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Author Topic:   If Genesis is Metaphorical, what's the metaphor?
Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 101 of 168 (189985)
03-04-2005 6:33 AM
Reply to: Message 78 by mikehager
02-25-2005 6:46 PM


Re: If we're talking about the fall,
There are treatments for elephantitis.

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Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 104 of 168 (189990)
03-04-2005 7:27 AM
Reply to: Message 100 by arachnophilia
03-04-2005 1:25 AM


Re: The Historical Symphony
Style is not the sole arbitrator of what constitutes history.
In 1492,
Columbus sailed
The ocean blue.
--Edited to ask this question---
I’m not convinced as to why in this forum a literary definition of history should concern us. Can you explain why a literary definition should be used over one that historians use?
This message has been edited by Trae, 03-04-2005 04:29 AM

This message is a reply to:
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Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 108 of 168 (190138)
03-05-2005 1:16 AM
Reply to: Message 106 by arachnophilia
03-04-2005 4:53 PM


Re: The Historical Symphony
When I say style is not the sole arbitrator, I am permitting that it might be a factor, however, I am not personally convinced that literary style has to result to making something unhistorical or unscientific.
For example: American Pie and Vincent, by Don McLean.
I decline to define the other factors, I am testing your thread, not proposing my own.
When people ask if the Bible is historical, I don’t believe that they’re asking if it was written in some specific literary style.
Let’s consider at a non-written example. Say we find a cave of prehistoric drawings. Even with highly stylistic art, certain things may be learned, types of animals know to them, perhaps dress, and other aspects of their lives.
Your premise in message 8 would seem to be that Genesis is not written in a historic style. I would suggest that chronological stories are a historic style (this happened, then this happened, and oh wait, before this happened, I just remembered this other thing did).
From message 47. Why must date keeping be a requirement for a history?
I am not sure I follow, are you saying that in order for something to be historical it has to have no mistakes of a certain type or types?
If a child tells a parent of his play day and it included some interspersed fantastical elements about his imaginary friend would the account be non-historic?
Without a doubt there is useful history in Genesis, though perhaps not of the sort most would be looking for.

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Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 119 of 168 (190289)
03-06-2005 1:24 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by arachnophilia
03-05-2005 1:47 AM


Re: The Historical Symphony
clearly a song, not trying to be history. now suppose it was really written about wolfgang amadeus mozart. not only would it be 400 years out of date, but it would be completely anachronistic. there wasn't even an america then, for it to be called american pie, and mozart was from the wrong country.
The song is also historical and biographical.
Initially inspired by his memories of the death of Buddy Holly in 1959, ‘American Pie’ is autobiographical and presents an abstract story of Don McLean’s life from the mid 1950s until when he wrote the song in the late 1960s. It is almost entirely symbolised by the evolution of popular music over these years and represents a change from the lightness of the 1950s to the darkness of the late 1960s. This is also very symbolic of changing America during this era.
http://www.don-mclean.com/americanpie.asp
In his 2000 'Starry Starry Night' video, Don says: I'm very proud of the song. It is biographical in nature and I don't think anyone has ever picked up on that. The song starts off with my memories of the death of Buddy Holly. But it moves on to describe America as I was seeing it and how I was fantasizing it might become, so it's part reality and part fantasy but I'm always in the song as a witness or as even the subject sometimes in some of the verses. Don McLean (from his website).
Are you familiar with the concept of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources? American Pie is not a primary source of the death of Buddy Holly, it is however, as far as I know a primary source of how Don McLean felt about death at the time he wrote the song.
Note: In my earlier post I titled one of his songs as, Vincent when the song is titled, Starry Starry Night. While Starry Starry Night is a song, it is also Don McLean’s biography of Vincent Van Gough.
Some of the issues you raise, problems with anachronisms, intent of authors, when the stories were written down, and later redactions are questions that anyone should be asking about any materials they review.
I do think you overrate intent. Yes, intent to defraud or mislead should be watched out for, however, the primary intent of a work need not be to convey history for it to do so. The primary intent of the history and discovery channels is not to convey the most correct factual information. I have my doubts that is even their secondary, or tertiary goal. The primary intent might be to get a good grade, sell lots of books, acquire fame, and on and on.
Often things are not either or, and can have more than a single intent or purpose. I think if you read Brian’s posts again, you’ll see he’s conveying the argument that inaccuracies of the type found in Genesis can’t constitute proof that everything in Genesis must be said to be invalid.

