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Purgatory : Healing - a sign of the Kingdom.

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  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    The evil God idea is different from being a bastard, as it implies that God is inherently evil, but ingeniously allows some good, in order to trick us, and other reasons. Stephen Law describes it online.
    I don't see a difference.

    [added quote for top of page clarity, because I can]
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Again E., and thanks for all this, your walking naked here; what does He get out of it? God? Why bother with all the killing? To ensure Jesus' milieu? That's what I used to argue.

    Why E.? Civilization is the better for it? There's a utilitarian gain? Why?
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    I don't know, @Martin54. All I can say, echoing @Dafyd, is that I presently tend towards the conviction that "all manner of things will be well", and that's enough for me for most of the time.

    If I were to speculate, I wouldn't say God "bothered with all the killing to ensure Jesus' milieu". I do however think it's important/significant that Jesus was born into a culture, a lineage, for which we have some background, he didn't just get beamed down.

    Is God utilitarian? I don't think so. I don't see him throwing the switch in the trolley problem*, but then again neither do I see myself doing it. What does that make me? Hmm, let's check Wikipedia.

    Well, that page suggests that one reason for not throwing the switch may be a belief in the incommensurability of human lives. I'm way out of my depth looking at that second page, especially at this time of night, but an initial glance does at least suggest there might be other ways of looking at the ethics of the "OT bad bits" other than utilitarianism, and the "in" of "incommensurability" suggests to me that lack of an easy answer might not mean there isn't an ethical one - just that it's one beyond our grasp. Well mine anyway. I'm tired.

    =
    *ETA: I'm guessing @lilbuddha, and @KarlLB (on a bad day), probably think God's preferred solution to it is Multi-track drifting :naughty:
  • God, being God, could just lift the trolley off the track.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Hope you slept well. What happened to cultural evolution? These texts are Perso-Judean edits of written Jewish source material over half a millennium older (Samuel-Solomon) and Jewish-Babylonian/Chaldean and Egyptian oral and written material of another millennium and more? None of the mega-myths happened, so what did?

    The paradox of His ways not being our ways looking very much like our ways. Like the Culture but less inhibited.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Hope you slept well. What happened to cultural evolution? These texts are Perso-Judean edits of written Jewish source material over half a millennium older (Samuel-Solomon) and Jewish-Babylonian/Chaldean and Egyptian oral and written material of another millennium and more? None of the mega-myths happened, so what did?
    Eutychus wrote:
    So, assuming (big assumption for the sake of this thread) that the Bible is God's written revelation, what do we do with the "awkward bits"?

    This discussion is based on that assumption. It's an intuitive assumption, largely based on the text having the 'ring of truth'. I'm fairly sure of my ground in terms of what the Bible actually says, orders of magnitude less sure about the history of the text. I really don't feel qualified to comment on that, I'm unsure as to where a reasonably objective analysis could be found, and I'm not sure whether it makes any difference in the long run. Either it's God-breathed, somehow, or it isn't, whatever the process.
    The paradox of His ways not being our ways looking very much like our ways.
    What strikes me is the way, within the text, that expectations of God's ways are constantly being challenged, right from the start. It's dialectic by design, and for me it keeps on being so after fifty years of reading it. I find that compelling. Do you know who God is in conversation with the first time he's referred to as YHWH?

  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Er, Adam?

    And yes, I can see the Spirit at work (doing dialectic by design, I like that) in the text of course. Despite the text. Despite the a-historical myth.

    God's written revelation of what?
  • Hagar, isn't it?
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    mousethief wrote: »
    God, being God, could just lift the trolley off the track.

    Not outside a book.
  • God is the trolley.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    Hagar, isn't it?

    Ding! ding! ding!

    Comments, @Martin54 ?

    God's progressive revelation of what he's like and what he would like us to be like?
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Nice bit of trivia, well done Lamb Chopped.

    Does your question need an Oxford comma? If not, then what is the progressive revelation of what He'd like us to be like in Him? What's the first thing He's like that He'd like us to be like? If it does, then that's a very, very long progression. And it isn't over yet by a long shot. What was revealed that is unique, that we wouldn't have got to if it hadn't been revealed? The beatitudes? Everything on the way to them? Or what is unique to the story, that marks a turning point in history? In human behaviour?

    Damn this is frustrating.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Damn this is frustrating.
    Yes it is. When you ask a question, I take it seriously and spend hours composing an honest reply. When I ask one, you take a patronising approach and start picking at my grammar, neatly avoiding having to admit you got the answer wrong - because like so many hubristic fundamentalist evangelicals before you, you think you know what the text says instead of actually bothering to look, let it surprise you, and let the implications work away at you.

    If you want to dismiss the whole text as bullshit, go right ahead and we can save a lot of time, energy, and frustration all round; but don't expect any help from me in doing so.

