The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Amazing how people try to lay their 21st century perceptions over a God who is eternal and a bible that was written thousands of years ago. I'll stop there.


Franco Harris mentions bring back to mind the Vikings' painful loss to them in the Super Bowl.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Amazing how people try to lay their 21st century perceptions over a God who is eternal and a bible that was written thousands of years ago. I'll stop there.

Amazing how a God who is eternal and a Bible that was written thousands of years ago have been redefined by every generation of believers for their own narrow self-regard. I'll stop there.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

That just means Mary was born without sin, not that she was a divine baby.

Nobody said she was a divine baby. Any divinity ascribed to Mary comes after the Assumption.

Sex isn't sin; sex is just the cabling the Original Sin signal is transmitted via. But Mary's mother (Anne? I forget, which is a bad sign) did do the nasty -- it's just that God intervened and made it Divinely Safe Sex -- the only case of which I am aware that a child was begotten by sex without sin. Jesus of course is a Virgin Birth via the intervention of the Holy Spirit (perhaps in the form of a hot Bedouin Lothario; Nazarene nights are lonely for an early teen girl with a good imagination) because Joseph's sperm just wasn't up to making a god fetus. All of the god myths from the East have virgin births, so you had to have one for your candidate to win in the primaries. Jesus had a brother so Mary and Joseph got down to the beast with two backs soon after Jesus was born. 4 brothers, actually, (James, Joe Jr., Simon, and Judas {not that one}) plus several sisters, so Mary was a DTF freak alright. God just gave her a Magic Vagina so that when the HS popped in for a little in-out her tunnel of love was unsullied by sin.

It was important for these gods to have as little to do with women as possible, given the prevailing hierarchies of the regional cultures. Since women are nearly subhuman, the more you can remove the taint of their presence, the better. Now mix in the rabid misogyny of the early church fathers (does anybody doubt John the Revelator et al. were self-hating poofters?) compounded by centuries of monastic carping about seductresses and the evil of sexuality, and you wind up with Mary as the Uncola -- the ideal unfemale female.

This is a good summary of the party line.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Amazing how a God who is eternal and a Bible that was written thousands of years ago have been redefined by every generation of believers for their own narrow self-regard. I'll stop there.

Not really. A lot of what folks believe now is pretty close to stuff that was believed by Augustine, Calvin, Luther, etc. Details often are quibbled over and are different, but the major stuff has been remarkably consistent. And I'm not speaking to the Catholic side of things. I'll leave that to someone else.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

"Mary"? Did the new Pope decide this or what?

Just to note, Mary's divinity is a Catholic thing. Nobody I know of on the Protestant/non-Catholic side believes anything of the sort. I've never seen anything in the Bible indicating she was without sin, and I've looked.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Just to note, Mary's divinity is a Catholic thing. Nobody I know of on the Protestant/non-Catholic side believes anything of the sort. I've never seen anything in the Bible indicating she was without sin, and I've looked.

Mary comes up a lot in fundy criticism of Papist saint worship, but it's a complicated subject. It seems to me that Protestants are a lot more open to Mary as a "saintly" figure worthy of special consideration than most RC saints.

I think most evangelicals regard the Cult of the Virgin as idolatry and a sin in the eyes of God.

 

[unofan]

Nobody said she was a divine baby.

Not to pull a fishy on you, but you clearly did just farther down on this page.

It's the Holy Spirit that conceives.
...
and Jesus and Mary both being conceived without sex...

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Mary comes up a lot in fundy criticism of Papist saint worship, but it's a complicated subject. It seems to me that Protestants are a lot more open to Mary as a "saintly" figure worthy of special consideration than most RC saints.

I think most evangelicals regard the Cult of the Virgin as idolatry and a sin in the eyes of God.

Mary certainly has a special role in Biblical history, but the whole thought of "saints" who are somehow more special (or whatever the best descriptor is) than other believers is a foreign concept to Protestants. The word "saints" is used often in the New Testament, but it is used to reference believers in general, not some special class of believers. References such as "the saints in Jerusalem".

 

[burd]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Amazing how people try to lay their 21st century perceptions over a God who is eternal and a bible that was written thousands of years ago. I'll stop there.

What I find amazing is that some people will wager their salvation on a book written two centuries ago consisting of triple hearsay, translated at least twice--once for a King focused on securing power--from a language practically nobody understands, and reengineered some 300 years after the fact; yet will refuse to believe that Barack Obama was born in this country based upon lack of documented proof.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

We are, remember, sinners in the hands of an angry god.

You are catching on!

What is original sin, anyway? Other than being born a gopher fan.

A sue fan.

