Thanks for your honesty in your current thoughts on this. I can see what you are saying and your concerns, and I have worked long years thinking through those issues too. The questions you have are very layered, and there are responses, but in truth no one can prove it unequivocally. In the end, both positions - “is it true?”, or “is it false?” are a matter of faith to be taken by each individual based on the information they have and know - hopefully after thought and research, whichever way they decide (which seems to be where you are).
Honestly, were it only for the Old Testament, I might have a hard time believing too. But it is in the person I see in Jesus and what he says (what he ACTUALLY says, not necessarily what other people say he does) that I see something that resonates with me. So I look at Him, and in the person I see, I see truth and the face of God and Love. From that person I then look back to the culture he worked in, and from that basis all my other views fall into place.
But not everyone sees that in Him, and if so that is OK. Each must decide for himself.
Hi. (and hi to @Hamfy). Just jumping in to say briefly that my “Christocentric” view of scripture seems similar to yours, Dogdoc. Because I have come to believe that Jesus is God, and because Jesus took the OT “seriously”, I too must wrestle with the text of the OT and assume that it has teaching value in an authoritative sense. That does not mean a naive “literal”/surface or “flat” reading of the text. Jesus himself went back to the OT to exegete that the purpose was “to point to himself” and he challenged previous interpretations and assumptions of the Jewish establishment of the day. We learn from Hebrews 1:1-2 for example, that Jesus Himself is God’s final and most complete revelation of himself. As a Christian, then, I think my focus is primarily to learn what it means to understand and to follow Jesus, not getting too hung up on trying to decipher a singular fixed and certain meaning from a set of words on a page (as if it always exists). Neither do I feel any pressure to assume that the text itself is an “inerrant” revelation in every possible way. God’s intent was not to reveal Himself in a perfect book, but in the flesh, in his perfect Son.
But, yeah, Jesus becomes the lens with which I read the OT and the means by which I try to sift “God’s message of himself trying to break through” versus “human stubbornness and blindness and cultural influences” that have affected how the biblical authors have written. For me, it also does not mean that no wisdom whatsoever can be gleaned from other traditions or texts like the Bhagavad Gita. But because Jesus happens to endorse the OT scriptures and apostolic writings and not the B.Gita, where such writings come into conflict, I would consider the biblical text (Or Jesus’s view) authoritative.
I wonder if you think he knew the B.Gita even existed. That’s a question of Christology. I don’t find it instructive (at this point) that a Jewish man, raised in a culture that endorsed a Jewish text, would not do the same with a Hindu text/Scripture. Even in my former Christology I would say he didn’t even know about the B.Gita (or that the world was round and not flat).
Sure…given that Jesus’s audience probably didn’t know about the Gita we probably would not have expected him to quote it even if Jesus himself knew about it (that is indeed a question of Christology). But I think that misses my core point. Jesus quoted the existing religious text which his audience was familiar with not just to extract pearls of wisdom (which may be found in many places and in many texts), but to explain how the (limited and often misinterpreted) text’s main purpose was to point to Himself. Jesus was not ultimately concerned that people follow a text (whether it be the Gita, Plato, or the OT scriptures), but that people followed Him. I do not consider Christians “people of the book” (any book) put “people of the person”, i.e. Jesus. Perhaps that makes me a heretic in some Christian circles
Yeah, I concur with Barth’s take on “The Word”. I cringe inwardly when I visit a church and after the scripture reading, the ritualistic phrase is uttered “this is the word of the Lord thanks be to God”. Not everyone shares my personal hang-ups but fortunately this has not been the practice in my Mennonite tradition
im not going to bother entertaining that…we know for a fact that the historical element of the entire book of Daniel is true…there is a wealth of information from Babylonian cuniform tablets and various other historical evidences that support the story of Nebuchadnezzar as well as the medes and persian kingdoms after.
So whilst you claim fraud, you do so from a position of complete ignorance of the historical facts.
See the thing about biblical history which you continue to be oblvious too is this…finding factual evidence that largely supports significant parts of the biblical narrative, such as the existence of Nebuchadnezzar, Belteshazzar, Darius, Cyrus…even the gates of the city of Babylon itself…these on the balance of probabilities tell us that the narrative is true. How you can ignore that suggests stupid nativity and refusal to even bother checking before parroting dumbass wives tails from other individuals who have spun you a lie. This is more certain than the science of radiometric dating…and thats because we have records from those times where these individuals really existed and experienced the actual stories!
Do the alternatives have a Savior Who rose from the dead?
We aren’t stuck with just the OT any more, we have the promise “made more sure” (to borrow a phrase).
God has provided immense amounts of information that let us get a reasonable approximation of an ancient Israelite in our heads. I don’t think it’s at all an accident that just when people are losing the ability to understand the Bible we got this (ongoing) deluge of information and resulting scholarship.
Ditto. The Incarnation makes all the difference.
A great deal of the OT is a program to set up the right conditions for the Incarnation, specifically a people who expected a Messiah and had an authoritative set of writings that pointed (however dimly in many ways) to that Messiah. There is heilsgeschichte, “holy history” and “salvation history” because God steered things to arrange for the arrival of His Holy One – it is the One Who makes holy the history and the books that framed it.
You are plainly determined to twist everything towards a worst possible understanding, so determined that you are blind to the reality of the literature and history.
At the risk of repeating something above since I haven’t kept up with this thread …
I’m reminded of somebody’s observation (Pete Enns?) that the set of texts we call “the Bible” can be thought of as a “text in travail with itself”. Not a buzz-phrase for those who will perform whatever contortions necessary to re-make it into one seamlessly self-conforming unity. But those of us who at least try to read with our eyes open may often note the apparent [actual] tensions between one prophet and another or between later prophets and Moses, not to mention between later apostles and earlier writers. Noting all those tensions is easy enough, but I’m recently struck with the tensional struggles showcased even within a single text or a single chapter! I can say that after having freshly read Lamentations 3. God has caused all this evil and calamity to come upon me/us … God is against us, and yet - my hope is still in God, and yet (v. 38) God is not the source of evil things! Within that one chapter we have mourning, lament, appeal, hope, and finally ending with anger - anger at God, and at all the enemies and mockers. The author goes on into “full vengeful psalmist” mode by the end of the chapter wishing for God to heap merciless vengeance on all enemies. It isn’t just “one biblical text in travail with another”! It is authors (like Job and the author of Lamentations) being in travail with God and with themselves!
Motley, tatterdemalion, over a thousand years in the making, from thousand year older weave, with unshrunk cloth patched to old, and very worn over two thousand more.
I don’t find it instructive (at this point) that a Jewish man, raised in a culture that endorsed a Jewish text, would not do the same with a Hindu text/Scripture. Even in my former Christology I would say he didn’t even know about the B.Gita (or that the world was round and not flat).