    If you actually don't want to dismiss it all, start by considering what the gap between your guess and the actual answer might say about your assumptions with respect to what the text says.
  • Hagar, isn't it?
    Hagar?
  • Eutychus wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Hope you slept well. What happened to cultural evolution? These texts are Perso-Judean edits of written Jewish source material over half a millennium older (Samuel-Solomon) and Jewish-Babylonian/Chaldean and Egyptian oral and written material of another millennium and more? None of the mega-myths happened, so what did?
    Eutychus wrote:
    So, assuming (big assumption for the sake of this thread) that the Bible is God's written revelation, what do we do with the "awkward bits"?

    This discussion is based on that assumption. It's an intuitive assumption, largely based on the text having the 'ring of truth'.
    Realising of course, that every religious text has the "ring of truth" for its believers? Even Scientology operate that way. As do climate deniers, flat earthers, Adam and eve were real people believers, believers in reptilian overlords, believers in...
    Eutychus wrote:
    The paradox of His ways not being our ways looking very much like our ways.
    What strikes me is the way, within the text, that expectations of God's ways are constantly being challenged, right from the start. It's dialectic by design, and for me it keeps on being so after fifty years of reading it. I find that compelling. Do you know who God is in conversation with the first time he's referred to as YHWH?
    The bible is very much not dialectic in design, people are. The Bible is prescriptive, calling it dialectic is very much like saying a building is designed to withstand earthquakes merely because it did not collapse during one.* You are reading the result and inferring the design from this and that is not solid reasoning.

    *For the less structural and geotechnical. What stresses a building takes during an earthquake is highly variable. It depends on type of quake, geology underneath the building, etc. So fargile buildings might survive if the conditions are right.
  • I ask again: Have you read it? Because very, very large portions (in fact, the vast majority) are NOT prescriptive, and I am surprised to hear you say so--if you have read it.
  • I ask again: Have you read it? Because very, very large portions (in fact, the vast majority) are NOT prescriptive, and I am surprised to hear you say so--if you have read it.
    Fucking hell, I have said I've read the bible, I'm just not getting into the bloody measurements game of how much.
    The bible is also filled with a hell of a lot of Shalls and do this or DIE! sort of pronouncements. Positing that God set it up as a way to guide questioning is ridiculous. Especially given the way followers have, and still do, read it. If the bible was meant to properly guide people to the correct answers, it was poorly written.

  • Seeing the bible as generally divinely inspired, but filtered through people's foibles is reasonable. Seeing it as a cohesive work, IMO not so much.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    The bible is very much not dialectic in design
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Seeing the bible as generally divinely inspired, but filtered through people's foibles is reasonable. Seeing it as a cohesive work, IMO not so much.
    Either it's not cohesive or it's not dialectic. But it can't be neither. It's got to be one.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    The bible is very much not dialectic in design
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Seeing the bible as generally divinely inspired, but filtered through people's foibles is reasonable. Seeing it as a cohesive work, IMO not so much.
    Either it's not cohesive or it's not dialectic. But it can't be neither. It's got to be one.
    Of course it can be both. Not being cohesive is not necessarily a trigger for questioning. It should be, but it isn't. cf much of Christianity.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    The most coherent of your recent posts is this one. Well played. I've had one of the strips pinned above my desk for years, I'll try and find the English version.
  • The Bible is a library, and contains any amount of history, poetry, prophecy, biography-like-gospels, and the like. To call it mainly prescriptive is missing the point. Proper use of it involves diving in and seeing what you can make of it--not standing at a distance looking for thou shalt nots. And complaining that it has no coherence is rather missing the point too--what kind of coherence were you expecting from a set of books covering thousands of years of lived human experience of God? It would have to be a fairly loose coherence.
  • I do not expect coherence. Christians, in general, use it as if it does. Well, more accurately, it is often used to justify a position without looking at the overall intent.
    If one is not looking at the bible as coherent, it should be easy to look at the nasty bits and say "That bit is probably not God" If one cannot, they are seeing a coherence, regardless of recognising the library nature of the "book".
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    The bible is very much not dialectic in design
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Seeing the bible as generally divinely inspired, but filtered through people's foibles is reasonable. Seeing it as a cohesive work, IMO not so much.
    Either it's not cohesive or it's not dialectic. But it can't be neither. It's got to be one.
    Of course it can be both. Not being cohesive is not necessarily a trigger for questioning.
    Oh well if you say it can be both that must be true.
  • There is nothing in a lack of cohesion that dictates a dialectic nature. Your assertion that it does fails to make it true.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    @Eutychus - sorry.
  • Eutychus wrote: »
    Hagar, isn't it?

    Few other points; she also gets to name God. Her name means 'stranger' as in 'Do not oppress the stranger' or 'You were strangers in Egypt'.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    There is nothing in a lack of cohesion that dictates a dialectic nature.
    If you assemble a group of documents then either they cohere into a single voice and point of view or they don't and form an assemblage of voices in dialogue. If the former they are cohesive; if the latter they are dialectic.

