Historical Critical == Bible is a Lie?

liars_paradox said:

The same applies to a friend whom I met at the megachurch with a sizeable young adults population who has been challenging me on my views on gay marriage. And, from this one group at a different church, a conservative has remarked how he grew up in the Presbyterian church and hates it and thinks that most liberals "are going over a cliff".

And, from all the churches that I have been frequenting (since they are all conservative) they usually tell me that liberals call parts of the bible a lie with their historical critical method instead of using the historical grammatical method that the conservative churches employ.
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For instance, if God didn't literally make the world in six days like Genesis says, does that make it a lie?

I just want to hear from liberals about what you guys think in regards to your interpretations of the bible. If any of the bible was a lie, then we're practicing the wrong religion, right?

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To me, lie implies an intentional untruth. I doubt that any parts of the Bible are that. There can be a number of reasons why a conservative interpretation isn’t true:

* The original author didn’t intend it to be literal. Jonah, for example, is a pretty obvious satire, yet many conservatives think it’s historical.

* The editor used traditional stories, because they were a way that his people used to understand God and their relationship to God. I’d classify Genesis that way. I would think whoever put Genesis together would have known that he was combining two traditional stories of creation that couldn’t both be literally true. At least if he thought about the issue. It might be that he never considered whether the stories were history or not.

* People were simply mistaken. Humans are imperfect witnesses, and also pass on stories imperfectly. It’s easy to see evidence of this, e.g. the number and species of people at the empty tomb. Historians deal with this all the time. No source of history is perfecty accurate, but historians don’t go around calling ancient writers liars, nor do they say that we can know nothing about the past without perfectly accurate sources.

* Material this is intended as interpretation. I think the NT letters are this way. Paul is, of course, our earliest witness to Jesus’ message. Most people think he was inspired. But he and the other NT writers are basically helping people understand the implication of the Gospel for their situation. I don’t think most of those letters were written the intention of becoming doctrinal or legal authority. This comment actually applies to a lot of the Bible. The OT histories are not intended as value-free historical accounts. Genesis through 2 Sam use history, but also interpret it to apply to questions of their time. Deut and Chronicles use the same history to make their own points.

Basically the problem is that the Bible is literature, with a variety of purposes. Saying that is has to be literally true (in the fundamentalist sense) or it’s a lie is silly. Are Shakespeare’s histories lies? Are novels? I’m not saying the Bible is entirely fiction. I’m just saying that these folks are turning off all the intelligence they would use when presented with any book other than the Bible.

For me the most difficult question is the NT books that explicitly claim a specific author but almost certainly weren’t written by that person. The clearest examples are 2 Peter and the Pastorals. Many people will argue that pseudonymous authorship was common in antiquity, and could have been done in good conscience. I’m not convinced. I would be reluctant to accept ideas whose primary source is those books. I don’t feel the same about apocalyptic, e.g. Daniel, as pseudonymity does seem to have been part of that literary convention. Maybe I’m being too harsh on the Pastorals. But it’s hard for me to avoid a feeling that the author was trying to claim Paul’s authority for something that Paul would not have entirely agreed with.

We can’t deal with the gay question here. CF doesn’t permit it. But I don’t think Paul was lying.

I don't think any part of the Bible is an outright lie, but I do think that many parts are false or plain incorrect.

Hedrick pretty much sums up those feelings in his post, though. I feel along the same lines as what was written there.

liars_paradox said:

Before modernism, the church took a mixed approach to symbolic and literal interpretations, and yet the church said that the bible was 100% true.

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First, I doubt you'll find statements like "the Bible is 100% true." But even if you did, 100% true with the option for allegorical interpretation isn't the same thing as the modern conservative view.

The Catholic tradition has done a couple of things to provide enough flexibility to deal with parts of the Bible that can't be literally true, or where a literal interpretation is unedifying (e.g. parts of the OT history). The major ones are allegorical interpretation, and a commitment to the official interpretation by the Church.

The liberal tradition has tended to replace allegorical interpretation with a critical reading of the text, understanding that the authors' purposes, background, and knowledge aren't the same as ours. By no means will that always (or maybe even often) produce the same result, but it still provides flexibility for the Church to read Scripture in a non-literal way.

