Why read the Bible literally?

The reason I read the Bible literally is two fold. Firstly, although worthy of debate, it's really quite clear when parable or poetry is meant compared to narrative. There's been a recent analysis of word use in Psalms vs Genesis vs Exodus vs Kings. Genesis matches the other narratives not poetry or parable.Seondly I find Scripture makes incredible sense when we take it literally. The Christian God and the Bible is all about God coming in flesh - not just in Jesus but in OUR flesh too. The Son was in heaven with the Father and humbled himself to take on flesh. And he took it back with Him too.The God of the Bible is the God that created the Earth for this purpose - to bring flesh into heaven and mix it with godliness. This is the miracle of the gospel.And this principle of natural AND spiritual is borne out in creation:We see the world 'born out of water', then fallen, then 'baptised' (Peter tells us that the Noah event was the baptism of the world), then sanctified ('separated') to individual identities as separate continents (cf action of Holy Spirit) and finally refined in fire (to come).Our processing by God is linked to that of the Earth.Note that Peter even links the Noah event to the 2nd coming:"6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." 2 Pet 3:6-8It makes more sense that the Noah event was literal as the 2nd coming will be.I fully agree God is more interested in hearts BTW. But I find a literal reading makes perfect sense.This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-14-2005 09:24 PM

You ask about the different creation stories. As you probably know we take the first one that has a built-in time line (day 1, day 2 etc) as time-based and the econd one is a fill-in of details for various ppoints, not necessarily in order.When did people start taking Scripture literally? I would be very surprised to find ancient evidence (eg of the children of Israel) not tking the stories literally. The early church did. Jesus and the apostles (as quoted in scripture) did. I really think it was during he 18th century that doubts began to arise but I'll allow for a minority report.I beleive the truth of the matter is that the universe is far more amazing and mysterious than modern science believes.For example, modern creaitonists now beleive that deep space is billions of years old but unfolded in a Big-Bnag like event only htousands of years old via a subtely differnt Big--Bang model that comes out of General Relativity. Let's put that in perspective: there is a simple cosmology that AUTOMATICALLY has the universe being created recently with distant space undergoing billions of years of time whilst the centre experineces very little! Why would any Christian want to not believe that cosmology! It's as straight-forward as the Big-Bang one. The Big-Bang model was chosen to NOT have LARGE_SCALE time dialation.The expanding universe and drifting continets are all part of God's plan - not random aspects of the universe. This is God's universe - not Hawking's or Sagan's or Einstein's and the way the universe, the Flood and plate-tectonics and the 2nd coming (will) occur(ed) are precisely as described in Scripture. The musings of godless science only get it half right.This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-14-2005 09:49 PM

Why is it important to read the Bible literally? And I would ask why is it important to read it non-literally? Because of science? You trust it that much do you? Why would any Christian trust blinkered science which outright ignores the possibility of a global flood despite Christ and Peter referring to it?The Good Samaritan? Precisely. It didn't need to be mentioned that it's a parable - it's obvious. So I ask, why is it obvious that Genesis 1 is a parable?This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-15-2005 02:29 AM

Very true - I have not read the Talmud. What does it say regarding creation?

Brian, you said that "The Bible suggests a 6000 year old Earth, history itself demonstrates this to be nonsense. For example, Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) was inhabited 9000 years ago. The Flood was supposed to be 4400 years ago, the Egyptian civilisation has an uninterrupted history gong back about 7000 years. Why were they not all killed in the Flood."We dispute both the carbon dates and the Egyptian chronologies.For example, creationists have presented clear cut evidence of systematic anomolies in C14 dating (see my 'Helium retention' post of yesterday) at a mainstream geology conference in Dec 2004.On the Egyptian chronology front, the conservative statement is usually to about 4000BC and David Rohl - a mainstream archeologist - has offered an improved chronology that only goes back to about 2400BC because by taking into account OVERLAPPING dynasties he can fix up inconsistencies with the Hittite and Assyrian chronologies! Best of all it perfectly ties in with the most detailed chronology we have ever had - the Bible. In particular plausible Jospeh and Moses influences can be seen in the revidsed chronology.The Bible was probably right all along and those archeologists that went along with the naive Egyptian chronologies going back to 4000BC were wrong!