  • The underlying assumption of the Bible is that it is all inspired by God. That is a cohesive assumption. At least for Christians. That is the anti-dialectic. That Christians do argue is not proof of the intention to create a dialogue or question the texts. Again, if to teach by raising questions were God's intention, then he is incompetent as the answers are diverse and the effects of some of the answers found are pretty messed up.
  • Colin SmithColin Smith Suspended
    edited April 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    The underlying assumption of the Bible is that it is all inspired by God. That is a cohesive assumption. At least for Christians. That is the anti-dialectic. That Christians do argue is not proof of the intention to create a dialogue or question the texts. Again, if to teach by raising questions were God's intention, then he is incompetent as the answers are diverse and the effects of some of the answers found are pretty messed up.

    Err, no. Not really. Others will correct me (some more than others) but I think what you have done is make an erroneous claim on behalf of God and then attacked God for not being terribly good at fulfilling that claim. In other words, you've made a straw-man argument.

    No one other than a Christian would claim the Bible is all inspired by God and I suspect most Christians (and certainly most here) would not go that far. They might say the Bible was to greater and lesser extent across its various parts inspired by God but not everything in the Bible is an undiluted representation of that original inspiration, what with a few millennia of translations, edits, agglomerations, and borrowings from earlier myth. Given the church's role in deciding what should and shouldn't be in the Bible there's even a reasonable argument that some of what's in there shouldn't be and other texts not included should be.
  • Some Christians don't think of the bible as inspired at all.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    The underlying assumption of the Bible is that it is all inspired by God. That is a cohesive assumption. At least for Christians. That is the anti-dialectic. That Christians do argue is not proof of the intention to create a dialogue or question the texts. Again, if to teach by raising questions were God's intention, then he is incompetent as the answers are diverse and the effects of some of the answers found are pretty messed up.

    Err, no. Not really. Others will correct me (some more than others) but I think what you have done is make an erroneous claim on behalf of God and then attacked God for not being terribly good at fulfilling that claim. In other words, you've made a straw-man argument.
    I am making no erroneous claims on behalf of anyone.
    No one other than a Christian would claim the Bible is all inspired by God and I suspect most Christians (and certainly most here) would not go that far. They might say the Bible was to greater and lesser extent across its various parts inspired by God but not everything in the Bible is an undiluted representation of that original inspiration, what with a few millennia of translations, edits, agglomerations, and borrowings from earlier myth. Given the church's role in deciding what should and shouldn't be in the Bible there's even a reasonable argument that some of what's in there shouldn't be and other texts not included should be.
    All this paragraph says is that there are variations in how Christians interpret the bible, but that is not in contention.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    @Eutychus - sorry.
    Thank you, but that's not enough according to the terms you set down. You demanded that this be "thrashed out". Simply retreating is not abiding by your own terms. If you're not dismissing the text as bullshit, how about addressing one of my questions:
    Eutychus wrote: »
    start by considering what the gap between your guess [Adam] and the actual answer [Hagar] might say about your assumptions with respect to what the text says.

    @lilbuddha I think @Colin Smith is right that you're putting forward a straw man. Or at least explaining to us why you're not an inerrantist.
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Eutychus wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Damn this is frustrating.
    Yes it is. When you ask a question, I take it seriously and spend hours composing an honest reply. When I ask one, you take a patronising approach and start picking at my grammar, neatly avoiding having to admit you got the answer wrong - because like so many hubristic fundamentalist evangelicals before you, you think you know what the text says instead of actually bothering to look, let it surprise you, and let the implications work away at you.

    If you want to dismiss the whole text as bullshit, go right ahead and we can save a lot of time, energy, and frustration all round; but don't expect any help from me in doing so.

    If you actually don't want to dismiss it all, start by considering what the gap between your guess and the actual answer might say about your assumptions with respect to what the text says.

    Sorry again Eutychus. I was knackered last night. Sore eyes from too much Age of Empires. No excuse.

    My frustration was at myself. I'm still gob-smacked at the place you're at. It's put me in a place of cognitive dissonance. You have been a lifeline of faith for years now, that's what I meant by leadership, a deliberate use of a problematic word. Never underestimate your credibility with me.

    Your answer was excellent: 'God's progressive revelation of what he's like and what he would like us to be like?', but evoked more questions in me, as I badly responded.

    Hubristic fundamentalist evangelical I might have briefly been after decades of heretic hubristic fundamentalism, but now I'm a hubristic deconstructed postmodern emergent liberal rational existential blah-di-blah di-bloody-blah neo-orthodox knackered old Christian.

    So the OT text says many concurrent different things to me. Above all it says God - if He exists - yearns back despite us. What am I missing? What does the text say to you?
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    So the OT text says many concurrent different things to me. Above all it says God - if He exists - yearns back despite us. What am I missing? What does the text say to you?
    No, I get to ask the questions for a while now. "Thrashing it out" means you have to do some of the work too.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    start by considering what the gap between your guess [Adam] and the actual answer [Hagar] might say about your assumptions with respect to what the text says.

    Why did you assume the first person with respect to whom God is referred to as YHWH was Adam? And why did you dismiss the correct answer as trivia?
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    edited April 2020
    Eutychus wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    So the OT text says many concurrent different things to me. Above all it says God - if He exists - yearns back despite us. What am I missing? What does the text say to you?
    No, I get to ask the questions for a while now. "Thrashing it out" means you have to do some of the work too.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    start by considering what the gap between your guess [Adam] and the actual answer [Hagar] might say about your assumptions with respect to what the text says.

