Question about Matthew for Christians

Great Debates
261

(bolding mine)

Given that college students are not that much older than high school students, I can practically guarantee that the majority of them were merely parroting what they’d heard from their parents, pastors, and Sunday School teachers.

I was born and raised an Evangelical Christian, still call myself a Christian (though a terribly flawed one, by some standards), and attend a church that is part of an “Evangelical” denomination, though not the same church I grew up in.

I was a “thinking” person, even when I was a teenager*, and that’s largely why I declined to go out “witnessing” as a youth. I preferred to wait until I actually knew what the hell I was talking about, and had enough self-awareness to realize that I didn’t know anything. I will “credit” a lot of my not knowing anything to the aforementioned parents and Sunday School teachers. The majority of those people never attended Bible college, so much of what they were passing to us kids was simply what they had heard. And most of them were not the least bit qualified to be trying to actually teach the Bible.

So a lot of them didn’t. I can say, with all seriousness, that I cannot recall a single serious, thoughtful Bible lesson. What I can remember, clear as day, is endless lectures about the evils of rock & roll, alcohol, and premarital sex. And Sunday School teachers/youth group leaders do not like having some smartass kid in their class who calls them on bullshit. Especially when they have no answer with which to rebut the kid’s argument, except more bullshit. For example:

Teacher: Don’t drink alcohol, it’s a sin, blah-blah-blah…

Me: Didn’t Jesus drink wine?

Teacher: Well, yes. But you see, the “wine” the Bible talks about was more like grape juice, not an alcoholic drink.

Me: … then why does the Bible suggest moderation by telling us “do not be drunk on wine”, if you couldn’t actually get drunk off the stuff?

Teacher: Um, shut up?
And holy mother of salad, I wish the Internet had existed when I was a teenager, so that I could actually look up and rebut the various horror stories they told us about rock stars. But, in fairness, they couldn’t look it up either. All they had to go on were books and videos from supposedly “reputable” sources, and they passed that information on to us.

*Which is why I attend the “Evangelical” church that I do. My particular denomination gives its local pastors a great deal of autonomy, and my personal research into world history, and church history, has led to my realization that my pastor is downright “Orthodox”, in that much of what he teaches flies in the face of the things I learned growing up Protestant, and instead lines up much with the Orthodox position. And my pastor is also a “thinking man” who loves stories, and language, and understands the power of a fictional story to make a real-life point. He’s huge on Tolkein and Lewis. He even agrees that profanity has its place. Hell, two of his sons are in a Christian rock band (one is the drummer, the other is the lead singer/lead guitarist/primary songwriter) that released an album with a song that drops an F-bomb while making a Christian point.

He’s the kind of person who is willing to sit down with a child or teenager who has a serious question, and give them a serious, thoughtful answer that they can understand, rather than some canned response.

262

Throughout this thread, I have been fighting, unsuccessfully, against the straw man of 19th century literalism. I have explained several times that when I say most Christians for most of the last 2000 years took everything literally, I don’t mean they never allowed for metaphor or imprecision, I just mean they didn’t question that the events described (creation, flood, miracles, Star and Slaughter of Bethlehem, Flight to Egypt, etc.) really happened, essentially as described.

I’ve already given examples, but I’ll give another one: Luke says that shortly before Jesus was born, and when Quirinius governed Syria, Augustus Caesar ordered a census of the whole world, and that it required people to travel to the city of their ancestors. In many debates over the years, I have attacked that claim as ridiculous on many fronts: there’s no historical record of such a census, Quirinius didn’t govern Syria while Herod was alive, Galilee was not part of the Syrian province, the travel requirement would disrupt commerce all over the Empire, etc. But never, in several decades of debate over this verse, have I made an issue of the phrase, “the whole world.” It’s just obvious that Luke meant “the whole Roman Empire,” which (to his audience) was essentially the whole world.

In this thread, however, I have had little success in getting my meaning across. People kept insisting that I’m claiming that Middle Age peasants practiced 19th-century literalism, to the point where I gave up.

Happily, I have been rescued by Pope Leo XIII. I stumbled across his Providentissimus Deus, written in 1893 and addressing the emerging problem of various forms of scholarly Biblical criticism (Wellhausen’s seminal book on the Documentary Hypothesis was published in 1883), and I realized that I had read it so long before (probably 40 years ago) that I had forgotten about it, but that it had been formative in my opinion of Catholic theology.

