Is a literal reading of the Bible an insult to its authors?

You say our atoms will survive our death.You said that many hydrogen atoms ceased to exist by being fused into helium atoms.If they were fused they did not cease to exist they only changed form. Ok explain how the energy and matter that compose a human body and mind can cease to exist.That would be very intersting. A kingdom has to have a king presiding over it.That can not happen on earth until Jesus comes back and sets up His earthly kingdom.Until then the king devil is in charge.That is why there is so many problems in the world.Yea I know everybody likes to blame God. What else is new?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

ICANT, so much depends on what you mean by "existence." This is a huge question in philosophy; it even has its own branch called "ontology." Does Babylon still exist? Eden? Adam and Eve? Do the dinosaurs still exist? Does water still exist after it has been electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen? Do the twin towers of the World Trade Center still exist, even though much of them lie at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean?If you ate a mouse would that mouse have any existence in you? Could it make you feel mousey?On the other hand, one could say with statistical precision that the probability of you inhaling an oxygen atom that was once inhaled by Jesus is very high, maybe 1.0. In that case, that oxygen atom might have carried some Jesus energy with it and done you some good. Or not. I wouldn't know.If you want to talk about spiritual existence, I don't mind. It's an empty box for me. But when you say: I can only say that this is basically true, in the physical context”that matter and energy will exist forever. But will they exist as ghosts of their former occupations? Will a squirrel obtain oak-ness by eating the matter and energy of an acorn? Does the squirrel have little acorn ghosts inside him? If Jerry Falwell went to heaven then I want go to the other place.”HM

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If you got some quince, Pussycat, I got a runcible spoon.

Isn't that obviously what he was referring to?

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“I know where I am and who I am. I'm on the brink of disillusionment, on the eve of bitter sweet. I'm perpetually one step away from either collapse or rebirth. I am exactly where I need to be. Either way I go towards rebirth, for a total collapse often brings a rebirth." -Andrew Jaramillo

I'm not so sure. He was invoking the First Law as if it had something to do with spiritual existence.

Meh... *shrugs* Carry on then.

Hi HM all I was saying is that we existed before we were born to our parents in some form.We exist in our present form today.When we die we will continue to exist it will just be in another form.In other words we are eternal.There are many philosophies as to how we exist after we die a physical death.There are those who think we come back until we get it right.There are those who think we come back as some other creature.There are those who think when we die that is it we exist no more.
We know this is wrong because matter and energy can not be destroyed.I happen to believe we move on to a higher plane. The squirrel eats the acorns, he extracts energy from the acorns, then he discharges the waste on the ground. The rain comes and dissolves the waste it is then picked up by the roots of the oak tree. It travels up the trunk out the limbs and forms acorns.
The acorns loads up with energy again and here comes the squirrel. Be careful what you wish for you might get it.HM I have no idea where Falwell is and I met the man in person.I have been married to my childhood sweetheart for 51 years and I don't know for sure where she will spend eternity. From the fruit I see she will spend it with Jesus.The only person I know about is myself. I know I have met God's requirements He set down in His Word. He says for that He gives me eternal life.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Oh I’d love some evidence for this please mate.I had a discussion here with Ken Demeyer a few years ago, and we went through the possibilities, and a sperm whale cannot fit anything bigger than a man’s fist down its gullet, so let’s see you evidence that it can swallow something bigger and that after 72 hours its gastric acids have no effect on flesh. Why not? So the Ninevites do not have to accept Jesus’ sacrifice since they died long before that allegedly happened?And when Jesus said “no one comes to the father except through me”, He was lying again? So this could be another untrue statement. That’s because it is literature, it isn’t some supernatural gimmick. No it is literary invention of an ancient people constructed to try and explain their surroundings and their lives. I wondered when this would be trotted out. The Bible contains many contradictions and untruths but if you read them properly these errors disappear, in other words, you will believe any old crap if it maintains your delusion. No I haven’t. I have spent the entire thread saying how foolish people are who take the Bible literally. Anyone who believes that there was 3 million people in the Exodus group needs to ignore the evidence from every branch of academia employed in the search for the Israelites of the Exodus. I never said it was, but it is foolishness to believe that 4400 years ago everything on the planet was wiped out apart from Noah, his sons and their wives, and millions of animals that were on a boat for a year. That’s the foolishness, the tale itself isn’t foolish, it is just a story that ancient people invented, to take it as being real is foolish and an insult to its authors. There’s nothing wrong with my understanding. If you wish me to believe that Jonah lived inside a big fish for 3 days then instantaneously converted a city of over half a million at Nineveh then you need a lot more evidence than just telling me I don’t understand the Bible. Well if being born again means I need to have a cerebral bypass then hopefully I will never be born again.Being born again does not affect the evidence that we have.

