How does one differentiate between parts of the bible that are meant to be literal vs metaphorical?

There are sincere Christians who believe they have the Holy Spirit who are young earth creationists. Are they right? They interpret the Bible as teaching young earth creationism, and the theory of evolution, in their mind, contradicts revealed will of God.

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I think I covered this above

The problem with including consensus in verification is that sometimes there can be more than one person who has come to a false conclusion. That is just an extension of the above, and part of humanity and the system as a whole. Otherwise, everyone would hold identical views,.Like the notion that it is the difference in views that makes horse races. Without diversity of thought we would be automitons processing evrything the same.

Richard

Yep sola scriptura can and has been twisted, misused, and abused. So has the Bible. So has Christianity. So has science, and drugs, and… and… and…

Which is why we speak up about what it originally meant and how can be understood in a good and meaningful way.

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as I promised to continue:

When it comes to the appearance of ghosts, it is possible to conjure apparitions in people which we understand better why this happens https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214012123 and having experienced auras I can understand what those experiences can do to you. The interesting thing here here is more what the story is telling us.

When it came to matters of reproduction and magic babies it appears things of that nature were taken quite seriously. After all, they killed people that had unsanctioned sex - let alone babies.

Another example that is worthy of interpretation is the first miracle of Jesus at the wedding in Canaan. “Sola Scriptura” at its best, as the way you interpret this story shows reveals what God you pray to and where your values lie. Is it materialism or spiritualism, is it philosophical understanding of the message or the willing interpretation of fake reality governed by our wishful thinking. Whilst this might sound a harsh judgement, the interpretation of the story results in a clear statement of ones value scale and ones relationship to God.

Does the text say that the water that became wine become physically alcohol or does it convey to you the message that this water was understood to be the more valuable than any wine you could ever drink. After all, it was the water sanctified for ritual purification, e.g. that which could make you clean as to approach the table of the Lord. Would Jesus as you understand him have defiled that water for the sake of impressing his followers? Would you as a potential follower of Christ - knowing what his instructions were - have followed him for performing an act of magic, admiring his power of deception to hide the fact that the groom was not rich enough to serve a greedy crowd who came to get drunk instead of celebrating a wedding, or would you follow him because he managed to stun the crowd by challenging their values serving them the cleanest of waters instead, combined with a lecture of honesty not to pretend wealth and shaming them for their greed. It might explain why he was responding so harshly to his mothers request. The choice is ours to read from the scripture what we think it says, as we are given free will to do so. You can probably tell how I read it :slight_smile:

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Wow I have never read such a convoluted attempt at exegesis in my life.

The wedding at Cana…
Jesus was reluctant to do anything at all but was persuaded to by his mother, why? because it was part of his extended family who were being embarrassed. So he chooses the most convenient materials. There would appear to be no reason other than they were there and could hold a lot of water. That they were used for ceremonial washing was nothing more than an explanation of why they were both there and why they were large. I have heard of people concentrating on the ceremonial significance of the water, but it is not part of the traditional understanding.
Most miracles in the Buble are taken at face value in terms of whether they occurred or not. They are part of the genre. A miracle is supposed to be physically impossible, That was the point for the Bible, there is no need to explain or debunk them for theological purposes. Jesus had mastery or authority over the physical elements of the world. That is the point of all the miracles. But most people were not even aware (or even cared) that it had happened. They just drank it! Mary did not need to know, she knew because she knew what Jesus was capable of, the disciples were suitably amazed and started to understand what Jesus was capable of.

Yes.

There is no ambiguity.

Richard

@Trippy_Elixir, as in the Tower of Babel topic, you’re asking the wrong, typical historical-grammatical question. All of the Bible is metaphoric - just look at those synonyms, regardless of what scant, if any, literal, factual, historical, correlated, disinterested, objective parts, reportage. One must start by dumping the intellectually useless historical-grammatical method and love God with our WHOLE mind. As He commands.

Thank you for sharing your understanding of and insights into Sola Scriptura.

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For me personally I don’t struggle with accepting the supernatural.

Take the already mentioned story of Jesus and wine. I believe the story is clearly stating Jesus turned the water into wine. Nothing was defiling. Alcohol is not evil. Water is not righteous.

Though I presented multiple options for the birth of Christ and I meant it when I said it could be anyone of them and not affect my faith , I still land on this one.

