Bible Stories That Can't Be True

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

Here, Cecil discussed the ‘missing day’.

What other Bible stories cannot be taken literally? For instance, my current favorite is the angel who prevents Abraham from murdering Isaac. Angels? Really? C’mon, this must be some kind of metaphor.

Bonus points if you can interpret what you think is the intended metaphoric meaning.

[Chronos]

Do you have the same objection to all the other numerous places where angels show up in the Bible? And do you have some metaphorical meaning in mind for that one?

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@Chronos

Do you have the same objection to all the other numerous places where angels show up in the Bible? And do you have some metaphorical meaning in mind for that one?

Well, either you think angels exist or you don’t. I’m saying they don’t literally exist. What do they mean metaphorically?

[Princhester]

This thread seems a bit pointless. The Bible contains a boatload of supernatural anecdotes. Hell, the entire foundation of the thing is a supernatural proposition ie that there is a god.

If you swallow that camel, how could you remain consistent while singling out particular gnats to choke on?

And similarly, if you choke on the camel (presumably because you don’t believe in such unproven nonsense), why would you choose to swallow any particular gnats? You wouldn’t. So you would say you don’t take any of the supernatural stuff literally.

[qazwart]

A child comes home from afternoon Hebrew school…

Mom: What did you learn today?

Child: Well, Moses was leading the Jews out of Egypt and they come to the Red Sea. The Jews are stuck with the Egyptian army on one side and the Red Sea on the other.

Suddenly, the Israeli Air Force came by and they started bombing all the Egyptian chariots. Then, the Israeli army put two pontoon bridge over the sea, and the Jews escaped down one. Meanwhile, on the other one a whole brigade of Israeli tanks came running over and…

Mom: Is that what your teacher said what happened?

Child: No, Mom, but you wouldn’t believe what my teacher claimed what happened.

[SCSimmons]

Douglas Adams’ character Dirk Gently once criticized Sherlock Holmes’ maxim that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. He explained that something that seems impossible shows us something we understand only imperfectly about the universe; and in fact, we know there are many things like that, and we should accept the impossible as a learning experience and a chance to expand our understanding. Something that’s really highly improbable is an example of something we do understand, since we know enough about it to calculate the probability; and if the improbability is excessive, we’re entitled to reject it, even if the alternatives seem impossible.

The Bible provides a great testing ground for this sort of analysis. Take the Nativity story in Matthew and Luke. Virgin birth? I can accept that–it’s blatantly impossible, and ends up in the ‘some kind of miracle’ category. Joseph having to travel to the city of his ancestors for a Roman census? That’s just ridiculous–the Romans did lots of censuses that we have records of, and that’s not how they worked or what they were for. It’s not blatantly impossible–Augustus was a tyranical dictator who could order whatever he wanted, and there are no records left of this particular census. But the records we do have give us a very good idea of how his government worked, and this just isn’t something they would have done.

Of course, that then throws doubt on the virgin birth, since the motive for the Bethlehem fabrication also applies to the other. (Viz. showing Jesus to have fulfilled prophecies about the Messiah.) But I find that it’s the implausible rather than the impossible event that seems most convincing to me.

[Irishman]

Even though inspired by a column, wouldn’t this thread really be better suited to, oh say, IMHO? I can’t see how it’s really about the column.

I tend to agree with Princhester.

I’m sure religious scholars, especially Jewish ones, have hashed out all sorts of explanations and meanings behind the various stories. For instance,

Talking about an angel coming and saving Isaac from Abraham. There’s supposed to be a lesson in there about depth of faith, about trusting God. God instructed Abraham to kill his own son as sacrifice. And Abraham, being a good believer, set out to do just that, even though he hated the idea. And he prayed that he wouldn’t have to, but then at the last moment, as Abraham lifted the knife and ready to strike, suddenly Abraham hears a sheep (IIRC) and a voice instructs him he doesn’t have to kill his son, kill the sheep instead. He is rewarded for his faith by not having to follow through.

Or something. But the thing is, someone else can parse that story a bit differently and think, what kind of a loving just God would ask his servant to murder his own son merely to prove a point? Doesn’t that very request demonstrate that God is not worthy of worship? If God really is as described, wouldn’t it make more sense to believe that the request was a trick from Satan? Why would a loving father consider for one moment following that instruction? Nevermind the last moment rescue, Abraham didn’t know to expect that. What kind of a father is Abraham to follow through on that instruction? See, there’s more than one way to interpret a story.

