I find the Gospels not to be literal-historical accounts of events by people who had slightly different memories of the events, but are theological works created for their different intended audiences. .
Speaking as someone not coming from a place where I believe everything in the Gospels must have happened exactly as written: and who would argue that the authors have arranged and edited their material to sharpen whatever point they think the material is making.
I think I would like to question this alleged contrast. Literal historical accounts are created for intended audiences. For example, a news story in the Guardian is going to be written with the intended audience in mind. However, that does not mean that the Guardian is not literal-historical. It has an agenda and it bases its judgement of what facts are important in part on that agenda, but it doesn't intentionally distort the facts to advance it. Some other news outlets, however, do distort or make up facts to suit their agenda. One cannot justify what those other outlets are doing by saying that they're not literal-historical accounts but political works.
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
As is often said, humanity has been around for hundreds of thousands of years and has been religious for as long as we have records - of all the gods we have believed in over those thousands of years, and in which people still believe, what makes us think we've got the real one now?
I think that saying humanity has been religious for as long as we have records conflates something like the worship of Marduk with Buddhism, and the two are rather different enterprises. The thing about Judaism is that its earliest strata come from an era when it was rather like the worship of Marduk and it's turned into something that's a lot more like Buddhism. (In a similar manner, Adi Shankara created the possibility for Hinduism to be a lot more like Buddhism.)
I find the Gospels not to be literal-historical accounts of events by people who had slightly different memories of the events, but are theological works created for their different intended audiences. .
Speaking as someone not coming from a place where I believe everything in the Gospels must have happened exactly as written: and who would argue that the authors have arranged and edited their material to sharpen whatever point they think the material is making.
I think I would like to question this alleged contrast. Literal historical accounts are created for intended audiences. For example, a news story in the Guardian is going to be written with the intended audience in mind. However, that does not mean that the Guardian is not literal-historical. It has an agenda and it bases its judgement of what facts are important in part on that agenda, but it doesn't intentionally distort the facts to advance it. Some other news outlets, however, do distort or make up facts to suit their agenda. One cannot justify what those other outlets are doing by saying that they're not literal-historical accounts but political works.
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
I don't think newspapers are a great example.
It's more like someone writing a history of D-day in 2025 without access to any archives and based only on stories passed through families about what happened.
I was going to bring up earlier an interview I saw with the historian and author William Dalrymple. He said some interesting stuff, most relevantly here perhaps that the things we associate with Buddhism and Hinduism only date back to the twentieth century and for many centuries were quite different things.
We associate Buddhism perhaps with a concept of otherworldliness. According to Dalrymple in the past it was more associated with trade and commerce and making money. Hinduism today might be associated with peaceful Satyagrahas but historically is was about fighting and winning wars. He didn't mention Sikhs but obviously they have roots in a military order.
Of course Dalrymple isn't an objective observer. But I think these things are true, the idea that the thing we see today isn't reflective of the extensive history of the thing (even if, of course, peaceful Hindus are by far preferable to flighting ones).
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
In what way does the nature of the Guardian's agenda regarding transgender issues differ from the agenda of other news outlets? Is it matter of degree, or conceptual distinction or some other quality that distinguishes it?
I find the Gospels not to be literal-historical accounts of events by people who had slightly different memories of the events, but are theological works created for their different intended audiences. .
Speaking as someone not coming from a place where I believe everything in the Gospels must have happened exactly as written: and who would argue that the authors have arranged and edited their material to sharpen whatever point they think the material is making.
I think I would like to question this alleged contrast. Literal historical accounts are created for intended audiences. For example, a news story in the Guardian is going to be written with the intended audience in mind. However, that does not mean that the Guardian is not literal-historical. It has an agenda and it bases its judgement of what facts are important in part on that agenda, but it doesn't intentionally distort the facts to advance it. Some other news outlets, however, do distort or make up facts to suit their agenda. One cannot justify what those other outlets are doing by saying that they're not literal-historical accounts but political works.
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
I don't think newspapers are a great example.
It's more like someone writing a history of D-day in 2025 without access to any archives and based only on stories passed through families about what happened.
Except, those stories passed through families are a form of archive, just transmitted orally rather than written down. For the vast majority of human history that oral archive was all that there was, historians interested in events of the last couple of centuries have the luxury of records written at the time - partial, imperfect and one-sided that they may be.
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
In what way does the nature of the Guardian's agenda regarding transgender issues differ from the agenda of other news outlets? Is it matter of degree, or conceptual distinction or some other quality that distinguishes it?
The transphobia is marginally more subtle with a dash of both-sidesism before they stick the knife in.