I don’t add anything to the OT, I read the entire relevant passages that give all of the information relating to a concept.
The reason you don’t see anything relating to eternal in this verse is because the not everything about the Tree of Life is in that tiny verse and the original texts weren't divided into chapters and verses. But if you care to read on it is explained by the authors that this tree gave eternal life.Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Once Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they became like God, they knew good and evil, and God is concerned that they also eat from the Tree of Life and live for ever.So, Adam and Eve were created as mortals, they were not going to live for ever, if they were going to live for ever then guarding the Tree of Life, or even creating the Tree of Life was pointless.
God was worried, Man now knew the same as God did, good and evil, and there was now only one difference, death. Adam and Eve were mortal, God is eternal, and that is the only difference between them since Mankind gained the knowledge of good and evil.The Tree of Life gave eternal life, it is right there in the Bible, you just have to look instead of continually weaving a web of ad hoc theology.

ICANT, you and I live on different landscapes of reality, and they barely touch each other. But if I happen to run into Jerry Falwell while I'm grocery shopping in the hereafter, I'll give him your best wishes. (And then I'll go on home to my non-air-conditioned apartment on Hitler Street and sweat out another night in Hell.)”HM

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If you got some quince, Pussycat, I got a runcible spoon.

And it did, eventually.The references I gave told what the population growth was for the 10 000 years before Jesus was born was only 0.4 per thousand, Lucas using census figures for the same area in 1907-1937 tells us the growth rate was 11.69 per thousand and the Hebrew population using 11.69 per thousand for 70 people in 430 years would have been 10,363. A more realistic figure, but still way higher than it could have been. I have heard that one, and apparently the offer of doubling the amount only needs to last a month, we do have money in Scotland. But that is not how population growths are worked out.You are doubling your penny in one day; before Christ the population was doubling every 2000 years. Ever wonder why there weren’t hundreds of millions of people living all over the Ancient Near East? If 70 Hebrews could become 3 million in 430 years, how many could 50 000 Egyptians become in the same period? It just wasn’t feasible, there’s nowhere in Egypt that 3 million people could have lived at that time, the archaeological remains testify to that. Well I honestly don’t know either, but I do know it didn’t happen as per the face value account in the Bible. No one is saying it is physically impossible, but you have to have the right conditions for it to be possible.4000-3500 years ago in the ancient near east the conditions were not right to allow this rate of growth for a sustained period, if it was possible why wasn’t every nation doing it? Anthropologists and archaeologists do not just pluck these figures out of the air they are based on remains of cities, villages, other settlements, and the extension of cultivated land'' (Livi-Bacci, M. (1992). A concise history of world population. Cambridge, Mass ; Oxford, Blackwell, p.16) Because famine and disease in the areas under discussion are well attested to in other ancient texts, and skeletal remains also testify to not only disease and famine but to wars that claim many victims. For example, the city of Avaris, which was excavated by Manfred Bietak, and the average age of the dead in one graveyard was just 18. I actually don’t criticise aspects of the Bible that give it credence, I criticise the entire text. You said 70 x 430, which is adding 70 people a year, so effectively after the first year you have doubled the population to 140, which is about 2000 times more than any other civilisation in the world. I would disagree with this, did the population of the world grow in the 14th century CE? It may have reduced the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400. So populations do not always go up, and in the ANE the some nation or nations were constantly at war with other nations. Then why not go with Lucas’ census figures for the area in which the Israelites allegedly lived? And not left a single trace?3 million people camp and do not leave anything at all behind them?Over a period of 38 years at Kadesh-Barnea how many livestock must have been born and died, there must have been millions, and there’s no trace. I’ve been through all these arguments before, and none of them does anything for the biblical account, pick one or two if you want and we can examine them. Not with 3 million people it isn’t.Don’t you find it unusual that other much smaller groups left plenty of evidence of their existence in the Sinai desert but the Israelites left nothing.Where are the 3 million bodies of the people who left Egypt?God was angry with them and only allowed 2 of them to enter Canaan, not even Moses was allowed to enter Canaan, they all died in the desert, 3 million I posted the quote and reference in the post you first replied to, here it is again:Gray ((1903) A critical and exegetical commentary on Numbers, Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark) informs us that: The unreality of the numbers is independently proved by comparing them with one another. Thus: the number of male firstborn is 22 273, allowing the number of female firstborn to be equal, the total number of firstborn is 44 546, and, therefore, the total number of Israelites being