Bible As Metaphor Vs. Literal Truth

February 19, 2004

The Bible (and the BoM):

Are they literally true or true as myth/metaphor?

Debate!

Originally posted by ray @ Feb 18 2004+ 05:04 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ray @ Feb 18 2004 @ 05:04 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin--elinz @ Feb 18 2004@ 05:04 PM

You still haven't understood the difference between the
"narrative" style and the deeper meaning that is often
presented as a "parable".
When someone says it is "God's Word" they mean that
it defines a "truth" which is a "pattern" of the way thngs
really are. Deep truths are not attached to specifics.
When the narrative style is used it introduces the possibility
of error because it attempts to make a literal story of
an event.
By focusing on the details you miss the deeper meaning.
So the dilemma is this:
Use the narrative and risk "detail error".
or
Use parables and risk "intellectual failure".
Neither choice is perfect, but that's the diffculty in trying
to communicate complex ideas.
People are incredibly stupid, unfortunately...

That’s an interesting idea, but I see things differently. I think the truth is in the details, it’s just that all the details aren’t fully understood.

For instance, I believe Adam and Eve are the parents of all “humans” who have ever been born on the Earth. The only exception is Jesus, because His father was our heavenly Father. But then again, He wasn’t exactly “human” like the rest of us, so I can truthfully say that all “humans” who were ever born on this Earth descended from Adam and Eve. Jesus was both “human” and “divine”, because His mother was a “human” and His father was “divine”. I could get a little more specific about what it means to be “human” or “divine”, but I think I’ll stop there for now.

Some people say that Adam and Eve didn’t really exist, or if they did exist, that those names are only a reference to non-specific persons.

Like I said, I believe the truth is in the details, and that you must understand every little detail about everything before you can understand all of the truth.

February 19, 2004

Eden is a myth. Here is one possible interpretation by Danel Quinn (author of Ishmael)...just for fun...

There have traditionally been two approaches to Adam's crime and punishment . The text tells us Adam was invited to partake of every tree in the garden of Eden except one, mysteriously called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As we know, Adam succumbed to the temptation to sample this fruit. In one approach, the crime is viewed as simple disobedience, in which case the interdiction of the knowledge of good and evil seems entirely arbitrary. God might just as well have interdicted the knowledge of war and peace or the knowledge of pride and prejudice. The point was simply to forbid Adam something in order to test his loyalty. Under this approach, Adam's punishment--banishment from Eden to live by the sweat of his brow as a farmer--was just a spanking; it doesn't "fit the crime" in any particular way. He would have received this punishment no matter what test he had failed.

The second approach tries to make some connection between Adam's crime and his punishment. Under this approach, Eden is viewed as a metaphor for the state of innocence, which is lost when Adam gains the knowledge of good and evil. This makes sense, but only if the knowledge of good and evil is understood as a metaphor for knowledge that destroys innocence. So, with roughly equivalent metaphors at either end, the story is reduced to a banal tautology: Adam lost his innocence by gaining knowledge that destroyed his innocence.

The story of the Fall is coupled with a second that is equally famous and equally baffling, that of Cain and Abel. As conventionally understood, these two brothers were literal individuals, the elder, Cain, a tiller of the soil, and the younger, Abel, a herder. The improbability that two members of the same family would embrace antithetical lifestyles should tip us off to the fact that these were not individuals but emblematic figures, just as Adam was (Adam merely being the Hebrew word for Man).

If we understand these as emblematic figures, then the story begins to make sense. The firstborn of agriculture was indeed the tiller of the soil, as Cain was said to be the firstborn of Adam. This is an undoubted historical fact. The domestication of plants is a process that begins the day you plant your first seed, but the domestication of animals takes generations. So the herder Abel was indeed the second-born--by centuries, if not millennia (another reason to be skeptical of the notion that Cain and Abel were literally second-generation brothers).

A further reason for skepticism on this point is the fact that the ancient farmers and herders of the Near East occupied adjacent but distinctly different regions. Farming was the occupation of the Caucasian inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent. Herding was the occupation of the Semitic inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula to the south.

Another piece of background that needs to be understood is that in very ancient times farmers and herders had radically different lifestyles. Farmers were by the very nature of their work settled villagers; but herders (by the very nature of their work) were nomads, just as many present-day herding peoples are. The herding lifestyle was in fact closer to the hunting-gathering lifestyle than it was to the farming lifestyle.

As the farming peoples of the north expanded, it was inevitable that they would confront their Semitic herding neighbors to the south, perhaps below what is now Iraq--with the predictable result. As they have done from the beginning to the present moment, the tillers of the soil needed more land to put to the plow, and as they've done from the beginning to the present moment, they took it.

As the Semites saw it (and it is of course their version of the story that we have), the tiller of the soil Cain was watering his fields with the blood of Abel the herder.