    Why did you assume the first person with respect to whom God is referred to as YHWH was Adam? And why did you dismiss the correct answer as trivia?

    Sigh. What is it mate? What's going on? I wasn't dismissing it. I didn't realise this was what you were referring to. It seemed like a tangent. Sorry. I didn't realise that it was pivotal, that we were engaged in the Socratic method or a catechism. What was always dim is getting dimmer.

    I assumed Adam as the first use of the tetragrammaton is in Genesis 2:4. But you said the first use in conversation, hence my question mark.

    OK.

    YHWH, ego eimi Himself spoke with Hagar as far as she was concerned (v13). She may well have been right. Meaning that all such related references, including to Gabriel, if not to created supernatural beings, minimally are to the Second Person of the Trinity.

    Which is most germane to my question thread as to whether Jesus was God. Which I feel I must bow to Him being.

    Does this progress our conversation?

    I find, like KarlB, but not as acutely as he, the thought that He did speak to Hagar thus, preserved by the Holy Spirit through aeons of human chaos, prophetically about the Arab peoples, is vertiginously cognitively dissonant.

    I am more than happy to walk naked with you and all here.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    The underlying assumption of the Bible is that it is all inspired by God.
    F+. Must try harder.
    At least for Christians.
    At least for conservative evangelicals. (Passing over the implied acceptance of the consevative evangelical definition of inspired.)

    You're claiming that the conservative evangelical framework is a priori correct and then claiming that reading the Bible in such a way as to support that framework is wrong. Which is it?
    Again, if to teach by raising questions were God's intention, then he is incompetent as the answers are diverse and the effects of some of the answers found are pretty messed up.
    You really don't get the point of 'teaching by raising questions' do you?
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    @Martin54 Sigh. I'm not trying to cathechise you. I'm trying to get you to consider your own assumptions.

    (And if you didn't realise what I was referring to, consider that in the post in question I was very deliberately mirroring the exact style of many of your own posts, in which you leave everybody else to fill in the semantic gaps and only bother interacting if they manage to solve the puzzle you set them).

    I originally put the question to @lilbuddha in an attempt to get her to realise the limits of half-assed generalisations about a book whose text she is not really familiar with.

    Her response was to say that what we read was an attempt by the writers to "big up their god" (so that's when she's on one of her "coherent" argument days) Your response is to hold it up as an example of vertiginous cognitive dissonance (one of your "inconsistent" days). I don't think both those positions can be right, which seems, more or less, to be what @Dafyd is saying too.

    To me, that little piece of text is the kind of thing that challenges the view of "bible as systematic theology". It throws a spanner in the works of those, Jamat-like, who want the Bible to be a gigantic jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces fit and, in his memorable words, "it all goes to bed nicely". My experience with him and others of his ilk is that they can think that because they don't actually read the text, they prefer to read what their favourite commentator says it says, and the latter often turns out to be, well, lying.

    @KarlLB, meanwhile, has spoken in terms of his "inner fundamentalist". My insight from all this is that many of the critics of the Bible are sort of reverse inerrantists: they seem to apply inerrantist reasoning to reach the opposite conclusion: instead of contrived arguments saying "look, this all fits together nicely", they say "look, this clearly doesn't all fit together nicely", and therefore it's crap. The conclusions are opposite, but the criterion is the same in both cases.

    I think this is all wrong; the Hagar incident is just an instance of why I think it's wrong. The use of YHWH in that narrative is pregnant with significance. Irrespective of whether it was what God dictated to Moses or what some later editor shoved in there, the significance of using the tetragrammaton at that point can't have escaped them. It's a slap in the face for Jewish claims of exclusivity. If it "bigs up their god" (sic), it does so in a way that doesn't exactly big up them. We're talking about the purported ancestor of the Arabs here. You can't read it, I mean really read it, and not think "wait what?". And that's the point.

    To me it's pretty much the same story on divine healing. You can't really read the pool of Bethesda story and not think "hey, why didn't Jesus heal all the others?" The whole narrative throws that very point into stark relief.

    What I guess I'm trying to do here is to challenge you to consider the text on its own merits, not on what you might have been taught it said all those years ago, and not on the advisement of some intellectual, however brilliant, with an agenda. My experience is that the text rewards that kind of consideration, that the fruit of that is no less beneficial than any other approach I can imagine, and on balance more. And it keeps doing it, fifty years of reading on. @lilbuddha puts that down, essentially, to incompetent authors and/or seeing things in the text that aren't there. She might be right, but so far I haven't come up with anything better for making sense of life, and if she has, she's not letting on.

    Tl;dr: one person's cognitive dissonance is another person's dialectic.

  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Eutychus wrote: »
    @Martin54 Sigh. I'm not trying to cathechise you. I'm trying to get you to consider your own assumptions.
    As long as you're not trying to catheterize me.

    What (unwarranted?) assumptions do you see me making?