And, to pick up another point from earlier. My religion doesn't heal, my faith is that God heals - but also, that in the vast majority of cases God heals by calling people to be doctors and nurses, or to conduct research into medical sciences.
On this final paragraph, isn't there some saying of Jesus having done some magic that his followers would do the same?
No. The closest you can get to that idea is this, from John 14. I include the context because it's the only way you're going to avoid the idea of "magic."
I’m not sure that the only place you can find that idea. There’s also Matt. 17:14–20, for example:
14 When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, 15 and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has epilepsy and suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” 17 Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured from that moment. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Granted, I think that, as with the John passage you cite, there’s lots of context to unpack here.
I find the Gospels not to be literal-historical accounts of events by people who had slightly different memories of the events, but are theological works created for their different intended audiences. .
Speaking as someone not coming from a place where I believe everything in the Gospels must have happened exactly as written: and who would argue that the authors have arranged and edited their material to sharpen whatever point they think the material is making.
I think I would like to question this alleged contrast. Literal historical accounts are created for intended audiences. For example, a news story in the Guardian is going to be written with the intended audience in mind. However, that does not mean that the Guardian is not literal-historical. It has an agenda and it bases its judgement of what facts are important in part on that agenda, but it doesn't intentionally distort the facts to advance it. Some other news outlets, however, do distort or make up facts to suit their agenda. One cannot justify what those other outlets are doing by saying that they're not literal-historical accounts but political works.
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
I don't think newspapers are a great example.
It's more like someone writing a history of D-day in 2025 without access to any archives and based only on stories passed through families about what happened.
Yes and No. Not the whole history of D-Day. More like the history of one unit at D-Day, based on the memories of those who have regathered with their families and retold the stories of the day at regimental reunions Again and again over the ensuing decades.
Specifically, although I heard it only once, I vividly recall the experience of hearing one of my school teachers recounting his own experience of training for and landing at D-Day as part of an infantry bicycle unit.
And, to pick up another point from earlier. My religion doesn't heal, my faith is that God heals - but also, that in the vast majority of cases God heals by calling people to be doctors and nurses, or to conduct research into medical sciences.
On this final paragraph, isn't there some saying of Jesus having done some magic that his followers would do the same?
No. The closest you can get to that idea is this, from John 14. I include the context because it's the only way you're going to avoid the idea of "magic."
I’m not sure that the only place you can find that idea. There’s also Matt. 17:14–20, for example:
14 When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, 15 and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has epilepsy and suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” 17 Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured from that moment. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Granted, I think that, as with the John passage you cite, there’s lots of context to unpack here.
About the only thing I can say to this passage is,
a) I'm pretty sure he was speaking to the twelve (or the 72, whatever) when it comes to expecting such miracles routinely--he did delegate power to them in a way I'm not sure he did to us; and
b) Jesus is obviously completely on the money when it comes to calling us (me) "little faithed" and being surprised that we don't do better. There's no denying that, or the fact that we could do far, far better today, whether miracles are a part of it or not!
Ok, time for me to speak as a professional, but I am going to do it through a story rather than technical language. I want to take you into the mind of a Professor who taught me when I was training to be a statistician. Let's call him Roger, because that was his name, and yes, he was also a personal friend. You see, Roger was also a URC member, raised in the Reformed tradition. Roger was likeable, a bit eccentric, had a beard that at times made him look like a civilised OT prophet and held several conflicting stances. For instance, he was a liberal Christian who was also a great evangelist.
Now, though Roger was URC and some in the URC are Predestinarians of various colours, some are even deterministic predestinarians, but those are quite rare. Please realise, predestinarianism only refers to one's status concerning Salvation, it does not refer to what cereal one has for breakfast, while deterministic predestinarians believe that even our preference for Coco-Pops over porridge is divinely ordained. So I had no problem with Roger being a professor of statistics until over Coffee one day in the senior common room, he revealed that he was indeed a deterministic predestinarian. If you do not believe in free will, why on earth would you believe there was randomness in creation, which is what is a basic assumption in statistics and all statistical modelling? My brain was trying to turn somersaults, and I had not yet come across Martin Stringer's Situational Belief, or I might not have listened carefully to what Roger said in reply to another master's student's query.
Roger consistently believed the World was deterministic. The question was whether this was useful in a particular circumstance. Modelling involved two things. Firstly, one had to collect data, which is actually what the physicists are doing with their big machines. The collection of data is central to the scientific method, though collecting and interpreting data is not as simple nor straightforward as many non-scientists imagine. The second, is then it is modelled. Models are summaries of the data. They are often numerical but can be narrative or pictorial. The thing is that the models rarely (never) capture the data perfectly; there is always noise. In statistics, this noise is modelled through the random process in the model.
