Catholics have their own ignorance. I think it would be good if you rejected liberal Christianity, you know, because it’s wrong.
If I were a liberal Christian I wouldn’t want to focus much on words and what they mean either.
Do you follow Jesus by renouncing your mommon, leaving your family and preaching the gospel?
Yeah I like Ehrman (watched a few of his debates), if I’m not mistaken he thinks all the miracle stories are false, just like me, and he came to that conclusion by studying the Bible also.
Seriously? Do you read anything that’s not a factual account? Stories can be true even when they’re fictional. Aesop’s fables teach morality. Uncle Tom’s Cabin describes slave life.
Your approach is like criticizing a Monet painting because it’s not a photograph.
I don’t believe in a literal talking snake. I believe that humans are estranged from God because, in general, we think we know better and would rather do things that are self-serving instead of self-giving.
Yes.
Although I think he really did rise from the grave, the answer is yes, the myth is true even if he didn’t. Christ continues to live today - in me, in his church, in the billions of believers since the first century, even if his body was stolen or something.
Admittedly my last History of Christian Thought class was over twenty years ago, so those cites are not at the forefront of my mind anymore. I’ll see what I can find.
No one thinks Monet paintings, Aesop’s Fables or Uncle Tom’s Cabin are important guides for their lives the way many people think The Bible is. If anything, the repeated comparisons made to other media are arguments for why people should stop placing so much importance on the words within it, whatever the messages may be. Uncle Tom’s Cabin might make you think about things another way, but how many would agree that referring to it for guidance is helpful?
The logic is not “Many parts of The Bible are fictional, therefore we should reject it completely”. The logic is “Many parts of The Bible are fictional, so even if the messages are good, there is probably no divine influence and it has no special importance over other great literature”.
Browsing a few articles and books online supports the idea that most church fathers supported neither a 7-day creation nor an indefinite one, but rather a creation of 7-10,000 years (arguing from the verse that 1,000 years to God is but a day). This supports my assertion that the Genesis account was not generally taken literally.
“There is, unfortunately, a common misconception that Christians all used to take it [Creation] fairly literally, and that in a post-Copernican and Darwinian age some of us are now trying to cobble together some kind of non-literal understanding. This is simply not true. At no stage in the history of Christian interpretation of Genesis 1 – 3 has there been a ‘purely literal’ understanding.” - Roger Forster and Paul Marston, Reason, Science and Faith, p.198, Monarch Books © 1999
“And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with things which exist? . . . That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: ‘This is the book of the generation, also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth’ [Gen. 2:4]. For the expression ‘when they were created’ intimates an indefinite and dateless production.” (Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6:16 [A.D. 208]).
“For who that has understanding will suppose that the first and second and third day existed without a sun and moon and stars and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? . . . I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally” (Origen, The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).
“And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day . . . and of the [great] lights and stars upon the fourth . . . we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world.” (Origen, Against Celsius, 6:60).
For what it’s worth, a reasonably scholarly series of articles on what the early church fathers said about Genesis begins here.
That’s reasonable, as long as you accept that what’s important is a subjective value and that others will make their own value judgements.
My reading of Augustine and Origen goes back 40 years, so I’m no expert. My recollection, probably bolstered by the fact that Augustine and Origen are both commonly cited as non-literalists, is that both of the writers warned against pitting a literal interpretation against observable facts. I’m not inclined to try to accumulate the facts to dispute with you because I don’t care enough about the subject to do the work. A quick look at Homily I in Homilies on Genesis by Origen shows him beginning the homily by saying that “in the beginning” is not referring to time, but to creation having its origin in Jesus. That seems pretty non-literal to me. YMMV.
If you click on the link, do a search for “beginning”, that’ll take you to the beginning of Homily I.
(emphasis added) The point in time or the origin? 
Actually, that’s a great example of what I was talking about. He clearly believes that Genesis 1 is a factual, chronological account, but he sees layers of meaning, literal and spiritual, e.g. he believes that the firmament really was created on the second day, and separated the waters from the waters, but then he draws some spiritual parallel to people partaking of celestial water and having lofty thoughts.
He doesn’t say it like, “Of course there is no actual X, it’s just a metaphor for Y.” He says it like, “Just as God did X, so you should strive to do Y.”
As for “in the beginning,” he’s just saying that Jesus existed before time did, so he’s the real beginning. But he certainly doesn’t imply that the Genesis account isn’t a chronological account of the creation of the world. On the contrary, he says, “there was not yet time before the world existed. But time begins to exist with the following days. For the second day and the third and fourth and all the rest begin to designate time.”
Sure, I really liked Moby Dick and thought there was a lot to learn from it. But seems you guys want to think there really was an Ahab who really went after a giant white whale, that really sank their ship.
No it’s like you read the Iliad, and you really believe in Zeus.
But there was a whale, and it sank the Essex.
Asking why there are myths in the Bible is like asking why there are myths in the Iliad. It’s a book of myths.
And the geneologies presented for Christ in Luke is certainly fictional, as is the one in Matthew. The latter isn’t even internally consistent, as a quick count shows.
OK, so you are basically making your religion up and what’s in the Bible really doesn’t make much difference.. That’s what I think liberal Christians do to.
OK, so a non-virgin is a virgin, very reasonable.
He rose from the grave even if he didn’t? That’s a good one.
I don’t think he continues to live if he’s dead.
I can’t wait.
I’m estranged from God partly because the Yahweh of the Old Testament is a genocidal monster who gives every evidence of delighting in suffering and liked to murder children for things their ancestors did, and partly because he doesn’t exist.
Mostly it’s the second part.
A few quotes does not say anything about what was believe “generally” does it. 7-10,000 years sounds like they are taking things pretty literal.
If Melville wrote that Moby Dick rose from the dead and flew around would you believe it? Speaking of whales, what are your thoughts on Jonah? Really swallowed? There was a chapter all about that in Moby Dick.
That’s not what Origen is saying in the quotes I posted above. In fact he specifically says “I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally.”
Uh, I don’t know how you get this. My “religion” is based on 2,000 years of Christian tradition and theology as well as the bible. No, I don’t worship a book like some literalists do. The Bible is a source of divine revelation - maybe the most important one - but not the only one.
I’m not saying that she was both. I’m saying that the myth of the virgin birth has value and truth. Whether or not she was literally a virgin is immaterial.
I don’t think he continues to live if he’s dead.
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Yes, metaphorically he is alive today as he ever was, regardless of what happened to his body.
I posted some quotes above from Origen and Clement, and modern scholars, to show that a non-literal interpretations of Genesis go back to the earliest church. Do you want to have a discussion, or do you want to be snarky? Because I’ll engage with you if it’s the former but not the latter.
Yeah, that’s what I think too. I’m not to big on Jesus of the New Testament torturing all unbelievers in hell either.
How old do you think non-religious people thought the world was in the first century? Plato, I think, guessed a couple hundred thousand years, but 7-10,000 was as good a guess as anyone. Once you make the leap that a “day” is not a 24-hour period, you’ve left literalism behind. If Origen and Clement had lived in the modern era they’d be on board with the scientific consensus (much like the Catholic Church is).