But the underlying flaw in this whole process is to accept that there really is a God who really requested Abraham to kill his own son, and then stepped in at the last moment. Now if you assume for a moment that there really was an Abraham, maybe he was just some crazy coot hearing voices in his head, and was crazy enough to endanger his own son over it. It’s a schizophrenic that’s the basis for morality. Great!

Or maybe there wasn’t even an Abraham, that he’s a mythological figure dreamed up as part of some fable to teach the lesson of blind obedience and faith. An Aesop’s fable without talking animals, but instead angels and God.

You get to choose. Choose wisely.

[Yllaria]

Or it could be a story meant to show that if you start to think that YHWH wants you to sacrifice your son, you’re wrong because he wouldn’t do that. Just get those Greater Sacrifice ideas right out of your head.

@SCSimmons

Douglas Adams’ character Dirk Gently once criticized Sherlock Holmes’ maxim that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. He explained that something that seems impossible shows us something we understand only imperfectly about the universe . . .

Does the fact that this quote comes from a story in which the mystery is solved by determining that someone has

a time machine

affect your interpretation?

[Malthus]

@Irishman

Even though inspired by a column, wouldn’t this thread really be better suited to, oh say, IMHO? I can’t see how it’s really about the column.

I tend to agree with Princhester.

I’m sure religious scholars, especially Jewish ones, have hashed out all sorts of explanations and meanings behind the various stories. For instance,

Talking about an angel coming and saving Isaac from Abraham. There’s supposed to be a lesson in there about depth of faith, about trusting God. God instructed Abraham to kill his own son as sacrifice. And Abraham, being a good believer, set out to do just that, even though he hated the idea. And he prayed that he wouldn’t have to, but then at the last moment, as Abraham lifted the knife and ready to strike, suddenly Abraham hears a sheep (IIRC) and a voice instructs him he doesn’t have to kill his son, kill the sheep instead. He is rewarded for his faith by not having to follow through.

Or something. But the thing is, someone else can parse that story a bit differently and think, what kind of a loving just God would ask his servant to murder his own son merely to prove a point? Doesn’t that very request demonstrate that God is not worthy of worship? If God really is as described, wouldn’t it make more sense to believe that the request was a trick from Satan? Why would a loving father consider for one moment following that instruction? Nevermind the last moment rescue, Abraham didn’t know to expect that. What kind of a father is Abraham to follow through on that instruction? See, there’s more than one way to interpret a story.

But the underlying flaw in this whole process is to accept that there really is a God who really requested Abraham to kill his own son, and then stepped in at the last moment. Now if you assume for a moment that there really was an Abraham, maybe he was just some crazy coot hearing voices in his head, and was crazy enough to endanger his own son over it. It’s a schizophrenic that’s the basis for morality. Great!

Or maybe there wasn’t even an Abraham, that he’s a mythological figure dreamed up as part of some fable to teach the lesson of blind obedience and faith. An Aesop’s fable without talking animals, but instead angels and God.

You get to choose. Choose wisely.

My favorite reason for the existence of this story is one based on historical context: that the purpose was to demonstrate that sacrifice of children is not a necessity of worship of this particular god, in a context where many neighbouring religions had customs of child-sacrifice.

[gamerunknown]

Uh, I think Hitchens had the most reasonable interpretation.

[Sister_Vigilante]

@Irishman

Even though inspired by a column, wouldn’t this thread really be better suited to, oh say, IMHO? I can’t see how it’s really about the column.

I tend to agree with Princhester.

I’m sure religious scholars, especially Jewish ones, have hashed out all sorts of explanations and meanings behind the various stories. For instance,

Talking about an angel coming and saving Isaac from Abraham. There’s supposed to be a lesson in there about depth of faith, about trusting God. God instructed Abraham to kill his own son as sacrifice. And Abraham, being a good believer, set out to do just that, even though he hated the idea. And he prayed that he wouldn’t have to, but then at the last moment, as Abraham lifted the knife and ready to strike, suddenly Abraham hears a sheep (IIRC) and a voice instructs him he doesn’t have to kill his son, kill the sheep instead. He is rewarded for his faith by not having to follow through.