Now, Roger believed simply that if you had perfect data and the perfect model, you technically could predict anything. However, the circumstances, where that happened were rare. Indeed, in most situations, you would need to gather data that was so cumbersome that the data was unwieldly and the selection of the correct model unfeasible. It would take a machine of greater complexity than the universe to model many processes in the Universe to this accuracy. In such a situation, using statistics made sense.
Thus, though an expert in using tools for the development of scientific models, Roger did not believe the models he produced were true. In the words of G. E Box, "All models are wrong, but some are useful".
For me, all human knowledge is made up of models, and all are wrong, but as the choice is to use them or to know nothing and so fail to understand the world, I choose to explore the intelligibility different models give of the world rather than try and make one model do for everything.
The idea that a deterministic world can lead to results which are, for all observable purposes, random is one that classical physicists have long accepted for mundane matters such as rolling dice. What's intriguing is that it also seems to be the case that the aggregate of fundamentally random quantum effects is pretty close to being deterministic.
I presume Roger wasn't a fan of chaos theory, but I guess that's what the extra universe(s) are for.
What you describe seems to be about the application of the concept of perfection to a person's beliefs.
I find the idea that scientific models can be "true" or "wrong" intriguing. I think "sufficiently accurate" or "insufficiently accurate" would be a more appropriate designation. "True" and "wrong" seem to me more a description of the belief-value of these models for the people who create them (and consequently for the people who use them).
What do you mean by "try and make one model do for everything"?
Picking up something that was earlier being said about stories:
There's a hymn, O Worship the King, based on one of the psalms, one verse of which goes:
The earth with its store/ Of wonders untold
Almighty thy power/ Hath founded of old;
Hath stablished it fast/ By a changeless decree
And round it hath cast/ Like a mantle the sea.
Now, I like that verse despite the fact that it has only a tenuous relationship with the facts of geography, geology, and cosmology. I find it rather more satisfying as a set of imagery than other mythological imagery, such as the Norse creation myths or Ovid's cosmogony at the beginning of Metamorphoses. That is, because I do think it is an image, however symbolic and metaphorical, of God's creative act and bringing the universe into being - even if we now know that that cannot be a process of crafting the universe in time.
Stories matter and are aesthetically satisfying not just to the extent that they are formally pleasing but also to the extent that they are felt to symbolise or represent something true about the world.
For me, all human knowledge is made up of models, and all are wrong, but as the choice is to use them or to know nothing and so fail to understand the world, I choose to explore the intelligibility different models give of the world rather than try and make one model do for everything.
Returning to Martin Stringer's Situational Belief: during my evangelical days, it seemed pretty evident that the situational nature of belief was an issue in the different ways that we believed our beliefs.
Picking up something that was earlier being said about stories:
There's a hymn, O Worship the King, based on one of the psalms, one verse of which goes:
The earth with its store/ Of wonders untold
Almighty thy power/ Hath founded of old;
Hath stablished it fast/ By a changeless decree
And round it hath cast/ Like a mantle the sea.
Now, I like that verse despite the fact that it has only a tenuous relationship with the facts of geography, geology, and cosmology. I find it rather more satisfying as a set of imagery than other mythological imagery, such as the Norse creation myths or Ovid's cosmogony at the beginning of Metamorphoses. That is, because I do think it is an image, however symbolic and metaphorical, of God's creative act and bringing the universe into being - even if we now know that that cannot be a process of crafting the universe in time.
Stories matter and are aesthetically satisfying not just to the extent that they are formally pleasing but also to the extent that they are felt to symbolise or represent something true about the world.
And this, I think, brings us round to a central aspect with regard to this thread—understanding biblical stories on their own terms.
It is inevitable, I think, that we bring our own presuppositions and assumptions to biblical stories, or at least that we are inclined to until we are taught not to. And the presuppositions and assumptions that the typical modern Western reader brings to to the creation story is that creation means bringing the universe into being, and creating something out of nothing. Was the world created as Genesis described or was it the Big Bang?, for example. And that means that we naturally tend to look at the first chapters of Genesis as accounts of how God took nothing and made the universe out of it. And for many contemporary Western readers, our cultures also train us to assume these accounts are meant to be historical, or at least quasi-historical, similar to how an account of a war might be historical.
