Choosing between miracles and what's in the Bible

Faith & Science Conversation
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A great post knor and i find myself sharing so many of your points.

Probably the most important concern for me is that we know what a proverb is. I dont think that any Christian who reads a single proverb thinking that will be the outcome is following some other well known proverbs and or parables…such as the lazy servant in the parable of the talents.
Clearly.God expects that we are to use faith and works…not just the faith part (which is what the parable of the talemts teaches)

Christians far too often think righteousness by faith requires no effort…thats incorrect.

My point is, the bible is quite explicit is separating out proverbs and history…most of the time its easy to pick the difference.

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Sometimes it is easy to see the differences between genres (for example, proverb vs. something else) but not everywhere in the scriptures.

One problem is that many believers take what is written in the Bible as the words of God, literarily in the sense that the writings would be written word by word as the Holy Spirit dictated. What is written in the Proverbs or elsewhere is then taken as binding truths said and promised by God, as in a lawbook.

The more I learn from the biblical scriptures, the more I think that we should try to understand why the text was written, what is the original intention and purpose of the message, instead of just reading the words and taking them as something that is written in a lawbook - reading the letter but not the spirit and intention of the message.

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My answer to this is fairly straightforward…

The usual arguments there are highly problematic in that when biblical internal consistency is compromised, one knows for certain that ones theology is fundamentally flawed (and almost certainly wrong).

This is why cross referencing theology from one bible writer must be compared with other bible writers. When one does this, the contradictions are resolved and it is not likely one can explain away biblical statements that are historical.

I know some here ramble on about genre but honestly, these are so easily.reconciled and even falsified.

Heres an example:

Moses was about 1300b.c in Egypt…hundreds of km away from canaan and even further away from Assyrian territory where Sumerians were known to have colonised

Christ was preaching about AD 28 during Roman occupation…with greek influence

The apostle Peter, an eyewitness to tue teachings of Christ wrote the epistle of 2 Peter about AD 60

ALL 3 OF THE ABOVE WRITERS DESCRIBE NOAHS FLOOD AS A REAL HISTORICAL EVENT!

the above example falsifies the genre argument.

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Jesus wasn’t a writer.

I’d expect some-one who claims qualifications in theology to know that.

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Roy, that isnt a defense…thats just playing games…virtually none of the bible writers wrote anything, they almost all used scribes. Anyone who actually studies any bible history would know this.

The point is, did Christ say it …or not? (Its a binary choice we have there)

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Jesus didn’t use scribes either.

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  1. Did Christ teach the following?

Matthew 24 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. 39And they were oblivious until the flood came and swept them all away.

Did the apostle Peter record the following

2 Peter 2 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes

If you think the above are genre based mythical fairytales about morality, then the logical conclusion must be you also believe the Second Coming prophesied by Christ is nothing more thaj a mythical fairytale about morality. That also means, no eternal life.

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Read the references…

Either Christs statement about Noahs flood in matthew 24 is a historical prophetic statement or its a mythical fairytale claim of morality…take your pick.

I choos its historical because

  • the apostle Peter also references noahs flood as historical,
  • Moses wrote of it 1000 years earlier in an historical manner (its written like real history…times, dates, people, places)

If you choose mythical tale of morality…then there is no second coming and no eternal life …both of which are unscientific btw because we cant live forever, we cant levitate into the sky, and we cannot survive in the vacum of space!

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Yes like believing that Christ changed the Sabbath.

Can you show me the text in scripture where he says conduct this special day of worship on sunday?

The only day of worship set aside by God is seventh day of the week. The sabbath wasnt originally an institution of sin or salvation…he set the day aside and blessed/hallowed it in the garden of eden before the fall as a day to commune with God and remember that we are created.

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None of that is remotely relevant to the fact that you described Jesus as a “writer” when he wasn’t.

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Why should it be attached anywhere else? It wasn’t being used as an excuse for cowardice anywhere else.
Every good excuse rests on fact. In this case it’s a matter of everyone knowing the sons of Anak were there, but someone seized on a known fact about them as an excuse to try to avoid doing something that scared them.
The slanderous report lies in the assertion that “The land. . . is a land that devours its inhabitants” plus an exaggeration “and all the people that we saw in it are of great height” justified by a known fact, that the Anakim were descendants of the Nephilim. If the assertion that the Anakim weren’t even taller than the rest wasn’t true, everyone would have laughed off the report. By the time that Numbers was edited centuries later, a reminder that the Anakim counted as Nephilim was likely necessary and thus was inserted so the passage even made sense.

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Sure, if you ignore the actual kinds of writings ancient people used.
Why don’t you want the Bible to be the ancient literature it was written as?

Yep – first you have to know what the possibilities are. Use Adam’s approach, and books by John Grisham count as history.

That why getting into grad school required a substantial amount of literature courses: to get across the point that all literature has to be approached that way.

You’ve never shown that such consistency is compromised by anyone here, you have only shown that others’ approaches don’t match your views of what God had to make the Bible be (as opposed to having the humility to ask what it is).

Exactly – which is why it makes the fact that he used the Egyptian creation story as his framework in Genesis 1 perfectly sensible: what better way to correct the wrong ideas they got in Egypt?

So? Anyone who mattered in Egypt knew about Canaan and Assyria and what they believed.

Moses does, sure, but Christ’s statements don’t require that, and none of their statements make it global – that’s a human tradition you force onto the text.

The above has nothing at all to do with “the genre argument”; all it does it demand that the genre be twentieth century objective MSWV reporting instead of ancient literature.
You seem to have this notion that there can be literature without genre – that’s impossible! The only question is what genre any given piece of literature uses/is, and the only way to assess that is to start with what genres were available to the writer. To ignore that starting point is to determine ahead of time to lie about the literature.
So – to ask your kind of question – why are you so determined to lie about the Bible?

A very sloppy theologian?

Wow – talk about a statement that show serious ignorance of what “genre” is . . . .

False – given the ancient Hebrew worldview, and given the nature of ancient Hebrew prophecy, even if the Flood etc. were “mythical fairytales about morality” the value of prophecy is not changed.

As has been noted, for someone who is supposedly theologically trained there’s an awful lot you don’t know about the Bible.

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I do read them, in Hebrew and Greek, and in accord with how human literature works.

False dichotomy based on ignorance of the nature of literature and the ordinary use of language, including ancient Hebrew prophecy.

You choose historical because that’s a tradition of men that you’ve bought into without ever actually bothering to learn about what the Bible is – you assume it is what it looks like to you because a tradition of men tells you to, not recognizing how stiff-necked and arrogant that is.

I don’t consider myself bound to your imaginary choices, so I choose the kind(s) of literature the Bible really is.

Why do you insist on interpreting the Bible using science? I reject that, too.

Why do you keep introducing false accusations?

False teaching: every day is a day of worship. The Sabbath was set aside as a day or rest.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with why Christians from the very start worshipped on Sunday! Indeed for centuries they did both; the Sabbath was a day of preparation for the celebration of the Resurrection.

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