Or something. But the thing is, someone else can parse that story a bit differently and think, what kind of a loving just God would ask his servant to murder his own son merely to prove a point? Doesn’t that very request demonstrate that God is not worthy of worship? If God really is as described, wouldn’t it make more sense to believe that the request was a trick from Satan? Why would a loving father consider for one moment following that instruction? Nevermind the last moment rescue, Abraham didn’t know to expect that. What kind of a father is Abraham to follow through on that instruction? See, there’s more than one way to interpret a story.

But the underlying flaw in this whole process is to accept that there really is a God who really requested Abraham to kill his own son, and then stepped in at the last moment. Now if you assume for a moment that there really was an Abraham, maybe he was just some crazy coot hearing voices in his head, and was crazy enough to endanger his own son over it. It’s a schizophrenic that’s the basis for morality. Great!

Or maybe there wasn’t even an Abraham, that he’s a mythological figure dreamed up as part of some fable to teach the lesson of blind obedience and faith. An Aesop’s fable without talking animals, but instead angels and God.

You get to choose. Choose wisely.

Quoted the whole thing for truth. This is the exact part of the bible that made me begin to question the whole thing. My 8 year old mind thought I was going straight to hell because there was no way I could kill my own kid, were I ever to have one.

Also re: talking animals. Genesis never specifies that the talking snake is Satan; that was a later interpretation. It was just a frakking talking snake, and not really even a snake since it had legs at the time. And Balaam’s Ass. Donkeys can’t talk.

So those would be mine.

(edit: it was a goat I believe; thusly “scapegoat”)

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@Princhester

This thread seems a bit pointless. The Bible contains a boatload of supernatural anecdotes. Hell, the entire foundation of the thing is a supernatural proposition ie that there is a god.

If you swallow that camel, how could you remain consistent while singling out particular gnats to choke on?

And similarly, if you choke on the camel (presumably because you don’t believe in such unproven nonsense), why would you choose to swallow any particular gnats? You wouldn’t. So you would say you don’t take any of the supernatural stuff literally.

You have a point. Maybe if I talk some more I can persuade you that there is, perhaps, more to the story.

One result of the question in my thread could be, “There are no intended metaphorical meanings in the Bible. Either you take it at face value, or else there isn’t a story at all.” I think most of us know which sects follow this philosophy.

For me it is hard to believe that the people who were smart enough to compose these works in the first place were unaware that they were, erm, embellishing the truth, if not writing fiction. I realize some books might have been written by committee or cobbled together from ancient writings passed down from writers unknown. Still, I think the ‘editors’ surely must have noticed something factually amiss in the various Bible books and put them out anyway for the sake of… I dunno. Maybe what I am terming the ‘metaphorical meaning’.

Let me give you one model of an answer to my question. This is from an enactment of the pagan Roman emperor Julian’s journal, from Gore Vidal’s “Julian”, ch 17. I is is the late 4th century or so and Julian referred to Christians as “Galileans”, etc:

 As the religious forms of the state became more and more rigid and perfunctory, the people were drawn to the mystery cults, many of them Asiatic in origin. At Eleusis or in the various caves of Mithras, they were able to get a vision of what this life can be, as well as a foretaste of the one that follows. There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system.

Now into this most satisfactory- at least potentially- of worlds, came the Galileans. They base *their* religion on the idea of a single god, as though that were a novelty: from Homer to Julian, Hellenes have been monotheist. Now this single god, according to the largest of the Galilean sects, sent his son (conceived of a virgin, like so many other Asiatic gods) to preach to the world, to suffer, to rise from the dead, to judge mankind on a day which was supposed to have dawned more than three hundred years ago. Now I have studied as carefully as any bishop the writings of those who knew the Galilean, or said they did. They are composed in bad Greek, which I should have thought would have been enough to put off any educated man, while the story they tell is confused, to say the least (following Porphyry I have discovered some sixty-four palpable contradictions and absurdities).

 The actual life story of the Galilean has vanished. But I have had an interesting time trying to piece it together. Until thirty years ago, the archives at Rome contained a number of contemporary reports on his life. They have since disappeared, destroyed by the order of Constantine. It is of course an old and bitter joke that the Nazarene himself was not a Christian. He was something quite else. I have talked to antiquarians who knew about the file in the archives; several had either read it or knew people who had. Jesus was, simply, a reforming Jewish priest, exclusive as the Jews are, with no interest in proselytizing outside the small world of the Jews. His troubles with Rome were not religious (when did Rome ever persecute anyone for religious belief?) but political. This Jesus thought he was the messiah. Now the messiah is a sort of Jewish hero who, according to legend, will one day establish a Jewish empire prior to the end of the world. He is certainly *not* a god, much less the One God's son. The messiah has been the subject of many Jewish prophecies, and Jesus carefully acted out each prophetic requirement in order to make himself resemble this hero (the messiah would enter Jerusalem on an ass; so did he, et cetera). But the thing went wrong. The people did not support him. His god forsook him. He turned to violence. With a large band of rebels, he seized the temple, announcing that he had come with a sword. What his god would not do for him he must do for himself. So at the end he was neither a god nor even the Jewish messiah but a rebel who tried to make himself king of the Jews. Quite correctly, our governor executed him.

