Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Magus55 · 06-22-2004, 08:16 AM

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Originally Posted by Sven

How do you know this?

Peter for example stated himself that God flooded the entire Earth.

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I think you mean biologists, geneticists (sp?), geologists, etc. You forgot the "common-sense-ists"

Geologists have nothing to do with Adam and Eve. They deal with the Earth, not the people on the Earth. And most biologists are probably evolutionists, so my point still stands.

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How do you know his words are recorded accurately, that is, perhaps only the gospel writers were inerrantists? How do you know that he wasn't speaking allegorically?

Because Jesus always states when He is speaking allegorically. He didn't when referring to Adam and Eve.

NOGO · 06-22-2004, 01:15 PM

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Originally Posted by dado

yes, they certainly do exist and account for roughly 10% of the overall Jewish population. there aren't many beliefs unrepresented in some stream or substream of Judaism - uniform it is not. my favorite are the group who believe the messiah died in 1994...

Unfortunately for you their view is supported by the Hebrew Bible.

Magdlyn · 06-22-2004, 01:35 PM

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Originally Posted by NOGO

Unfortunately for you their view is supported by the Hebrew Bible.

I guess you missed dado's post on the prev pg?

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the literal meaning of the text is known in Judaism as peshat - this is the simple meaning you give to your seven year old. why your x'ian friend seems to desire this stunted level of perception, G-d only knows. from there it goes deeper - to derash, homolitical, then to remez, allegorical, and finally to sod, mystical. the difference is profound. the literal reading of the very first verse is something like "in the beginning G- created", by the time you get to the mystical meaning, it's the other way around, "the Beginning created G-d". (roughly).

There is much much more to Jewish thought than the Tanakh.

NOGO · 06-22-2004, 01:38 PM

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Originally Posted by Magdlyn

1)Jesus did not exist.

2)His hagiographers/mythographers (and Paul) did not take the Hebrew Scriptures literally. If they did, they would not take Tanakh verses out of context to imply a "deeper meaning" proved Jesus' life fulfilled them.

Anyone read "The Epistle to the Hebrews" (not an epistle, not sent to the Hebrews) lately, BTW? There you will find your non-literalist early Xtian, in spades.

You, like others in this thread, are confusing two things.

I believe that Paul, whoever wrote the gospels and Jews of the first century all read the Bible literally.

Midrash is another thing. The belief that there some hidden message in these texts does not deny literal reading.

Let me give an example.

Was there a Garden of Eden?
What happened in the Garden of Eden.

The literists will claim that, yes the Garden of Eden did exist and that man ate of the apple etc.

Paul and his midrash accepted all of this. He simply added a hidden truth.
... that God promised a saviour.

He did not call the whole story a fairy tale. He used it to explain his beliefs.
Paul believed the story of the Garden of Eden to be history.
He simply interpreted the historic account for his own purpose.
He did not deny that the story was factual.To him it became the fall of mankind.

You will notice that no one in the rest of the OT nor Jesus mention a single word about the so called fall of mankind and the promise by God to send a saviour.

Paul created a myth but he did not deny the historical and factual nature of the story in the Garden of Eden.

You can say the same of ALL the prophecies of Jesus Christ.

Show me any evidence that Christians or Jews before the renaissance actually believed that something in the Bible was not actually true as stated.

Today the literists are a minority but before 1500 AD they were all there was.

dado · 06-22-2004, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NOGO

Unfortunately for you their view is supported by the Hebrew Bible.

no, it is not, but if you'd like to start a thread on that so we can thrash it out fully, feel free...

dado · 06-22-2004, 01:55 PM

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Originally Posted by NOGO

Show me any evidence that Christians or Jews before the renaissance actually believed that something in the Bible was not actually true as stated.

i refer you to Rashi's 11th century commentary on Beresheit. i refer you to 13th century Maimonides, who outright denounced literalism as bordering on idolatry. i refer you 2nd century giant Akiva and the 2000 year old Talmud, both filled with admonishments against not seeking the deeper, more valuable, non-literal interprative meanings. i refer you to the 12th century (or earlier, it's not clear) Zohar, which teaches it is not G-d creating the beginning, rather, G-d being a creation of the beginning. that one is classic: it is not only non-literal, it is in direct opposition to the literal reading.

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Today the literists are a minority but before 1500 AD they were all there was.

this may be true for x'ianity, but it most assuredly is not for Judaism. sorry.

Mageth · 06-22-2004, 02:03 PM

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Originally Posted by NOGO

Today the literists are a minority but before 1500 AD they were all there was.

I strongly disagree, not about strict literalists being a minority, but about literalists being "all there was" before 1500. Before 1500, mythos (including mythical or allegorical interpretation of scriptures) was the rule.

From the following link, Karen Armstrong explains (emphasis mine):

http://www2.gol.com/users/coynerhm/agodfor.html

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This western literalism increased with the advent of modern science. Many Europeans and Americans now assumed that God's existence could be proved and discussed as rationally as the phenomena they were investigating in their laboratories. Indeed, Protestant fundamentalists today insist that all biblical statements must be interpreted literally, so that, if the Bible calls God 'he', this means that God is male.

Such fundamentalists are a minority, yet so muddled has religious thinking become in the West that most people probably think that to interpret religious language symbolically is a modern compromise --almost a dilution of faith. They forget that in the ancient world symbolism was part of the essence of religion: the divine was in some profound sense a product of the imagination, rather than a matter of fact. People would create images of God that worked in the same way as a poem or a great piece of music. These images would touch something buried within them and convince them--if only momentarily--that life had some ultimate meaning and value. Often--even in the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam--these images of the divine would be female.

Here's an online article by Karen Armstrong, titled Resisting Modernity - The Backlash Against Secularism, in the Harvard International Review, in which Armstrong describes the rise of Fundamentalism in response to the rise of Secularism in the West and its subsequent extension into other regions:

http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/inde...id=1189&page=1

A quote from page 11 (emphasis mine):

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Fundamentalist movements may hearken back to a Golden Age, but they are essentially modern and could have taken root in no time other than the present. Christian fundamentalists may claim to be reading the Bible in a traditional way, but their literalist approach is essentially the product of the scientific age. In the premodern world, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all relished highly allegorical readings of Scripture, which, as the Word of God, was infinite and capable of multiple interpretations. Until the invention of printing made it possible for every Christian to have his or her own Bible and until universal literacy made it possible for them to read it, nobody could subject the Bible to the close and detailed reading employed by fundamentalists today.

Mageth · 06-22-2004, 02:05 PM

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Originally Posted by dado

this may be true for x'ianity, but it most assuredly is not for Judaism. sorry.

It's not true for Christianity or Islam, either.

I'd highly recommend Karen Armstrong's A History of God and The Battle For God.

dado · 06-22-2004, 02:08 PM

Mageth - no argument from me. the Catholic church is certainly not a bastion of literalism, and until relatively recently it was the pretty much the only game in town, at least in western civ.

Mageth · 06-22-2004, 02:22 PM

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Originally Posted by dado

Mageth - no argument from me. the Catholic church is certainly not a bastion of literalism, and until relatively recently it was the pretty much the only game in town, at least in western civ.

I didn't suspect I'd get an argument from you.

BTW, the NT is in large part an "allegorical" interpretation of the OT. If literalism was all there was before 1500, we wouldn't have Christianity.

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06-22-2004, 02:08 PM	#39
dado Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 839	Mageth - no argument from me. the Catholic church is certainly not a bastion of literalism, and until relatively recently it was the pretty much the only game in town, at least in western civ.

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