The fact that the version we have is the Semitic version explains the central mystery of the story, which is why God rejected Cain's gift but accepted Abel's. Naturally, this is the way the Semites would see it. In essence, the story says, "God is on our side. God loves us and the way we live but hates the tillers of the soil and the way they live."

With these provisional understandings in place, I was ready to offer a theory about the first part of the story, the Fall of Adam. What the Semitic authors knew was only the present fact that their brothers from the north were encroaching on them in a murderous way. They hadn't been physically present in the Fertile Crescent to witness the actual birth of agriculture, and in fact this was an event that had occurred hundreds of years earlier. In their story of the Fall, they were reconstructing an ancient event, not reporting a recent one. All that was clear to them was that some strange development had saddled their brothers to the north with a laborious lifestyle and had turned them into murderers, and this had to be a moral or spiritual catastrophe of some kind.

What they observed about their brothers to the north was this peculiarity. They seemed to have the strange idea that they knew how to run the world as well as God.

elinz · February 19, 2004

To know what was going on we must go back to the thought

processes at the time that the stories were created.

My sense (what do I know?) is that they did use things like

abstractions to describe social movements.

They were much looser with their style then.

Today we are very literal in our thinking. This is probably

because of the influence of the sciences. If you can't measure

it it isn't real, so to speak.

My read on "The Fall" is that prior to the age of "Empires"

people lived very simple and innocent (but brutish) lives.

The knowledge of "Empire" is the "Fall". It's everything

that allows someone to lie, cheat and steal "legally" and fully

get away with it. (lawyers, politicians, liberals)

Here's another realization I had:

Creationism and Evolution are BOTH true.

Evolution is VERY slow acting. It takes millions of years to

make things happen. But about 4000 years ago there was

a new process that dominated the earth. It's the role of

"Empire" (the Fall) on human "evolution".

So at the point of spirit "Creation" the weaker force of

evolution becomes irrelevant.

The group defines survival, not biology.

The Bible and BoM are ALL about Empires! B)

February 19, 2004

Yeesh! I don't think the ancient Israelites pondered the creation story quite this deeply. I think they borrowed it from the epic of Gilgamesh and gave it a distinct spin that reflected monotheistic, patriarchal values.

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by elinz@Feb 18 2004, 07:21 PM
To know what was going on we must go back to the thought
processes at the time that the stories were created.
My sense (what do I know?) is that they did use things like
abstractions to describe social movements.
They were much looser with their style then.
Today we are very literal in our thinking. This is probably
because of the influence of the sciences. If you can't measure
it it isn't real, so to speak.
My read on "The Fall" is that prior to the age of "Empires"
people lived very simple and innocent (but brutish) lives.
The knowledge of "Empire" is the "Fall". It's everything
that allows someone to lie, cheat and steal "legally" and fully
get away with it. (lawyers, politicians, liberals)
Here's another realization I had:
Creationism and Evolution are BOTH true.
Evolution is VERY slow acting. It takes millions of years to
make things happen. But about 4000 years ago there was
a new process that dominated the earth. It's the role of
"Empire" (the Fall) on human "evolution".
So at the point of spirit "Creation" the weaker force of
evolution becomes irrelevant.
The group defines survival, not biology.
The Bible and BoM are ALL about Empires! B)

Say what??????

elinz · February 19, 2004

There's an idea.

It's just a hodge podge of past stories.

Maybe.

Whether this is true or not there was a distinct break from the

simpler hunter gathering / farming age into the age of empires.

The main focus of the Bible is empires.

(and the "Harlot" rides on top of the "Beast" again! B) )

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by elinz@Feb 18 2004, 07:33 PM
(and the "Harlot" rides on top of the "Beast" again! B) )

Are you being pornographic again? Really!

Snow · February 19, 2004

Originally posted by curvette@Feb 18 2004, 07:24 PM
Yeesh! I don't think the ancient Israelites pondered the creation story quite this deeply. I think they borrowed it from the epic of Gilgamesh and gave it a distinct spin that reflected monotheistic, patriarchal values.

Right,

It's not like one guy actually wrote Genesis, either as a literal history or as a metaphorical construct. The story was (likely) passed down for centuries as an oral tradition. By the time it got written, who know how faithful it was to the original and then, there was more than one author/version of what became Genesis passed down (copied by scribes) for a 1000 years until someone redacted (edited and wove) the various accounts together. In retrospect you can say that it was this (literal) or that (metabolical) but since the Genesis we have now is not the original, first time told Genesis... who knows.

On another note, I am going wireless and networking my computers together. Beyond that I hope for world peace and the admiration of strong minded women. Stay tuned.

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by Snow@Feb 18 2004, 07:37 PM
On another note, I am going wireless and networking my computers together. Beyond that I hope for world peace and the admiration of strong minded women. Stay tuned.