Amazing how a God who is eternal and a Bible that was written thousands of years ago have been redefined by every generation of believers for their own narrow self-regard. I'll stop there.

I can only speak from a Wisconsin Synod viewpoint, but our Pastors are trained in Greek and Hebrew, so they can read the original texts. It's interesting when they focus on a word that did not translate well and they expound on it. So for us, we have not and do not re-define God or what the Bible says from it's original recordings. That's the beauty of focusing on what God wants us to know from what is recorded, and not relying on people to tell us what God wants us to know based on their take on it.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Not to pull a fishy on you, but you clearly did just farther down on this page.

I didn't say she was divine, but you're right that I did say her conception was without sex, which is just wrong -- Mary was the fruit of actual sex, but she was protected by God from her conception as a sinless vessel.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

What I find amazing is that some people will wager their salvation on a book written two centuries ago consisting of triple hearsay, translated at least twice--once for a King focused on securing power--from a language practically nobody understands, and reengineered some 300 years after the fact; yet will refuse to believe that Barack Obama was born in this country based upon lack of documented proof.

What I find amazing is that people took the word of a woman that she had seen a ghost rise from the grave and ascend to Heaven. When the tomb was investigated, it was empty.

If this happened today, would the result be:
A) We'd believe her and start a new religion around the fallen (and risen!) Saint
B) We'd ask where she got such wonderful drugs and could she hook us up with her dealer
C) We'd assume she was a grave-robbing whore who lied about the ghost part so her accomplices could escape with the loot

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

I can only speak from a Wisconsin Synod viewpoint, but our Pastors are trained in Greek and Hebrew, so they can read the original texts. It's interesting when they focus on a word that did not translate well and they expound on it. So for us, we have not and do not re-define God or what the Bible says from it's original recordings. That's the beauty of focusing on what God wants us to know from what is recorded, and not relying on people to tell us what God wants us to know based on their take on it.

I'm sympathetic to sola scriptura, and I have a lot of respect for the sincere attempts by generations of Protestant Biblical scholars to go back to the original text. But there is exegesis in every reading of a text no matter how neutral it tries to be, if for no other reason than the words in the readers' heads are changing their meanings from generation to generation. Throw in the incredible complexity, not to say self-contradictions, of the many voices captured in scripture, and the idea of the consistency of the text is a foreign concept slapped onto the source material later. Scriptural consistency is itself the most radical reinterpretation of scripture. The Pentateuch, just a small portion of scripture, was rehashed over by at least 4 different editors (JEDP), each of who had an agenda that was far more aggressive and invasive than just preservation of an existing work -- they were doing a complete rewrite.

So, the original texts came from many different cultures, often unrelated to one another, and the bundling of them together was artificial. There is overwhelming textual evidence of a continuous process of re-editing, censoring, and distorting these source texts over the many years prior to their canonization. Thus, even if it were true that the Bible had been somehow stored in pristine vacuum-lock purity from the moment of the Muratorian Canon in 170 onward, which is highly dubious, we have tons of evidence of tinkering and outright rewriting in the hundreds of years before.

Even granting there is a God (there isn't) and a divine sanction for the text (there wasn't), we still have incontrovertible evidence that the text has been constantly changed to suit the needs of the believing community and power structure. Given the fate of all the other scriptures that all the other cultures have had over the millenia, that should come as no surprise. Even if God actually was the first guy on the game of telephone, the message that we have now is hopelessly garbled.

 

[WisconsinWildcard]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

I'm sympathetic to sola scriptura, and I have a lot of respect for the sincere attempts by generations of Protestant Biblical scholars to go back to the original text. But there is exegesis in every reading of a text no matter how neutral it tries to be, if for no other reason than the words in the readers' heads are changing their meanings from generation to generation. Throw in the incredible complexity, not to say self-contradictions, of the many voices captured in scripture, and the idea of the consistency of the text is a foreign concept slapped onto the source material later. Scriptural consistency is itself the most radical reinterpretation of scripture. The Pentateuch, just a small portion of scripture, was rehashed over by at least 4 different editors (JEDP), each of who had an agenda that was far more aggressive and invasive than just preservation of an existing work -- they were doing a complete rewrite.

So, the original texts came from many different cultures, often unrelated to one another, and the bundling of them together was artificial. There is overwhelming textual evidence of a continuous process of re-editing, censoring, and distorting these source texts over the many years prior to their canonization. Thus, even if it were true that the Bible had been somehow stored in pristine vacuum-lock purity from the moment of the Muratorian Canon in 170 onward, which is highly dubious, we have tons of evidence of tinkering and outright rewriting in the hundreds of years before.

