I just mean that some of your conclusions I do not find complete.
well, of course not. i think it's a mistake to ever pretend that we have a complete understanding of anything. my conclusions aren't so much conclusions, but tentative working models based on as much information as i can gather. but i suppose this is a
scientific approach, isn't it?
i do genuinely see it as a problem when religious folk claim to have all the answers, especially when many of those answers are easily contradicted by information they do not seem to have. it's easy to say you have all the answers when you're not asking any questions -- but one question leads to three or four others, and those lead to more questions. but that's how knowledge grows.
It's not so much that you're wrong, I just don't think you have yet seen the connections I am trying to illustrate.
well, there are connections, and there are coincidences, and there is reading too much into something. sometimes, it can be hard to tell the difference. if i "don't see" the connections, it's because i do not genuinely consider them to
be connections.
We cannot change minds can we?
we can, it's just extremely rare. what changes minds... well, what changed
my mind was more information. with a certain critical mass of information, opinions, biases, and tentative conclusions are often overturned. it's getting to that point that can be hard. there is so very, very much that can be learned about the bible, and surprisingly, it can be very hard to convince a fundamentalist of even the most basic and self-evident points.
that's why my arguments here
always start with what the text plainly says -- the "self-evident" points. from there, it occasionally gets into social context, the role of the story in the bible or religion, etc. it's always interesting and exciting to be able to discuss something like
symbolism instead of having to continually argue "no, that's not what the text
says."
That is a skill that I lack! I have become terminally prophetic in my tone. I can't help it! My sincere apologies...
so far, you've been doing really well at not preaching in my direction. for which i thank you; it can be very insulting, depending on the tone. but -- as former fundamentalist and continuing christian myself -- i realize just how hard it can be to keep from spreading the good news as much as you possibly can.
the thing to remember is that we've all heard it here, especially people like myself. it's the basis for the discussion, not the conclusion. we're hammering out some textual stuff, and repeatedly going back to the pulpit to drive a point home only gets in the way of the finer technical discussion. which is a nice thing to have.
Just know that I don't expect or advise anyone to take anything at face value. Information must make sense for us to accept it. But we should keep in mind our own duplicity. A favorite philospher of mine said, 'In any interplay or exchange between information and a person, the first test is not the veracity of the information, but the honesty of the person receiving it.
yes, this is true. it can often be hard discussing matters with fundamentalists, because they start with set points of faith which cannot change even with new information. a truly honest debator is open to the possibility that they are wrong, or mistaken, or simply have been mislead. for instance, i am entirely open to the bible being god's inerrant word. it was actually my starting assumption, which has had to be modified as more information about the history and construction and function of the bible was made available to me. i have to weigh any argument that it is, in fact, of divine origin against all the evidence that i have that it is a human document. i still partly believe that god speaks through it. and i still find it a very inspiring and moving text -- actually, even more-so.
Let me put it this way... I think Adam and Eve would have understood it immediately, whereas we must struggle and study because of the cognitive dissonance the Bible poses for us in our time.
well, adam and chavah would likely not have spoken biblical hebrew, would they? moshe might have understood it. but you're absolutely right. a lot of cultural and linguistic context has been lost. even knowing as little hebrew as i do has opened a whole new world of understanding to me -- imagine if i lived in the time of king david and spoke classical hebrew natively?
there is some stuff, honestly, that we can simply have no hope of identifying with, or understanding. it's shame, really. but that, i feel, is why we must collect all the knowledge about the text and its surroundings that we possibly can -- even if it means changing our assumptions a little.
In this tage, all of the assumptions of the enlightenment, the renaissance, modernity, and all history are below the surface of our thinking and have become in many cases subconscious. It is clear to me as I study, that we have lost the ability to even question these assumptions.
i see this in everyone, even the fundamentalists. we read the bible with certain ideas about what it says, or what's in it, or what it means. often, the text is far, far weirder than anyone could imagine. there are a number of popular tales that people will tell you come from the bible -- for instance, the fall of the archangel lucifer before time began -- that simply aren't in the narrative at all. and then, starting with that assumption, we go find proof-texts, and (subconciously) misread them and jerk them out of context to retrodact them into supporting this belief. i bet you could find me 5 verses right now that you think say my example is wrong. (don't bother, i've heard them before, and we're actually discussing symbolism pertaining to a very similar rebellion, at the end times.)
the problem you mention of modern perspective, though, is incredibly hard to shake. how do we step out of our cultural framework and read the text through the eyes of a 6th century bce judean priest?
we don't. we can't possibly do that. so when we look at something like genesis 1, we have one side saying "genesis is not a science textbook" and the other saying "it's scientifically accurate in everyway." neither is actually true. genesis
is in some regard a science textbook. it's the 600 bc way of explaining things, and there is a lot of content in it that pertains to astrology and alchemy. what is the mistake is to say this is the point. ...we can't understand the integration in the text today, because we separate science from religion. the authors did not. their science, their religion, their law, their academics, and their government were
all intermingled in one conglomeration. we can't understand how that kind of system works today, because it's unlike anything we've known for a long, long time. let alone recognizing the various subtleties of focus as it shifts from book to book.
