OldChurchGuy
Regular Member
Great set of questions. Wish I had your sharp mind when I was 15. Replies are in italics and underlined.
My question is throughout the other general bibical texts how can you tell on more general term when passages are metaphoric or litertal. Generally how should I view the book and what kind of book am I exactly supposed to be reading. Depends on how you want to interpret it, frankly. If one is more comfortable with a literalist understanding, then the Bible is to be taken literally unless a given story or passage uses wording such as "like" or "as". If a simile appears, then it is to be taken symbolically. If one is not comfortable with a literalist understanding, then the reader has more latitude about what to take as literal and what to take as a metaphor. The creation story in Genesis, for example. Taken literally obligates one to conclude Adam and Eve are responsible for all humnaity. Taken symbolically, the story can be understood to mean that the entire known universe is the creation of a single God. Neither interpretation can be proven as correct or incorrect as we do not have the original manuscripts much less notes by the original author as to what they were thinking.
How would you reccomend reading the bible is their any particular way of reading it? I would recommend getting a hold of a Bible Dictionary or two. That will allow you to look up topics that interest you and the Bible references can then lead you to various parts of the Bible. Check your church or public library for Bible Dictionaires. Try to get at least two of them as no one dictionary covers everything.
What is the purpose of the old testament and some of the graphic displays of cruelty in it. I believe the purpose of the Hebrew Bible (aka the Old Testament) is to show a variety of situations by many different people of what it is like to know / experience God. The graphic cruelty is something that has bother theologians for many centuries. Some claim that the stories should be accepted as is. Others claim the stories are not to be taken literally, but rather are ways to show the superior power of God. Personally, there are many stories of grace in the Hebrew Bible so I think the violence was due to a limited understanding of God. Jesus came along with a message of a better understanding of God. But, that is my opinion on the matter.
Out of curiousity what are the basic arguments or resources against evolution. I just want to hear a strong creationist argument, which I've yet to see but I'm curious at how it go so to speak. I think others have spoken well about their belief in creationism. For me, how God created people is not nearly as important as believing God was responsible for all life.
One last question...does anybody know what the gnostic scriptures are? The gnostic writings are a collection of ideas and views of God and Jesus that were in strong competition with the "orthodox" view of Christianity which is dominant today. Gnostic comes from the Greek "gnosis" which means "to know". The gnostics taught they there was a much deeper meaning to the gospel message and they had that deeper teaching. They were very divided though, so a gnostic teaching in Alexandria might be quite different from a gnostic teaching in Jerusalem or Antioch. As such, they were not able to overwhelm the orthodox teachings of the church although it took many centuries to eradicate them. In about 1945 or 1946, as I recall, a collection of Gnostic writings was discovered near a town in Egypt called Nag Hammadi. One good thing the gnostics did was create the first canon of scripture. Amazingly, not one of their recommended books made it into the New Testament canon which was initally created to refute the gnostic canon.
Enough lecturing / preaching.
OldChurchGuy
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