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Author | Topic: Hyperbole in the Bible | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
purpledawn Member (Idle past 3712 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
quote: Noah was 600 years old.All mankind's thoughts were only evil continually.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: On what basis do you conclude that that is hyperbole ? Given the number of differing implausible ages in the pre-Flood patriarchs is it not likely that this is a mythic/legendary element ?
quote: That seems to be a simplified and not entirely accurate paraphrase:
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
(Genesis 6:5, NASB) So, it seems that you can only come up with two incidental details - and one of them requires the very consideration of genre that you want to rule out as irrelevant (and with that consideration it is likely that your assessment is wrong !). I think that my point is made.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3712 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
quote:Per Friedman's Documentary Hypothesis, the Redactor put in the exaggerated ages. If you feel that it is not hyperbole, then make your case. Exaggerated Ages Professor Bruce Vawtner in A Path Through Genesis, suggests that "Both the Hebrews and Sumerians/Babylonians knew that many more than ten generations had elapsed during these periods. To bridge over the enormous gaps in time, therefore, both of them assigned tremendous ages to the few names that they possessed. While the Babylonians simply set down astronomical figures, none of them under twenty thousand years, the Hebrew author has been comparatively moderate, and above all, he made his ten generations serve a religious purpose." quote:I have no idea what your point is concerning hyperbole. You haven't made any argument or presented any position concerning hyperbole in the Bible. I'm not going to comb the story for you. Absolutes tend to be exaggerations. If you disagree, then present your argument. If you disagree that a verse presented is hyperbole, then present your argument.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: Remember that it is you who insists that this is hyperbole, so it is for you to make the case. If all you have is a "suggestion" that the great ages were assigned to "fill up" the periods that the authors knew to have passed - without any evidence offered - I don't see much of a case. Why can it not be, for instance, a "Golden Age" view, where the distant past was far better than the present day, a view reflected in the stories told, and people simply lived longer ?
quote: My point is simple. Simply assuming that the Bible is basically an accurate historical text and that anything that seems obviously exaggerated is hyperbole is a crude approach, which seems driven by apologetic considerations rather than any serious attempt to understand the text.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3712 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
You seem to be creating an absolute position for me that I didn't present. I didn't insist the ages were hyperbole. I presented what I would consider to be hyperbole. People do not live to be 600 years old. It is an exaggeration to fill in a gap. If the redactor added the ages, they weren't part of the older story and looking at the legends of the same story, the ages didn't continue. He exaggerated the ages for a reason or affect. Why woulldn't that be a hyperbole.
quote:That's why I'm confused. I haven't assumed any of the stories are basically accurate historical texts. Hyperbole is commonly used in fiction, drama, poetry, and common speech.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: On the contrary, in the OP you claimed:
The flood story is a good example of exaggeration with the use of the words everything and all.
The fact that you are refusing to support this assertion doesn't mean that you never made it.
quote: I didn't see any indication of uncertainty when you presented it as an example of hyperbole. The more so since you chose it as (presumably) one of the two clearest examples of hyperbole in the entire story!
quote: In reality, no. But this is why we must consider genre. Yet, you presented it as a definite example of hyperbole that could be identified without considering genre (Message 16)
quote: I've already presented one alternative. But filling a gap is not the same as hyperbole, and even that is only a suggestion. We can say that the ages are not a standard figure used as an exaggeration (e.g. "He's, like, a hundred years old!") or even schematic ages like the 40 year periods in Moses' life, so simple hyperbole is not the explanation. We can see that we are dealing with mythical or legendary figures so that we cannot trust the constraints of reality to apply. We can see that the age is not unique to Noah and applies to many patriarchs before and after the Flood - admittedly diminishing after the Flood, but still continuing. The "filling in gaps" explanation has more merit than simply assuming hyperbole, but it still seems to be a strange thing to do.
quote: Yet you assume that Noah's age is hyperbole simply because in reality Noah could not be that old. You described the extent of the Flood as a definite example of hyperbole without giving any better reason. You don't want to consider the possibility that the stories are myth or legend or even fiction.
quote: Which is not a position I am arguing against. However we cannot use the fact that many genres use hyperbole to jump to the conclusion that we cannot consider genre when identifying hyperbole. Noahs's age is a clear example of this. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3712 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
quote:Was that so difficult? You present why you disagree and I can decide whether to rethink my position. I can agree that even though the ages are exaggerated for whatever purpose, they aren't written in a distinctive hyperbolic fashion. So they probably aren't truly hyperbole. I'm not using the ages to explain anything. I'm looking at possible hyperbole in the Bible. quote:Again you are incorrect. I don't want this thread to be about proving (notice the word proving) that the stories are fact or fiction. Do you understand yet? IMO, it doesn't matter when it comes to hyperbole. If you disagree that a given verse is hyperbole, then present your counter argument based on whatever reason you have. If it is because of genre, then present your reasoning. If we read the Bible stories just like any other writing, can we see hyperbole?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17919 Joined: Member Rating: 6.7 |
quote: The difficulty is in getting you to recognise that this is not a one-sided duty that applies to me and not to you. The fact that your attempts to support one of your new assertions was hopelessly bad and easily refuted does not in any way excuse you from the need to provide support for your original assertion. Which you have been evading throughout this discussion.