    (And if you didn't realise what I was referring to, consider that in the post in question I was very deliberately mirroring the exact style of many of your own posts, in which you leave everybody else to fill in the semantic gaps and only bother interacting if they manage to solve the puzzle you set them).
    Hoist with me own petard.

    I originally put the question to @lilbuddha in an attempt to get her to realise the limits of half-assed generalisations about a book whose text she is not really familiar with.
    I don't see her lack of familiarity with it? Doesn't she affirm the opposite?

    Her response was to say that what we read was an attempt by the writers to "big up their god" (so that's when she's on one of her "coherent" argument days) Your response is to hold it up as an example of vertiginous cognitive dissonance (one of your "inconsistent" days). I don't think both those positions can be right, which seems, more or less, to be what @Dafyd is saying too.
    Her response is valid to me. Even so my response is based on my looping round the beads again and asking 'could this be true?'. Especially in the light of my recent thread. Wires are crossing and short circuiting in my head.

    To me, that little piece of text is the kind of thing that challenges the view of "bible as systematic theology". It throws a spanner in the works of those, Jamat-like, who want the Bible to be a gigantic jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces fit and, in his memorable words, "it all goes to bed nicely". My experience with him and others of his ilk is that they can think that because they don't actually read the text, they prefer to read what their favourite commentator says it says, and the latter often turns out to be, well, lying.
    OKayyyyy. I can't see anything throwing him but my consistent deconstructive take, which is why he's not posting any more. Hubristic as I am.

    @KarlLB, meanwhile, has spoken in terms of his "inner fundamentalist". My insight from all this is that many of the critics of the Bible are sort of reverse inerrantists: they seem to apply inerrantist reasoning to reach the opposite conclusion: instead of contrived arguments saying "look, this all fits together nicely", they say "look, this clearly doesn't all fit together nicely", and therefore it's crap. The conclusions are opposite, but the criterion is the same in both cases.
    Not my counter. I don't think it's crap, bullshit at all. Even if God has nothing to do with it, by not inspiring any of it or not existing to do so. And I want Him to exist and I want Him to have inspired it. I certainly, like KarlLB, don't want Him to actually be anything like the accounts.

    I think this is all wrong; the Hagar incident is just an instance of why I think it's wrong. The use of YHWH in that narrative is pregnant with significance. Irrespective of whether it was what God dictated to Moses or what some later editor shoved in there, the significance of using the tetragrammaton at that point can't have escaped them. It's a slap in the face for Jewish claims of exclusivity. If it "bigs up their god" (sic), it does so in a way that doesn't exactly big up them. We're talking about the purported ancestor of the Arabs here. You can't read it, I mean really read it, and not think "wait what?". And that's the point.
    Nice. But being dim with a capital B here, why'm I being included in the conversation? Your point is to lilBuddha & KarlLB? Om confused.

    To me it's pretty much the same story on divine healing. You can't really read the pool of Bethesda story and not think "hey, why didn't Jesus heal all the others?" The whole narrative throws that very point into stark relief.
    They were all so sodding selfish? He says from his privilege. But it's a good question. Divine healing was a sign of the Kingdom as Jesus' first sermon showed. But He didn't do it in stadiums like Benny Hinn. It seems always to have been intimate, even with more than one healee. The ten lepers. They asked from a social distance. He didn't go out of His way with anyone, for His own security. All very fully human divine. He never walked on by, stepped over, but He didn't go looking either.

    What I guess I'm trying to do here is to challenge you to consider the text on its own merits, not on what you might have been taught it said all those years ago, and not on the advisement of some intellectual, however brilliant, with an agenda. My experience is that the text rewards that kind of consideration, that the fruit of that is no less beneficial than any other approach I can imagine, and on balance more. And it keeps doing it, fifty years of reading on. @lilbuddha puts that down, essentially, to incompetent authors and/or seeing things in the text that aren't there. She might be right, but so far I haven't come up with anything better for making sense of life, and if she has, she's not letting on.
    Er, I thought I did. I certainly don't regard the authors as incompetent and I don't believe I'm seeing things in the text that aren't there. Divine inspiration could be after all... (and yes, the text rewards that kind of consideration), in the text even nearly one and a half millennia after the events described in it. Although the entirely rational alternative is that the C5-4th BCE editors were remarkably enlightened. Like those who refined the Pericope Adulterae nearly another millennium later.

    What do I yet lack?

  • @Eutychus thank you <notworthyemoticon> I am following this with interest.

