The contrast between the way the Bible is understood in the academic world and the way it is viewed in our churches is striking. I know because in my life as a priest and a bishop I have both served typical congregations and been privileged to study and to teach in some of the best known Christian academic centers in the world. In academia I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as "heresy" in the churches. The result has been that the majority of people who have remained in the church have become more and more rigid and fundamentalist, while those who have left have become more and more dismissive of everything, good or bad, about Christianity. We also now have a crop of writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchen, who have totally demolished the fundamentalist approach to God with their clever and penetrating books, yet they are seemingly unaware that there are other ways to view Christianity.
In the world of Christian scholarship, for example, to read the Bible literally is regarded as absurd. To call the words of the Bible "the Word of God" is more than naïve. No modern person can still believe that a star can wander through the sky so slowly that wise men can keep up with it, that God actually dictated the Ten Commandments -- all three versions, no less -- or that a multitude can be fed with five loaves and two fish. No modern person understanding genetics and reproduction can believe that virgins conceive, nor can those who understand what death does to the human body in a matter of just minutes still view the resurrection as the resuscitation of a deceased body after three days. Biblical scholars know that the accounts of the crucifixion read in Christian churches on Good Friday are not eye witness reports, but developed interpretations of Jesus' death based on a series of Old Testament texts selected to convince fellow Jews that Jesus "fulfilled the scriptures" and thus really was the "messiah." These issues and many others are assumed in the world of biblical scholars, but are viewed by many church-goers, together with the vast majority of television evangelists and radio preachers, as attacks on divine revelation that must be resisted in order to save Christianity. They thus, knowingly or unknowingly, join in a conspiracy of silence, ignoring truth when they feel they can and viewing biblical scholars, strangely enough, as the church's ultimate enemy. At the same time secular critics attack what Christian scholars know is nonsensical about both the Bible and Christianity and act as if they have discovered something new.
There are some biblical facts that cannot and should not be ignored, if Christians really value truth. For example, the time separating when Moses lived (ca. 1250 BCE) from when the stories of Moses were written in the Bible (ca. 950 BCE) is about 300 years, representing 15 generations of oral transmission. Can anyone knowing this continue to be a literal believer? The gospels were written 40 -70 years after the crucifixion, which means that most of what we read about Jesus in the Bible was handed down orally for two to three generations before one word of it achieved written form. The gospels were also first written in Greek, a language which neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke or wrote! How can anyone claim "inerrancy" for such material? Other facts well-known in the academy, but seemingly unknown outside by either believers or critics, are that scholars can find no evidence that miracles were associated with the memory of Jesus before the 8th decade of the Christian era, that there is no mention of the virgin birth anywhere before the 9th decade and that the narratives of the ascension and Pentecost did not appear until the 10th decade. The New Testament does not agree on such basic issues as the identity of the twelve disciples or the details of Easter. Why has none of this been made available in churches or been discovered by those who pose as the church's secular critics?
The New Testament also introduces us to a group of characters who are far more likely to be literary creations than they are to be literal. Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? I do not think so. There is no mention of him in any source before the 8th decade. Paul, writing between 51 and 64 CE, appears never to have heard of the tradition that one of the twelve was a traitor. In addition to that, every detail of the New Testament portrait of Judas can be located in other traitor stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. If a major figure like Judas is not real then what about such lesser characters as Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman by the well, Lazarus, miraculously raised from the dead four days after being buried, or even the "Beloved Disciple?" All of them, I now believe, were created to illustrate a theme.
It was fascinating for me in writing this book to explore the scriptures from these perspectives by journeying through the entire biblical landscape from Genesis to Revelation. That enabled me with both integrity and conviction to challenge the literal assumptions of the past and to open the biblical story to new levels of understanding that I believe are profoundly real. Who would have thought, for instance, that Hosea's domestic life would illumine his understanding of the love of God; or that Amos, a keeper of sycamore trees in the village of Tekoa, would be the one to redefine God as justice? The book of Jonah is seen as a readable mythological tale, deliberately designed to hook its audience emotionally in order to break them out of the bondage of prejudice. The book of Job explores the universal theme of why innocent people suffer. There is great stuff in the Bible that needs to be opened in new ways.
Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. I am tired of seeing the Bible being used, as it has been throughout history, to legitimize slavery and segregation, to subdue women, to punish homosexuals, to justify war and to oppose family planning and birth control. That is a travesty which must be challenged and changed.
I wrote "Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World" to do precisely that.
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anyways have a great day GOD LOVES YOU !!! YAY
Even ID proponents admit that theistic evolution is just creationism by another name.
"To talk of a purposeful or guided evolution is not to talk about evolution at all. That is slow creation. When you understand it that way, you realize that the Darwinian theory of evolution contradicts not just the Book of Genesis, but every word in the Bible from beginning to end. It contradicts the idea that we are here because a creator brought about our existence for a purpose. That is the first thing I realized, and it carries tremendous meaning." —Phillip Johnson
“[Francis]Collins, one of the most eminent scientists ever to identify as an evangelical Christian, staunchly defends Darwinian evolution…reported scientific indications that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 years ago—long before the apparent Genesis time frame—and originated with a population that numbered something like 10,000, not two individuals.” [ChristianityToday]
No Adam & Eve. Oh, noes! LOL.
This article seems to endorse a similar view, while claiming it for Christian scholars.
If non-Christians (including deists, agnostics and atheists) and Christians can believe almost exactly the same things about the Bible, then what does the word "Christian" actually mean? Is it just a way of labeling yourself as a fan of Jesus, or culturally affiliated? And what is it, exactly, that non-Christians are failing to understand?
Furthermore, if I'm more interested in the politics, sociology, or psychology of religion than its philosophy, shouldn't I consider "Christianity" to refer to what populous Christian churches do, and instead view Christian scholars as being the ones who practice a rare, fringe offshoot from Christianity?
power to the peaceful people
It's clear that in American churches the bad is driving out the good. I've attended a service here or there in my adult life, and recently at an Episcopalian church I noticed an undeniable shift toward the harsh biblical ethos of the fundamentalists. (They gleefully preach cruelty and torture and call it love. I was horrified; they were ecstatic.) I take this as an indication that people want this kind of religious relationship, to submit to a frightening and authoritarian church, and bible literalism jibes nicely with that infantile desire. Churches are giving the people what they want. Pity.
Bible literalism is easy and unchallenging, a lazy person's approach to understanding life. No critical thinking is required. No wonder it seduces so many.
You say that the feeding of the 5000 was impossible, that a virgin birth was impossible & that wise men following a star was impossible. (Even though on point three sailors did that type of navigation quite well for 1000 years) You say that the Bible is not the Word of God, Christ did not rise from the dead or that He was conceived supernaturally.
So what else in the Bible isn't true? "I am The Way, the Truth & The Life, no man comes to The Father but through Me." Is that true or not true?
You don't believe any of the miracles Jesus performed, that He rose from the dead, and you believe that He was conceived through natural means. Why do you still say you are a Christian, if you reject the fundamental aspects of Christianity that your church teaches?
The nation of Israel didn't wander for 40 years in the Sinai desert because there is no archaeological evidence for this, and it would have left a lot of evidence. No wandering in the desert implies there was no real exodus, and that means Moses was not an actual person. That is just the story that was recorded when the Jews wrote the Bible from their oral traditions.
Evangelical Christianity needs to deal with these realities that can be demonstrated before trying to get into other more obscure issues of theology.
Because everything happening is designed, the Bible needs to remain in the hands of fundamentalist, karma and reincarnation are the things governing man on earth. Earthen beings must experience everything any other earthen beings have is why Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us everything happens time & time again and in seasons (Ecclesiastes 3:1-9). Via reincarnation we have been every physical manifestation on earth who've already experienced everything they do to those other life types and our fellow man. That can only be done by keeping man-in-mass ignorant.
