What is the Bible and why led to it's creation?

[CShephard53]

The largest part of the Penteteuch is not prophesy, so this argument doesn't hold water. Most of it is either myth, legend, history or law. Personally, I've never seen the point of writing something before it could be understood (or understood "properly"*, whatever that means) by the people that read it.




Then it's a complaint that is completely without foundation. No higher critic - certainly no Christian higher critic - thinks that the Bible is "without meaning." They may disagree with your particular understanding of it, however.


That's also without foundation, unless you think that God doesn't work in any other way except supernaturally. But God is the God of creation, working in and through the world in a perfectly natural way. Maybe sometimes he works miracles: but mostly he doesn't need to.



I don't see how that affects "higher criticism." Firstly because of the uncertainty of archeology (one day they've found Jericho, the next they haven't); and secondly because proving that a place in Israel is real doesn't prove that something happened there. Just as proving that London exists doesn't prove that Charles Dickens novels set in London aren't fictional. I once read a commentary on Acts (with which I disagreed, by the way) that argued that Acts was fictional, and that the details of real places in it were no more than could be expected from a good historical novelist. I agree with the second half of that statement, in a way; but I don't think that Acts was intended to be fictional. I don't think it's necessarily 100% accurate, any more than any early historical writing is; but I don't think it's fictional either.

There's also, of course, a lot of the Bible which archeology doesn't touch. The story of David & Goliath, for instance, is not something that would leave any discernible historical evidence. Neither, actually, is Abraham's journey from Ur; we've got lots of evidence of wandering people in the desert from all ages, but no rock with Abraham's name on it. Nor, I suspect, will we ever find one. Moses' existence goes totally unnoticed by any Egyptian chronicler... etc, etc...

*It usually means "so that it agrees with our theology."

This is about logic, not understanding. We tend to take context, culture, and language into account rather than trying to impress our own views on it- or naturalistic mindsets.

 

[artybloke]

Another thing: usually, the arguments about authorship have nothing to do prophesy or otherwise, or even to do with historical events. They're to do with such things as language (type of Hebrew used, use of loan words etc etc...) In other words, they're based on scientific analysis and reasoned argument, unlike fundamentalist views which are generally based on the Bible being a kind of magic text.

We tend to take context, culture, and language into account

Funny, all I've ever seen you do is quote it out of context, cut-n-paste it to fit your theology and make it say the opposite of what it does say.

 

[CShephard53]

Another thing: usually, the arguments about authorship have nothing to do prophesy or otherwise, or even to do with historical events. They're to do with such things as language (type of Hebrew used, use of loan words etc etc...) In other words, they're based on scientific analysis and reasoned argument, unlike fundamentalist views which are generally based on the Bible being a kind of magic text.



Funny, all I've ever seen you do is quote it out of context, cut-n-paste it to fit your theology and make it say the opposite of what it does say.

http://christianforums.com/t6867087...not-sinfullb1-sinfullc1-please-thank-you.html
And by the way, your claim is a knowledge claim. It's essentially useless for any debate. It's also an ad hominem.

 

[artybloke]

Fundamentalism was a reform movement in reaction to modernism.

And like most reactionary movements, basically infected with the very thing it protests against. Like modernist scientism, it basically accepts the premise that truth=fact, then tries to prove as factual things that were never intended to be factual (such as the myths & legends of Genesis.)

The only way out is to reject the formula that truth is only factual, and to recognise that poetry, fiction, art and the creative use of the imagination are all as much vehicles of real truth as fact is. That doesn't mean saying that everything in the Bible is fictional, as some seem to think; it means recognising when the Bible is as much a work of divine imagination as of "historically verifiable fact." That God speaks through poetry as much as through fact, and that this isn't a lie.

(Imagine, if you will, God trying to explain the theory of relativity to a 12th century peasant who can't read, has no calculus and no scientific understanding of the world. Don't you think he'd tell a story, rather than go into the science of it?)