Even granting there is a God (there isn't) and a divine sanction for the text (there wasn't), we still have incontrovertible evidence that the text has been constantly changed to suit the needs of the believing community and power structure. Given the fate of all the other scriptures that all the other cultures have had over the millenia, that should come as no surprise. Even if God actually was the first guy on the game of telephone, the message that we have now is hopelessly garbled.

Having just finished Jesus, Interupted, this post is actually a great summation of Ehrman's thesis in the book. Great post.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

There are, what, like 24,000 early manuscripts with various portions of the bible, with the Dead Sea Scrolls being the most famous, some dating back to pretty close to the time of Jesus. The amazing thing is how these texts have been found in a variety of places, but their consistency is quite amazing. Not everything is exactly the same of course, as if you were a scribe copying things, not always under easy circumstances, you'll get a word wrong here and there. But, hey, I don't expect anyone to put stock in 24,000 early manuscripts with a great deal of consistency.

Here's one of many such articles:
http://irr.org/todays-bible-real-bible
Not that any number of such articles would change minds on this.

 

[WisconsinWildcard]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

There are, what, like 24,000 early manuscripts with various portions of the bible, with the Dead Sea Scrolls being the most famous, some dating back to pretty close to the time of Jesus. The amazing thing is how these texts have been found in a variety of places, but their consistency is quite amazing. Not everything is exactly the same of course, as if you were a scribe copying things, not always under easy circumstances, you'll get a word wrong here and there. But, hey, I don't expect anyone to put stock in 24,000 early manuscripts with a great deal of consistency.

Here's one of many such articles:
http://irr.org/todays-bible-real-bible
Not that any number of such articles would change minds on this.

Going by your link, up to 300 years between the original and earliest surviving manuscript, there are only 4 existing manuscripts. The 24,000 comes post 300 years from the original. Much can change (and has been shown to by historians applying the historical-critical method) in the 300 years leading up to the mass reproduction of the works (which has a lot to do with conversion of Constantine and the Roman Empire shifting toward Christianity).

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Going by your link, up to 300 years between the original and earliest surviving manuscript, there are only 4 existing manuscripts. The 24,000 comes post 300 years from the original. Much can change (and has been shown to by historians applying the historical-critical method) in the 300 years leading up to the mass reproduction of the works (which has a lot to do with conversion of Constantine and the Roman Empire shifting toward Christianity).

Also, most contrary documents (and people) were burned. Many of the most important source documents discovered in the last century only survived because they had been deliberately hidden from the church's PC police. Christianity used to take the same line on apostasy and heresy as ISIS.

c.f. "Everybody in 70's China was a Maoist because the only surviving documents from that period are Maoist."

There's a really interesting discussion of the evolution of Christian doctrine in (I think) Karen Armstrong's The History of God. She documents how what we are taught as Christine doctrine now was only one of many wildly divergent strains of early Christianity, and in some doctrinal cases not even the majority position. Basics like the Trinity or the cross as the symbol of faith or transubstantiation would have struck early Christians as bizarre lunacy.

This was a very messy, very worldly history of power struggles between the various power centers (Rome vs Alexandria vs Antioch etc). When one strain finally got enough secular power to extinguish the others, culminating with the First Council of Nicaea in 325, there was a ruthless effort to obliterate all record of all the others. But in reality Christianity in the early period was extremely volatile and the creed didn't settle down until somebody finally had the firepower behind him to kill off all the competition.

tl; dr: Not only was Jesus not a Christian, the vast majority of early Christians weren't what we call "Christian."

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

One thing that seems clearly incontrovertible:

95% or so of every religion, including atheism, is entirely consistent with 95% or so of every other religion, across the board.
-- don't lie
-- don't take things that don't belong to you
-- don't hurt people

Amazing how that remaining 5% leads to so much controversy, eh?




Yes, atheism has all the external trappings of a religion, as well; it has its doctrines and its heresies, just like any other.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

tl; dr: Not only was Jesus not a Christian, the vast majority of early Christians weren't what we call "Christian."

Heretic! Next you'll tell us Jesus didn't have blue eyes, fair hair and speak with a slight southern drawl.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Yes, atheism has all the external trappings of a religion, as well; it has its doctrines and its heresies, just like any other.

No, this is a fallacious theist talking point about atheism. Atheism is a rejection of the project of living by religious faith in preference to reason, period. People who organize their thinking by faith do not seem to grasp this simple but essential difference. It is also allows them to make spurious comparisons between science and religion, and in fact it's typically motivated by their desire to elevate some quack pseudo-science to the level of actual science with the obfuscation of terms like theory, law, and proof.