    I was given a vision once of an oasis in the desert. What was above the water represented the Old Testament. It was perfectly reflected in the water, which represented the New Testament. While I watched, the picture turned on its head so that the reflection became the reflected.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    Martin54 wrote: »
    What (unwarranted?) assumptions do you see me making?
    The assumption that as far as the text goes, you've been there, seen that, done it, bought the T-shirt, deconstructed it, and that the answer to any detailed question arising from the text is trivial.
    I don't see her lack of familiarity with it? Doesn't she affirm the opposite?
    @lilbuddha clearly wasn't familiar with the details of the episode I was referring to, has previously admitted to not having read the Bible in its entirety, dodges any direct question about how much of it she has read, and still feels qualified to opine on its content. That's her right, but I certainly wouldn't make sweeping declarations about the details of a book I hadn't read.
    Her response is valid to me. Even so my response is based on my looping round the beads again and asking 'could this be true?'. Especially in the light of my recent thread. Wires are crossing and short circuiting in my head.
    If Hagar/YHWH 'bigs up' the God of Israel, it only does so at the expense of Israel. What would be the benefit to a Jewish author/editor of such an inconvenient addition? It's shooting their ethnic self-interest in the foot, isn't it? (It does, however 'big up' God in a way consistent with the 'all nations' unifying theme running through the entire Bible).

    Yes, we can loop round plenty, but (CS Lewis yet again) what's the outcome? Nothing positive. His relevant advice was to "laugh at" [the looping] "and go to bed".
    OKayyyyy. I can't see anything throwing him but my consistent deconstructive take, which is why he's not posting any more. Hubristic as I am.
    The problem I have with your deconstructive take, which I'm not making very well, is that in its own way it appears fundamentalist to me. It feels like you're looking for truth that for all its alleged deconstruction, is monolithic, singular; one answer. Whereas French réformé theology is all about how truth emerges out of a plurality of voices. Which I would also assert is right there in the Bible as a principle. "Let others weigh".
    I don't think it's crap, bullshit at all. Even if God has nothing to do with it, by not inspiring any of it or not existing to do so. And I want Him to exist and I want Him to have inspired it. I certainly, like KarlLB, don't want Him to actually be anything like the accounts.
    Maybe my take on reading the Bible is like my take on what God is trying to say. I think there are layers. One can read it as a child and get one level of truth out of it. And then read and re-read it and see new levels of truth. They don't invalidate the insights gained the first time round, they are new truths for new stages of one's personal journey. The first time round we see Jesus heal the paralytic and think "wow". The second time round we think "hang on, what about the others?" And that makes us want to understand the mind of God more clearly. I can identify with Paul, "I want to know him". Like I say, it's curiosity that keeps me going.
    Nice. But being dim with a capital B here, why'm I being included in the conversation? Your point is to lilBuddha & KarlLB? Om confused.
    Because when you write dismissively of "trivia", it gives me the feeling you're not willing to be challenged in a positive way by what you read. If you're preset to see God as a bastard, that's what you'll see. If deep down you don't think he is, well then struggle with the text a bit more.
    They were all so sodding selfish?
    How do you know that? You only have the healee's word for it. Sounds like a typical whiner to me.
    Divine inspiration could be after all... (and yes, the text rewards that kind of consideration), in the text even nearly one and a half millennia after the events described in it.
    That's certainly a possibility I'd entertain.
    Although the entirely rational alternative is that the C5-4th BCE editors were remarkably enlightened.
    Enlightened? Inspired? My belief (and I'll freely admit it's a belief, pure rationalists feel free to differ, even if I think there are good reasons for it) is that God made sure we have the Scriptures we have, saying what they say, and that multiple, sometimes conflicting manuscripts, and more especially original languages (plural), are a feature of that revelation and not a bug.

  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Whisky. As Jack Nicholson says to Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment.

    But I accept all that you say. And yeah, the poor sod was whiny. I'd have been stoicism personified of course.

    And I add your layers, especially the final para, to mine. But I certainly won't be rejecting mine. They're superpositioned. Like God in Heaven and walking the Earth as a bloke at the same time.
  • Martin54 wrote: »

    What do I yet lack?

    Patience, mostly.

    I get the sense that you see a dissonance--a point in the Scriptures that you don't get, and can't figure out, and it throws you (which happens to all of us)--and you panic.

    There's no need for that.

    When you hit those spots, as we all do, just lay the thing aside on the edge of your plate (as you would with a bit of gristle) and wait for God / your unconscious mind / whatever to deal with it. It may take minutes, it may take years. But there's no need at all to instantly comprehend everything in the Scriptures. Use what you can use now, and leave the rest for later. Don't panic, and don't leap to conclusions.
  • Since the temp in here is lower for the moment, and I won't be so tempted to behave like an asshole, maybe I can say this, riffing off Eutychus.

    The hard bits--the seeming inconsistencies, the offensive bits, the parts where I scratch my head and think, "What the hell?"--those are the bits of Scripture that tend to reward me as reader the most. But that reward comes sometimes years later, after chewing on it and praying and consulting others and (yes, freaking out)... I've come to realize that if I pay attention to those things, when they do finally unravel, huge riches of understanding come rolling out, and I am the better for having fought with them. Like Jacob wrestling with God. You lose, sure, but the losing is better than winning with anybody else. You go away from it with a new perspective.

    This is why I really hate it when people try to corner me into defending the Scripture as a whole (rather than working together to try to understand the meaning of a particular bit of it). I am not the master of the Scripture (that would be God). I am one of its many servants and students. It has no need of me to defend it. It would in fact be hubris for me to defend it, as if I had the wisdom and ability to do what God's word has always done for itself.