But as I understand it, making something out of nothing isn’t really what ancient Near Eastern cultures were talking about when they talked about creation. (There’s a clue to that right in the second verse of Genesis, as apparently “the deep” and the waters were there before God began creation.). What ancient Near Eastern cultures, including the culture from which Genesis arose, thought of as creation was not bringing something out of nothing, but rather brining order out of chaos. The god who is powerful enough to “create” is the god who can tame the chaos and impose order on it.
This understanding has echoes throughout the Hebrew and New Testament Scriptures, the Torah in particular. The image of humanity in the Garden having charge of the land is the image of humanity as people responsible for maintaining order in the garden, lest the wilderness, with its chaos, creep back in. The Flood is not just a random punishment, but rather is the creator god relinquishing the maintenance of order and allowing the return of chaos. The parting of the Red Sea (and of the Jordan later on) is another echo of God bringing order from chaos, and in the case of the Red Sea, allowing chaos to return. (And more could be said about the whys of allowing the chaos to return, but that’s probably more than belongs in this thread.)
Admittedly, I’ve pretty much always viewed the Genesis creation stories as myth (in the strict sense of the word, not in a sense that means “untrue”) and metaphor. I come from a denominational tradition that has no problem with that. But it was a bit eye-opening for me to realize that Genesis was actually starting from a different understanding of creation than the one I assumed as a modern Westerner. And looking for reflections of that different understanding in the text provided a perspective on the texts that made the old “is this literally true or not” questions seem a bit irrelevant.
TL/DR: To really understand biblical texts (or any ancient texts), you first have to understand what how writers (and editors) saw the world and what they were trying to convey about it and about God, rather than assuming that they saw everything just the way we do. We can’t assume that our default, and to us obvious, foundational assumptions were their default assumptions.
For various reasons, the church hasn’t always done a good job of that.
The problem with that, @Nick Tamen, is the idea that we can step into the minds of ancient people and understand how they saw the world. What we have is a selection of texts that come from the literate parts of society of those communities that have survived. To assume that these texts are culturally representative seems to me dubious, yet that is what we have to do to create an idea of the ancient culture.
We then read those texts through our cultural lens. For instance, we often assume that non-literate cultures are less sophisticated than the literate. This is blatantly not true amongst current cultures; it seems a dangerous hypothesis to put onto older cultures. We also tend to subscribe to the belief that we are developing into a more civilised culture. Then there is the assumption of continuity between the ancient culture and theirs. It is difficult. We have words that appear only once in the Bible and nowhere else.
When we read a passage, is it better to look at:
Other texts of a similar age
Archaeological Evidence
Modern Middle Eastern communities
Jewish understandings
Christian Interpretations through the centuries
Modern subsistence farming communities' culture
and if all of the above, how exactly do you mix and match to come to the correct answer?
The problem with that, @Nick Tamen, is the idea that we can step into the minds of ancient people and understand how they saw the world.
I would probably say “challenge” rather than “problem.”
What we have is a selection of texts that come from the literate parts of society of those communities that have survived. To assume that these texts are culturally representative seems to me dubious, yet that is what we have to do to create an idea of the ancient culture.
I’m afraid I don’t see why it’s dubious to assume, absent evidence to the contrary, that the written texts we have, which appear to reflect or record stories told, represent the cultures out of which they grew.
But I could rephrase the proposition: The creation stories we have from the ancient Near East appear to share many common elements, one of which is that creation is described as fundamentally bringing order from chaos rather as fundamentally bringing matter into being. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether it makes sense to read the Genesis creation narratives, which exhibit other similarities to ANE creation stories, as though they are coming from an understanding of what creation itself means that differs from the recorded stories of neighboring cultures.
Digging into my Philosophy of Science memory I remember a scientific model is a device which explains the data in the simplest possible terms, but as more data develops that model will change and become more complex. It will continue to be more complicated until such time as a new model is developed that better explains the data,
An example was when it was thought the earth was the center of the universe. We could explain the movements of the planets in fairly accurate ways, even though the planets would often appear to reverse course. Then came a guy by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus who proposed the heliocentric universe. Then came the development of the galactocentrism model and now there is the Lambda-CDM model. In every case as more data developed better models had to be postulated. And it is not done yet.
When considering Literal, ,Symbolic, Historical, Figurative, it seems to me that the Bible is a blend of all these things, whose purpose was never to be a simple history book, but a narrative designed to lead the human soul to at-one-ment with the Divine principal we call God. But many Christians get uptight about this suggestion.
The most widely read Hindu Scripture is the Bhagavad Gita, which takes place on a battlefield, and is largely a conversation between a warrior, Arjuna, and his charioteer, Lord Krishna, who is an incarnation of God. The battle is the battle everyone has to go through to reach enlightenment. But I doubt if anyone believes it's a historical narrative.