The liberal tradition generally places a high value on the Church. Liberal churches tend to be Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican backgrounds, all of which are to one degree or another committed to understanding Scripture as a community, with strong guidance by current Biblical scholarship. For Lutheran and Reformed this comes out of the confessional backgrounds. Of course the way our communities work is not as monolithic as later Catholic centralized authority, though for much of Catholic history things were less centralized. But I think you'll find a broad consistency in the way liberal Christians understand Scripture.

liars_paradox said:

Well, talk like that would offend conservatives. And, honestly, I disagree with the words that you chose, but I can't say for your intent since I don't know you.

But, the Bible can't really be incorrect, right? If it was then why believe at all? And, what do you mean by false?

Before modernism, the church took a mixed approach to symbolic and literal interpretations, and yet the church said that the bible was 100% true.

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I don't really care if my kind of talk offends anyone, to be honest I never made the assertion that parts of the Bible ARE false/incorrect, but I mentioned it was what I think.

I believe in the parts of the Bible that speak to me in a powerful way. Many parts do not, so I do not bother with them. I've also spent many years in prayer to have God open my heart about a lot of it, so my feelings on the Bible were further morphed by that and other experiences.

I don't really care what "the church" thinks of the Bible either. I only care about what I've been guided to think in prayer and experience

Not to be horribly negative or anything with any of this. You can believe the Bible in inerrant, and that's fine! I just don't.

Hedrick's said it better than any of us could.

Just because there's a variety of different literature in the bible doesn't make any of it a lie. The only lies would be if someone insisted on reading something into the text that wasn't there in the first place, but that lie wouldn't originate in the text itself but in the teacher's own personal opinions.

I believe the opening chapter(s) of Genesis are a creation poem, so I don't think it's meant to be understood literally. That doesn't mean I think what it's saying is a lie, I think it would be dishonest to insist that it's a historical account that's meant to be read just like a school text book.

Or take the flood account for example, many cultures have a flood tale (take the Epic of Gilgamesh and the portion that talks about Utnapistim), there are several parallels between that and the story of Noah in the bible are very similar yet I'm fairly convinced the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the authoring of Noah's story in Genesis.

In either case, I don't think the point is that they be taken in a literal manner. I think the point is that the underlying theme is God is in control, and that he loves humanity and desires for us to have life abundantly. Contrast that with the creation stories from a lot of cultures at the time, they were violent and humanity was sort of a "happy accident" or the result of some kind of violent standoff between two gods, etc. Or in the case of the flood narrative, the Epic of Gilgamesh displays the story as humanity has essentially stepped on the gods last nerve because they were making too much noise and so they're going to silence us by sending a flood.

So I think the takeaway from those narratives, even though they're similar to those from other ancient cultures, is that they're saying "but this God is different", this God cares to enter in to human history and guide his creation towards something.

Historical critical doesn't necessary mean liberal. N.T. Wright is a major conservative scholar who relies on the historical critical method.

And I would say the Bible is inerrant in this sense: it's exactly what God intended it to be.

I don't think we should be looking for truth statements where the literature doesn't intend on making any. Reading poetry as science does not respect the poet.

What we have these days is something like this...

A book is written today containing just three equations:
1+1=2
1+2=3
5+8=1

The book is buried and dug up a few thousand years in the future. People read the book, declare that the last equation is wrong, therefore the book is wrong, and there is no Author. Authors don't get stuff quite so obviously wrong!

But context is key. The author was teaching the telling of time, and the equations were done on a clockface. 5 am plus 8 hours gets you to 1 pm. Since, in the future, people have done away with clocks and use only digital watches, no one knew what a clockface was or how to read it. This context changes everything. No longer is the book teaching falsehood, it was simply teaching in the context of the time it was written.

These days, the fundamentalists are still trying to prove that 5+8=1 on the numberline, and calling anyone who dares to question the context of the literature a heretic. And some atheists are proudly beating their chests, suggesting that anyone who believes 5+8=1 is a moron, believing in the ancient fables of goatherders, and that there is no author.

They are both wrong.

Context, and literary genre, is key.

That's the way I read the Bible, sayre.
Its actually amazing to me that so many of the strange ideas of the ancient world that I have read as I've studied the ancient cultures didn't get into the Bible.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were lies in it. If they are there, they serve to protect the truth sewn up within them. Some view the Bible as truth where I view it as containing truth. Or protecting it. The distinction is important. I allow my conscience to guide my study and contemplation as I think viewing it through the lens of love and charity are the best means to discerning what is true and what is merely man made legalism, boasting, mythology, or tampering.