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Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 122 of 168 (190293)
03-06-2005 2:31 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by arachnophilia
03-05-2005 1:47 AM


Re: The Historical Symphony
of course, we can learn something fro, anything. and just about anything can have historical value to it. but that does not make it a history. and being a history does not make it history.
I didn’t want you to think I was simply ignoring the rest of what you wrote.
Okay. I’ll bite. What is the difference between a writing ‘a history’ and writing ‘history’?
ask a high school history teacher ifyou really have to remember the dates for the test.
Dates simply weren’t stressed that much when I took high school history. I suspect that dates are stressed more now, not simply because they make for better history, but because testing dates is easier then testing other aspects of history. Not all lessons or benefits of history are dependant on dates. Don’t get me wrong, dates certainly can be useful in many ways, the least not being to help put things in context.
no, but being filled with mistakes, and more importantly contradictions, is a good indication that historical accuracy was not the primary goal.
Indication, perhaps, but not an absolute, which I believe was one of Brian’s points. Further, we’re back to the idea that something has to be a primary goal of something to contain that. That just simply isn’t supportable.
What about accidental accuracy or accuracy in spite of other motives?
My exception of your stance is that I don’t agree that any number of errors or anachronisms permits someone to throw out the entirety of a piece. Each individual aspect of a history needs to stand and fall on its own merits.
I would however, fully support your stance as being valid if the presumption is of Genesis being a literal account.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
On your comments about King Arthur, I concluded watching the preview that there was little chance of the movie being the story of the Real King Arthur the moment they showed Lancelot.
now compare that to le morte d'arthur and other "knight in shining armor" stories of arthur. how historical do you think those are? written after the fact, with absolutely no basis in the real history?
How exactly would you show that le Morte d’Arthur had ‘absolutely no basis’ in the real history. What exactly were all the sources Malory used? As of the last time I looked, there was a strong argument that the Arthurian Mythos has some historical roots, though derivative of multiple historic and legendary myths.
Without knowing all the sources which comprised Genesis we can only go so far in testing its validity. For all we know, one of the writers had access to some source and made up the parts that they didn’t have.
it tells us a lot about the society that collected it and wrote it, but very very little about the time it's set in.
I would agree, that so far that does seem to be the case.

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Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 133 of 168 (190429)
03-07-2005 5:46 AM
Reply to: Message 124 by arachnophilia
03-06-2005 3:50 AM


Re: The Historical Symphony
I wrote a page and a half before this, but frankly, hashing out types of histories that don’t require dates, points on communication being inherently error-prone, assumptions about what people mean when they say history, examples of college level history classes which do not focus on date keeping, etc., wouldn’t seem to bring us back to point any quicker than the points below. If there are any specific questions you want an answer for let me know.
i'm looking it and saying "this section contradicts this section. these were written by two different people. whoever put them together didn't care about which was right, because being right didn't matter."
Understood. Still, eventually you begin to trip over assumptions made. For instance in assigning the sections to individuals rather than groups. Understand that even if you are correct about whomever put them together, let’s call them/him redactor(R), you can’t simply assign the motives of redactor(R) to the previous source(J).
How many people contributed to J and how can we be certain the work was by a single individual?
What were the source materials and influences available to J?
How can we be absolutely certain of J’s source materials contained no historical information?
Was J altered prior to the redactor? Alternatively, how can we be certain that the redactor even had a primary source of J’s writing?
Why must it be the case that anyone can definitively state the purpose of J from recactor?
but we do know the sources that comprised genesis. know how? because whoever compiled genesis simply copied the sources. that's why there are contradictions. they mere obviously more concerned with the integrity of the source than the accuracy to real life.
The ‘simply copied the sources’ is problematic inasmuch failure to correct one type of material does not equate to no changes being made of any sort. We don’t even know if they saw those things as errors. It very well may be the case that they did make changes where they felt they could determine which source was more accurate.
We don’t know all the sources that comprised Genesis, we mostly have what has wound up in Genesis. We have, if you will, the leftovers.

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Trae
Member (Idle past 4307 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 148 of 168 (190583)
03-08-2005 7:53 AM
Reply to: Message 134 by arachnophilia
03-07-2005 8:08 AM


Re: The Historical Symphony
The problem is when you use terms like just.
I think this sums up what we have been talking well enough.
The form or style of historiography do not affect its relation with the evidence, its epistemic status Tucker, Aviezer, Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 291pp, $70.00 (hbk), ISBN 0521834155.

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