Yes but man has fallen. He has fallen from his Godly stature and become a beast. And he acts like a beast.
not quite. man was exiled from eden, yes. but for doing something that made him
more god-like, not less.
Have you ever argued with yourself? You know... the typical depiction of a man with a dilemma; an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. And who is in the middle? Which one is me?
The leviathan is me also, as well as the devil on the one side.
i think that, symbolically, it might be the case that all of the animals mentioned in job represent various qualities in men. behemoth, btw, would be "lust." do i need to explain that one? leviathan is, obviously, pride or perhaps arrogance. which is a good note to end the book of job on, considering that job is challenging god. cross back over to revelation... anyways, i would have to go back and re-read the other animals in god's diatribe in job to see if i can find the symbolism of the other ones. and see if this idea holds up. but on the basic level, they seem to be refering to animals, mythical and real. i just don't want to jump ahead up the symbolic ladder without first acknowledging the literal. it likely means
both things.
The author of Job did not neccesarily know anything about the spiritual significance of the monster. And this is important... I think he did.
as an animal clearly mythecized, and used by god to drive a
spiritual point home to job, i would also think so.
And that is what gives tremendous credence to some of these depictions of beast rising out of the sea in Daniel and elsewhere.
same set of symbols, yes.
That God, by His sovereignty could tie these together even without the understanding of the author being necessary. But I maintain that they did understand.
i think that anything else would be selling the authors of the bible short. i despise readings that do this. "they didn't understand what they were writting, it was a code from god, and it really means this!" no, that's really just insulting to the intelligence of the prophets and the authors, and generally an excuse to misapply scripture.
And the protection (without peer) of the canon of scripture is becoming readily appearent to me...
of the old testament, at least. the jews were preservationists, but the christians were not. even still, there's some fun changes and edits, and some accidental hodge-podge going on.
imagine for a second that your bible doesn't have books or chapters or verses, and i take it and arrange it chronologically by event. so isaiah and jeremiah go in the middle of kings, and chroincles and kings get mashed together, etc. now we take it and lock it down again, and arbitrarily apply divisions where they make sense in the story. gotta fit it on scrolls somehow, right? we'd end up with
a lot duplications and mix-ups. (even triplications!) for instance, those sections of kings that isaiah and jeremiah
copy would each show up twice in a row. three times if the same story is in chronicles. confusing! but that's actually a good model for the way the torah was written, and brought together. preserved, yes. just shuffled into order from separate sources, and later re-divided.
the consistency is supernatural when you finally see it.
i can no longer see consistency. i'm sorry, but it's just not there. and i actually like it better that way. some books have entire points or premises that are totally opposite of anything else written in the bible. job, for instance, goes against quite a lot. i think it's really beautiful, and interesting, that we have so many
inconsistent and independent voices and perspectives in the bible. any reading that denies this, really, imho, is denying the text a great deal.
This idea that science is one thing, and religion another etc, is the fault of Emanuel Kant et al. When we seek to understand something, we do not eliminate resources for information, we seek total context. But not if your a materialist like Hume. Do you see how these men lied to us?
i haven't read kant or hume, so i can't say. philosophy got in my bad books a long time ago. just not very interested.
Did the churning of the waters destroy the Ark? No, because God Himself in a very overlooked detail of the story sealed the door of Noah's ark. And in the same manner, the Spirit of the 'born again' is sealed and given the zeal and vision to wheather the storms of doubt. Not to mention that the Ark in Genesis, represents the vessel (or temple) of the Holy spirt (the body) in the Gospels. Remember how Jesus rebuked the tempest on the sea of Galalie? Giving comfort, and Himself as food for sustanence? Spiritually rich material Arachnophilia.
well, again, it's important to remember which texts came first, and what is drawing symbolism from where. and actually, if you're looking for a good symbolic parallel to jesus (having to do with water) look no further than his namesake, joshua, leading the hebrews across the jordan.
The whole Bible is symbolic Arachnophilia.
laced with symbolism, sure. but i think it's a mistake to treat the bible like a coded message.
he whole of history is one mans story of how He created the universe for Himself to share with his creation.
again, i think this really sells the bible short. there's so much more to it than one simple story of creation.
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