God supernaturally broke all the natural laws and brought the old myths into reality. Through the power of the Holy Spirit Mary got pregnant and gave birth to her son. I believe this son supernaturally , “ magically “ healed the sick instantly, cast out supernatural beings that are our enemies that were able to possess someone’s mind, and that he have this superpower to 11 of his original apostles and then to Paul and it died out with them. Thusly along the development of this story the son of god was murdered, and then his spirit came back to his corpse and it resurrected and he left this world, and possibly dimension behind and went to be with his father and that at some point everyone who was saved throughout time will be brought back self aware.

I’m ok that all of it sounds stupid. The Bible sounds stupid. Believing in Jesus, Yahweh, the story of Moses and ect is stupid. You will always sound stupid to the secular world explaining your faith no matter how much to try to dress it up unless you ultimately just say it’s all one big metaphor and not real. I think many struggle with knowing the world thinks they are dumb since we don’t want to appear dumb after all like the science deniers…. We are warned repeatedly we will appear foolish to the world and its true. Genre and accommodation , mistranslations and so on all play a role in how i view what’s being told. But science does not direct my faith in as far as accepting something miraculous.

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I tried to find a scientific explanation and i couldn’t really find one, well one for turning 20 to 30 gallon jugs of water into wine.

I don’t expect you will find one, either. : )

Then you believe wrong. There is nothing of the kind in the Bible.

John 2 On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; 2 Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” So they took it. 9 When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Nowhere in the story does it say that Jesus turned water into wine. All it says is that after having drunk all the wine they already had and then they tasted this water from the wine barrels and thought it was better wine than what they had before. And the water probably did taste like wine and also had wine in it since it came from wine barrels which are rarely completely emptied of wine not to mention filled with all sorts of sediment from the wine.

What about verse 9 where it says the steward tasted the water now become wine? Still doesn’t say Jesus changed the water into wine. That could mean anything… like the steward tasted the water which He thought was wine.

You are looking for a scientific explanation for WHAT? You don’t even begin to look for a scientific explanation until you have the facts. We don’t have any facts. Whenever police look for witnesses what is one of the first things they ask? Have you been drinking? Why? Because if they had then they are NOT reliable witnesses to anything.

I certainly would expect a scientific explanation IF we DID have all the facts.

Oh… and what did this have to do with the topic? Differentiating between parts of the Bible meant to be literal and those meant to be metaphorical. Well I think this one is 100% literal. They literally thought the water tasted like wine. LOL

You really are pushing the boat out here. All implications within the text would indicate that there was actual wine. Just because you think it is physically impossible?

Richard

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My goodness, these people must have been so stupid and easy to fool! That goes for the author of St. John’s gospel also. No wonder they believed in the resurrection.

Yes alcohol definitely makes people stupid. …or worse.

And Jesus himself was instrumental in deceiving them. This was supposed to be his first miracle. Turns out he was a con man.

No doubt, according to you, magicians are con men and storytellers are liars. But what Jesus did in that story doesn’t even come close to MY definition of a con man.

I do not worship necromancers and wizards. God and Jesus are neither. Jesus certainly made it perfectly clear that He never did anything that any human being couldn’t do.

God broke his own laws? … no integrity at all? Might as well make Him a liar too and say he arranged all the evidence to make fools of all the scientists. While you are at it, why not add murder and genocide with total callous disregard for life who smashes any people He made for any defect whatsoever.

…sounds more like the devil to me, frankly. But I guess I am picky about the sort of being I am willing to worship.

Yeah when you make it sound like a comic book or Walt Disney cartoon and then claim this is the guide for our lives then yes it sounds pretty stupid. “Hey doctor, it hurts when I hit my head like this.” Doctor: “Maybe you shouldn’t hit your head like that.”

There is a caveat here. We can do anything He did with the Holy Spirit. But as that tends to have supernatural properties I guess you don’t believe in that either. Shame, it is actually very helpful, especially if I get out of my depth. Which happens more often than I would like to admit.

RIchard

Wow, honestly never looked at the story like that before, its definitely an eye opener.

So, this is one thing that has had me confused and is also a bit of topic. The definitions i found between the two are:

“Basically, magic and miracles differ in their source: magic has either a human or demonic source, but miracles are a supernatural work of God.”

The thing i wonder is jesus is the son of God, but he also walked the earth as a human, so does that mean because he is the son of God that it overides such acts and they are thus miracles?