Bible, literal or not

[Yytz6]

Jesus states science is lying

Where?

 

[d taylor]

Where?

The statement below was made by Jesus in His Olivet discourse

But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Also this is recorded in Luke
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

 

[Yytz6]

The statement below was made by Jesus in His Olivet discourse

But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Also this is recorded in Luke
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

That doesn't seem to say science is lying. If it's a lie it's not science.

 

[d taylor]

That doesn't seem to say science is lying. If it's a lie it's not science.

The Bible confirms the lies of science from Genesis to Revelation.

Both Jesus and Peter both state that the flood destroyed the world

the flood came and destroyed them all.

by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

 

[Tone]

And your opinion basically amounts to denial.

the opinion of the majority of the scholars

I'll take the Bible's opinion over man's...any day.

 

[Yytz6]

I'll take the Bible's opinion over man's...any day.

I take God's over the bible's.

 

[Yytz6]

The Bible confirms the lies of science from Genesis to Revelation.

Both Jesus and Peter both state that the flood destroyed the world

the flood came and destroyed them all.

by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

Oh I believe the bible says that. I just think the bible's wrong.

 

[Tone]

I take God's over the bible's.

The Creator doesn't have opinions...

 

[d taylor]

Oh I believe the bible says that. I just think the bible's wrong.

Of course you do.

Being that you are not a believer, but what is worse is that there are many believers (probably a majority) who take the same stance about the Bible as you do.

They believe the parts that fit their idea of who God is or should be and ignore, spiritualize or metaphoricalize the parts that go against science.

 

[Yytz6]

The Creator doesn't have opinions...

He must be capable of that, so how do you know?

 

[dlamberth]

He must be capable of that, so how do you know?

Nope, I don't believe that the Creator is capable of opinions.

 

[Yytz6]

Of course you do.

Being that you are not a believer,

I am a believer. I believe in the revelation given to Isa (alaihi salam) - unfortunately it is no longer anywhere to be found as it was, so the bible doesn't mean much to me.

 

[Yytz6]

Nope, I don't believe that the Creator is capable of opinions.

You are free to believe so. But only if you think you can limit God.. Which would bring you above God. Which usually isn't allowed in religions.

 

[d taylor]

I am a believer. I believe in the revelation given to Isa (alaihi salam) - unfortunately it is no longer anywhere to be found as it was, so the bible doesn't mean much to me.

Oh sure everybody is a believer in something. looks like your belief is in Isa and science.


But when i use the word believer is has a specific use.

Meaning that a person has believed that Jesus (in The New Testament) is the promised Messiah "only begotten/unique Son of God from Old Testament prophecies and has trusted in the Messiah for the gift of His eternal life.

 

[dlamberth]

You are free to believe so. But only if you think you can limit God.. Which would bring you above God. Which usually isn't allowed in religions.

What I limit is our Human images of God. God to me is the Life Force of all there is. Everywhere I look, there God is. But God to me is NOT a Greek Pagan type of God sitting on a mountain somewhere throwing lightening bolts around. That may be true for you, but not me.

 

[Zoness]

Literalism is more logically consistent, but a figurative approach is more humane and can evolve with the times.

 

[dlamberth]

... but a figurative approach is more humane and can evolve with the times.

It can also include an evolving animist approach to perception.

 

[trophy33]

Is there a system in Christianity (any "sect" of it) as to which part of the bible are literal and which aren't or which stories are true and which aren't?

No, Bible have more than a thousand of pages. To create such system is practically both useless and impossible.

There are only principles and some famous parts that are frequently discussed (like Genesis).

 

[hedrick]

Literalism is more logically consistent, but a figurative approach is more humane and can evolve with the times.

No, it's not more consistent.

I've been thinking more about this. I believe that mainline, critical practice takes the Bible more literally than conservative practice. We normally accept that the original authors meant more or less what they wrote, with allowances for symbolism and obviously non-literal things.

But we think sometimes they were wrong, if you look in terms of history and science. We also think different writers have different views. This is why we can understand the plain sense.

Conservative interpretation believes all writers were consisitent, and everything is historically true. This requires them to pratice non-literal interpretation. E.g. to make Gen 1 and Gen 2 consistent, you have to ignore the sequence given in Gen 2 and interpret it in ways not consistent with its plain sense.

The OP asks whether there are lists of places not to be taken literally. In fact there are a number of books on problem passages in the Bible from conservative writers. These books show for a number of passages how to interpret them so as to avoid contradiction and abusrdity. These interpretations are not the plain sense, so they are non-literal.

There are also theological issues. In many cases CF rules don't permit discussion. But not all of the NT writers had views of Jesus that are the same as later theology. This requires traditional interpreters to adopt non-literal readings of those writers. In almost every theological discussion you can see people giving piles of Biblical references, many of which are interpreted in ways not consistent with their meaning in the original context. Liberal theologians generally do their best to understand the original authors' meaning, not attempting to force them to be consistent with their own favorite theological view. I will admit that there are exceptions, but that's the ideal, and it is often followed.

 

[hedrick]

I just noticed that the OP asks both about literal and true. I just answered literal. Mainline interpreters understand things as literal except when they clearly aren't. Conservative interpreters have to make stories consistent with each other and with their own theology, so they tend to be less literal. There are, in fact, published lists of how to do this kind of interpretation from a conservative point of view.

Now, about true. I'm not going to talk about conservative practice. They typically take historical accounts, properly adjusted to make them consistent, to be historically true.

We don't, which paradoxically is why we can accept the plain sense of passages. The brief answer is that we treat the Bible the same way we would treat other historical documents.

• We pay attention to what science and archaeology tell us. This is relevant primarily to the OT. I'd say mostly before the kings, though there are people who think even the accounts of the kings are largely not accurate.
• We pay attention to the way people at that time typically wrote. Writings about famous people were full of miracles and supernatural events. That means it's hard to be sure of specific miracles reported in the NT. (It doesn't mean we think miracles are impossible. I think the resurrection happened, and that's miraculous.) It also means that speech as quoted in the Bible is surely not precisely what we'd get if we had had a video recorder back then. People worked from memory, and from the kinds of things that the person might have said.
• We look at what we can tell of each writer from their writing. E.g. a given writer, when giving us material also given in other writers, tends to expand on them. Or, give what we know of this person's view, there's no way they would have made that up. There's actually a set of principles for doing this, which I'm not going to list here, but you can find in textbooks on New Testament interpretation.
• For the NT (there's an analogous set of things for the OT) we look at what we know about 1st Cent Judaism. When people use words and concepts, unless we have good reason to think otherwise, it's likely that they used them in the sense that they were understood by 1st Cent Jews.

If you really want to understand how to read the Bible, and are willing to put time into it, there are books written for first-semester college courses in OT and NT. These books typically have a review of all of these considerations. They often have titles like "Introduction to the NT." Books with titles like that vary a lot. One approach would be to look at what textbook is used in the 1st semester OT and NT courses are major universities. (If you're a conservative, you'd look at colleges or seminaries associated with your theology.)

The absolute last thing you should do is look at how random people do Biblical interpretation in CF postings.