The best Bible interpretation often involves background historical information to elucidate, say, certain odd behaviors here and there, so they can be understood in the cultural context of their time.
Including the knowledge that ancient peoples had no way to explain their surroundings other than "Goddidit."
That's just a modern prejudice, a slander of ancient peoples. Sort of like racism only I don't know what it should be called. Chronism? Sure works for getting rid of the Bible though, just attribute it to a primitive mentality, rather than taking it as the revelation it is.
Actually, I think primitive peoples make up all kinds of stuff and still do, like the story told by the tribe who escaped the tsunami in their part of the world (This was on
60 minutes I think, a few months ago): The sea likes the taste of people, and once in a while has to come up on land just to taste them again. Along with this fanciful explanation, they also had good empirical knowledge of the signs of a tsunami's imminence, which saved them from it, while other equally primitive peoples surrounding them died in it.
This animistic kind of thinking IS typical of primitive people, but it is far from the mentality you find in the Bible. Nothing about God in that story. In fact, although there are vague references to a Great-Spirit-like God in some tribal religions, the usual religion is ancestor worship and local gods and forms of animism along the lines of this tribe. The Bible is SO far above these TRULY primitive kinds of thinking there is no comparison, and it comments ON these common beliefs also. The Bible is the reason the Western world transcended that kind of primitive thinking. How sad to see arrogant moderns accusing it of the same thing.
That's my point - if the "best Biblical interpretations" come from using historical context of the people who wrote it, then we have to also take into account their level of knowledge. To the ancient Hebrews who wrote the Old Testament, every natural disaster was the direct Hand of God smiting some sinner - we know that now to be totally untrue ...
We don't know any such thing. Knowledge of the mechanics of events is far from knowledge of their cause. I've studied the patterns of the hurricanes that have been so prominent in the news this year and last year, on the Weather Underground site, which traces their paths. There is NO way to tell where they are going to hit until they are within a day or two of hitting and even then they can change direction. They all start in roughly the same part of the ocean, but some develop into serious storms and some don't, they can veer out to sea in either case and avoid land altogether, or they can strike anything from the Caribbean islands and Central America to points from Texas through Florida, or even miss the Gulf altogether and strike on the eastern seaboard. Lots of room in there for God to direct them as He pleases. There is no reason for ANY of them to end up in any particular place. They could ALL die at sea or they could regularly do as much or more destruction than even Katrina has done.
Why is there an ancient psalm that speaks of the "fool [who] has said in his heart, There is no God" if they weren't subject to the same stupidities we are? I don't know about "ancient peoples" in general -- how much evidence is there apart from the Bible about the thinking of people from the time of Abraham? -- But the Bible reflects human nature and reality just as well now as then it seems to me.
(or do you suggest that every victim of a lightning strike or tornado was somehow blaspheming against God? Including the many churches destroyed by such disasters?).
We are all subject to disaster because we are all sinners and in any particular case there's usually no way to identify a specific cause and effect. If natural disaster destroys a church, however, or a nation for that matter, the church should take it as a reason to reconsider how they are teaching and living the gospel in my opinion, and the nation should repent as Nineveh did.
Taking into account the nature of humanity, which you fully accept to be dishonest,
I haven't made any such blanket statement. Where do you get that? I think humanity is fallen, all sinners, but that we still retain the image of God in some degree, which is our moral sense, although it is distorted and stronger in some than in others.
...and the level of knowledge of ancient peoples, how it it not reasonable to say that their interpretation of the events they witnesses, and the accounts reported, were biased by their level of understanding and their preconceived notions?
It doesn't read that way. There's nothing in the text to suggest such a mental state. The Bible writers are wise level-headed realistic people.
The Ten Commandments at no time say "THou shalt not have teh buttsex."
The law against adultery is understood to be against all forms of non-marital sex.
Homosexuality is described as an "abomination" only be certain authors of the Bible - and, since it's in the Bible, you simply assume that the sentiment is "God-breathed" because of another passage in the New Testament that says as much.
Love how you impute assumptions to me.
But modern religious leaders attach to issues and claim they are "God's Will" all the time, with or without real Biblical support. How can anyone claim that ancient religious leaders could not be the same way?
What "modern religious leaders" are you talking about? The Bible is a unique text, preserved against the errors that are so false imputed to it. The fact that so many were involved in writing it over so many centuries helps to guarantee that reliability.
The point is, this is how we figure out what the Bible actually SAYS. We don't insist it is allegorical when it obviously presents itself as historical.
No, but some accounts include events that God may have had nothing to do with (like slaughtering children) that were attributed to God as a justification.
Based on what? Only your own imagination, which requires you to rewrite what it actually says. That's what I meant. We read it as written, but in order to consider it allegory or the ancient people's projecting their own acts onto God (man you must think them AWFULLY stupid) you have to violate the actual written text. No, I'm afraid God really did do those things, and they are supposed to be taken by us as knowledge of the consequences of sin.
Perhaps they misunderstood God's Will, or perhaps they just lied becuase nobody questions the Will of God, but just becuase somebody said it was the Will of God to murder women and children doesn't mean that it was.
You are free to disbelieve it, but the Bible's tone shows no sign of the kind of frame of mind you are imposing on the writers.
Other "historically" presented accounts were likely not wwritten by those who actually experienced them. Factual archeological evidence suggests that the Exodus as described in the Bible never happened (there is no evidence of a 40 year trek through the desert - even smaller nomadic groups leave evidence behind, and the numbers suggested by the Bible are huge).
After 3000 years you expect evidence to remain, though many other nomadic groups have come and gone since then? Remarkable. What? Quail bones? A pellet of manna?
Rather, Hebrew slaves were forced to work by Egyptians in various mines, within Israel itself! Groups of escaped slaves retruned to their homes. Over time, their stories were embellished and resulted in the Biblical account.
Amazing what modern people prefer to believe based on scanty recently acquired evidence over a witness account from the time. The ancient people would laugh at us.
The Flood, obviously, simply never happened. It's a Hebrew retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, with embellishments to make sure the Hebrew God sounded more powerful.
Couldn't be that the Epic of Gilgamesh is just one of many vaguer and more romanticized memories of the same event, that is in fact described with more historical precision in the Bible, huh? The striking thing about the Bible as a whole is its utter lack of literary embellishments of history. And God is God of all, not just the Hebrews.
These interpretations, using historical evidence, are only invalid if you have a preconceived notion that the Bible is infallable. You have, in essence, reached your conclusion before even so much as looking for the evidence.
Remarkable how willing you are to tell me what I think and why I think it even though it contradicts everything I myself have to say about why I think what I think. Oh well.
This message has been edited by Faith, 09-02-2005 04:43 PM
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