Is the Bible Inspired?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Good afternoon, @gbob. Our family didn’t make it to church today since our boys both have minor sniffles that we don’t need to share with others. But that gave me a bit of time to think about this thread. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m quite open to the Bible containing historically verifiable information. I also think it’s intriguing how the Eden story jibes with some things we now know, as long as we take it as the story of humanity writ large rather than a tale of two real people who lived a few thousand years ago (such as bigger brains and upright posture leading to increased difficulty in childbirth).

Despite that almost-agreement, I think we have different ways of looking at inspiration:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to view inspiration as meaning Scripture is God’s speech. I don’t think that’s the case because God-breathed is not about speech – it’s about breath. As we see in the Eden story, God doesn’t remain socially distant from us. God stoops down, puts divine hands on our cheeks and breathes right into our face. The result is that something of God’s is communicated to us: life.

The Hebrew language has an interesting interplay between life and breath. The same word means spirit/breath/wind. And I don’t think it’s that the same word can mean those different things in different contexts; rather, those different things were seen as the same thing. There was no need to distinguish them. In the Hebrew idiom, a pot breathes when it boils because the water is no longer still but now quickened with rising bubbles. Greek has similar idioms, such as how running, moving water is living water. Breath means life; to breathe on something conveys life. To be alive means to be virile: active, moving, replicating.

So when Paul says Scripture is God-breathed, he’s saying much the same thing as the author of Hebrews who declares that “the word of God is living and active.” God’s word, including Scripture, is alive and on the move. It doesn’t leave us the same. It’s not about telling us something we can verify, nice as that is, but about conveying God’s abundant life. It does that, first, through the stories of others who have contracted that life, and second, through how God’s Spirit still uses these writings as a vehicle to deliver that life today.

As Paul puts it elsewhere, to read the Old Testament in light of Christ is to turn towards God with unmasked faces, receiving his breath/Spirit – if not in its fulness then at least the germ of it – allowing it to grow within us, reproducing God’s image in our flesh (2 Cor. 3:14–18).

To the thread title: yes, the Bible is inspired. But don’t reduce God’s breath to words. To only find statements that may be dispationately evaluated is to reduce its life to a sentence.

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Nay bother gbob. I’ve seen all this in type decades ago, been there, done it. No matter, I should have said that to me the Bible is ineffably inspired and to me it is utterly irrelevant if it is arcanely inspired. I’m just not interested. I’m a simple man. It’s to[O!] complicated for me. In my cult we majored in the minors, we made history congruent, coterminous with prophecy, we had a wood full of trees and I knew every twiglet of every one. I’m more than happy for you to be right Glen, but none of it is for me. I take a different path now.

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Hi Marshall, I hope your family gets well. We didn’t go to church because it was turned into a virtual service, and amazingly it was more satisfying than I had expected. I had told my son that I wasn’t going to give up church service, but that I would sit in the back away from everyone. But they canceled it. lol

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m quite open to the Bible containing historically verifiable information. I also think it’s intriguing how the Eden story jibes with some things we now know, as long as we take it as the story of humanity writ large rather than a tale of two real people who lived a few thousand years ago (such as bigger brains and upright posture leading to increased difficulty in childbirth).

You have been and I have always appreciated that about you–you don’t seem to be afraid to take the risk of having data in Scripture. I agree with you about this data NOT being the point of the Bible, and it does run the risk of turning the Scripture into an idol, but the alternative is to turn the Bible factless, and that is something I can’t go with.

We agree that the whole point of Scripture is to turn us towards God. Today we live in an incredibly materialistic society who believes that there is nothing true in Scripture–neither history, miracle or resurrection. What I see this doing is maybe making one of two people stop and think about how in the heck did that get into Scripture and maybe re-assess their world view. We must meet people where they are, and whare I see them is steeped in the pot of materialism. (sorry if there are typos. This has been a bad chemo day and my eyesight is being hurt by the chemo. double whammy.