 

[BigNorsk]

arty,

You keep promoting a false image of fundamentalism.

What I would call stereotypical fundamentalism.

It is true that reform movements have problems, one of the common one is that they have a tendency to turn into a folk religion. And so you have fundamentalism. And some of the people affected by fundamentalism after 50 years or so drifted, drifted in many cases to a simplistic, legalistic folk religion. People in those places had a tendency to continue to call themselves fundamentalists, but their very practice contradicted fundamentalism. You often see them doing what is called majoring on the minors. Things like women shouldn't wear pants, or no one should ever touch a drop of alcohol, or the KJV is perfect. Those things are not fundamentalism. The bible is not a magic text, not I think in the derogatory sense you use it. Of course one believes the word of God is a very powerful thing. I would think even you would hold to that, at least if you could identify it. I guess you don't think the universe was created through a word of God since you keep calling it a myth, so I can't use that example, but I would think you must at some level recognize the power of the word of God to save man. And that power is there whether spoken or written or whatever form.

Marv

 

[artybloke]

I guess you don't think the universe was created through a word of God since you keep calling it a myth,

I think the truth behind the myth is true. I don't think of myths as false: they are ways of explaining the truth through story.

As an image of creation, the idea that God created through a "word" is very powerful. If I thought that in order for the story to be true, it had to be factual as well, I'd have great difficulty reconciling it with what God reveals of his creation through the creation itself (it looks old, evolution is one of most solidly evidenced theories on the block, etc etc...

but I would think you must at some level recognize the power of the word of God to save man.

Except the Word of God is a person, not a text... The letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life...

 

[artybloke]

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge –
myth is more potent than history –
dreams are more powerful than facts –
hope always triumphs over experience –
laughter is the cure for grief –
love is stronger than death”

This apparently is a chap called Robert Fulgham, from All I Ever Needed to Know I Learnt in Kindergarten.

It sort of encapsulates what I feel about scripture. Not that there isn't fact & history in the Bible (there has to be some), just that what matters is what it all means.

 

[CShephard53]

This apparently is a chap called Robert Fulgham, from All I Ever Needed to Know I Learnt in Kindergarten.

It sort of encapsulates what I feel about scripture. Not that there isn't fact & history in the Bible (there has to be some), just that what matters is what it all means.

Ah, postmodernism....

 

[artybloke]

Ah, you old Modernist you...

And for those who have no idea of what post-modernism is, this won't help:

Postmodernism is "all intellectual play of surfaces and depthless reification of the commodified body in a post-industrial epoch." (Simon Turner, Gists & Piths)

postmodernism is a convoluted term
postmodernism is rotting our social fabric
postmodernism is "a loathing for 'bourgeois values"
postmodernism is the rise of political correctness and the attempt to purge dissenting opinion from the ranks of the academic
postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientism
postmodernism is generally viewed as a critique of modernism
postmodernism is the foolishness
postmodernism is about and
postmodernism is most likely the most important
postmodernism is the idea of the collapse of grand narratives
postmodernism is all about process
postmodernism is notoriously difficult to define
postmodernism is a move beyond the limitations of reductionism and rational analysis—beyond rationality
postmodernism is epistemological relativism
postmodernism is moving that pace to exponential levels
postmodernism is againist modernity and progress
postmodernism is still a
postmodernism is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good
postmodernism is not a term that appeared in our vocabulary from nowhere
postmodernism is like the loch ness monster
postmodernism is one of the most dangerous movements of the century for christians
postmodernism is the cultural worldview that now penetrates and owns our society
postmodernism is not what you think
postmodernism is a hospital where the beds must remain empty
postmodernism is a term which attempts to describe the condition of contemporary society coming to grips with the failings of modernity
postmodernism is pragmatism; we find ways of accommodating ourselves to the debased norm

Postmodernism is self-referential like this definition

(From the blog-zine Gists & Pists)