between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000, the average number of children to a family is about 50! Again, if, as is probable, the firstborn of the mother is intended (cp3:12), then, since the number of firstborn and of mothers must have been identical, there were 44,456 mothers: but the number of women being approximately the same as of men, the women over 20 numbered something over 600,000, and therefore only about 1 in 14 or 15 women over twenty were mothers! (page:13)Does it really sound plausible to you that only one female in 14 or 15 over the age of twenty were mothers? Not a single female member of the 3 million under the age of twenty had given birth?Does it sound plausible that the one female in 14 or 15 that did have a family had an average of 50 children?Let’s be serious here, if these figures appeared anywhere else except the Bible, you would pass them off as untrue, or possibly as ludicrous. The thread is about taking the Bible at face value, and this is the figure that we would have if we take the Bible at face value.So perhaps you agree that we cannot take some of the text at face value. There’s two that I have reference in the M.th thesis, they are:The Samaritan Pentateuch.The Septuagint.Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 2.15.2, is a non-scriptural reference if you are interested. Well look a bit closer at the figures and the biblical texts.Exodus 6:14-25 that declares there is only four generations from Levi to Moses, even with the dubiously high life spans this genealogy is totally at odds with the 430 years in Egypt. Exodus 7:7 tells us that Moses was 80 years old when he first confronted the Pharaoh and this happened in the final year that the Israelites were enslaved, this means that there are 350 left for the remaining three generations. This is stretching reality a bit too far, maybe we could convince ourselves that three generations are possible if Levi was 40 when he arrived in Egypt and that Levi, Kohath and Amram all became fathers at the age of 130, this might be acceptable to a literalist but to the historian, these things are simply legends. If the literalist thinks the 3 X 130 years explains the discrepancy then they will have to find yet another excuse when they read Genesis 46:11 which includes Kohath among the children who first entered Egypt! This only leaves two generations to span 350 years, utterly impossible. I’m not sure how daughters would feature as a generation? G Rendsburg, working from Babylonian kings’ lists suggested that a generation in the 2nd millennium BCE would be closer to 25 years.However, if you wish to remain faithful to the Bible, a generation is forty years. It is the most reasonable answer if you wish the Bible to be true in any sense regarding the Exodus. There may well be historical kernels in the story, but even these are invisible. Afraid not, although I would say it gets more trustworthy after the exile. But from Genesis through to the end of Judges the Bible’s record in regard to history is appalling. The Hittites of Bogazkoy are not the biblical Hittites though, this is another myth put about by inerrantists.I wrote a post on this a while back which demonstrated that this identification is untrue.The Hittites of Bogazkoy were prematurely named as Hittite when they never actually referred to themselves in an ethnic context like this. They always referred to themselves as from ”people of Land of Hatti’.They were incorrectly identified as the Hittites of the Bible, and by the time the evidence had been uncovered to prove they were not the Hittites the name had become accepted for them. So, the name remained for the sake of convenience. Therefore our current designation of Hittite should be understood to represent an artificial categorisation of the peoples who lived under the political banner of Hattusa. (Ronald L. Gorny Environment, Archaeology, and History in Hittite Anatolia. Biblical Archaeologist, Volume 52, 1989, page 82)The people who occupied central Anatolia were of mixed ethnic origins, Hattians, Hurrians, Luwians and numerous smaller groups, they called themselves by the traditional name of the region in which they lived, the ”people of the Land of Hatti’.Bryce hopefully puts the final nail in the coffin of this myth when he sates that Largely for the sake of convenience, and because of their long-assumed biblical connections, we have adopted for them the name ”Hittite’ The name was given in haste, before the evidence was properly examined, and the term simply stuck, as Bryce said it was for the sake of convenience.People really must investigate these things for themselves because I see this Hittite untruth all over the Net, I think it is just parroted by amateurs on websites because they somehow think it makes the Bible completely true.

Then you never refer to the parables of Jesus? Then Jesus was relating historic fact when He was telling the parables? This question is related to your claim that anything that is not true is a lie...thus all fictional stories are lies. Since lying is apparently a sin, and Jesus never sinned, by your beliefs all the parables must be historical fact.Regardless, you seem to be saying that we cannot learn any truth from fiction.
Aesop's fables have no merit. Children cannot learn anything from Adventures in Odyssey. Sesame Street is useless.
We should probably burn all of Shakespeare's works, as they can do nothing except mislead us concerning the human condition.If I am incorrect regarding your position concerning Jesus's use of parables, then you need to explain how Jesus can use fictional accounts to explain spiritual truth on the one hand but, on the other hand, must have the Jonah account be an historical fact in order to impart another truth.