We must never forget that* in his own words*, Jesus was a Jew who believed in the Law of Moses. This means he could not be the son of God (the purest sort of blasphemy), much less God himself, temporarily earthbound. There is nothing in the book of the Jews which prepares us for a messiah's kinship with Jehovah. Only by continual reinterpretation and convenient "revelations" have the Galileans been able to change this reformer-rabbi's career into a parody of one of our own gods, creating a passion of death and rebirth quite inconceivable to one who kept the Law of Moses... not to mention disgusting to us who have worshipped not men who were executed in time but symbolic figures like Mithras and Osiris and Adonis whose *literal* existence does not matter but whose mysterious legend and revelation are everything.

 The moral preachings of the Galilean, though often incoherently recorded, are beyond criticism. He preaches honesty, sobriety, goodness, and a kind of asceticism. In other words, he was a quite ordinary Jewish rabbi, with Pharisee tendencies. In a crude way he resembles Marcus Aurelius. Compared to Plato or Aristotle, he is a child.

It is the wonder of our age how this simple-minded provincial priest was so extraordinarily transformed into a god by Paul of Tarsus who outdid all quacks and cheats that ever existed anywhere. As Porphyry wrote so sharply in the last century, "The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious; he has become immortal and by them his memory is cherished. Whereas, the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed in error." It is even worse now. By the time Constantine, Constantius and the horde of bishops got through with Jesus, little of his original message was left. Every time they hold a synod they move further away from the man's original teaching. The conception of the triple god is their latest masterpiece. 

One reason why the Galileans grow ever more powerful and dangerous to us is their continual assimilation of our rites and holy days. Since they rightly regard Mithraism as their chief rival, they have for some years now been taking over various aspects of the Mithraic rite and incorporating them into their own ceremonies. Some critics believe that the gradual absorbtion of our forms and prayers is fairly recent. But I date it from the very beginning. In at least one of the biographies of the Galileans there is a strange anecdote which his followers are never able to explain (and they are usually nothing if not ingenious at making sense of nonsense). The Galilean goes to a fig tree to pick its fruit. But as it is not the season for bearing, the tree was barren. In a fit of temper, the Galilean blasts the tree with magic, killing it. Now the fig tree is sacred to Mithras: as a youth, it was his home, his source of food and clothing. I suggest that the apologist who wrote that passage in the first century did so deliberately, inventing it or recording it, no matter which, as a sign that the Galilean would destroy the worship of Mithras as easily as he had destroyed the sacred tree.  

An extensive examination of the lack of literal truth of Bible stories by someone who was there and in a position to know. There appears to be so much meaning in this part of the story the parts most people are familiar with simply are not the same without it. OTOH, while I doubt that Gore Vidal is making things up, so far my amateur research skills have not uncovered the source materials in the writings of Julian from which he got these ideas. If any 'dopers know, feel free to post a link…

Anyway, the first part of the Bible mostly does not have to do with the Jews’ interactions with the Roman empire, but rather other things, and usually not so successfully as dominating the whole she-bang. Is there such a meaning behind some of those stories as well?

[FriarTed]

Well, I was ready to say “Vidal was a novelist- he may have pieced that together from some random counter-Christian writings at the time but of course he ‘made it up’…” In fact, I thought perhaps it was cribbed from Origen’s quotes of ‘Celsus’.

But whaddya know…!

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm

Btw, took me a minute to find- put ‘Julian Gore Vidal sources’ into Google, went to the Wikipedia page for Vidal’s ‘Julian’ which included the link to Julian’s actual extant writings…

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm

Btw, I know all these arguments & I still believe the Bible essential describes what actually happened.

[FriarTed]

@FriarTed

Well, I was ready to say “Vidal was a novelist- he may have pieced that together from some random counter-Christian writings at the time but of course he ‘made it up’…” In fact, I thought perhaps it was cribbed from Origen’s quotes of ‘Celsus’.

