Is the Bible Inspired?

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@Christy

There is a difference between saying “don’t take that story literally” and “don’t take that expression literally.” I’m saying using the verb stand still with sun is a figure of speech. Identifying figurative language in a narrative tells you absolutely nothing about whether the narrative describes factual events (i.e. a historical battle) or is a fictional account. You can use figures of speech to describe either. Identifying an idiom is just linguistic analysis. It makes zero commentary on the “reality” of the events described by the idiom. So that last sentence of yours is not what is going on at all.

Then I beg your pardon. For the last half of the sentence. The linguistic analysis is still forced. The text describes a myth. The writers knew that of course.

[Bill_II]

@Dale

Do you mean like the fact that a ‘modern’ ANE reading of Genesis 1 wasn’t even a thing until the scholarship well after the discovery of the Rosetta stone

The Bible gives us answers for the questions which science cannot. Which makes looking for science in the Bible rather pointless.

Knowing the ANE background of the OT brings us a better understanding but I don’t think it changes the fundamental message.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Bill_II

The Bible gives us answers for the questions which science cannot. Which makes looking for science in the Bible rather pointless.

Is the Bible inspired? The answer is yes, but people do not agree as to what this means.

I find the best answer in the AME Articles of Religion, which say in part, “the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation…” No. 5 of the articles of Religion of the AME Church.

If the information needed for salvation is found in the Bible, then it must be inspired by God. Even so it does not say that we must believe that the universe was created in 6 days to be saved. The Bible is the book of salvation, not science or even morality.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Bill_II

I don’t think it changes the fundamental message.

Nor does a sequential reading.

[Bill_II]

@Dale

Nor does a sequential reading.

What is “a sequential reading”?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Count to six and then add one. They should be familiar numbers.

[Dick_Fischer]

Cush does indeed refer to the son of Ham. The Cushites or Kassites originally settled in southwestern Iran. Dominick M’Causland identified the Gihon as the “Gyudes” of the ancients, the modern Karkheh joined by the Kashkan River in the region where the Cushites originally settled. Today this is called Khuzistan, a province in the southwest corner of Iran. Jewish historian Josephus, who lived at the time of Christ, suggested the Gihon may have been the Nile, thus throwing off searches for Eden for 2,000 years.