The Bible's purpose is to keep the ignorant ignorant (Revelation 22:11) and aid the wise in finding the answers to life (Daniel 12:10). Man-in-mass are to remain in their state until it is their time to go through the metamorphosis, New Birth (John3:8), for evolving to the next plane. The "Remnant" who evolves during "harvesting" of souls will be replaced by new ghosts or life-forces entering earth while those evolving replace those evolving to another plane. Those who leaves the last plane will forget everything and return to a new series of evolving reincarnatings until going through the New Birth again.
Genesis 1:14 tells us the heavenly bodies are place there as signs [revealing man's plight on earth like] seasons, days and years. So the Bible is suggesting cycles to life forever without end.
The solution scholarship uses need not be the correct answer. Outside of the Stele, there is no proof of Moses in 13th century BCE or any traditionally considered period. Merenptah could very well have been speaking either of the late Judicial Period or even the Divided Kingdom of Israel.
You offer us your truth. Divorced scripture from any fact, in fact throwing out scripturally based facts as in the case above. If the history is disposable because it doesn’t work the way scholarship believes it should. Why keep any of it?
When we get right down to it, it is more reasonable to believe white supremacist European males between 1 AD and 1996, got much of it wrong. Rather the non-white progenitors of the Middle East that shared, their religion with Europe wrote their origins and history down in their primary religious text, wrong.
Nah let us dicker over this point protecting our fragile super egos at the continued destruction of our id. Continuing to insist we, white particularly Anglo-Saxon (my own maternal ethnicity) men are so wonderful. Those original non-white authors have it wrong when compared to our modern understanding. This is exactly what is happening to modern biblical research fracturing it into fundamental, liberal, progressive, agnostic, atheism, the profound, and the absurd views of it.
Until we owe up to reality, my daydreams based three thousand years into the future, where everyone laughs over the hubris of the Continental Congress of the late 18th century. Because by then our descendants will know everything about that time, and surely their knowledge is greater than those that lived it. Keep playing daft WM, but I assure you time does not stop even for superior white males.
the Hebrew Bible doesn't talk about the Red Sea, it talks about the sea of reeds. The bible has been changed both intentionally and unintentionally over the centuries. There are wide gaps in the manuscripts and the new testament is written a language that doesn't translate from the Aramaic very well and ancient Greek doesn't translate to English very well. It's hard to know just what exactly is in the collection of books and letters.
This should be a strong enough hint, but in case it is not, consider who in human history has shown themselves to have this knowledge of the designer and see how little overlap there is between them and the physicists and cosmologists.
Besides: there are other and better forums for physicists and cosmologists.
I also look about this universe (reading the Book Of Creation) and realize that no person, group, organization, government or world holds a certificate of authority to speak for its designer creator (maybe it was a decider working with a committee of designers and a team of programmers). Therefore, if I am to be polite to the designer of this universe, I must study the result of its design to allow the designer to speak for itself. Listening to a lesser being, claiming to speak for the decider designer creator, would be an insult to the decider designer creator. I prefer to be polite.
(continued)
I also learn that this universe will end and I (at least what I know of me) will also end. So I realize that eternity is something I can ponder but not yet learn about. I also learn that no other resident of this universe is privy to information from eternity. I would like to have some information, but, I have also learned that no force of faith in a belief will make a belief true. It is only by a rigorous and regimented testing of belief that knowledge is gained. That knowledge is then shared and retested (sometimes with many iterations) until a consensus is formed and presented as true.
It seems that we do not agree. Physicists and cosmologists have great reverence for the designer of this universe. They allow the designer to speak for itself. They are polite. They are persons. They are part of this universe. They have a place here.
One last point: in the human history you mentioned, religion worked very hard to prevent the advancement of science and they had the sway of hundreds of generations of persons inculcated by corporate religious dogma and the power of government. That is precisely the subject of this discussion, today. The mere difference is that science has had about a century or so, without fear of punishment, to advance.