Here’s what he says about scientific/historic literalism (emphasis mine):

[QUOTE=Pope Leo XIII]
There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, “not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.”(51) If dissension should arise between them, here is the rule also laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologian: “Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so.”(52) To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost “Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation.”(53) Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers-as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us - 'went by what sensibly appeared,"(54) or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to.
[/QUOTE]

YES! EXACTLY! If the Bible says the sun rose and set, even though we know that’s an illusion caused by the rotation of the earth, that’s fine; we still say it today. If the Bible talks about the four corners of the earth, we still say that today, too. It’s no big deal. I don’t insist on taking stuff like that literally. When I say people took Luke’s census literally, I mean they believed that it happened, and Qurinius was governor, and Joseph was required to travel to Bethlehem for some reason, but NOT that it encompassed the whole world. I don’t see why that’s hard for anyone to understand.

BUT, he says, that doesn’t mean that the Bible is not inerrant (emphasis mine):

[QUOTE=Pope Leo XIII]

It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible; this question, when it arises, should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good hermeneutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the obscurity. But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it- this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last: “The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.”(57) Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write-He was so present to them-that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth.
[/QUOTE]

So there you go. That’s the Pope, not an evangelical. And he’s saying is it NOT OK to say that the authors of scripture were just doing the best they could within their own limited, human understanding – he says that they were guided by God in every word they wrote. It is NOT OK to say that some parts of the Bible are less inspired than others. It is NOT OK to say that, copyists’ errors aside, the Bible is not infallible.

And, emphatically, it CANNOT BE TOLERATED to say that we should just look at the instructive value of a passage, and not worry about whether it’s actually true or false. If it’s in the Bible, it’s true.

It is the position of several posters in this thread that 19th century literalism sprang up as a reaction to the scientific discoveries, e.g. in geology and biology, that cast parts of the Bible as scientifically foolish.

I agree. I think that’s obvious. What these sophisticated posters IMO don’t see, even as fish don’t notice the water they’re swimming in, is that their sophisticated attitudes of “Who cares,” or “it’s not intended as journalism,” or “it’s a metaphor” (said of passages obviously intended as flat narrative) are also a reaction to science. The literalists dig in their heels and double down on taking everything literally; the sophisticates pretend that those passages were never intended to be taken literally, and that even CLEARLY historical narratives like the census and the Slaughter were metaphors or parables or just instructive fables, and only the deeper meaning is important.

But that’s not what Leo says. He says that such an interpretation is “intolerable,” and always has been – “This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church.”

So yes, Augustine took Genesis literally. Not as a fundamentalist would, insisting on six 24-hour days of creation, but according to Leo’s guidelines, insisting that the creation account is not in error, and is not a metaphor. His solution was to note that “day” is used as “period” elsewhere in the Bible, and so “day” is also used in that sense in Genesis. But he still believes that everything happened as the Bible says it did, including the genealogies using “regular” years starting from Adam. For example:

[QUOTE=St. Augustine]
“They [pagans] are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of [man as] many thousands of years, though reckoning by the sacred writings we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed” (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 12:10).
[/QUOTE]

Leo wrote his encyclical in 1893. That was before the discovery of radioactivity gave a mechanism for the sun to be billions of years old, rather than even the “many thousands” of the pagans. It was before Mendel’s work on genetics was re-discovered and gave a mechanism for inheritance, and the discovery of countless fossils, including those of transitional forms, that make evolution undeniable. It was long before DNA was discovered. It was, in short, before people realized how well science explained things, and how large the gap between science and the Bible was.

So now, the view is more sophisticated. I believe the posters in this thread who say that they were taught things in Catholic schools that might make Leo’s toes curl. The Catholic Church has long since accepted evolution; they’ve even apologized for their treatment of Galileo:

[QUOTE=Pope John Paul II, 1992]
The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture.
[/QUOTE]

But I assert that my cites from Leo, and even John Paul II, show that what I said was correct: that the vast majority of Christians, for the vast majority of Christian history, did not question the literal truth of the Bible (with “literal” used as I have attempted to explain it in this lengthy post).

I hope that clears things up.

263

So, you think that a nineteenth century declaration by a person fully embracing nineteenth century attitudes among some religious people is evidence that various attitudes toward scripture could not have arisen in the nineteenth century. Interesting concept.
(I will also note that some of the ideas you are imputing to that nineteenth century religious statement are being interpreted through your twenty-first century secular world view. However, given our failure to understand each other in previous posts, I doubt that I would be able to demonstrate that to your satisfaction.)
And, to a certain extent, Leo was just wrong. (The declaration is not an infallible declaration.)