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Fair enough. Let’s continue our walk together even with different views.

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Most gracious gbob. I’m sorry for my immediate lapse.

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Thanks GBob… I really was not supposing oral tradition handed down from 5 mya accounts for that data…but I don’t know how “developed” they — the ubiquitous"they" — think human/hominid beings were 5 mya—in fact, I do not think they think any certifiably early human form was around at that era. But your data is interesting. I just am supposing some event more recent is referred to in the biblical account…whether the Persian Oasis or otherwise. World geography today is not what it was thousands or millions of years ago, and we forget that too in some of this.

If humanity has long been imagining itself to be part of a cyclical universe, the reality of one text (more or less “one”) saying otherwise is intriguing. Or do you mean “fluke” as in the Bible accidentally just managed somehow to state reality for once? But the patient and persistent (over the centuries) hint – or notification – that a Messiah whose name “will be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace” and will crush the serpent with His heel —is a pretty powerful event for the Bible to have foretold, among other things.

I will bet you have a real story behind your “15 years in serious doubt” — I have that one too, and more or less a similar amount of time.

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the time will come when you will get to whack me for may lapse in behavior. I know me and it is coming–whack me like a brother when it happens.

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Yeah, like I should put the boot in on a brother in chemo.

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They were not modern humans, there were hominines and some hominids on earth at this time. We are hominids.

That has always been my problem with this view. However, as I point out, the curses both refer to things requiring large heads. The curses beceome pointless if they already have large heads.

That would be what I call blind chance. I had my turkish translator experience and it was a profound experience in my life. Atheists almost always say it is a fluke, yet I lived it and know I didn’t mean to say the things that I said. Can I prove it isn’t a fluke, no, not to anyone else’s satisfaction. To me this rivers of Eden thing is far more curious. It is either accident or it becomes like my Turkish translator experience (to be found described on this forum.).

Yes it is Bluebird. That is the power of prophecy, if it is accepted as genuine. Modern scholarship has tried to make most of the prophecies, postecies, after the fact events–a cheat in other words. The power of prophecy as a witness lies in its being there before. It is hard for me to see how this Med thing to be turned into a postecy.

we will have to tell war stories. I would love to hear yours first. start a thread on doubt and lets see if others want to join in.

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Thee is no time Klax that we christians shouldn’t take care of each other. Today has been tough, maybe the worst day of chemo ever. I actually took my first nausea pill. But feeling sorry for my state doesn’t improve my spiritual condition. So don’t hesitate. Kick away if needed.

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I like the term “postecies”…but there often are as many, or more, arguments “for” the thing being a prophecy than the other way around. At any rate, the Dead Sea Scrolls show what people of Jesus’ era were expecting, and the LXX had much of what would be considered “messianic” prophecy already intact — centuries before Jesus actually showed up on their doorstep.

I did, at one time, look into the book of Daniel — which also has what some would call “postecies” — but which, in retrospect, were not so likely to have been that. Another big discussion to be sure!!

The large brain thing interests me. Will have to go back to re-read.

And my 15-year story involved lots of events — some influenced by a rejection of the sort of Christianity I had been taught, others influenced by what I saw around me. The “return” took time, but that is true for many of us, I think.

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I’m afraid I can’t accommodate your preference for no accommodation. Whatever it is you or I believe or the stances we may take, every other human being on this planet will be equally as entitled as our peer to make his own decisions. People are not objects to be arranged in line with our believes. They are as we are, peers. No matter whether or not we believe what we spout, we need to recognize the necessity of their acting in accordance with what they belief. Our best hope is to make common cause in regard to respecting each other as peers. If we don’t, we diminish ourselves first of all. Our very humanity depends on how well we respect others. If you act for a higher purpose reflect on how important that is to you. Then recognize how important it is to each of us to live coherently by our own higher values and purposes. I don’t believe this is a zero sum game where only one group’s beliefs matter.

