GakuseiDon

Actually, I disagree. We do apply the same standard to many popular pieces of works. For example, I think "Kill Bill vol 1" and "Pulp Fiction" were utter cr*p, others think they are masterpieces. I can't say enough bad things about Freke and Gandy's "Jesus Mysteries", while others think it is an important piece of scholarship.

With the Bible, the extreme positions seem to be taken by the people who know least about the Bible. The key to understanding the Bible is to understand the culture and trying to determine the meanings the authors themselves wanted to convey. For me, the more I learn, the more I appreciate it. I doubt that I would ever call it perfect, though.

Vinnie

""""""""""""OK, I AM tired, and I am reacting to what feels like pressure to abandon the bible totally, based in part on the findings of some historians and experts. If these guys cannot agree on a premise as simple as 'did Jesus really live', why should I listen to any of them that the bible is pretty much trashed? (After all, in earlier postings somewhere on this database, there was a review of a book insisting that Jesus lived in India, while other threads from the same period insisted there was no such person.)""""""""""""

Diversity drives debate. It is not grounds for dismissal of a debate. Jesus most certainly existed and there is most certainly no compellign evidence he lived in India or that Mary Magdalen fled to France with his baby. There is a VAST scholarly consensus on these claims if that "calms" you.

Some guys claim we never went to the moon either. Others evolution is false. Lots of claims are made. Ultimately it depends on the evidence and expert testimony.

Re: models of inspiration. I used to subscribe to qualitative inspiration:

Its much better than verbal plenary inspiration but ultimately failed. Natural inspiration if the only feasible model but that unfortunately applies to any religious writing--good or bad.

Asha'man

My assumption is that the bible does not deserve any “get out of critical thinking free� card. Any claim made by the bible must be verified with external sources. The more extraordinary the claim, the more verification must be done.

When the bible makes a claim that animals talk, I look around and see that animals don’t talk, and are biologically incapable of talking. Therefore, I have every reason to reject that claim.

When the bible makes a claim about faith healing, I look around and see that modern faith healers all appear to be frauds, milking millions of dollars from gullible followers. Therefore, I reject that claim.

When the bible makes a claim about mass population movements in the ancient world, I look for archeologists to find evidence of such movements. When those archeologists tell me that evidence is lacking, I reject that claim.

When the bible makes a claim that God did this and God said that, I look around for evidence, and find none. I also look at the context: a book written by people who believed such things were common, and didn’t have the tools to fully understand their world. I also find motivation to write such things as fiction, and plenty of evidence that man has written similar fictions. Therefore, I reject such claims.

Modern books, the ones that are intended to be historically accurate, generally agree on what actually happened. They tend to diverge wildly when they talk about motivations, reasons, and justifications, since those are extremely subjective. They also tend to diverge when talking about details that are not critical to the story, small items that may be misremembered. But the core facts of modern life are generally recorded quite well, and those records have not been destroyed by time.

However, there is no reason to assume that the books of the bible are supposed to be in any way similar to modern historically accurate books. They are part of a whole different genre. They are myths, religious myths. When written, the gospels were considered to be true, but not because the events actually happened here on earth. They were supposed to reveal a religious truth, revealed by scripture, even as the author was fabricating the details and writing them down.


If you don’t give the gospels that “get out of critical thinking free� card I mentioned earlier, the historians all agree that the external evidence for Jesus living is virtually non-existent. They all agree that there is no evidence that the life of Jesus is not mostly fiction. The only disagreement is down at the lowest levels of detail. Once you have stripped all the fiction away, is there anything left?

People such as Vinnie clearly believe that the story needed to originate with a historical event, and that echoes (but nothing more) of that event are still present in the book. Other people, including myself, can see an alternate origin for the story, one that comes from a different direction entirely, and no longer needs a historical person at the very beginning. But we are working at a level where certainty is not even remotely possible, all that is left is a case of “best explanation� and subtle shades of probability.

Madkins007

Vinnie, G.Don, Asha'man- I am more awake now, if not necessarily more clear thinking! Please forgive the outburst from last night, and thank you for taking time to respond!

About the only major point I made last night that I still wish to lay a significant claim to is the idea that each of the books of the Bible needs to be dealt with seperately. Genesis is obviously a different thing than Psalms, which is different than the Song of Soloman, etc., etc., etc.

Vinnie- that was an interesting extract on qualified inspiration. Is there a place that discusses various options in layman's terms?

shunyadragon

I am new and I reviewed the thread, but it is long heavy. I had several questions about the contradictions in the geneology of Jesus. They seemed to be touched on, but not answered.

(1) Is it Kosher for Mary' lineage to fulfill the prophecy for Jesus's geneology to be legitimate?

(2) I believe all the other persons referred to are men. Is that true?

(3) There appears to a problem in the order of the people being switched chronologically or out of place from one geneology to another. Is this true?

Asha'man

Hi shunyadragon! Welcome to II. You might want to drop by the Lounge and introduce yourself.

No. Ancient Jewish society, like all the rest of the middle east cultures, was exclusively patriarchal. The male lineage was the only one that counted. As a side note, remember that the human egg was not discovered until after the invention of the microscope, in much more recent times. The ancient Jews considered women to be nothing more than an incubator, a place for the ‘seed’ of the man to be planted.

The genealogies all trace the lineage through the male line, as was required.

However, there are four women mentioned in passing in the genealogy given in Matthew, all women of ill repute. Tamar was “with child by whoredom� (Gen 38:24), Rahab was a harlot (Joshua 2:1), Ruth seduced a drunk Boaz (Ruth 3:7-14), and Bathsheba who committed adultery with King David (2 Samuel 11:2-5).

It has been suggested that the author of Matthew paid a Jewish scholar to fabricate a genealogy, and the scholar screwed Matthew by giving him one full of cursed lines and women of ill repute. Luke had no choice but to find a more cooperative scholar and pay for another fabrication.

It’s easiest to look at in a table, try this one and this one. The problem is far larger than just out-of-order names. Some names are skipped, others are listed earlier as having no children at all, or having his line ‘cursed’ so his descendants were no longer of the line of David. Matthew lists 28 ancestors between Jesus and David, Luke lists 43. The genealogies appear to intersect in the middle, at Salathiel and Zorobabel, but then diverge wildly again. Matthew tries to count things in sets of 14 generations, but he can only do so by miscounting and dropping names.