264

What’s more interesting, at least to me, is that in the post you’re responding to, I explicitly said that 19th century literalism arose in reaction to the 19th century scientific challenge to a literal interpretation of the scriptures, which is the opposite of what you said I think. Your reading comprehension is beyond question, so that’s pretty baffling. I suppose we all have to deal with cognitive dissonance in our own way.

Also interesting is your characterization of the third longest-serving Pope in history as “a person fully embracing nineteenth century attitudes among some religious people,” as if he’s just some random member of a splinter denomination. And I guess another random slob is John Paul II, the second longest-serving Pope, who confirmed that in 1615, theologians took the Bible literally even in scientific matters. To be exact, the Inquisition, after some months of deliberation, declared that the heliocentric theory was “…formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the words…”

I consider this strong evidence for my assertion that long before 19th century science posed a serious challenge to the scriptures, the default position, even among the Church’s top theologians, was a literal interpretation, as defined by Leo. Or in this case, perhaps even more literal than Leo’s definition.

You’re entitled to that opinion. But of course it wasn’t just Leo, it was he and the many Church scholars who worked on that encyclical, along with JPII and the many Church scholars who worked on the report I cited from him. It was evidently not a viewpoint confined to Protestant evangelicals, and Leo’s statement that his encyclical espoused “the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican,” vetted as it was by God knows how many people, would seem to indicate that your opinion is mistaken.

265

Just as many Islamic scholars, all equally vetted, have worked just as judiciously to define terms of modern Islam. Yet either they are wrong…or the Catholic Christians are wrong…because the two faiths are incompatible on certain matters.

Just saying, “They worked real hard to come up with this” doesn’t provide it with any cachet of truth.

266

In the paragraph you quoted, I wasn’t talking about how modern Catholics interpret the Bible; I was talking about how two very well respected former Popes thought people interpreted the Bible centuries (and in Leo’s case, millennia) ago. And with due deference to tomndebb, I think that they probably gave it more thought, and had a better research staff.

So even if I’m wrong, I’m in good company.

267

You said it better than I.

I’d also add, Leo XIII also refused to condemn Darwin or the Theory of Evolution.

268

You are quoting a nineteenth century scholar speaking in terms of the nineteenth century, but drawing conclusions about prior generations. That is hardly cognitive dissonance on my part. Leo was speaking as a man of his time, having already accepted the mindset of post-Enlightenment Europe, and failing to recognize the shift in attitudes that occurred in the ways of belief before he was born.

Popes living a long time has little to do with the accuracy of their statements.

And all the people who vetted Leo’s statement were also operating in the nineteenth century.

As to Pope John Paul II, note the incident to which he refers. Galileo was writing during the period, (in fact, leading the movement) toward scientific inquiry. When his works were published, some theologians attacked him; others did not. It was the first time that scripture was actually challenged on the basis of science or history. It provided the reaction that both of us agree occurred. However, you are looking backward at the idea–formulated only at the time of the Galilean trials, gaining some traction during the Enlightenment, and coming to full bloom in the nineteenth century–and presuming that such an attitude of literalness had always existed. Your interpretation ignores the politics of the Reformation that shaped a number of views on the dispute as well as the perceived attack on Aristotelian philosophy that helped shape the arguments.

If the scripture was seen as literally accurate, where are the challenges among theologians to Adam’s creation as the second-to-last living creature as opposed to as the first living creature? Where are the challenges to Noah bringing one pair or seven pairs of clean animals to the ark?
Where are the arguments among the Greeks as to whether Athena was sired by Zeus or Pallas?

Without an explanation of how those passages and stories survived, unchallenged, I have no idea what you think you mean by scripture being “literally true.”

269

You are quoting a nineteenth century scholar speaking in terms of the nineteenth century, but drawing conclusions about prior generations. That is hardly cognitive dissonance on my part.
[/QUOTE]

I really am starting to wonder about how you so consistently miss the point, even in very short paragraphs. I’m not quoting a 19th-century scholar in that paragraph; I’m talking about you so mischaracterizing my opinion as to claim I think the opposite of what I said.

/sarcasm
Yes, the year of his birth obviously makes it impossible for Leo, or any of his staff, to know what they are talking about. Fortunately, you, as a man of your time, can be completely objective about the Middle Ages. /

I agree that the length of his reign isn’t crucial, but I still strongly disagree with your implication that a Papal encyclical should be given no more weight than the opinion of any other 19th century kook, let alone your new implication that the Vatican was a hotbed of Protestant literalism.