Many, though by no means all, Christians may be willing to take that approach to some OT stories like The Flood, or even The Exodus, but they would balk at applying this opinion to the New Testament. I believe there is much history in the New Testament, indeed many agnostic or atheist scholars believe there's a recoverable historical framework of the life and death of Jesus. But I think it's heavily blended with accounts which are designed to bring us into God's presence.
The parts I, personally, see as most authentic are Jesus' emphasis on the need for humility, as in denys self and take up your cross, forgive others if you want our Father to forgive you, and the requirement to Love God and neighbour and keep my commandments which are all based on love. Of course, when trying to construct a belief system around a narrative of Scripture, not all people will agree where the four elements in the OP start and finish, or where their lines blur.
I find it most useful to discern what kind of writing a passage is as a first step. Is Form Criticism still a "thing?" It certainly was when I was in the seminary +50 years ago.
I would say statistical models are a different thing to scientific models. I'm not a statistician and wouldn't claim any expertise, but it seems to me that on the whole statisticians use "model" to mean a way of understanding the spread of data in certain circumstances.
The purest of pure statistics seems to be separated from the thing that generated the data.
Scientific models, I would say are different in the sense that the use words to describe concepts that explain phenomena using stepped logic based on what is "known". The problem with scientific models is that life is often complex and further research often shows there are things one hasn't thought of, the "unknown unknowns" which might break the existing paradigm. It's also not uncommon for scientific models to be completely composed of ideas that are strung together but have almost no meaning whatsoever. Entirely absent of falsifiable data. One classic example is ecology where the ideas of "invasive" and "native" species were popularised by racists and often have no actual verifiable scientific meaning. And yet are casually thrown around.
There's an interaction between statistics, statistical models and scientific models, but it isn't straightforward much of the time.
And it becomes very complicated when the statistician who created the model, the data scientist using the data and the scientist who collected the data are all operating within different philosophical ideas of what they think they are doing.
The problem with that, @Nick Tamen, is the idea that we can step into the minds of ancient people and understand how they saw the world.
I would probably say “challenge” rather than “problem.”
What we have is a selection of texts that come from the literate parts of society of those communities that have survived. To assume that these texts are culturally representative seems to me dubious, yet that is what we have to do to create an idea of the ancient culture.
I’m afraid I don’t see why it’s dubious to assume, absent evidence to the contrary, that the written texts we have, which appear to reflect or record stories told, represent the cultures out of which they grew.
But I could rephrase the proposition: The creation stories we have from the ancient Near East appear to share many common elements, one of which is that creation is described as fundamentally bringing order from chaos rather as fundamentally bringing matter into being. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether it makes sense to read the Genesis creation narratives, which exhibit other similarities to ANE creation stories, as though they are coming from an understanding of what creation itself means that differs from the recorded stories of neighboring cultures.
I'm not entirely sure what it is you are talking about, but it seems like there could be something akin to "survivorship bias" in what you are describing.
In fact there might be reasons why certain texts survived and others didn't which are unrelated to how representative they are of an ancient culture.
As an illustration, I was listening to a talk yesterday about the history of the fork, as in cutlery for eating. There was evidence offered of fork use in ancient china. It's possible that this evidence was preserved because of who it was (maybe it was written by an important aristocrat) and so on. It might not actually show that forks were in use by anyone beyond those who wrote that particular document. It's also possible that something else altogether happened and the story about a fork was entirely invented.
Clearly if one was going to say that this document shows widespread use of forks in ancient china there would have to be other evidence. Perhaps a lot more writing or paintings or a big archaeological collection of forks.
...
But I could rephrase the proposition: The creation stories we have from the ancient Near East appear to share many common elements, one of which is that creation is described as fundamentally bringing order from chaos rather as fundamentally bringing matter into being. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether it makes sense to read the Genesis creation narratives, which exhibit other similarities to ANE creation stories, as though they are coming from an understanding of what creation itself means that differs from the recorded stories of neighboring cultures.
If we're considering creation beliefs of Near East religions, I would include Zoroastrianism.
My understanding is that the creation accounts of different religions describe the nature of the cosmos or world that humans inhabit, and the nature of the God that brought it about, with the primary aim of laying the foundations of the belief system. I presume that the aspect involving order and chaos (or unordered matter) establishes a particular faith's or God's authority over the cosmos/world/humanity. Another aspect addresses the origin of evil, establishing a framework for understanding the problem of evil and/or suffering.
