Why Literal?

I tried asking this on a different thread and got no answer.If the Bible is the literal written word of God it should be the case that where the author refers to himself in the first person it would refer to God. Do you agree, and if not, why not ?After thirty years of research I would hope that you would be able to answer such a simple question.

PaulK;
I suspect this question is not an honest one. Are you really interested in an answer, or just trying to be cute? I take this all very seriously. I'll look into this for you if you are serious.By the way, I agree with the booboo guy. None of your arguments against him were compelling. Luther also defended Mary worship, but the Bible remains unaffected by his actions. Rumors of someone's sexual preference are easy to come by. Anyone with a grudge could buy you all subscriptions to a gay rag and make your lives really strange for a while. The problem with most of the arguments here is that noone is willing to take any document at face value. It's like talking about Buddhism while denying the existence of the Buddah. It's pointless.

Oh, it is a serious question.(BTW even if "booboo" is winning on this thread - I haven't paid much attnetion to the arguments you refer to - he is losing very badly on others).

Hi PaulK Fair Question,Please remember Paul that the Bible is NOT an "autobiography". It is a "biography", that has been uniquely authored with the full inspiration of(2Tim.3:16), the full assistance of, and at the direction of, "the subject".It is akin to PaulK wanting to tell his life story in a book and asks 40 of his closest and dearest friends to help him write it, as they were a big part of his life. PaulK accomplishes this by actually giving each friend a segment of the book to complete as it relates to their individual experiences together, and Paul also assists each friend until the segment is complete. This method gives the very best and accurate information pertaining to PaulK's life and his experiences with his friends as possible, and maximizes the credibility of the book.PaulK is never in the first person, however it is his book, about him and his expeiences, inspired by him, yet authored by others.One of the attributes of God is Humility. This is a great example of that. "Never one to Toot his own horn"Paul

Taking documents at face value is pretty dumb. There's nothing in the bible that couldn't be there as an effort to justify all-too-human actions, garner support for one's particular cult, or simply explain the observed world in a way that makes sense at the time.A document can't be used to verify itself. That's totally illogical.Belief in God and belief in the inerrancy of the bible both require faith. But I don't think people realize that they're separate acts of faith. One can believe in God and deny the bible, since at no time has god gone on the record to say he wrote it.I mean, I could write a book and instead of signing my name, I could simply write "these are the words of David O", and in the absence of input from you, who could contest it?Belief in a literal bible is even more self-contradictory. The bible has phrasings that are contradictory on the face of them. That much is certain. I've heard the explanations, but each one relies on squeezing out meaning "between the lines" to an extent that no one who's doing so could claim to be making a literal reading! That's the paradox - if you want a literal bible you can't read every line of it literally. You know, unless we were gay. That's a pretty heterocentrist comment to make, actually. I would reconsider any further statements like this - they tend to confirm the worst stereotypes about believers.

And therefore not literally his words, now are they?

So your answer is that the Bible is NOT the literal written word of God.Indeed it cannot even be dictated by Him since the opinions about God are - according to you - those of the actual authors.So I have to ask you how you can be certain that other parts are not also the opinions of the human authors.

Are you ever going to actually present any of this evidence on any thread? Just curious as to whether I should continue waiting, or simply ignore you from here on out.[This message has been edited by Quetzal, 04-25-2003]

Hi Paul, Crash, As the verse above says, every word, every verse, every chapter, every book, has been given by God. Therefore it's his Word.The Greek word for inspiration here is "theopneustos"-God breathed. It was that special influence of the Holy Spirit that gifted these people to write an infallible record of divine truth concerning all things, and at the same time being exactly what God wanted the record to be, word for word.So my answer is that the Bible "IS" the literal written word of God.Respectfully, Paul

Can you make your mind up, please ?Either the bits praising God are the opinions of the human authors as you said earlier or they are dictated by God as you now claim.Further if God did dictate the writing - which is necessary for it to be God's literal written word - then you have just contradicted your response to my question which denied just that.And one last point - the fact that you choose to quote a Bible verse that is too vague to decide the issue (even assuming it to be correct and to refer to the Bible as we have it - neither of which is provable) does not speak well for your "30 years of research".[This message has been edited by PaulK, 04-25-2003]

You know, if St Paul had meant this to mean "Scripture is inerrant", wouldn't he have said so?He didn't.He asserts no more than that the Spirit of God works through Scripture and makes it, as he says, profitable ('useful' some translations say) for the purposes he lists.A far, far, cry from the inerrant dictation of God.

I have taken your document at face value. I will judge it as if you really wrote it and meant what you wrote. If I find out later that you don't exist, or didn't mean what you said, I will have done the honorable thing by taking you at face value. If I go into this doubting that your words are meaningful or literal, I can make you say anything I want you to say. If you think you see a contradiction in the Bible, you are seeing your own lack of understanding.

I'm not worried about whether you are gay or not, I advise the same caution you advise me about referring to someone's sexual preference. Back up your claim that King James was gay with some documentation.

Sure, there's no real reason to doubt that. But that doesn't make every claim I make true, does it? You can assume I wrote what I did, but the reasonable thing to do would be to consider why I wrote what I did. What my authorial motivations were.I have no doubt that the bible is a real book. I have no doubt that real living people wrote it. But that simply doesn't make it true! Not so. Haven't you ever done literary interpretation? Any interpretation you make about my meaning must be supported by and argued from the text. Therefore the essence of clear writing is an effort by the author to ensure that the text supports as few meanings as possible (the meanings he/she intended). I may not be a biblical scholar, but reading texts in English is something I'm exceedingly good at. If I see a contradition in the bible, it's because it's there, or because the bible is occasionally metaphoric or even poorly worded in places. If you don't see the contradictions, it's because you're bending the words and reading between the lines to smooth them out. What I want to know is, how can such word-bending be considered a "literal" interpretation?

King James gay? I wasn't around then...
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/jamesi.htm
and
http://www.geocities.com/cott1388/kingjames.html
think so; lots of churchy websites say no. There are too many hits on Google to even guess what serious historians think.