Yes, yes, and therefore incapable of being correct about Church history. We get that.

I’m sure that was a great consolation to Galileo. Too bad he didn’t have the wit to charge his accusers with incapacity to interpret scripture, based on the fact that they were born in the 16th century, and thus caught up in the anti-science frenzy ignited by his works.

And it would be a telling point, if I hadn’t acknowledged in one of my first posts here that there have always been exceptions among scholars and theologians, who comprise far less than 1% of the Church. That has nothing to do with what the vast, vast majority of Christians thought.

But John Paul II wasn’t born in the 19th century; in fact, he actually lived five years into the 21st century without repudiating that “nonsense” he wrote about 1600’s theologians, so I’m afraid that his agreement with me can only be attributed to sheer stupidity. I wonder if you can pinpoint the year between JPII’s birth and yours, when objectivity and intelligence finally triumphed over 19th-century thinking.

This is amazing. I know you’ve heard of Augustine. Heck, I’ve even quoted Augustine above, saying don’t fuck with the scientists, a thousand years before Galileo. I’m picturing you as the robot in Star Trek, with smoke coming out of its ears after Kirk gives it the liar paradox.

In other words, if everybody believed the Bible, where are all the people who didn’t believe the Bible? And where is all the disputation among Christians over issues that were settled by Jewish scholars centuries before Jesus was born?

Even I, as a confirmed atheist, have no trouble with those examples. I accept that they betray different authors, but for a devout Christian, they are very easy to reconcile. There’s nothing contradictory about God giving Noah general instructions at first and more specific instructions later, or with God finding it just as easy to create animals on site for Adam to name, rather than transporting previously created animals to him. You would have done better to ask me how fruit trees could be growing before the sun was created, but that too is asked and answered in very early writings.

Again, I know you know this. I consider such desperate flailing as an indication that you really have nothing cogent to say.

===

**tl, dr: I’ve cited Popes, and Augustine. You’ve waved your hands and said, “Bah, what did they know?” IMO you know you’re wrong, but you refuse to admit it. It was bad enough when you resorted to attacking straw nits, but now you seem to have forgotten everything you ever knew about history.

I’m going to leave it here. IMO anyone who can read the last several posts and agree with you is a person that I am incapable of understanding. My fault, I’m sure.

There was little dispute about the literal truth (allowing for obvious figures of speech such as “the sun rose” or “the whole world,” but not allowing for flat narrative to be dismissed as allegorical) of the Bible before the 19th century, because before then, the typical Christian had no reason to disbelieve it. There was no geology or biology or archaeology to throw it in doubt, and when someone did challenge it, unless he had scholarly credentials and wrote very carefully (and sometimes even that didn’t help), he risked prison or worse. This is just common sense, as well as documented history.

I really don’t understand why you’re fighting so hard. What do you lose to admit that people a thousand years ago knew less, about almost everything, than they do today?

270

Of course he thinks that people a thousand years ago knew less than today. The charge that others miss the point applies, IMO, directly onto you most of all in this thread. What he is saying is that prior to the Protestant Reformation, there was not their literalist reverence for the Scriptural text as there was afterwards (+ a few years) for obvious reasons. So if people ran into things that countered their belief in things, it was ok for that belief to change in accord to what was figured out and their faith did not suffer - after all, everyone was Catholic or Orthodox (basically). In both of those traditions, the Bible is not held up on a podium to be the be all and end all. Scripture held an equal power with Tradition and was supposed to be read through Priestly interpretation. To illustrate the point, in the late 18th Century, there was a fuss in NYC schools. They issued Bibles (which they could back then) for study in the schools, but they were Protestant Bibles - just the text, no interpretation. The Catholic families protested and pulled their children out of the public schools, only to reach the compromise, the Catholic Bibles, with the proper interpretative footnotes included, to be an option in the schools for Catholic children. The Bible was to be read through the lens of interpretation arrived at through the ages. In this type of view, who was going to assert that the text of the Scriptures were literally inerrant? It wasn’t until the notion that everyone can and should read the Bible themselves without others telling you want it meant that the notion took off (and early in the Protestant Reformation, while the doctrine of Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone - was promoted, it was always intended to be read within the Community to discern proper interpretation).

271

Absolutely correct. Catholics believe in the magisterium. One of the crucial differences between Protestants and Catholics is that every Protestant is his own final judge in interpreting the Bible, while Catholics must defer to the expertise of the Church.

