Both sides in this discussion are like Peter Bly, the character of whom Wordsworth sang:

a primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him;
And it was nothing more. [/b][/QUOTE]

. . . or


Earth is crammed with heaven,
and every bush is a burning bush.
those who see will take off their shoes,
the rest just sit around and pick berries.

Elizabeth Barret Browing
(sorry, somewhat paraphrased).


[This message has been edited by Amos123 (edited May 15, 2001).]

So, Amos123, are you claiming that those miracles are literal history?

And if they are literal history, then are the miracles of other religions literal history? Is Alexander the Great one of Zeus's offspring? Did Apollonius of Tyana raise a girl from the dead? Did the Gods intervene in the war over Troy? Did the Buddha get up and walk right after he was born? Is "there is no god but Allah" written in Arabic inside some tomato?

Lance

The point is simple.

If we say we discard the "wildly mythological" and use common sense in interpreting the gospels as Bede advocates, then yes you must throw out the resurrection as it IS WILDLY, if not the MOST WILDLY assertion of the whole tale. Skies darkening...happens. Earthquakes, ditto. Dead men walking...there's a reach.

You can't have it both ways here. Either Matthew is clearly lying about the events surrounding the resurrection (which begs the question about what else is a lie?) OR they're all a true historical account.

The records come down on the lying side as we can't seem to find a record of either the earthquake or the sky darkening.

Or is this just another sad example of Christian cut&paste bibling? :;

"Either/Or" thinking says more about the bifurcation of consciousness than it does about any bifurcation inherent in reality.

The gospels are a complex blend of history and theology. It's not that the evangelists wrote dumb stories and at the Enlightenment we got smart and realized it; it's that they wrote powerful, metaphoric stories and we got dumb at the Enlightenment and took them literally!

Amos123:
To paraphrase and extend Elizabeth Barrett Browning, if every bush is flaming and, by extension, if every grave is opened and every curtain between the divine and the human rips in two--what does that tell us about the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion to gospel writers in the first century?

And by the way, Ipetrich, parable is NOT allegory. Allegory explains and, at best, "decodes." The parable subverts.



[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 15, 2001).]

Lance

Akido7: What's happened is Bede's inadvertently painted you guys into a horrid corner.

If you hold a literalist position, you can be torn apart on inconsistancies, factual foul-ups, and down right lies that are found in the bible.

If you hold an interpretive position such as Bede and more liberal Christians, you've just shown us all how two-faced it is. You are selectively picking and chosing what you WANT to believe and there's no objective rationale about it. Its entirely subjective. On one hand you say to discard Matthew's lies and hyperbole for the mythical nonsense it is...but at the same time declare with all sincerity that the resurrection happened.

How on earth can you do that when you call dead men walking mythical and a dead man walking out of grave two days later NOT mythical?

Catch-22's a bitch, ain't it???

Only a mirror has two faces; the gospel accounts are history, fact, theology and myth. And I am using myth as anthropologists use the term. Specifically, I am not looking at the gospel accounts as the surface stories for themselves or even for the characters and events in the stories. A study of myth in this instance looks for the underlying structure at the deepest possible level. Levi Strauss's article of 1955 called "The Structural Study of Myth" might be worth reading in this regard.

This idea poisons all wells. While post-modern criticism must admit that the act of observation changes what is observed, we are all then literally standing on no ground at all if "everthing" is to be dismissively declared "entirely subjective."

When we in the 21st century can stop pouring our ideas of fantasy back into the first century we might be able to make a little progress in the debate--or at least sharpen the questions somewhat.

The resurrection happened. To me that is a historical and mystical fact. It had nothing to do with Jesus' body. The gospel writers expressed the meaning of his crucifixion in metaphorical language and narrative. Deep and complex imagery was used from Israel's cultural mythology at that time. The task of scholarship is to attempt to unravel that dense overlay. The gospels are not CNN biographies. They do not simply report the history of Jesus: they metaphorize it. They turn his words and deeds into parable.

I don't do that and I did not do that.

Catch 22's are always a bitch. They are part and parcel of the human dilemma and always cry out for some sort of resolution. The easiest resolution lies in reframing the "Catch 22s" as "both/and" rather than "either/or." Sometimes this reframing comes from conscious planning and other times from an unconscious epiphany.




[This message has been edited by aikido7 (edited May 16, 2001).]

Could a lunar eclipse cause darkness?

They are not just historical accounts but allegorical descriptions of current events. The history of the account is secondary to the event and is only used here to create a new religion in an old mythology.

Amos

Certainly not darkness in the middle of the day!

Every bush is flaming but only those who see this will take off their shoes in reverence of heaven on earth. The rest just sit around and pick berries from the same bush while in total oblivion of heavn on earth. Obviously their veil has not been rent nor has their grave been opened.

I love your line "It's not that the evangelists wrote dumb stories and at the Enlightenment we got smart and realized it; it's that they wrote powerful, metaphoric stories and we got dumb at the Enlightenment and took them literally!" but, is an educated man like you allowed to say this?

Amos