Metacrock

OK so let's think again. I said in my thing that the model is not the memo from the guy upstairs, but the record of an experince by people who encountered the divine.

So encode that encounter in cultural constructs, because what esle do they have?You cant' expect them to understand the world from outside their own culture can you? So it's the power of the divine but reflected through the writtings of primaitive desert people because they were primative desert people.

But if we are really as sophisticated as we think we are, we should be abel to understand that and to learn enough about them to make sense of it.

Perhaps if we approach it from the standpoint of a transformative experince that can touch anyone's life in any setting, maybe it will mean more to us. :huh:

Metacrock

It's not a matter of thinking a snake could not be made to talk if God wanted it so, but it's obvious that it's part of the mythologoical genre since enchanted world is one of the ear marks of mythology. Mythology is more than just amazing things. it's not miracles, it takes more than supernatural to make mythology, a literary genre like a western or a mystery story.


I am also willing to see the walking on water as an embellishment or a mythological element, although its not directly that.

Metacrock

No it's not. See if you can say that you didn't read the essay.







we always have to decide that in all writtings. Read a Play by Shakespier or a novel by Joyce and you will have to decide that a hounded times. Its' part of all language. Langauge doesn't work by litteralism. The litteral a communication is the less it communicates.






Mormons are Christians. Some are even Scotsmen.




ahahahahah



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Bull, I can speak of the tradition as a whole.






vast majority of seminarians dont' become atheists. thousands of Bible schoarls walk through more difficult probelms than you ever heard of and it never affects their faith.

Most people who gave up faith because of such problems in the text were short changed, most of them were kept ignorant of alterantives and led to think that verbal plenary inspriation is syonomious with Christainity.




National Bible Week Poster. (PDF)

Yes, yes. Problems abound.


Yea, they do. and none of them warrent giving up faith. Its' only if you buy into the lie that it has to be perfect with no mitakes that mistakes int he Bible makes faith unlivable. if you know that you can afford mistakes in the text then it no big deal to find them.



I said:


Even if the eye-witness nature of the individual authors of the NT cannot be established, the testimony of the community as a whole can be. The NT and its canon is a community event. It was a community at large that produced the Gospels, that passed on the Testimony and that created the canon. This communal nature of the revelation guarantees, if not individual authenticity, at least a sort of group validation, that a whole bunch of people as a community attest to these books and this witness.








Scholars no longer think of the gospels as the products of individual authors. They think of them as the compuations of oral tradition and redactions within litteral communities, like scholars, or communes. Two major works made this thinking possible. One was The Johannine Circle by Cullman, the other was a dissteration at University of Dallas on the Matthew school.

That's one community per Gospel. We can see the roots of such communities in Acts. Living together sharing positions, it says they devoted themseleves to study scritpures; the outcome was the production of Gosples. that also means the whole community acts as a check on the process. Since there probably eye witnesses to the events living in the communities (you can see the influence of Mary Magdelon on John) so they acted as a control process.

SteveD

Unless you presuppose the divine you won't find it here. I think that for the most part you have to already believe it to consider the bible any reflection of a divine influence.

Steve

TySixtus

Metacrock:

Doesn't your view of personal revelation of god through individuals kind of pre-suppose the existence of god?

Is that a good idea with all these atheists around?

So far, you have yet to (in this thread, or the other one here) answer a basic, fundamental question:

How do you decide which stuff is metaphorical, and what isn't?

You kind of answered this question earlier, when you said:
Do you realize how incredibly vague this is? This is the main problem with liberal Christianity, IMO. You guys have too much damn wiggle room.

My father started reading a cook book about 4 years ago, after some carpal tunnel surgery. He's been a machinist his whole life. Anyways, he was really taken in with how sophisticated and complicated cooking was , and he realized he really wanted to cook. He went to culinary school at age 49 and is now a chef. That cook book changed his life.

By your reasoning, that cook book is the word of god.

Check, please.

See! This is what I'm talking about. Getting a straight answer out of you is like threading a needle under water.

By your reasoning again, learning about Thor, Odin and Valhalla will bring me closer to the Christian God, because somehow, the Mono-Myth all leads back to the same thing. *yawn*

This is why arguments with liberal Christians seldom achieve anything but a stalemate. You've used your standards to include everything, thereby making them useless to prove anything.

According to you, the ingredients on the box of Oreos sitting on my desk right now is the word of god, if I can only get what Nabisco was trying to say!

Ty

PS Please don't include a snippet of how you have a PHD in something or other. College or education of anykind is useless in this matter, because, by your own rules, interpretation of truth is up to the individual. There are no standards.

Metacrock

Duh. Why would you want to start out from a postion of unbelief and try to advocate accepting the Bible? Why do sketpics alway try to teat religion like some little scientific experiment?

The Bible is for the believer, it's the text that shapes the consciousness of the faith community. IT's not a scientific experiment to be proven, it's a text to be accepted as condition of membership in the community.

Metacrock

Yea, so what?




Don't you have to know what you are rejecting? Or do you just give a blaket skepticism to everything?








wrong, I answered it several times. I said histoircal critical methods. its' a scinece.


You kind of answered this question earlier, when you said:




Sure, I guess it could be, except that I doubt that cooking is the object of ultiamte concern. Religion is about our "ulatime concerns." If your father thinks he's going to cook in the after life maybe it is his religion.


See! This is what I'm talking about. Getting a straight answer out of you is like threading a needle under water.

By your reasoning again, learning about Thor, Odin and Valhalla will bring me closer to the Christian God, because somehow, the Mono-Myth all leads back to the same thing. *yawn*

This is why arguments with liberal Christians seldom achieve anything but a stalemate. You've used your standards to include everything, thereby making them useless to prove anything.

According to you, the ingredients on the box of Oreos sitting on my desk right now is the word of god, if I can only get what Nabisco was trying to say!

Ty

PS Please don't include a snippet of how you have a PHD in something or other. College or education of anykind is useless in this matter, because, by your own rules, interpretation of truth is up to the individual. There are no standards.[/QUOTE]

Steven Carr

Agreed. It does not make sense.

I don't know what is meant by saying the comunity at large produced the Gospels. Did various people write different things and they were edited together?

It would be more accurate to say that the Pentateuch, not the Gospels, were an example of community writing.

Steven Carr

What would you count Jesus holding conversations with Satan as, if not as a typical motif from mythology?

Steven Carr

Clearly the Bible is not for atheists then.

Why should we even care what it says, when it is for believers?