Agreed. They certainly can, but what if they get mixed together so that you can't tell them apart? Then, if you read a certain passage as history it becomes historically unreliable. Just imagine if there were portions of myth mixed into the Gospels! It's not as if you can go back and see for yourself if Jesus actually visited a certain town or not.
We know that mixing of truth and non-truth has taken place, and still does take place (heard of "The DaVinci Code"?). From early on, there were stories about Christ which were rejected. But the canonization of the New Testament could be a topic of its own I suppose. As a Christian, I believe the non-truth was weeded out during the canonization process, at least enough so that the overall story is reliable.
I hate to sound pedantic, but I think it important to distinguish between "myth", which we were discussing previously, and things like mistakes, lies or exaggerations, which is what I think you're referring to above when you say "myth"?
To address myth - when you speak of "portions of myth mixed into the Gospels", there's really no evidence of that. It's not written like myth, it's not presented as myth, it's presented as "we all saw such and such happen", with very good detail. Accounts of Christ's miracles are accompanied with stuff like "It was in this town, on this day, we had just eaten lunch, James was there, Mary was there, the other James was there, a crowd of others saw it, etc." But most importantly, Christ's death and resurrection,
has no mythic meaning, no meaning at all really, apart from it's factuality. The story of the Fall, being myth, tells a story, relates a truth, expresses an idea, but it doesn't
do anything. The story of the Cross does something, it affects something important. What I'm trying to say is, there is no reason to tell the story unless it is fact. The Gospel writers could be lying or mistaken, but it makes no sense that they simply invented a meaningful myth (whether with good intentions or bad), because the story of the Cross
doesn't relate any idea other than itself. Does that make sense?
The story of the Cross is this: a real event actually took place - a real Christ really died for our sins.
But the same is really true of all Jesus's miracles. I've read good explanations of deeper symbolism involved in each of Jesus's acts, but ultimately, they are all simply about him, not about any wider, deeper truth. What could be the deeper meaning of a man walking on water or a man withering a fig tree? Again, there's no other idea being expressed except - this real man exercises control over the physical world by his mere will - this man is God.
Of course even if the Gospel writers weren't myth-making, there could be non-truth mixed in. Your story about the French non-saint saints doesn't demonstrate that there's no such thing as a real saint. Likewise, if some of Christ's miracles didn't happen, that doesn't demonstrate that he didn't do others. So what do we do? It seems like trusting their factuality is an all-or-nothing proposition. If we knew he healed a leper in this town, but didn't really heal the insane man in the other town, or if we knew he turned water into wine, but didn't multiply the loaves, then what? The narratives seem designed so that you either believe that he had power over nature, or you don't - the miracles are far too numerous and varied. Possibly they could all be outright lies, but they are too numerous and varied for them all to involve exaggeration or mistake.
I've heard skeptics who think Jesus was somehow "exaggerated" into being divine. That he was a very wise and good man, possibly very charismatic, and... and... and what I don't know. I don't know how you exaggerate a man walking on water - it either happened or it didn't. If there were a single such act recounted, sure, I could believe that some mistake had been made, but not numerous acts, and numerous types of acts, seen by many people. It leads me to believe all the accounts of miracles are lies, or else they are true. I think the skeptic's idea of exaggeration or mistake is untenable after you give it a moment's thought.
Those are some reasons I rule out the Gospels being mythic story or exaggeration or misunderstanding. That doesn't rule out the whole story being a lie, and I was going to go into that, but this post is a bit lengthy, and I'm not sure I haven't gotten off-course from what you want to discuss anyway, so I think I'll leave off here and see what you may have to say.
As I see it, going back to the initial question of this thread, the strength of the Fundamentalist p.o.v. is that they treat the Fall and the Cross alike. An act of disobedience requires an act of salvation. Simple, symmetrical and easily understandable. The potential weakness of it though, is that it necessarily demands that Genesis be taken literally as historically accurate reportage and that it demands a Y.E.C. approach to Creation to link the genealogy of Jesus to Adam.
I may be misunderstanding, but it seems all you're saying above is: treating the Genesis account of the Fall literally demands that Genesis be taken literally. And I'm not a literalist so I can't defend that p.o.v.
I believe in the idea and meaning of "The Fall". The idea of the Fall is that man was invented good, including the good feature of a free will, and came to disobey his good Creator, and that there are lasting consequences for every individual. Man was made to be whole and sound, but is now sick, broken or corrupted. I believe that is the meaning of the Fall. Whether it involved a man named Adam, a tree, a fruit or a serpent is really not important. Whether this change in the nature of man took place in an instant, or over the course of millenia doesn't matter.
"Dumping" science may not be necessary, but in my experience, a lot of people of faith (rightly or wrongly) do just that. I note that there are some members of C.F. who take the line that scientists are plain wrong, deluded or lying.
Yes, I've seen some of that.
...but then conversation turned to the relationship between Religion and Science.
The same Science, which once said the Jewish histories were false because there was no such thing as a Hittite people, later, through archeology, proved that there was in fact a great Hittite Empire. Science, which could once claim the Gospels were fiction because there was no such person as Pontius Pilate, proved that there was a Pontius Pilate. Science, which once held the universe could be eternal, now all but proves the idea of the Genesis story - that the universe had a beginning. And if science proves that humans evolved gradually and there really couldn't have been an Adam? Then it's disproving a secondary fact, but not the primary meaning of Adam (universal sin). I guess it depends on what particular points you're looking at, but on many important points, I see that science is an ally, if not to all religion, at least to Christianity. Like any relationship, the one between Science and Religion has its ups and downs, but judging from the track record, my attitude towards science is "keep up the good work". And I'd never want to dump a good ally.
It was all good-natured, so I put the following question to them...
Jesus referring to the moon as a dairy product? I understand the point you made, but goodness, we Christians have enough trouble answering for what's actually in the book. Do we really need to defend make-believe errors?
It did make me think, though, that the fact that you invented a hypothetical error to attribute to Jesus leads me to suspect that maybe you've read the Gospels and didn't find an actual error; otherwise you'd have asked about the actual error?
It was only days later, when I got back home that I remembered Mark 16:18. I suppose I could have slipped a few potassium cyanide tablets into their tea as an empirical test of the Bible's truth! (Just joking!)
If you poisoned them and they both died, what would you conclude? You'd have to be a diligent scientist, and consider all possible conclusions, not just the hypothesis you were testing. Up 'til the end, Judas Iscariot was a Disciple of Christ, and I suspect he'd have keeled over if you spiked his drink. If you can't be sure of a disciple being a true believer, who could you ever be sure of?
Thanks Walter.
