about humans. (As for rocks and numbers, you can make literal judgments.)

So, it seems to me that Philo's method was not a pure invention on his part. He turned into an exegetic method a conception of human judgments which had been formed before him and which persists after him. The conception of truth that comes from philosophers and historians is foreign to that conception. (In that conception, truth is nothing but the literalness of a judgment, or: truth and the literal word are the same thing. So, Jesus proclaimed himself to be the Truth, which Christians fully understood to be the WORD of God, named Logos in Greek.)

We can take this a step further. We could say that a word is true, if it denotes something real, and in effect, a true word is the name of something real., but according to the Israelitic conception of truth, to say that God's word is true, or God's word is literal in value, means that it subsumes or "grasps" something real in it. So, for example, the moment God said "light," there was the light which had been uttered; until He said the word or until there was his true word, there was no existing light. (Later on, philosophical theologians erroneously interpreted Genesis-1 as saying that God -- the Elohim, to be sure -- caused the existence of light when he uttered the word. Such a conception of creation simply does not exist in Genesis-1; the causality conception exists in Genesis-2, where Yawe's creation is the artisan's fashioning or shaping of something out of something else./ According to that simple-minded exposition of Genesis-1, God's word is not eternally spoken; when it begins to be, the world begins to be. God's word does not come into being out of nothing, nor does the world. /.... And don't tell me that the account about the Elohim is allegorical and that the real god is not a speaking God, and that the world was created by the real God out of nothing. Where did you learn all this truth about God and the world? And where did you learn that there is such a god and that the world had an absolute beginning? O Philo, start reading philosophy all over again, and you may learn something about Truth and Being.

Dastrn

people who believe that the bible is more than a comic book probably also believe that God exists.

Most people who believe that God exists believe that he at least is ABLE to intervene into this realm, and circumvent natural law, as it is his creation.

Therefore, if you believe the bible to be true, there is no reason to believe that miracles cannot happen.

If you believe that the bible is complete fiction, then why argue any of this? if it's fictional, you don't have to care. No one here is arguing for an explanation as to how superman can fly. So why argue about other fiction, if you indeed believe it to be so?

Personally i believe the bible is true because i choose to do so by faith. It cannot be "proven." Neither can it be disproven, as it is not a science book, but primarily a collection of history and letters written by people who followed Christ when he walked on earth.

The book itself presupposes that supernatural things happen because it presupposes the existence of God.

Either believe it or not, but arguing about this topic (Jesus' Miracles) is asinine.

Dastrn

Do you realize that you just defined God with physical limits?
how can you say that a supernatural being has to operate under you guidelines? if you believe him to exist, then you have to believe that he can do things that you don't understand. and if you believe he doesn't exist, then why even bother saying "if he did, he could lift a body, but not make one walk on water." ??

stuart shepherd

Psalm 89:9 (King James Version)
9Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.

Jeremiah 31:35 (King James Version)
35Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name:

When the NT writers fabricated the NT, they searched the OT for material.
If God is master of the seas, sun, moon, etc, it only seems logical that Jesus could walk on water. So that's what they wrote.

Stuart Shepherd

Steve Weiss

Rather than being sold as sacred fact as the words of a deity, truthfulness and honesty (granted both in very short supply among Christians) would require that the Bible be labeled as fiction. Perhaps you don't mind being defrauded and being sold a bill of goods, but I do. Let's apply consumerism where it actually makes a difference.

You believe, like all theists do, simply because you want to, proving that religion is arbitrary and empty of any substance. Why the Bible? Why not the Koran or Alice in Wonderland?