But whaddya know…!

Julian the Apostate, Against the Gallileans: remains of the 3 books, excerpted from Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum (1923) pp.319-433

Btw, took me a minute to find- put ‘Julian Gore Vidal sources’ into Google, went to the Wikipedia page for Vidal’s ‘Julian’ which included the link to Julian’s actual extant writings…

Julian the Apostate, Against the Gallileans: remains of the 3 books, excerpted from Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum (1923) pp.319-433

Btw, I know all these arguments & I still believe the Bible essential describes what actually happened.

Oh - and the Fig Tree incident is SO obvious & explained in the Gospels. The Fig Tree represents Israel or perhaps more narrowly, the Jerusalem Establishment. Jesus comes in his campaign to be Messiah, finds the establishment is hostile to him. & pronounces doom upon it. Nothing to do with Mithraism at all.

[TubaDiva]

Ooh, IMHO.

[PandaBear77]

@Malthus

My favorite reason for the existence of this story is one based on historical context: that the purpose was to demonstrate that sacrifice of children is not a necessity of worship of this particular god, in a context where many neighbouring religions had customs of child-sacrifice.

I have never heard it explained this way but I like it, a lot, and I think you’re right. (Right as in that’s one of the reasons - I also think it was a foreshadowing of God sacrificing his son.)

[Malthus]

@PandaBear77

I have never heard it explained this way but I like it, a lot, and I think you’re right. (Right as in that’s one of the reasons - I also think it was a foreshadowing of God sacrificing his son.)

Fair enough. I’m thinking of it as a pure question of comparative religious anthropology - that is, a position looking at religion as a purely human creation, uninterested in whether the religion has any validity or not.

The fact is that human sacrifice is very significant and powerful religiously in a wide variety of cultural contexts, and tends to get independently created in a lot of places (think of the Aztecs). Human sacrifice of enemies is of course more common, but still more “potent” is human sacrifice of one’s own beloved children - and this was practiced by the neighbours of the Israelites. In terms of a religious gesture, such a sacrifice is about as extreme as you could get, arguably more extreme than sacrificing yourself (also practiced in some places). Christianity makes full use of this theme in the story of Christ.

The potency of one’s god(s) is often thought of in direct proportion to the potency of the sacrifices those gods receive from their worshippers. A god that gets a thousand human sacrifices offered up to it - or for whom a thousand followers are willing to martyr themselves for - just seems more serious, and more significant, than a god to whom are offered (say) flowers.

To my mind, the story of Issac is, in effect, answering the question “why, if our (Hebrew) god is so all-powerful, is he not asking us to make the sort of extreme sacrifices our Moloch-worshipping enemies make? Is he not even more mighty and awe-inspiring, literally awe-full, than Moloch?” To which the answer is "well, he asked our founder to make that sacrifice, but then had mercy on us all and said animal sacrifices are ‘just as good’ ".

[garygnu]

The ‘Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt’ story is a landscape origin myth like cultures have everywhere in the world.

[Irishman]

@gamerunknown

Uh, I think Hitchens had the most reasonable interpretation.

Can you summarize in text?

@Sister_Vigilante

(edit: it was a goat I believe; thusly “scapegoat”)

No, a scapegoat is something different. A scapegoat is a goat they would load down with all their blame and such, then set loose into the wilderness and drive out of the town, thus driving away all the negativity. Sacrifices aren’t meant to be bad things, they’re supposed to be good things to show honor to God.

[Voyager]

@PandaBear77

I have never heard it explained this way but I like it, a lot, and I think you’re right. (Right as in that’s one of the reasons - I also think it was a foreshadowing of God sacrificing his son.)

Historically it was about child sacrifice. Inside of Judaism, it is about obeying God and having things turn out okay.
As for foreshadowing, if you look at a large enough set of writings after an event, you will always be about to pick out something supposed to predict the event. However there are many Messianic prophecies, and they all involve the Messiah becoming king and freeing his people - not getting killed before he even gets started.
The classic examples, already mentioned here, are the virgin birth, which comes from a misreading by the author of Matthew, and the trip to Bethlehem, which comes from the requirement that the Messiah be born in David’s city (and be descended from David which legitimizes him as a king.) Jesus inconveniently was born in the wrong place. The Nativity story is just about as plausible as Obama being born in Kenya.