When it comes to the truth therein, my view is simple: if a child wouldn't innately understand it due to the complicated nature of the interpretation, once explained, it is probably an erroneous interpretation of the underlying message or an artifact of an era and not of divine origin. If Heaven was made "for ones such as these" (eg children) then it stands to reason that complicated legalism and convoluted rhetoric is a function of corruption - a function of the flesh and not the spirit.

As previously mentioned, the untrue bits and the mythology like in Genesis create a perfect protection to what is important. The Bible working like a sort of puzzle box seems to be the most likely case, in my view; a complicated lattice work of pride born folly and myth hiding sparks of divine wisdom only discernible through intuition rather than study or rationalization. It would be the best protection of the truth against tampering through the ages.

Pail wasn't lying but the words he used doesn't mean same sex. Not only that this word has being used many times without connection to same sex

In my opinion, the problem with many interpretations of the Bible is that they all seem to want to a) see truth and fact as interchangeable, b) deny the humanity that is really quite obvious and c) make finite that which is infinite (God).

Firstly, truth and fact are not in any way the same. Truth is timeless and can apply to a wide range of circumstances... Fact on the other hand, is ridged, and applies only to that which can be proven (very little). Poetry, mythology, parables, fairy tales can all convey truth (or rather a version of truth), but are unlikely based on fact. I think more people need to apply this logic to Scripture.

Secondly, in terms of the humanity of the Bible, to be frank, it baffles me that people try to deny this. Historical evidence shows that the Bible was written, and edited, by men. That is not to say these writings were not divinely inspired... Indeed, there is no doubt in my mind that they were, but human beings are fallible. We make mistakes, regardless of how hard we try not to. A mistake is not the same as a lie. Furthermore, us fleshy humans are ever so good at projection... And we frequently project onto God. I believe many such projections have made their way into the Bible. I am not saying projection is always a bad thing... Projection can indeed be very useful in trying to understand the Divine... But I think it is important that we acknowledge these projections in order to further our understanding.

As for the third point, making finite that which is infinite... For me this is where the greatest problem lies. To read the Bible as literal fact, or to brand one reading as "correct" (regardless of how beautiful that reading may be) is to limit God to the confines of a relatively small object. Indeed, I think this does Him a great disservice. God is so much bigger, so much wiser, so much more glorious than a single book. However, if we read the Bible as a divinely inspired, human text, with all its inconsistencies, silences, omissions, projections, it is immediately opened up... It becomes a text with no end... An infinite text. To me, this is where we will find God.

I think the viewpoint that the Bible is not always literal, and that it needs to be understood in the actuality of its original, human context is a more common viewpoint among liberals than thinking that the Bible is a lie or contains lies, but you will find both viewpoints. I personally think there are some minor errors of fact in the Bible (cud-chewing rabbits, pi as 3, etc.), historical inaccuracies showing the hallmark of the oral tradition before writing, and some very obvious conflicts (such as discrepancies in the 2 creation stories in Gen.) which lead me to believe that they weren't intended to be understood (at least by the compilers) as literal--at least not to the extent that some conservatives believe they should be.

Joykins said:

I think the viewpoint that the Bible is not always literal, and that it needs to be understood in the actuality of its original, human context is a more common viewpoint among liberals than thinking that the Bible is a lie or contains lies, but you will find both viewpoints. I personally think there are some minor errors of fact in the Bible (cud-chewing rabbits, pi as 3, etc.), historical inaccuracies showing the hallmark of the oral tradition before writing, and some very obvious conflicts (such as discrepancies in the 2 creation stories in Gen.) which lead me to believe that they weren't intended to be understood (at least by the compilers) as literal--at least not to the extent that some conservatives believe they should be.

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Yeah, that.

And I would add that I think the Bible is inerrant in the sense that while parts of it may contain historical or scientific errors or other conflicts, none of it is a mistake. It is what God had His people write down for us, and it's what He wanted us to have. The errors, such as they are, might be there for a reason: to keep us from taking it more literally than it was intended.

*shrugs*

My post was a long time ago, I don't even know what's going on anymore.

You can believe what you want, and I will do the same

People accuse me of not being a "real" believer all the time, because I don't believe what they believe exactly how they believe it. All I can do is shrug at them. Can't do anything to change their mind, really.

I do have to say, though, that your text formatting is strangely hard to read So it's difficult for me to focus on everything you're saying here.