Well, I’ve watched quite a few Bible specific threads go through the SDMB lately, virtually all the forums.
And it seems like it usually turns into a debate between those who accept The Bible (all or part) as true, and those who don’t accept The Bible (all or part) as true.
Here is my proposal:
Use this thread to make a point for either side. Please reference your cites, whether sacred or profane (religious or secular).
Counterpoint anything with which you disagree, again providing cites.
Please advise whether your cite is from religious sources or not, provided you can actually tell. (Is the Catholic Encyclopedia religious or secular? See what I mean?)
I can’t stress this next point enough: Please, no fundamental rhetoric or anti-religionist propoganda.
I’ll start the first topic and let you post point/counterpoint.
Add other topics as you wish.
Is the Mosaic Law Code a copied version of the Code of Hammurabi? GO!
Beajerry kindly provided a link to the Code of Hammurabi in the thread that this gave rise to. I trust nobody will have a problem finding the Law of Moses?
I conceive that both derive from the same complex of Middle Eastern customary law, codified by leaders and attributed to the deities of their nations as the ultimate sources of law. There are many good Jews and Christians who believe very seriously that God did in fact dictate the laws found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy at the times and places specified in those books, and I am not out to disprove them.
However, there seems to be some strong evidence that the Torah was compiled after the Exile from four or five tradition of narrative and law preserved in differing places within the Jewish state. I’ll leave better experts than I to give the details of what that evidence is. Note that this is not to say that it was not the work of Moses, preserved by four different traditions and redacted into a single document at that time – a position taken by some conservative form critics.
I apologize for not giving cites in the above; I’m running short on time online for today. Links will follow tomorrow if others haven’t already provided them.
A well thought out, logical, reasonable post is acceptable without a cite. Who decides what is reasonable? Why, the Dopers of course.
Alternate topics:
Was Belshazzar a real person?
When was the New Testament completed?
Who was Pontius Pilate?
On the topic of higher criticism vs the bible, I’m interested in the debate beyond literalism, that is beyond the predominant bloody battle of the past 2000 or so years which continues with nuts like bin Laden and Pat Robertson who interpret metaphorical/spiritual symbology selfishly as some historical fact/dogma that must be blindly served instead of recognizing that these symbols (in the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, etc.) are instead meant for spiritual advancement of the Self.
If you go this beyond this fundamentalism, then it is assumed that the Bible is a book of metaphors that have great meaning in an individual’s life and the historical proofs are moot. The historical facts that can really be found, like who the character of Jesus is based on, become just interesting side-lines or footnotes but do not add anything to the meaning of the metaphors in his story.
It’s like reading Alice In Wonderland, Finnegan’s Wake, Jalamanta, or whatever. The metaphors contained therein are full of great meaning, but the historical referencing is very very secondary.
The historical trivia of the Quran means nothing. It’s just trivia.
The spiritual meaning of it is the thing of importance.
bin Laden is stuck in the trivia. Jerry Falwell is stuck in the trivia.
Someone who argues that the Shroud of Turin is real is stuck in trivia.
And this isn’t ‘anti-religionist’. My focus is on what needs to be done to move the Higher Criticism away from trying to debunk Bible trivia to trying to encourage people to see the forrest for the trees? Why beat heads together about whether or not Moses was real or not? How can debates like this be elevated to “What does the story of Moses teach you in your life?”
Stuff like that may be too boring for people. I imagine most would rather sit on their porches with their shotguns and shout “Jesus really made water into wine, dammit!”
The most encouraging thing I’ve seen in the past few years is the bumper sticker, WWJD?
But whatever. My topic, I guess, is how to motivate people past literalism? Is there a practical way?
Question. Completed as in written, or completed as in “the books are chosen as canonical”? If it’s the second, you would have two very different answers for Catholic and Protestant theology.
At least for the early (Protestant) church of England, it wasn’t abundantly clear which NT books were canonical. William Tyndale, who translated the first “modern” English NT, was a follower of Luther, who famously called the book of James “an epistle of straw” and cast doubts on the canonical nature of a number of books. Tyndale reflected those concerns in his NT. After translating what he considered the “certain” canonical books, he pushed Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelations into a “grey area” section. In the introductions to these four books he hedged his bets, noting that these were “denied by many” to be scripture but “seeing the [subject] matter is so godly and agreeing to other places of holy scripture, I see not but that it ought to have the authority of holy scripture.” (I use Daniell’s edition of Tyndale’s New Testament here.)
Subsequent English translations of the Bible followed Tyndale’s lead in including these four books. However, the English church remained sceptical of their value. As an example, during the reign of Edward VI, parish priests were ordered to read one chapter of scripture during each service, using a perscribed order. This order contained every chapter of every book, except for Hebrews and Revelations–only about half the chapters of Hebrews, and three of the chapters of Revelations, were ordered to be read. (The Prayer Book of 1547, ed. Parker.) Hebrews and Revelations really only gained full acceptance in the the English Protestant tradition after the end of the reign of Mary and the return of the exiled Protestant community. Many of the exiled leaders were interested in apocalyptic traditions, and used Hebrews and Revelations extensively in their writings. (The English Apocalyptic Tradition, Firth.) The Geneva Bible, a product of the Marian exile community, did not contain the same concerns about the validity of the four books that Tyndale had reservations about.
So, as late as about 1560, the NT canon was still in question in the church of England. Of course, the Catholic NT canon had long since been settled, and I am certain that a Doper much more knowledgeable than myself will enlighten us on that subject.
Interesting Man. He was the Roman governer of the province of Judea. According to history, he was a royal bastard. No, I don’t mean he was the Emperor’s ill-gotten son, I mean was a real jerk.
The New Testament portrays him much more kindly, but then, he only really shows up in one scene and the Bible only talks about one decision. Mayhap he did suffer a change of heart of sorts.
In any event, the Jews themselves did not like the man. And the Chief Priest sort of kow-towed to him (not literally).
I’m a bit confused, and seek clarification of the opening post.
Higher Criticism (at least in so far as it concerns the Old Testament) seeks to establish that the five Mosiac books could not have had a single author, and the Wellhausen school identifies many different editors and contributors, and places the origins of the books into the era of King Josiah (~620 BCE).
Before going too deeply into that, I would like to clarify that the question of derivations of the Books from Code of Hammurabi are not central to Higher Criticism, and in many ways directly contradict it. (The similarities between the two Codes in fact indicate that the Mosaic laws long predate the Josiah era).
There’s too much difference between the practice of Judaism at the time of the King, and the laws set out in Deuteronomy, to give credence to Higher Criticism’s fundamental claim that Deuteronomy is a late conconction (I am drawing much of this from Rabbi JH Hertz’s commentaries on Deuteronomy).
I therefore end up with two questions -
Does the realtionship of the Mosaic Law Code to the Code of Hammurabi have any direct bearing on the basic subject of this thread
and
Does the term “Higher Criticism” as used in this thread relate to the Wellhausen school of study of Old Testament.
I’ll be happy to respond further once I know we’re speaking the same language here.
Sorry, I was using “Higher Criticism” as a generic term referring to the school of thought that took off in the 18th and 19th centuries, where evolving social trends and scientific thought was being used to disprove the Bible on various points and where even theological schools were concerning themselves with Biblical contradictions.
As for the 1st question, it was brought up in a GQ thread and I thought a GD would better suit it.
What I was basically wanting to do, was set up a non confrontational forum for discussing such questions.
Many people today accept the Bible as a completely infallible, literal treatise on “Truth.”
Others have no room for the Bible in their thoughts, because of what they have learned on their own.
And quite a few fall somewhere in the middle.
So, how does one figure out who may (or may not) be right? By a reasonable discussion. That is why I asked for no fundie or anti fundie postings. I want to keep this intellectual. So far, it’s much more intellectual that I could’ve hoped. (More intellectual than I am, that’s for sure.)
If you have any thing you feel needs to be brought out, regardless of opening topic, please do so. The Law Code question was to get the ball rolling…
Padeye, sometimes it’s fun just to watch and learn.
If the thread dies, no big loss. I’ll narrow it down and post something specific that others can take my side on or not. Or, I may just join in on someone else’s thread.
I’m not saying it was a bad idea but a good debate has a reasonable scope and it helps if you take a position. Careful how you define “fundie” too as some of the best minds on SDMB might meet your criteria.