And according to Pope Leo XIII, it is “is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church” that the way to interpret the Bible is that except for copyists errors, and allowing for common figures of speech, the Bible is dictated by God, who cannot err. Every effort should be made to reconcile science and/or history with the Bible, but if those efforts fail, then science/history is wrong, and the Bible is right.

Again, since it somehow seems to be missed, he is not saying that is the position of the Church going forward. He is saying it has ALWAYS been the position of the Church.

I gave a cite for that. If you want to agree with tomndebb that the Vatican was too permeated with 19th-century literalism to know what they were talking about, I can’t stop you.

That said, IMO all that is really a side issue, because the vast, vast majority of Christians, especially before the Reformation, never even considered such questions. Even most Christians today, unless they frequent boards like this, are unaware of the problems tomndebb mentioned, let alone more subtle ones. I think I’ve already mentioned that I’ve run into many, many college students who went to Bible Study several times a week, but were completely unaware of any conflict between Matthew and Luke, or how many pairs of animals Noah took on the ark, or when David first met Saul. Their idea of Bible Study is more like Bible worship.

For the vast majority of Christians before the Reformation, who never read the Bible at all, it’s simply ludicrous to ask what they thought about such things. They never dreamed that there were any problems with the Bible. They just assumed that every word was true.

I really can’t understand how anyone can dispute that.

272

If it doesn’t mean what it says why try to determine what it did mean? It fits very comfortably in the made up shit category. i have heard wild eyed preachers read a senence or two and then pause and say What that means is +++++! and go on that way for an hour or more. BS if it doesn’t mean what it says why did God, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe and Commander in Chief of the armed farces of Heaven say it?

273

Think about how the U.S. Federal Court system has generated entire tomes of rulings, based solely on the very few words of the First Amendment.

It’s valid to reflect on a few words, and go on at great length about “what it means.”

274

Did they have to worry about whether those who wrote the 1st Amendment actually wrote it, or debate as to whether they even existed in the first place? Did they have original manuscripts to go by, or did they have to use copies of copies of copies of copies written in more than one language by unknown scribes?
Not a valid comparison.

275

It wasn’t a comparison in all ways; it was only an observation that intensive scholarship can legitimately derive a great depth of study from even a very few words.

(“C.S. Lewis, in his Narnia books, used Aslan as a metaphor for Jesus.”
“Did Jesus have four paws? Did he have a tail? Was Jesus killed on a stone, and not a cross? Not a valid comparison.”)

276

As I noted, I am no longer sure what your point may be.

Fail.
The year of his birth, (and that of his staff), has everything to do with the change in views that occurred between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries–including the better understanding of mythology that developed throughout the twentieth century.

The changes in views toward what is considered “accurate” in history and biography occurred over a couple of hundred years, generally too slowly for anyone in those periods to recognize the changes. It was only when cultural explorations of non-European societies brought post-Enlightenment scholars face-to-face with other mythologies, (originally misunderstood as “primitive” beliefs), and came to understand how those mythologies operated in their cultures, then brought the information back to Europe and North America to confront our own myths, that an understanding of the differences between literal and mythological expression began to develop. That entire exploration of mythology occurred after Leo’s death.

I am not dismissing his encyclical. Much of it is still relevant. However, his references to history are, indeed, rooted in nineteenth century epistemology and new information has demonstrated that some of it is not accurate.
Claims of what earlier people believed without the understanding of mythology that has subsequently been developed are errors that are firmly rooted in the times.

So? You do not appear to have demonstrated any understanding of the ways in which perceptions have changed.

No. You have shown no evidence that you actually understand my actual point.

Basically, you have now admitted that you can understand contradictions without insisting on literal interpretations, yet you need to hand-wave away those contradictions in order to adhere to your position.

What have you said that was cogent? You continue to post your binary position that everyone used to believe in the absolute literal accuracy of scripture and now they don’t, (while admitting that you find no conflict in direct contradictions). You have resorted to (mislabeled) metaphor and figures of speech when those are not even the issues being discussed. That is why you come across as simply lining up with the literalists; you demonstrate no understanding of the way that people have always employed mythology.

===

If that is your interpretation of my posts, then I can only figure that you are so committed to your own beliefs that you really are not interested in anything else.

I am not the one displaying a lack of historical knowledge.

I have no idea what you are capable of understanding.

Your last line would be humorous except that it applies so well to your posts.
Now you are throwing in “allegory,” (having misused “metaphor” previously), to demonstrate that you simply fail to understand mythology. ::: shrug :::

277

Well, since I made the same observation a few days ago, that through most of history, Christians, not having access to bibles and usually being illiterate, simply accepted the bible as “true,” clearly, I am not disputing it.

I am disputing the claim that the way that people in all cultures regard their scripture as “true” is the same way that we regard a court transcript as “true,” today. Failing to recognize the difference results in discussions such as this thread.

278

It wasn’t the same at all. Yes, I finally got you to say that most Christians throughout history have regarded the Bible as true, but that came too close to admitting you were wrong, so you immediately qualified it with, “However, they accepted them as true from the perspective of those eras that did not regard truth as a ‘literal’ manifestation,” and erected another Wall of Woo about Middle Age pig farmers’ perspective on literature, and how Biblical contradictions would not be relevant to them.

I strongly disagree. I think that if someone had taken the time to point out the contradictions, their reaction would have been shock and disbelief (in the person claiming the contradiction, not in the Bible), followed by their head exploding if they were actually persuaded to believe it. Fortunately, they were completely ignorant of any problems with scripture.

That’s just my opinion. I can’t offer any proof of what the pig farmers thought, just as you can’t. They didn’t leave many diaries.

But I have offered very credible citations to show that the official Catholic position, all through the Middle Ages, was one of Biblical inerrancy, and since it’s a tenet of Roman Catholicism that the Church is the final authority on scriptural interpretation, and since Roman Catholicism was essentially the only Christian denomination of western Europe for many centuries (excepting a few heresies which were stamped out), it follows that non-heretical Christians in western Europe, by definition, believed in the inerrancy of the Bible.

That’s not me saying it, it’s Pope Leo, it’s Pope JPII, and it’s the Inquisition itself indulging in “19th-century literalism” in 1616. You have offered nothing but your unsupported opinion that you know the history of the Church better than they. But until you come up with equally credible citations to refute them, your argument is with them, not me. Thank god.

ETA: Sorry for the severe editing of your post, but after I eliminated all your comments about my lack of knowledge and understanding, that’s just about all that was left. BTW, I freely concede severe defects in both areas. But you still need more than your unsupported opinion to refute my cites.

279

No, you’ve offered a Pope Leo quote saying this is how its always been. Of course, that was directly counted by St. Augustine of Hippo writing in 400 AD mentioning that if observed science seems to contradict Scripture, you are being an idiot if you insist on literal application of Scripture and need to adjust your interpretation. So obvious, Leo was not correct in his view as to how Scripture has always been read. But yet you continue to insist on it being proof, that Leo’s view on Renaissance, Medieval, and Ancient Christianity are true, simply because he says so. And stunningly that Christianity has had a Modernist Philosophical viewpoint centuries before it came into being - I mean at that point why call it Modernism, they could have simply said its Christian theology (which brings up another point - modern Evangelicalism is somewhat scorned for its lack of theological rigor, but if you are a literal fundamentalist, you don’t particularly need to do in depth theology, its all in the plain text; however, theology was something that was done quite voluminously prior to the fundamentalist age, and before the Reformation itself - obviously there were plenty of questions raised that required a lot of in depth religious thought, more than simply “the Bible says X, so do it as written”).

280

Right. All the medieval scholars, Christian and Jewish, who pored over the scriptures simply missed the obvious contradictions that I noted regarding Genesis. It simply never occurred to them that there was a clear contradiction between Adam being created before or after every other animal on earth. Your hand-waving away of the clear contradictions as if you were a literalist trapped on his own argument, does your position no favor.

And the scriptures were read at every service, so until the local languages evolved into the Romance languages, even the illiterate people would have heard that contradiction at least once a year, (as the Eastern Rite churches heard the Greek readings throughout the entire period). And when the Romance languages had evolved sufficiently that the Latin was incomprehensible to the laity in the Western church, the scriptures began to be read in both the Latin and the vernacular, so they would still have been exposed to the contradictions.

As to outside support:
Given the nature of the development of Historiography, in which the very notion of recording history as a factual exercise only became prevalent in the eighteenth century and the notion that Scripture adhered to that factual presentation only arose shortly thereafter, I would need to see some evidence that anyone actually believed that Scripture was a literal record even one thousand years ago, much less at the time it was written.
From the Encyclopædia Britannica, Historiography:

We know that Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo (in the Jewish and Christian traditions, respectively) each noted the underlying themes of the Biblical stories, as against a too-literal acceptance of the events of the stories.

Given this background, I would say that it is incumbent on those who claim a literal interpretation of Scripture to demonstrate that it was actually written for the purpose of a literal record or that it was understood in that literal manner prior to the Enlightenment.