You're a nut.

February 19, 2004

I don't know...the subconscious is a powerful thing. These symbols and themes can end up in stories without people even knowing they are writing them.

Snow · February 19, 2004

Tao,

Yeah. More likely, though, that they write them and then others make up symbols that they, the others, see in the unintended message of the original authors.

elinz · February 19, 2004

But then we would all be Jewish!

February 19, 2004

They could all just be fables used to teach morals and values...or they could be a novel gone arye...or they could actually be writing of prophets who spoke and dealt with God...but of course that last idea is so far fetched...golly gee whiz...

elinz · February 19, 2004

A good story can be understood at many levels.

It's like many movies made for kids. The kids see

one movie and the adults see another. It's the

same words, but the meaning is different for the

adults.

Entertainment for all ages! :)

Tr2 · February 19, 2004

Why would one think that biblical stories are metaphors or anything else? Is it because of the writing styles, the content.....?

The few people that I know that do view the bible as such, are not well versed in it. Though some aspects of the bible there is no way of knowing if it is based on a historical fact or a myth, example being Job.

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by Peace@Feb 18 2004, 10:39 PM
or they could actually be writing of prophets who spoke and dealt with God...but of course that last idea is so far fetched...

It is far fetched. Not because I don't believe in prophets or that God communicates with people. It's far fetched because there are very very similar accounts of the earliest Genesis stories written by a civilization that is much older than the Israelite civilization. If God revealed these things to Moses, he revealed them to the Mesopotamians over fifteen hundred years earlier. Even if we credit Abraham the father of all Israelites with this knowledge, the epic had already been written down on clay tablets in Mesopotamia for at least 700 years before Abram left Ur.

February 19, 2004

So whats the problem? God has been dealing with all His children...we only have one record....things get lost, jumbled and turned around, but the core stuff is still traceable. That confirms the bible, it doesn't prove it wrong or fablistic.

February 19, 2004

I think the mist of darkness is just that a mist of ignorance and misunderstanding. When you are going through that mist, if you don't hold to the rod/Christ/light/truth as it is taught to you by a prophet of God, you will get lost...leaning to your own understanding and the secular teachings of the world.

elinz · February 19, 2004

The narrative style was not the preferred style of Jesus or

anyone else back then. That's why the discovery of the

Gnostic Gospels (Gospel of Thomas etc..) sheds so much

light on the primative church.

Parables are in some ways better because they cannot

be picked apart. They DEMAND that you rise to the level

of the author!

But that's the problem, what do you do with the weak

minded ones? What can they worship? So you need to

tend to the entire flock in one way or the other.

Thus the creation of the narrative... B)

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by Peace@Feb 19 2004, 09:57 AM
So whats the problem? God has been dealing with all His children...we only have one record....things get lost, jumbled and turned around, but the core stuff is still traceable. That confirms the bible, it doesn't prove it wrong or fablistic.

I don't think anyone on this thread is saying that it is "wrong or fablistic (?)" The question is: Are there stories in the Bible that are metaphorical and not literal? Metaphor is just as powerful a teaching tool as literal history. Jesus didn't stop and say, 'Oh, by the way I'm speaking metaphorically now" before he gave his parables, he just taught them. It's my personal opinion that most of Genesis is fact woven with myth made into metaphor.

February 19, 2004

I think the Lord gives us all just enough rope to either hang ourselves or save ourselves...we decide how we are going to use it.

Some choose to analize the rope and not use it, which, when trying to climb to the highest mountain, defeats both the purpose of the rope and the person who is not using it for the best results... These are the fense sitters...

Rev. 3: 16

16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by Peace@Feb 19 2004, 10:11 AM
I think the Lord gives us all just enough rope to either hang ourselves or save ourselves...we decide how we are going to use it.
Some choose to analize the rope and not use it, which, when trying to climb to the highest mountain, defeats both the purpose of the rope and the person who is not using it for the best results... These are the fense sitters...
Rev. 3: 16
16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

What on earth are you talking about? I think the Lord gives us freedom in how we make sense of this strange and wonderful world He created for us. Why would our own father treat us in the manner you propose?

February 19, 2004

Our Father is not treating us in any unfavorable manner...unless your perspective says that is how it is to be interpretated.

We are given a choice to take drugs or not...our choice...what kind of good Father would give a child that kind of destructive choice....???? Get real Curvette...

The choice is to either use the Bible to climb the mountain, analized it and go no where, or use it for what it has been given to us for....and climb!

February 19, 2004

Okay. (As long as I'm "spewed" metaphorically and not literally...)

February 19, 2004

Originally posted by curvette@Feb 19 2004, 10:27 AM
Okay. (As long as I'm "spewed" metaphorically and not literally...)

LOL.

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