According to the Zoroastrian creation myth, there is one universal, transcendent, all-good, and uncreated supreme creator deity Ahura Mazda ... Zoroaster also proclaims that Ahura Mazda is omniscient but not omnipotent. Ahura Mazda existed in light and goodness above, while Angra Mainyu, (also referred to in later texts as "Ahriman"), the destructive spirit/mentality, existed in darkness and ignorance below. They have existed independently of each other for all time, and manifest contrary substances.
...
While Ahura Mazda created the universe and humankind, Angra Mainyu, whose very nature is to destroy, miscreated demons, evil daevas, and noxious creatures (khrafstar) such as snakes, ants, and flies. Angra Mainyu created an opposite, evil being for each good being, except for humans, which he found he could not match. Angra Mainyu invaded the universe through the base of the sky, inflicting Gayomard and the bull with suffering and death. However, the evil forces were trapped in the universe and could not retreat. The dying primordial man and bovine emitted seeds, which were protected by Mah, the Moon. From the bull's seed grew all beneficial plants and animals of the world and from the man's seed grew a plant whose leaves became the first human couple. Humans thus struggle in a two-fold universe of the material and spiritual trapped and in long combat with evil. The evils of this physical world are not products of an inherent weakness but are the fault of Angra Mainyu's assault on creation.
Comments
I think I would like to question this alleged contrast. Literal historical accounts are created for intended audiences. For example, a news story in the Guardian is going to be written with the intended audience in mind. However, that does not mean that the Guardian is not literal-historical. It has an agenda and it bases its judgement of what facts are important in part on that agenda, but it doesn't intentionally distort the facts to advance it. Some other news outlets, however, do distort or make up facts to suit their agenda. One cannot justify what those other outlets are doing by saying that they're not literal-historical accounts but political works.
In short, it seems to me that the distinction you're making is blithely and complacently conflating what the Guardian does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda and what, say, Fox News does when it arranges facts to suit its agenda.
I don't think newspapers are a great example.
It's more like someone writing a history of D-day in 2025 without access to any archives and based only on stories passed through families about what happened.
We associate Buddhism perhaps with a concept of otherworldliness. According to Dalrymple in the past it was more associated with trade and commerce and making money. Hinduism today might be associated with peaceful Satyagrahas but historically is was about fighting and winning wars. He didn't mention Sikhs but obviously they have roots in a military order.
Of course Dalrymple isn't an objective observer. But I think these things are true, the idea that the thing we see today isn't reflective of the extensive history of the thing (even if, of course, peaceful Hindus are by far preferable to flighting ones).
I hope you don't assume I'm ignoring or refusing to engage, I'm just too ignorant to say anything else.
Memories are flawed, particularly decades after things supposedly happened.
The transphobia is marginally more subtle with a dash of both-sidesism before they stick the knife in.
Granted, I think that, as with the John passage you cite, there’s lots of context to unpack here.
Yes and No. Not the whole history of D-Day. More like the history of one unit at D-Day, based on the memories of those who have regathered with their families and retold the stories of the day at regimental reunions Again and again over the ensuing decades.
Specifically, although I heard it only once, I vividly recall the experience of hearing one of my school teachers recounting his own experience of training for and landing at D-Day as part of an infantry bicycle unit.
IMHO, I think Nick has found your best answer, and it's not an easy one to reply to!
About the only thing I can say to this passage is,
a) I'm pretty sure he was speaking to the twelve (or the 72, whatever) when it comes to expecting such miracles routinely--he did delegate power to them in a way I'm not sure he did to us; and
b) Jesus is obviously completely on the money when it comes to calling us (me) "little faithed" and being surprised that we don't do better. There's no denying that, or the fact that we could do far, far better today, whether miracles are a part of it or not!
Now, though Roger was URC and some in the URC are Predestinarians of various colours, some are even deterministic predestinarians, but those are quite rare. Please realise, predestinarianism only refers to one's status concerning Salvation, it does not refer to what cereal one has for breakfast, while deterministic predestinarians believe that even our preference for Coco-Pops over porridge is divinely ordained. So I had no problem with Roger being a professor of statistics until over Coffee one day in the senior common room, he revealed that he was indeed a deterministic predestinarian. If you do not believe in free will, why on earth would you believe there was randomness in creation, which is what is a basic assumption in statistics and all statistical modelling? My brain was trying to turn somersaults, and I had not yet come across Martin Stringer's Situational Belief, or I might not have listened carefully to what Roger said in reply to another master's student's query.
