The Bible: Literal or Figurative

Read it. You happy now? Seriously, I can only give you what I believe about the subject. I've touched on it a couple times and you can find links at Message 72 or in a little more detail at Message 43 and the remainder of that thread.As I said, I can only speak for myself. But maybe they will at least open some lines for thought.HTH.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I don't know of any Christian Dogma, including Roman Catholicism that holds Original Sin as a condition of faith.There is nothing that I know of in Christian Dogma that requires ANY of the Bible to be taken literally other than the existance of GOD and the life and mission of Jesus.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Nope. It most certainly is not very important at all. That is why almost every Christian sect, except for the few Fundamentalist and Literalist cults, have dropped the concept of Original Sin.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Amlodhi asks: That is part of the divinity of Jesus. The virgin birth (not unusual from a mythological point of view) helps establish that Jesus was more than simply a prophet. For Christians, that IS one of the core beliefs. We believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Personally? No, I do subscribe to the Nicene Creed and consider it as the statement of my core beliefs.But there are many that also agree with various other interpretations of what the actaul words meant, whether virgin, young girl or some other variation. The actual words in the Creed are "Born of the Virgin Mary". That can be read either as a statement of her condition, or as a title of identification.The nature of Jesus has always been a contentious issue within Christianity. The main points disputed are:

• Sabellianism & Docetism: that Christ was Christ only. He just seemed to us to have a human body.
• Monophysitism: that Jesus Christ is the joining of two seperate natures, the eternal Legos Christ and the human Jesus that happened at incarnation.
• Nestorianism: that viewed him as two natures that remained seperate thoughout his life.
• Apollinarianism: where Jesus has a human mind and soul but a divine mind.
• Adoptionism: where Jesus is a normal human that is adopted by GOD.
• Arianism: where Jesus Christ is a special creation by GOD for man's salvation (suprisingly, this led to some of the most contentious fighting and has always been considered one of the greatest of heresies).
• Socianism: which is similar to Arianism and considers Jesus to simply be an extraordinary individual.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Most of them, certainly. Arianism was considered the most serious of them but held out for a long time under the Goths and the churches founded under Gothic influence.Monophysitism is still pretty common in some of the middle eastern churches and Egypt. You can still find traces of Socianism in the Jehova's Witnesses and Unitarians.There were many other heresies that revolved around features other than the nature of Jesus Christ. For example, Pelagianism which grew up in Britian, Gaul and Ireland is still very prevelant today. It is basically the difference between the modern mainstream Christain Church and some of the Evangelical Sects.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The geneologies are certainly mostly fiction. Their ages are pure fiction.The most likely explaination for Cain and Abel is a representation of the conflict between the Nomad and more settled Farmer. Many of the others may point towards actual individuals, but exactly what the relationship was is most likely something we'll never know.The Noah story, Flood and Ark are absolutely figurative. Even if some powerful or influencial person named Noah lived, the flood and ark simply never happened.edited to fix spelling:This message has been edited by jar, 08-04-2004 10:25 PM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, since there is no evidence that most of them ever even lived, there is no way to establish their lifespans.But there are a few indicators that would tend to make folk believe that they are simply imaginary.First, tales of extrememly long lived individuals are very common. In fact, the Patriarchs from the Summerian legends (which were compiled long before the Bible) were several orders of magnitude longer lived than the Biblical ones. It's as though the Biblical writers, as the borrowed stories from the popular folklore, said,"Ain't nobody going to believe these folk lived tens of thousands of years. Let's tone it down some."The bigger reason though is that seeing the claims that the patriarchs lived 900 years and that lifespans then got shorter (but not uniformly) adds nothing to the theology. The message of salvation does not rely on whether or not the Bible is taken figuratively or literally.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

but IMHO, it's not very reasonable or logical.We can't prove anything because we can not even show that the people existed.What we can say is that there is absolutely no evidence of any exceptionaly long lived individuals even though most mythology does have tales of such folk.We've been gathering a bunch of information and there are actually quite a few skeletons that have been found date between now and 10,000 years ago. And from those remains we can gather a bunch of information. We can figure out how long they lived, what they ate, sicknesses and injury. And there are certainly no signs that any of these folk lived very long lives.So once again, these is lots of evidence that lifespans were pretty normal or even shorter, but no evidence of super long lifespans. It's like so many other Biblical claims. It serves no purpose as far as dogma or belief systems, and it requires adding in something that has no support or evidence.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

They are very good lessons. Should they be taken literally? No. Does it matter if any of them actually happened or if they are only tales? No.I think that was the only question you asked me in that composite post, but if I missed one, let me know.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion