62,000,000 Americans did in 2007, according to Gallup.
I take things like that with a [del]pillar[/del] grain of salt, given how many people apparently don’t know what “literally” means.
Woohoo, I beat the spread!
How many believe that Sonaton literally defeated the Beast of Batrigore in its very cave?
Galations 1:12- I did not recieve it from any man, nor was it taught; rather, I recieved it by revelation from Jesus Christ.- Paul on the Gospel.
Look, if you don’t want to believe it, thats a different story, but don’t act like all the bible thumpers have just had it wrong all these years.
Atheists love to say thats its nice and cute to be Christian, but don’t in any way take it seriously. Again, if you don’t believe it, then thats great, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that all the people who have died rather then give up their faith have just ‘read it in to it’ wrong.
The only giving Christians a bad name here, is you.
You haven’t been around here long, have you?
:dubious:
Christianity doesn’t strike me as nice or cute. In fact, it strikes me as one of those things I have to eternally vigilant about in order to protect democracy.
If you’d been around here longer, you might know that, of all Dopers, Polycarp is the last person who’d normally be accused of giving Christians a bad name.
Now then: I totally fail to see what your quote from Paul has to do with whether or not the whole Bible, and particularly the story of Jonah, ought to be taken as a historical account.
This goes with pancakes3 post challenging me.
I stand corrected, I believe the Holy Spirit has corrected me and lead me to post this. Abraham did not have the ability to negotiate with God on this. Abraham had to do as commanded. I also believe that this was not blind following, but Abraham knew the reason why Issac must die.
Possibly, (IMHO) Abraham made some sort of deal earlier in his life which would have doomed Issac, and it was time. Though Abraham did not have the power to change God’s mind, God already made a way for Issac. The test of faith may have been that God had made a way for Issac, not that Abraham would sacrifice him, as I now believe he had to.
:dubious: You have cited an instance – and by no means the only such in the Bible, either – where the act of a righteous heart would have been to defy God. Moreover, the point of the story is that blind obedience is exactly what God wants.
If you are going to criticize the story for its internal contradictions, as opposed to criticising it for its improbability, you might want to actually read it, first.
When Jonah was thrown overboard, he was on a ship attempting to flee his prophetic mission. So he was either on the Mediterranean or the Red Sea.
Then, the fish did not take him to Nineveh; he walked there after being puked up on the shore.
If you wish to tackle the other odd claims in the story, consider that Nineveh is described as requiring days to traverse–for a town that was, at that time, fewer than six miles across, if one includes all the suburbs.
Hey, there was a lot to see in Nineveh, and you don’t move too fast when you’ve walked all that way after being puked out by a fish.
Btw, did ya see the Veggie Tales version?
It doesn’t seem too bad in there.
No, he doesn’t. First of all, the command in question came from the king of Ninevah, not from Jonah (see Jonah 3:5). Second, the passage in question (Jonah 3:8) merely says that the beasts as well as the people are to be clothed in sackcloth.
Again, untrue. It does not say that the animals are to repent, and it certainly does not say that they are to be covered in ashes. (Verse 6 says that the king covered himself in ashes, but this was a voluntary action on his part, and it was not a command that either he or Jonah passed on to the people.)
Why did the king command that the animals were to be covered in ashes? Wesley’s commentary offers a likely explanation. Ninevah was the capital of the wealthy Assyrian empire, and during that time, they tended to adorn their horses and camels with expensive clothing. The king commanded that even these ostentatious adornments were to be removed and replaced with symbols of repentance.
Whatever the case though, Jonah most certainly did NOT command that the animals were to repent.
Also untrue. First of all, as noted above, this command came from the king rather than from Jonah. Second, the king commanded a fast, and in his zeal, he even extended that fast to the animals. He did not, however, command that they fast until God “finally decides they’ve had enough and decides not to destroy them after all.” Quite the contrary; the king says nothing about when they are to end their fast, and he acknowledges that God, in his sovereignty, may or may not relent (see verse 9).
Diogenes, you claim to have studied religion extensively in a non-devotional manner. Nevertheless, you frequently throw out these barbs against religion (and Christianity in particular) without careful attention to the details of the passage. At times like this, I can’t help but feel that you chose to study religion with ridicule in mind rather that with the goal of understanding it.
What is interesting to me is that absurd hyperbole concerning the size of cities in that part of the world (on the part of folks who didn’t live there) appears to have been rather common in the ancient world; it is by no means unique to the OT myths.
I believe it was Herodotus who claimed that the walls of Babylon were 300 feet high; and it may have been him or someone else who claimed that when the Persians took the city, there were parts of the city in which the folks were completely unaware that the Persians had won the fight, days after the battle.
My “take” is that the cities in that part of the world were of a size that awed and impressed outsiders, to the extent that the tale grew in the telling to an absurd degree - see also the Tower of Babel myth (Ziggurats are big, reach the very sky itself).
Please bear in mind that Jonah wasn’t merely cutting across Ninevah, as one might drive through Chicago on I-90. Rather, he was going through the city preaching the need for repentance… and based on the response of the people, doubtlessly getting interrupted along his journey. He probably travelled a great deal more than just six miles, and I can easily see how this would take him several days to accomplish.
Here’s the entire passage:
And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
2Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
3So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.
4And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
5So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
6For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
7And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:
8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
9Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
10And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
(Jonah 3)
The only real legitimate nitpick you have is that it’s King who orders the animals to be starved and covered in sackcloth and ashes, not Jonah directly (though the implication is that the King is operating under Jonah’s directive). Since I was going from memory, I had forgotten this minor detail.
Everything else I said is plainly accurate, though, as you can see for yourself.The animals have to wear both sackcloth and ashes, water and food is withheld from them until God relents and – here’s the really salient part – the beasts, right along with the humans, are ordered to “cry mightily under God” and “turn from their evil ways”
Incidentally, I didn’t mean to imply that the Jonah (or the King, or whoever) had included “until God decides they’ve had enough” as an explicit part of his directive, rather that he orders it done indefinitely until God tells him he can stop. Maybe that was a little grammatical sloppiness on my part, but it’s hardly significant.
Finally, I do not throw out barbs against Christianity or religion. I sometimes throw out barbs about literalist interpretations of the Bible, but that’s not the same thing.
First of all, the fact that the king is responsible for that command, not Jonah, is itself pretty damning. It would be most unfair to blame Jonah – or any of God’s representatives, for that matter – for the actions of a pagan king who’s clearly acting in excess.
No, it’s not. Let’s go down the list.
First, the king did NOT command the people and animals to be starved. He commanded a fast, which is entirely different. He also issued this command after a citywide wave of repentance was already underway.
Second, as I already pointed out, he did NOT command them to be covered in ashes. He covered himself in ashes, but issued no command for others – whether man or beast – to do likewise.
Third, as I pointed out, neither he nor Jonah commanded the beasts to repent. This statement simply does not exist in the text.
Fourth, there is still no indication that they were to fast until God relented. They were simply commanded to fast, and the text gives no indication of when they were to stop. One might consider this to be a piddling difference, but if one is going to cast aspersions on the king’s actions, then a measure of accuracy is in order.
Finally, you make the claim that the beasts were commanded to “cry mightily under God” and “turn from their evil ways.” That claim is based on an idiosyncratic parsing of verse 8. Indeed, the New American Standard Bible (one of the most literal English versions) renders this verse as follows:
“But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands”
It clearly says that men are to call on God, not the beasts. The New King James (another highly literal translation) says that “every one” is to repent. I suppose one COULD choose to interpret this as including the beasts, but it’s hardly a straightforward or inescapable interpretation. Indeed, the most common sensical reading is simply that the people were to turn away from evil, not the animals.
So contrary to what you said, your error was NOT simply that of attributing words to Jonah rather than the king. Far from it.