On a case by case basis we should ascertain what is the nature of the lesson, teaching, parable, example, or allegory Jesus was using.Concerning Jonah He said this: The judgment day of the listeners is certainly to Jesus a historical event that will actually occur in the future. The people who participate in it are historical people.The generaton contemporary with Jesus will be there. Along with them will be the Ninevites who repented at the preaching of Jonah. This means that these Ninevites are not fictitious but historical. It also means that Jonah was historical and was sent to them by God.The book of Jonah is history to Jesus. To those of us who trust Jesus it should be also.Unless you can demonstrate that Jesus was getting His information from somewhere else besides the book of Jonah, we have to conclude that He regarded the book of Jonah as something that actually happened.The principle would be the same with the people of the city of Tyre and Sidon (v. 21),Bethsaida (v.21) and of Sodom (v.23), and of Capernaum (Matt.11:23) and Chorazin (vs.21)People who are of Ninevah, Sodom, Capernaum, Sidon, Tyre, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and the audience in chapters 11 and 12 of Matthew will ALL be at that judgment.Jesus is not teaching that fictitious or parabolic fictional figures will be at that judgment along with actual historical people.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Jay,I still don't see why Jesus has to take the Jonah tale as an actual historical event.If everyone is going to be judged, then it stands to reason that the Ninevites will be judged.Now it's a fairly safe guess that most, if not all, of Jesus' audiences would be familiar with Jonah's tale, and all the other OT stories (and more).Jesus would know that by using stories that His audiences knew that He would be making more of an impact by using familiar stories.If He used the time element of Jonah to inform His audience how long He'd be in the earth, then it makes sense that He uses the Ninevite people who are also part of the Jonah story to make another point.As there is no evidence of the Ninevites repenting anything, and with the mythological elements of the Jonah story, it would be an insult to Jesus to say he took the entire tale at face value.I'd also imagine at Judgement people won't really care who is being judge alongside them.Of course there's always the possibility that Jesus was wrong.

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Unless you can demonstrate that Jesus was getting His information from somewhere else besides the book of Jonah, we have to conclude that He regarded the book of Jonah as something that actually happened.

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We may be able to conclude that he believed in the story of Jonah. That does not mean however that we can conclude that the story of Jonah is 100% factual. Theists believe in the story because the bible says it happened, theists believe the bible says it is in fallible because the bible says it is infallible.There is no reasoning there. Anyone can take in information than spit it out verbadem. A true test I believe would be to take in the information, examine it from all angles and then reach your conclusion based on reason. There have been many who have believed in storys throughout the ages. Just because of their beliefs we can not say that all these stories are true, nor can we say that an openminded and critical examination of these stories would not lead to a better concept of the messages portrayed.

I have never thought that this was a strong charge, Yes, some theists believe the infallibility of the Bible. But not simply or solely because it states it so in the Bible. But rather the supporting evidence of fulfilled prophecy of the long period of its composition lends credence to its claims to be of God.There is a track record established in its contents which leads to the belief the it is adaquately infallible. It is not simply because of the circular reason that it says so. I just demonstrated to you some of the reasoning for believing the claims of infallibility.Don't you think it is a little bit naive to assume that students of the Bible have not considered the reasonableness of the Scripture's own claims to be the word of God?I think you underestimate how much this confidence in the Bible arose by eay of gradual process with many of us readers. It took me a period of time before I had to complete trust in the entire Scripture as adaquately infallible.And I acknowledge some copyist errors have occured in the transmition of the text down through the centries. However the percentage of such copyist's instances of fallibility seem not to effect the core and crucial teachings in any significant way. I think one starts with following the light concerning one's own sins. When one surrenders those areas to God and sees how God works to release them that encourages them that there is something real with this book.I allow the Bible firstly to speak to my personal life. I follow its light in that regard to turn over those areas of my life to Christ. His transformation process encourages me that I am on the right track to believe Him and the Bible. From experiences like this, gradually, by continued persuassion in my own personal life, I then grew to trust the claims of the Bible.I suspect that this reply may annoy you. But you see the Bible a book of life - of spiritual life. The main thing is that God through it is able to impart His life as the Spirit into your being.It is seeing how the Spirit imparted operates to liberate and free us from sins that encourages us to take more of the contents of the Bible seriously.