    I am deeply aware that people struggle with the Scripture. I do so myself. But I disagree that that struggling is always a bad thing.

    On the matter of the OT massacres--this is one of the biggest "hard bits" I struggle with, and I do NOT think I have it worked out yet, and I share the same consternation that others do about God ordering such actions. And yet...

    If I reject this wholesale, without any attempt to figure out why it's even in the Scripture, well. ... like so many of you, I do honor to the bit of God in us that says, "Mass murder is wrong." And that's a good thing. But I also fail to get any further ahead with whatever lies behind/beneath this major puzzle, because I've cut myself off from considering it or engaging with it any further. I've basically stamped "SOLVED" on a half-finished puzzle and walked away. And that prevents me from dealing with other, lesser cases of the same thing--for instance, Jesus' shockingly chilling take on a smaller massacre in Luke 13:1-5, or the building accident described there too. If God in the OT shows a shocking lack of regard for human life, Jesus does much the same here.

    And that tells me I'm missing the point, whatever the point is. I can condemn Jesus and walk away. Or I can put the hard bit on the side of my plate, refuse to allow it to choke or panic me, and wait to see what comes of it later.

    There are any number of places where that approach has born fruit--spectacularly, sometimes. The bit LB referred to about "women being obliged to marry their rapists" (which is a misunderstanding, by the way)--if you unpack that with a proper anthropological approach to culture and consequences, what comes out is a shocking example of God's justice against misogynist criminals, even in the midst of a very misogynist-in-some-ways culture. The woman (acting through her family, as they did in that culture) has all the power; the rapist has absolutely none, and is forbidden to exercise any power with regards to her for the rest of his fucking life. (And before anybody starts, I'll be happy to unpack this in Kerygmania if anybody is interested; I will NOT go further on this thread.)

    Enough of the example. I gave it only to show a little of what I've gained over the years by considering questions like "Why did Jesus apparently heal only one person at the pool of Bethesda?" "Why did Jesus treat the Canaanite woman with the possessed daughter in such an un-Jesus-y way?" "What was going on with the deception (if we can call it that) on the road to Emmaus?" and "Why is Bathsheba referred to as 'the wife of Uriah' in Jesus' genealogy in Matthew 1, even though the son in question was conceived long after the adultery problem was cleared up and forgiven?" There's some damn good stuff there, if you have the patience to sit and chew and ask and seek and wrestle with God and wait for it to unravel itself.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    The underlying assumption of the Bible is that it is all inspired by God.
    F+. Must try harder.
    Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.
    Dafyd wrote: »
    At least for Christians.
    At least for conservative evangelicals. (Passing over the implied acceptance of the conservative evangelical definition of inspired.)

    You're claiming that the conservative evangelical framework is a priori correct and then claiming that reading the Bible in such a way as to support that framework is wrong. Which is it?
    Swing and a miss. I am not saying the conevo framework is correct. Not by a long shot.
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Again, if to teach by raising questions were God's intention, then he is incompetent as the answers are diverse and the effects of some of the answers found are pretty messed up.
    You really don't get the point of 'teaching by raising questions' do you?
    I do, actually. The problem is that in a classroom as there are few consequences. With the bible, the wrong answers lead to people burning in Hell (in some interpretations) and have lead to murder, justification for oppression and genocide and keeping half the human race in subservience.
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    Eutychus wrote: »
    I originally put the question to @lilbuddha in an attempt to get her to realise the limits of half-assed generalisations about a book whose text she is not really familiar with.
    That is an assumption because I do not agree with your interpretation.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    lilbuddha clearly wasn't familiar with the details of the episode I was referring to, has previously admitted to not having read the Bible in its entirety, dodges any direct question about how much of it she has read, and still feels qualified to opine on its content. That's her right, but I certainly wouldn't make sweeping declarations about the details of a book I hadn't read.
    Again, for the hard of comprehension, I've read much of the book. But your attempt to make this a length measuring contest are irrelevant. What does it matter to understanding the bible if I have not read Obadiah? It doesn't change the messed up nature of parts of Levitcus. It doesn't change the genocide bits. And a legitimate question is a legitimate question regardless of the scholarly background of the inquisitor.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    @Eutychus - sorry.
    Thank you, but that's not enough according to the terms you set down. You demanded that this be "thrashed out". Simply retreating is not abiding by your own terms. If you're not dismissing the text as bullshit, how about addressing one of my questions:
    Eutychus wrote: »
    start by considering what the gap between your guess [Adam] and the actual answer [Hagar] might say about your assumptions with respect to what the text says.

    @lilbuddha I think @Colin Smith is right that you're putting forward a straw man. Or at least explaining to us why you're not an inerrantist.
    I would have to believe the bible was inerrant and I do not. What I advocate for reading any holy text is to read it for the message intended and filter out the bits that are incongruous. I've said many times that, for Christians, Jesus' message is the filter through which the rest should be interpreted. And that "his" message needs to be edited for consistency as well.
    Hardly inerrantist.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    That is an assumption because I do not agree with your interpretation.
    Where's the assumption? You've admitted you haven't read it all.