Your Judges trees reference is clearly a parable!! It couldn't be in more modern language!"When Jotham was told about this, he climbed up on the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them, "Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you. 8 One day the trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, 'Be our king.'"Why would you try to slander a text with such systematic integrity with such statements?This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-15-2005 07:43 AM

Last night in my reading I came across I Cor 10: It's a well known example (similar to Hebrews) where we are told that the OT was for 'our example'. But it's inescapably also explained to us that this was both real AND spiritual. Paul doesn't want us 'ignorant of the fact' that they 'passed through the sea'. But equally he mentions that 23,000 were killed in one day, that they were sexually immoral and idolators and warns us of the same temptations.Is it not clear that the 'hard-to-believe' aspects of the Bible were BOTH real AND spiritual?Why would anyone want to say 'those things actaully never happened' if the Bible is the book that brought the gospel of salvation to you!This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-16-2005 08:22 PM

I'm addressing the issue for those who beleive God gave us the Bible as well as our brains. In that case why would we want to put a cross against the hard-to-believe bits?

Because you think it disagrees with sceince and archeology and that Genesis is not a narrative?

So what do you make of all the amazing consistencies, prophecies and apologetics from classic to modern? For example, the Messianic prophecies?Or, my favorite, the incredibly consistent symbology linking Christ as the Passover lamb? And the patterns continue to the feats of Pentecost and Tabernacles.Every event that occurred on the passover night has a link to Christ's death? The events in Exodus all have a parellel for Christian's today. Many of these were teased out for us by the apostles but there's so much more in the OT for us today. But if we simply imagine the OT as an inaccurate series of books we'll never join with God to bring about His plan for the end of the age.Is our Christianity a modern version of an anicent cult or is it possible that the triune God revealed himself in stages to man and that all of the Bible is actually true?

The Rohl stuff totally de-bunks your statements on Exodus.Although that view was, and mostly is, the prevailing archeoogical view - and it suited atheists and liberal theologians - it is not the only learned view. But you act and speak as if it is, and on a site of 'knowledge and understanding through discussion'!Contrary to what was said here by others, Rohl is a mainstream Biblical archeologist who is not an evangelical or creationist - and he did not shoe-horn his revised Egyptian chronology.If you are basing your view of the Bible on archeology/science you need to carefully read both sides at the very least. Rohl's revised chronology is more consistent with the known facts and he makes the statement that Sure, you can side with the aethistic and liberal academics, I'll side with Rohl - who isn't even evangelical or creationist!This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-16-2005 09:47 PM

Jar, your statement assumes the old chronology! If you had really read the Rohl's chronology there is plenty of evidence of semitics at the revised chrnology's 1500BC. In the new chronology the Exodus event concides with - and probably represents the overturn - of the Middle Kingdom! The second intermediate period represents a break of 400 years before the relative glory of the New Kingdom.For your info, here is the comparison:STANDARD: Old K (2650-2150BC), Middle K (2050-1700BC), New K (1550-1100BC)
REVISED: Old K (2100-1600BC), Middle K (1750-1450BC), New K (1050-600BC)The revised chronology was dictated by evidence of Egyptian dynasty parallisms as well as Hittite, Assyrian and metal use chronologies and coincidentally now coincides with pre- and post-Exodus Hebrew (Biblical) chronology including Joseph, Moses and Solomon as well as semitic distributions and Biblical metal use).The standard chronology simply placed all the kingdoms and dynasties one after the other whereas Rohl finds plenty of evidence for parellism - even of the major kingdoms but mostly of the dynasties wihtin them and of the major kingdom dynasties and the minor periods dynasties (FIP, SIP, TIP etc).This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-16-2005 10:32 PM

Archeological chronologies are built up via consistency between multitudes of small facts, not all-out proofs by one fact. Rohl's chronology is an incredibly parsimonious analysis of all of the facts. And it's absolutely fascinating.This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-16-2005 10:26 PM

Rohl's chronology makes it quite plausable that the Exodus destroyed the Middle Kingdom.Sesostris III is recognized as a period of slavery in Egypt and he represents the 12th dynasty and last pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom. He lines up quite nicely with the Exodus pharaoh 'who didn't know Joseph'(Ex 1:8).It' the same story with Solomon. Go to the layers of 950BC in the new chronology and you find evidence of a glorious city.This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-16-2005 11:22 PM

GDR, are you aware that young-earth creationists have no problem with speciation? Many of us fully agree with the horse series for example.We just don't think that's how the eye arose!This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-18-2005 09:33 PM