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lol, I love that first sentence. Of course we are all free to beleive what we want. And everyone gets a chance to judge what I have done, whether I like it or not… My ‘accommodation’ objection applies only to God’s interaction with the Hebrews. It has nothing whatsoever to do with other people, other cultures, other religions. Accommodation in this sense is a way to make Scripture true in spite of it having nothing objectively true in it. It is true as in “Loving your fellow man is good” is true. There are those who would deny that loving your fellow man is good. they think if you love and turn the other cheek, you get taken advantage of. This is true in a non-objective way. Thus what I am against, for christians only is the view that God interacted with mankind leaving no observable evidence–which is inconsistent with the Christian belief that God didn’t leave such a trackless interaction with the disciples at the time of the resurrection.

You are welcome to live your life as you wish. Neither I nor my words could stop you from doing that anyway… You are also free to disagree with me. I think you are not understanding what is meant in Biblical scholarship by the term accommodation.

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I missed this and need to address this issue Marshall asked.

We have scripture saying God doesn’t lie. So however inspiration works, I find it contradictory to that for the message recieved to be false–such a message doesn’t have to be god’s literal words, but it must be true. If God inspires the message that there are french fries available with that hamburger, even if those words are not spoken, there better be fries.

No one knows how inspiration works. But we do have one guideline–its result must be true. And that is again a reason to find this geography in Genesis 2 so curious. Somehow, god didn’t accommodate his message here to a Hebrew writer who couldn’t have understood any of this geology stuff. God inspired objective truth. This actually fits what I have said for months, Simple stories can be real; they don’t have to be false as is often assumed.

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The early church recognized the canonical writings and many other documents to be inspired by God.

Inspiration is not unique to the sacred scriptures, and inspiration was not a criterion for canonicity.

But this thread, despite its title, seems to be more about other things such as an emphasis on the literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis, especially the second chapter.

The second creation story literally disagrees with the first creation story in the order and method of creation. So taking Genesis 2 literally opens other concerns.

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Not if you do what I do with Genesis 1. The Migrant Mind: Days of Proclamation: Historical Reading of Genesis 1

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Since the Bahai, and their writings, was mentioned, I thought getting this quote off their website might be of interest. This is in reference to renarks by Gbog… “The Bahai say the same about their books [divinely inspired]. How does one tell the difference?” — I should think that making the distinction would be entirely possible. One “divine” book talks about a Messiah who said “No man comes to the Father but by Me” and another “divine” book says “It does not behoove God to have a Son”…and still another book from another religion says quite another thing. You can be civil and charitable towards all, but you certainly will, in your own mind, make a distinction between these books --and their inspiration — in the sense of believing one and not another by virtue of the sort of statement I just quoted.

The excerpt follows: (Google the site for further info if interested]

Many religious ideas appear similar to some in the Qur’an because Bahá’í believe in the progression of religious revelation.

Bahá’u’lláh makes many references to the Qur’an and gives it great importance, since he was working in an Islamic context and the Bahá’í faith grew from an Islamic matrix (rather as Christianity grew from a Jewish matrix).

However, close study of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings show that he interpreted Qur’anic verses and the non-Qur’anic hadith in ways that were quite different from what had become orthodox amongst Muslim 'ulama in the 19th century.

Other texts

Bahá’u’lláh also referred to other texts, notably the New Testament, Persian mystical poetry, and ancient Greek philosophy. But his interpretations and his content are always original.

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I don’t think I said anything about them I wouldn’t expect them to say–that they believe their religion is true That their revelation is true… We should believe our religion is true–if not why beleive it in either case?

Years ago when a bahai friend gave me a book on the Baha’ullah and his miracoulous escape from a Persian prison, we spoke of that miracle. He believed it to be true, as I would expect him to.

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The first creation story says man was created 3 days after the earth brought forth vegetation.

The second creation story says man was formed before any plants had sprung up.

The literal disagreement is there.

Which do you believe, that man was created before plants or that man was formed before any plants had sprung up?

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In your response to Christy, about 8 hrs ago…