    And it's not a length measuring contest. You've either read all of it or you haven't.
    What does it matter to understanding the bible if I have not read Obadiah?
    It means you can be trolled nicely (with acknowledgement to @RooK).
    It doesn't change the messed up nature of parts of Levitcus. It doesn't change the genocide bits. And a legitimate question is a legitimate question regardless of the scholarly background of the inquisitor.
    Their credibility might relate to how well they knew the subject matter though.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    I would have to believe the bible was inerrant and I do not.
    You clearly don't. But you seem to judge it by the same standard as an inerrantist, i.e. whether or not it all fits together in one perfect puzzle. Inerrantists say "yes it does, QED", you say "no it doesn't, QED".
    What I advocate for reading any holy text is to read it for the message intended and filter out the bits that are incongruous.
    And lots of other people, @Lamb Chopped and I among them, think that's a mistaken approach. Jesus seems pretty clear that cherry-picking his teachings is not an option.
    I've said many times that, for Christians, Jesus' message is the filter through which the rest should be interpreted.
    @Lamb Chopped has pointed to a passage (be honest, are you familiar with it before looking it up, or is this another one of those things where a scholarly background is enough?) which I'd also thought of in which Jesus appears, at first glance, to have the same scant regard for human life as that (apparently) demonstrated on the OT.
    And that "his" message needs to be edited for consistency as well
    So in fact, you're not really listening to what he says at all. You're cobbling together a few favourite quotes. And that is the whole problem with not reading the whole thing.

  • Eutychus wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    That is an assumption because I do not agree with your interpretation.
    Where's the assumption? You've admitted you haven't read it all.

    And it's not a length measuring contest. You've either read all of it or you haven't.
    Asking the question about how much instead of addressing the issues raised isn't, but hanging on having read it all could well be. Doesn't matter, though, still ridiculous.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    It doesn't change the messed up nature of parts of Levitcus. It doesn't change the genocide bits. And a legitimate question is a legitimate question regardless of the scholarly background of the inquisitor.
    Their credibility might relate to how well they knew the subject matter though.
    Except no. The anti-homosexual parts of it are what they are unless you can point to something that clarifies that they mean something else. And most of that is either not directly in the bible or needs to be teased out.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    I would have to believe the bible was inerrant and I do not.
    You clearly don't. But you seem to judge it by the same standard as an inerrantist, i.e. whether or not it all fits together in one perfect puzzle. Inerrantists say "yes it does, QED", you say "no it doesn't, QED".
    Incorrect. I give a rational reason why it doesn't.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    What I advocate for reading any holy text is to read it for the message intended and filter out the bits that are incongruous.
    And lots of other people, @Lamb Chopped and I among them, think that's a mistaken approach. Jesus seems pretty clear that cherry-picking his teachings is not an option.
    I'm not. LC, and you by your acceptance, do. I say read the things people say he said and work out the consistent message.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    I've said many times that, for Christians, Jesus' message is the filter through which the rest should be interpreted.
    @Lamb Chopped has pointed to a passage (be honest, are you familiar with it before looking it up, or is this another one of those things where a scholarly background is enough?) which I'd also thought of in which Jesus appears, at first glance, to have the same scant regard for human life as that (apparently) demonstrated on the OT.
    And that "his" message needs to be edited for consistency as well
    So in fact, you're not really listening to what he says at all. You're cobbling together a few favourite quotes. And that is the whole problem with not reading the whole thing.
    Oh bullshit. Pulling a quote, aka cherry-picking, as LC did is exactly the problem. You can pick a position and find a quote that fits it. But reading the accounts of Jesus put those bits into better perspective.
    Supposedly, the devil can quote scripture, so knowing the words is secondary to understanding them.
    And that is where the difference lies. Questioning how much is a rubbish way to avoid dealing with the issues raised.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    And most of that is either not directly in the bible or needs to be teased out
    Can you get a bible-thin sheet of paper between "needing to be teased out" and "wrestling with the text"? Because I can't.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    But reading the accounts of Jesus put those bits into better perspective.
    So wait, now you're also saying that the hard-to-accept bits should be set against the broader perspective of the rest of the text. Are you sure you're not squatting on my side of the argument here?
    Supposedly, the devil can quote scripture, so knowing the words is secondary to understanding them.
    You can't possibly understand them unless you first know them. Duh.
  • Eutychus wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    And most of that is either not directly in the bible or needs to be teased out
    Can you get a bible-thin sheet of paper between "needing to be teased out" and "wrestling with the text"? Because I can't.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    But reading the accounts of Jesus put those bits into better perspective.
    So wait, now you're also saying that the hard-to-accept bits should be set against the broader perspective of the rest of the text. Are you sure you're not squatting on my side of the argument here?
    I've said, multiple times on multiple threads that reading for context is the proper approach.
    Eutychus wrote: »
    Supposedly, the devil can quote scripture, so knowing the words is secondary to understanding them.
    You can't possibly understand them unless you first know them. Duh.
    So adult. One need not know every single word, which is your implication.

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