Roger consistently believed the World was deterministic. The question was whether this was useful in a particular circumstance. Modelling involved two things. Firstly, one had to collect data, which is actually what the physicists are doing with their big machines. The collection of data is central to the scientific method, though collecting and interpreting data is not as simple nor straightforward as many non-scientists imagine. The second, is then it is modelled. Models are summaries of the data. They are often numerical but can be narrative or pictorial. The thing is that the models rarely (never) capture the data perfectly; there is always noise. In statistics, this noise is modelled through the random process in the model.
Now, Roger believed simply that if you had perfect data and the perfect model, you technically could predict anything. However, the circumstances, where that happened were rare. Indeed, in most situations, you would need to gather data that was so cumbersome that the data was unwieldly and the selection of the correct model unfeasible. It would take a machine of greater complexity than the universe to model many processes in the Universe to this accuracy. In such a situation, using statistics made sense.
Thus, though an expert in using tools for the development of scientific models, Roger did not believe the models he produced were true. In the words of G. E Box, "All models are wrong, but some are useful".
For me, all human knowledge is made up of models, and all are wrong, but as the choice is to use them or to know nothing and so fail to understand the world, I choose to explore the intelligibility different models give of the world rather than try and make one model do for everything.
I presume Roger wasn't a fan of chaos theory, but I guess that's what the extra universe(s) are for.
What you describe seems to be about the application of the concept of perfection to a person's beliefs.
I find the idea that scientific models can be "true" or "wrong" intriguing. I think "sufficiently accurate" or "insufficiently accurate" would be a more appropriate designation. "True" and "wrong" seem to me more a description of the belief-value of these models for the people who create them (and consequently for the people who use them).
What do you mean by "try and make one model do for everything"?
There's a hymn, O Worship the King, based on one of the psalms, one verse of which goes:
The earth with its store/ Of wonders untold
Almighty thy power/ Hath founded of old;
Hath stablished it fast/ By a changeless decree
And round it hath cast/ Like a mantle the sea.
Now, I like that verse despite the fact that it has only a tenuous relationship with the facts of geography, geology, and cosmology. I find it rather more satisfying as a set of imagery than other mythological imagery, such as the Norse creation myths or Ovid's cosmogony at the beginning of Metamorphoses. That is, because I do think it is an image, however symbolic and metaphorical, of God's creative act and bringing the universe into being - even if we now know that that cannot be a process of crafting the universe in time.
Stories matter and are aesthetically satisfying not just to the extent that they are formally pleasing but also to the extent that they are felt to symbolise or represent something true about the world.
It is inevitable, I think, that we bring our own presuppositions and assumptions to biblical stories, or at least that we are inclined to until we are taught not to. And the presuppositions and assumptions that the typical modern Western reader brings to to the creation story is that creation means bringing the universe into being, and creating something out of nothing. Was the world created as Genesis described or was it the Big Bang?, for example. And that means that we naturally tend to look at the first chapters of Genesis as accounts of how God took nothing and made the universe out of it. And for many contemporary Western readers, our cultures also train us to assume these accounts are meant to be historical, or at least quasi-historical, similar to how an account of a war might be historical.
But as I understand it, making something out of nothing isn’t really what ancient Near Eastern cultures were talking about when they talked about creation. (There’s a clue to that right in the second verse of Genesis, as apparently “the deep” and the waters were there before God began creation.). What ancient Near Eastern cultures, including the culture from which Genesis arose, thought of as creation was not bringing something out of nothing, but rather brining order out of chaos. The god who is powerful enough to “create” is the god who can tame the chaos and impose order on it.
This understanding has echoes throughout the Hebrew and New Testament Scriptures, the Torah in particular. The image of humanity in the Garden having charge of the land is the image of humanity as people responsible for maintaining order in the garden, lest the wilderness, with its chaos, creep back in. The Flood is not just a random punishment, but rather is the creator god relinquishing the maintenance of order and allowing the return of chaos. The parting of the Red Sea (and of the Jordan later on) is another echo of God bringing order from chaos, and in the case of the Red Sea, allowing chaos to return. (And more could be said about the whys of allowing the chaos to return, but that’s probably more than belongs in this thread.)
Admittedly, I’ve pretty much always viewed the Genesis creation stories as myth (in the strict sense of the word, not in a sense that means “untrue”) and metaphor. I come from a denominational tradition that has no problem with that. But it was a bit eye-opening for me to realize that Genesis was actually starting from a different understanding of creation than the one I assumed as a modern Westerner. And looking for reflections of that different understanding in the text provided a perspective on the texts that made the old “is this literally true or not” questions seem a bit irrelevant.
TL/DR: To really understand biblical texts (or any ancient texts), you first have to understand what how writers (and editors) saw the world and what they were trying to convey about it and about God, rather than assuming that they saw everything just the way we do. We can’t assume that our default, and to us obvious, foundational assumptions were their default assumptions.