quote: I understand that your objection was wrong. I never said anything about proving the story to be fact or fiction at all, all I asked you to do was to support the assumptions underlying your assessment of the text as hyperbolic in the OP. Which you refused to do, and still refuse to do. There is no real doubt that the story as we have it now is largely fiction anyway - a combination of two differing stories, both derived from older sources, which are more different still. So it seems that the objection is thoroughly bogus - and served to shut down a discussion you obviously want to avoid.
quote: It's already been proven that my actual concern for genre DOES matter, so your opinion is either wrong or completely irrelevant.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3712 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
I really have no clue what you want, so I'm going to stop trying.
We are obviously looking at this issue differently.
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GDR Member Posts: 6223 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
Hi PD
Let me try and explain what I think Paul means. Here is a quote from your OP.
quote: You used this as an example of hyperbole. It is hyperbole if Josiah really was an actual king. (I'm not disputing that by the way.) If however Josiah never existed then it isn't hyperbole but fiction. In looking at the flood strory, it would seem to me that that the Biblical account in order to be hyperbole would mean that it had to be based on an actual flood of some kind, even if it was just a local flood. If there was no flood at all then the story isn't an example of hyperbole but simply fiction or allegory. CheersEverybody is entitled to my opinion.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3712 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined:
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Hyperbole is used in drama, fiction, poetry, and common speech.
Hyperbole in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on like giants’ palms outspread. The strong unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Hyperbole in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper LeeA day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. I don't see that fiction negates the use of hyperbole. So these are non-Biblical examples.
It is all about exaggeration! I can give you a trillion examples... It is going to take a b'zillion years to get through Medical School. I ate the whole cow. He's 900 years old. I'm as hungry as a horse. I'm so hungry, I can eat a horse. My backpack weighs a ton.It took forever to get to the beach. That dog is so ugly, it fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch. Literary Terms Genes: a literary species or form, e.g., tragedy, epic, comedy, novel, essay, biography, lyric poem. Literal language means exactly what it says; a rose is the physical flower. Figurative language changes the literal meaning, to make a meaning fresh or clearer, to express complexity, to capture a physical or sensory effect, or to extend meaning. Figurative language is also called figures of speech. The most common figures of speech are these:... hyperbole: exaggeration, often extravagant; it may be used for serious or for comic effect. ... So I'm still clueless as to why hyperbole supposedly can't be in a fictional story if that is the point.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
GDR writes: quote: You used this as an example of hyperbole. It is hyperbole if Josiah really was an actual king. (I'm not disputing that by the way.) If however Josiah never existed then it isn't hyperbole but fiction. Your example may miss the mark. We might still recognize the verse as exaggeration if within the story we can see that Josiah was not quite as committed to the Lord as the verse indicates. On the other hand, with Noah's age, I don't see any indication in the story that Noah failed to live to 600. Unless an appropriate Noah existed and had a lengthy lifespan that was significantly less than 600 years, then I don't see any basis for calling his age hyperbole.
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Wounded King Member (Idle past 287 days) Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined:
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I like this game, I'd add another from fiction which actually explicitly acknowledges its hyperbolic nature (with a bit of paradox thrown in) ...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities TTFN, WK
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GDR Member Posts: 6223 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
purpledawn writes: I don't see that fiction negates the use of hyperbole. So these are non-Biblical examples. It is all about exaggeration! I can give you a trillion examples...It is going to take a b'zillion years to get through Medical School. I ate the whole cow. He's 900 years old. I'm as hungry as a horse. I'm so hungry, I can eat a horse. My backpack weighs a ton. It took forever to get to the beach. That dog is so ugly, it fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch. Definition
quote: I don't understand how you can exaggerate fiction. In all of your examples you have taken a truth and exaggerated them. For example when you say your backpack weighs a ton you are taken a non-fictional situation, which is that the back pack is heavy and exaggerating it. Fiction is just what it is; it can't be exaggerated or minimized.Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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GDR Member Posts: 6223 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
NoNukes writes: Your example may miss the mark. We might still recognize the verse as exaggeration if within the story we can see that Josiah was not quite as committed to the Lord as the verse indicates. That was the point that I was trying to make although obviously not that effectively.
NoNukes writes: On the other hand, with Noah's age, I don't see any indication in the story that Noah failed to live to 600. Unless an appropriate Noah existed and had a lengthy lifespan that was significantly less than 600 years, then I don't see any basis for calling his age hyperbole. ExactlyEverybody is entitled to my opinion.
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