Toto

Dio's comment (he hit edit instead of quote)

Do you think it's possible that Aesop's Fables are true and that the animals really talked? Did the Hare and the Tortoise really have a race? Can you prove they didn't? After all, there is just as much corroborating evidence for the Hare and the Tortoise as there is for Balaam and the Ass.

mountainman

It is not yet 1700 years from Nicaea. Those who want to cite the deaths of the martyrs need to support their claims with oodles of Eusebius on toast. The new regime was persecuted by the old regime, of course! The Good Guys and the Bad Guys. I do not buy the "deaths of the martyrs" story without evidence. Its just standard propaganda.

Diogenes the Cynic

Sorry about the quote/edit thing. I'm surprised I haven't done that more often. Thanks to Toto for fixing that.

sotto voce

Did Aesop (or whoever) intend that this be believed?

tanya

Obviously, none of us on this forum have any idea what Aesop (or anyone else) believed, believes, or will believe.

What we do know, in some considerable detail, should you choose to investigate, is something about laryngeal musculature.

In order to phonate, one must have a laryngeal apparatus capable of emitting sound. Yes, there are sounds produced by muscles not part of the larynx, clicking sounds, for example, from contraction of pharygeal muscles, or hissing sounds from moving saliva through crevices in the dentition by the tongue, but, language, for the most part, whether mammalian or avian, involves the larynx.

Nevertheless, there is no evidence that any animal or bird can converse in English. Parrots can immitate a few words, and can understand a few commands, but this is not illustrative of language skills per se.

Donkeys can emit sound, but they cannot vocalize.

sotto voce

So is there a chance that the whimsical RCC, a merely playful, amateur frippery, after all, will soon be outlawed? Will its weird, freakish theistic beliefs have passed into desuetude, before 2025? Would this be vindication of the thesis that the Bible is a novel?

Or is there perhaps an intelligent, systematic and potent version of biblical deity whose roots need to be excavated before that can be said? Would there be no demolition of the Martyrs' Memorial in Oxford, because the deaths of Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were seen in the light of true history to be embarrassing clerical errors and oversights?

sotto voce

Then it's futile to ask whether Aesop's Fables are true and that the animals therein really talked. It's futile to state that the Bible is a novel, because the concept of novel is predicated on authorial intent.

Sheshbazzar

A simple and entertaining story can contain and be much more than it appears upon a superficial reading.
Humpty Dumpty has entertained generations of children, many of whom have grown up without ever realizing that its essence, its very reason for existence was cleverly concealed political satire.
Does the fact that the idea of talking egg is impossible and utterly ridiculous mean that our understanding of the tale should be limited to consigning its content to being nothing more than a silly nursery rhyme? If so, it is our loss.
Gulliver's Travels? Through The Looking Glass? Uncle Tom's Cabin? Tom Sawer? Each of these beloved old tales are cultural treasures that are much more than they appear to be on any superficial reading.
However with these we are still close enough in time and in shared cultural experience to be able to, (if we use our brain, and ability to investigate) pick up on and appreciate their deeper and more important thoughts and social significance.

The Bible is not one book, but a series of books that were built around certain themes and constants. Each of these books were produced for different purposes under differing social, cultural, and political conditions.
Most of which, except upon knowledge gained by a superficial reading, we would have no knowledge or appreciation of at all.

Because we are now so far removed in time, and from that cultural experience, it can be very difficult for us to appreciate these Biblical stories in the deeper senses that their original authors intended, but which would have been immediately apparent within their original setting.

Anyone who has followed many of my posts within this forum will be aware that I have been attempting to convey that the Book of Genesis and many other portions of Biblical texts served a mnemonic function, that is that many outwardly seemingly primitive stories were mainly constructed so as to contain and retain certain invariable mathematical and geometrical concepts and relationships between pure numbers.
Working principals could quite easily be forgotten or lost in cultural disruptions caused by wars, the wholesale massacre of elders who held this knowledge, or by prolonged periods of dislocation, or slavery.
But by carefully encoding and weaving these principals throughout an interesting and colorful set of easily recalled creation myths and heroic ancestor tales in a treasured cultural Holy Book, one whose amazing tales could be taught to and would remembered even by children and the illiterate, the concealed information would then be assured of enduring into perpetuity.

In conclusion, to the question of whether the Bible is a Novel, I must say the Bible is a series of Novels, poems, and songs created by different authors at different times and in differing circumstances, but all sharing in a common vision and goal.
It contains Novels and much, much more, of which much has long since been forgotten but is now at long last beginning to be brought to the light again, to the triumph of the human spirit, and to the enrichment of all mankind.


ששבצר העברי
Sheshbazzar The Hebrew

sotto voce

It's possible. But it's not certain. Some would say that the above is a far-fetched hypothesis. Whatever the truth of that, pending their disproof, belief in actual events in the Bible has validity.

Chili

Nooooooooooo, that is called the 'adam's apple' where reason is interjected into a streamlined flow of words that is introduced by the idol of convention where parties are fun and gold is good and we just have to sniff it out before we enter.

And of course all sentient beings think and talk but not in our language wherein we only think we have dominion, but must think to take it all by force and then protect it as a slave to it, and so have identified ourself as slave already before we built a little tower that we call our own, but surely is temporal and must be left behind.

So glossolalia then is where the apparatus is still intact but the idol we call convention is out-of-wack like shepherds on the run, who later must be de-commissioned all together so that Pure Reason can prevail without the need for convention, and then let our stream of words flow over the dam and make sense to those who hear, which then is what heaven is all about.