For various reasons, the church hasn’t always done a good job of that.
We then read those texts through our cultural lens. For instance, we often assume that non-literate cultures are less sophisticated than the literate. This is blatantly not true amongst current cultures; it seems a dangerous hypothesis to put onto older cultures. We also tend to subscribe to the belief that we are developing into a more civilised culture. Then there is the assumption of continuity between the ancient culture and theirs. It is difficult. We have words that appear only once in the Bible and nowhere else.
When we read a passage, is it better to look at:
and if all of the above, how exactly do you mix and match to come to the correct answer?
I’m afraid I don’t see why it’s dubious to assume, absent evidence to the contrary, that the written texts we have, which appear to reflect or record stories told, represent the cultures out of which they grew.
But I could rephrase the proposition: The creation stories we have from the ancient Near East appear to share many common elements, one of which is that creation is described as fundamentally bringing order from chaos rather as fundamentally bringing matter into being. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether it makes sense to read the Genesis creation narratives, which exhibit other similarities to ANE creation stories, as though they are coming from an understanding of what creation itself means that differs from the recorded stories of neighboring cultures.
An example was when it was thought the earth was the center of the universe. We could explain the movements of the planets in fairly accurate ways, even though the planets would often appear to reverse course. Then came a guy by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus who proposed the heliocentric universe. Then came the development of the galactocentrism model and now there is the Lambda-CDM model. In every case as more data developed better models had to be postulated. And it is not done yet.
The most widely read Hindu Scripture is the Bhagavad Gita, which takes place on a battlefield, and is largely a conversation between a warrior, Arjuna, and his charioteer, Lord Krishna, who is an incarnation of God. The battle is the battle everyone has to go through to reach enlightenment. But I doubt if anyone believes it's a historical narrative.
Many, though by no means all, Christians may be willing to take that approach to some OT stories like The Flood, or even The Exodus, but they would balk at applying this opinion to the New Testament. I believe there is much history in the New Testament, indeed many agnostic or atheist scholars believe there's a recoverable historical framework of the life and death of Jesus. But I think it's heavily blended with accounts which are designed to bring us into God's presence.
The parts I, personally, see as most authentic are Jesus' emphasis on the need for humility, as in denys self and take up your cross, forgive others if you want our Father to forgive you, and the requirement to Love God and neighbour and keep my commandments which are all based on love. Of course, when trying to construct a belief system around a narrative of Scripture, not all people will agree where the four elements in the OP start and finish, or where their lines blur.
The purest of pure statistics seems to be separated from the thing that generated the data.
Scientific models, I would say are different in the sense that the use words to describe concepts that explain phenomena using stepped logic based on what is "known". The problem with scientific models is that life is often complex and further research often shows there are things one hasn't thought of, the "unknown unknowns" which might break the existing paradigm. It's also not uncommon for scientific models to be completely composed of ideas that are strung together but have almost no meaning whatsoever. Entirely absent of falsifiable data. One classic example is ecology where the ideas of "invasive" and "native" species were popularised by racists and often have no actual verifiable scientific meaning. And yet are casually thrown around.
There's an interaction between statistics, statistical models and scientific models, but it isn't straightforward much of the time.
And it becomes very complicated when the statistician who created the model, the data scientist using the data and the scientist who collected the data are all operating within different philosophical ideas of what they think they are doing.
I'm not entirely sure what it is you are talking about, but it seems like there could be something akin to "survivorship bias" in what you are describing.
In fact there might be reasons why certain texts survived and others didn't which are unrelated to how representative they are of an ancient culture.
As an illustration, I was listening to a talk yesterday about the history of the fork, as in cutlery for eating. There was evidence offered of fork use in ancient china. It's possible that this evidence was preserved because of who it was (maybe it was written by an important aristocrat) and so on. It might not actually show that forks were in use by anyone beyond those who wrote that particular document. It's also possible that something else altogether happened and the story about a fork was entirely invented.
Clearly if one was going to say that this document shows widespread use of forks in ancient china there would have to be other evidence. Perhaps a lot more writing or paintings or a big archaeological collection of forks.
My understanding is that the creation accounts of different religions describe the nature of the cosmos or world that humans inhabit, and the nature of the God that brought it about, with the primary aim of laying the foundations of the belief system. I presume that the aspect involving order and chaos (or unordered matter) establishes a particular faith's or God's authority over the cosmos/world/humanity. Another aspect addresses the origin of evil, establishing a framework for understanding the problem of evil and/or suffering.
From wikipedia: