So, just how DOES one justify picking and choosing what parts of the bible to accept?

Great Debates
21

John Zahn:

First comment is that there are any number of things that Jesus did not in fact say a single thing about. He was silent on the clining of humans or animals, he refrained from commenting on the morality of roaming charges for cell phones, he declined to address the morality of committed same-sex relationships, he failed to discuss business conglomerates, and he did not even mention AIDS. Slavery is not alone in being on the list of things He did not speak about.

Rather, he gave a formulary by which human beings could judge their own actions against an absolute standard that is extremely simple and easy to read. Shodan and I agree on that standard, though we disagree on certain applications of it.

I fail to see any way in which the enslavement of another human being could ever reflect the love of God, and certainly fails to show the love of one neighbor (tht slave) as oneself. Therefore, sir, in a quite real sense He did condemn slavery – by implication.

The Jesus Forum, for which I have no great affection, is attempting to discover that will-o’-the-wisp, the “historical Jesus,” by applying what they consider to be proper historiographic and textual-analysis criteria to the Gospels, explicitly excluding the presumption that they are divinely inspired and/or otherwise totally accurate. As such, they hope to achieve results that define a portion of His utterances as things that Czarcasm and His4Ever (to take a couple of folks holding radically different views) can agree were in fact His words. It is not that they, as men of faith, reject what they tag with “negative” colors, but that they are delimiting their quest to something that does not require presuppositions about divine inspiration in an effort to establish what exactly we can all agree that He did say. (In their efforts, they have succeeded in pissing off two groups: the conservative Christians for whom such a selectivity is an afforont to the sanctity of the Gospels, and the vast majority of the citizenry for whom wehther Jesus said something is of little import.)

The program I am suggesting is far more conservative than their POV – it merely assigns a less-than-reliable status to comments in Matthew unsupported by someone else that seem calculated to demonstrate Jesus’s statuus as Jewish Messiah, and likewise for unsupported comments which seem focused on the particular focus of the evangelist reporting them. If Mark reports something that shows Jesus as having transcendent knowledge, or John reports a Messianic prophecy-fulfillment, those are more reliable, because they are not in support of those evangelists’ particular foci. Then consider that Matthew and Luke divide the “Q” material differently – Luke spreading it across His entire ministry, Matthew concentrating much of it into five long discourses with definite themes. I’ve pointed out before that it was not contrary to the canons of First Century writing to write an “attributed” speech as a cento of thoughts and pericopés from the speaker, any more than using an indirect quotation accurately reflecting the concepts said by the attributee is today misread as something that he or she actually said. So it is likely that Luke reports more accurately when and where Jesus said something, and that Matthew gathered it into a discourse on the subject of that utterance, “written back” to supply an equivalent for the actual teaching of Jesus at that time and place, which was not recorded anywhere and is not now knowable.

RT’s point is worthwhile here too. That a writer records Joshua as having said at some point that God commanded that the Whoeverites should be wiped out utterly, does not mean that Joshua actually said that (though it is likely), and certainly does not mean that we can be sure God commanded it. The text is present; the divine inspiration for it is debatable.

As for the “Jefferson Bible” comment, I’d have to say that I do not reject out of hand any passage in Scripture out of hand – but I question strongly whether God was on the one hand telling Ezra and Nehemiah to break up mixed marriages, and on the other inspiring the writer of Ruth to resurrect the story of David’s Moabite great-grandmother and retell it at the same time. More than likely, one or both were the individual’s understanding of “what God is telling me to do” – and I can link you to a board full of people who “know the mind of God” far better than I’ve ever claimed to – at least in their own opinions. :smack:

Voyager, you do me honor with your comment (I’m thinking of modifying my signature to “Polycarp is more moral than Fred Phelps. – Voyager” ;)). But actually my criterion is something different.

I am committed to follow Jesus, to do what He taught as proper and avoid what He condemned. I use His teachings as my touchstone for determining what is God-given, moral, proper, wise, etc., and what is the reverse – including in the library of Jewish and Christian lore called the Bible.

22

That would make it more difficult, perhaps, especially if the second great commandment conflicts with one’s personal predjudices.

But also remeber that “love” is not always “rolling over and letting someone else have their way with you”. Any parent knows this.

23

I should think, in the absence of a “scientific” world view, most of the Fathers of the Church did think the account of the Creation was literally true … I know, in the City of God, St. Augustine goes through some determined logical contortions trying to account for apparent discrepancies in the Bible. On the other hand, the process of subjecting the text to analysis, of one kind or another, has a long and respectable pedigree - there are whole hosts of mediaeval scholars who’ve commented on and expanded on the Bible in terms of their knowledge of science (names like Roger Bacon and William of Ockham spring immediately to mind). So, I think it is safe to say that the Fundamentalist view, of the Bible’s text as unassailable, is a modern (and, to my mind, unwelcome) development.

And … to what extent does it matter, anyway? If it could be proven to me, one way or the other, that Moses did or did not part the Red Sea, or Christ did or did not physically rise from the dead, in what way would that absolve me of my responsibility to live my life according to His teachings and put my faith in Him for my salvation? I don’t see that it would, at all.

Well, perhaps it tells me that other religions have views on cosmogony in common with Christianity … don’t really see the problem here. It’s entirely possible that somebody else knows the entity I call God the Father under another name.

I’m not RTFirefly, but I’ll give you my answer to this anyway … Saddam Hussein is my neighbour (in the Christian sense, not the literal, I hasten to add), and I’m obliged to deal with him in a Christian fashion. Of course, if his actions are harmful to my other neighbours (I have about six billion of those, at the last count), then it may, indeed, be my Christian duty to restrain him and persuade him to change his ways … sound reasonable?

24

Well, if it could be proven to you that Christ did not, in fact, rise from the dead, I would expect that to remove the rationale for your belief in an afterlife and salvation through Christ. If Christ himself couldn’t rise from the dead, what hope is there for the rest of us?

There is a difference, I would think, between following the teachings of Jesus primarily because you agree with them (the same way one might follow the teachings of Socrates or Confucious), and following the teachings of Jesus because you think he was the Son of God and that eternal salvation can only be had by following those teachings. The first is merely a philosophy of life; the second is a religion. A philosphy can be wholly based on whatever one happens to think is a good idea. A religion, on the other hand, is based on defined precepts of what is right and wrong, and you pick and choose which precepts to follow at the risk of eternal peril.

Just a thought…

Barry

Barry

25

John, you draw a false dichotomy. Truth is often conveyed by language that is not literally accurate but which carries important meaning. “Just myth” implies you are taking the vulgar definition of myth as “a fictitious legend of no importance” – and one look at Joseph Campbell’s researches into what myth means in the human psyche would tell you that the truth is quite different.

Consider the best-loved Psalm, #23. God has never hired himself out as a sheep-herder, and the idyllic description of what the shepherd does bears little literal parallel to a modern city. But the underlying meaning is as true today as it was when David wrote it (it’s one of the few that even the most thoroughgoing of Biblical critics believe to have been not just in his style but his own work).

I believe as strongly in the truth contained in the Genesis story, the Adam and Eve story, etc., as do the most ardent fundamentalists. I just don’t think they report in literal news-story fashion a specific sequence of events that occurred in 4004 BC.

26

Well, to leave no room for me implying anything when I use “just myth” I’m referring over to just that, “a fictitious story or legend.” Whether or not the story has any other importance is debatable. I’m not too concerned with how JC uses it, and will just stick with how Daniel Webster and the common usage of that word is often used. Not sure why you would consider it vulgar. Have you ever referred to Genesis or Creation as myth? Does “just myth” change it that much to you?

How strongly you believe that it is truth, doesn’t get us any where, any more so than how strongly I feel that it is still just a myth. Maybe you could write a new Genesis story, leaving out any room for hyperbole, metaphor, legend, etc., and write an account of what literal truths it does have. Will there be one we can gather from it?

Actually, to a Jack van Impe, I’m sure he could find every one of those subjects covered, in detail, wouldn‘t you agree? :slight_smile: That’s what a lot of inspiration and other types of truths can do when the spirit taketh over. Anyway, that’s fine and dandy, Polycarp, but concentrating on what the NT writers did speak about, briefly, Jesus spoke about how God talked to Moses in the flaming bush; Paul speaks about a very real physical Adam; Peter speaks about Noah and the ark. There doesn’t seem to be any indication to them it was a myth. So, I’m not sure how anyone could give credence to Jesus being divine, if he and the other NT writers were mistaken on much of the Bible that today they may consider as myth. And how can you say Jesus never spoke about slavery? He is notorious for his slave parables. (Matt 18:23-35, 21:33-46, 24:42-51, 25:14-30, Mark 12:1-10, 13:32-37, Luke 12:39-46, 16:1-9 17:7-10, 19:1-9, 19:12-26. ) There are quite a few other parables and places where he speaks of it figuratively. Surely this would have been a good time to condemn it. Even though the English word “slave” only appears once in the singular and once in the plural in the entire KJV Bible with my concordance search for it; and the word “slavery” doesn’t even appear even once, Gene Kasmar shows how cunningly that word was translated right out of that Bible. In place of slave and slavery, he mentions words like servant, maidservant, bondservant, maid bondsman, dog, man servant, bondage, bondmaid, and bond servicewere substituted. He says that those words appear over 1,200 times in the Bible, and over 800 times these references are to slaves and slavery. There are very good Hebrew and Greek words which state what the older texts meant. Even a modern English version other than the King James starts to put some of the “slave” words back in.

That’s giving a hell of lot of leeway to Jesus. Do you give Jehovah/Yahweh the same? Let’s go to an earlier biblical precedent, after all, I assume Jesus was familiar enough with the scriptures to have this one in mind in Leviticus 19:18: *Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.(KJV) * So if by implication you can say Jesus condemned slavery because of that verse, I suppose you can give just about the same latitude and say Jehovah also condemned it too? Considering all of the other scriptures that don’t even have to imply, but state the rules for slaves in the Bible–if words are to have any meaning, and convey any message, the Bible clearly takes a very pro-slavery stance.

I’m sure they would be thrilled by the work of the JS had their work virtually showed all of the sayings being able to be attributed to him, and if it did, they would have a different opinion of the JS scholars. The Jesus Seminar, has had up to 200 scholars participate in that forum. Their qualifications weren’t lacking by any means. Personally, I don’t know of any group of religious scholarship that doesn’t piss off some group or another. Some groups need pissing off more than others. I don’t expect you to have respect for them, since I believe just about everyone in that group adheres to the philosophy of naturalism, while you still accept some aspects of supernaturalism.

JZ

27

In the anthropological sense, myth means a story that conveys truth as understood by a people. Poly’s use of “vulgar” (i.e., common) simply means the “common” sense of the word myth to mean fiction.

The Genesis creation story is (stories are) myth, not because they tell inaccurate stories regarding the origins of the physical world, but because they express the truth–as understood by Jews and Christians–that God is the author of all, that he created a world/cosmos that was good, that he did so without help (no daemon’s or evil counter-gods), and that he did so in an orderly fashion. That the Creation myths convey more than bad science really is not debateable. All commentaries on the Creation stories convey the same basic messages. In the anthropological sense, those “Truths” are established–at least among those who believe that Genesis is inspired.

28

BTW, Webster (as in the Merriam-Webster dictionaries) provides the following:

Thus 1a explains a “world view,” 2a “embodies ideals” of a people, and we have to go all the way to 2b before we encounter “an unfounded or false notion.”

The idea that myth is simply fiction is not even the primary dictionary definition, although it is certainly one meaning with a good deal of currency.

29

First of all, why do you say that Adam and Eve “didn’t bother”? Are you saying that they weren’t married in God’s eyes? If so, then I’ll have to ask you to prove that rigorously.

Second, can you please prove your claim that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob “grabbed whatever many women pleased them”? There is absolutely no evidence for that. They had their indiscretions and failings, but that does not mean that they cavorted with women whenever it caught their fancy.

Third, what is your point in citing Job? Please explain what you mean by saying that his marrigage was “recognized as supremely Amerikan only by the blaming and nagging of his wife”? Are you saying that this was Job’s fault? Or that God somehow approved of this marital strife? Or that merely having marital difficulties (amidst extreme circumstances, I might add) rendered their marriage unbiblical? If you have some point to make, I’m afraid that it is woefully unclear.

Fourth, so what if these men (apart from Job) had their indiscretions? That does not mean that God approved of such actions. These men were human, and they had their failings. In fact, condemns David’s adultery in most vehement terms, and criticizes Abraham for his lack of faith in employing a concubine to further his lineage.

None of the examples which you cited prove – or even remotely substantiate – your point.

30

godzillatemple:

Are you going to answer this one Poly?

31

Er, Poly, this seems to be a false analogy. At least one of the above things is not like the others. It has a certain temporal separation from them. Slavery existed in his time and he had to have known of it. Jesus not speaking specifically about slavery may not weaken the “do unto others …” “love your neighbour …” argument itself if we accept that he was a product of a time and culture in which slavery was so fundamental a fact that even such a radical thinker as he is portrayed as being did not think to comment on it. But accepting that weakens arguments for his divinity – which I’ll come back to very shortly.

The other things didn’t exist in his time – except, probably, committed same-sex relationships which are compatible with “do unto others …” and “love your neighbour …” – so that could explain why he didn’t speak about them: he didn’t know about them. But that lack of knowledge would weaken arguments for his divinity, wouldn’t it? (As the Son of God, he knew other things about the future, so why didn’t he know those things?) And a weakened argument for his divinity is a weakened argument for choosing as truth, on the basis of his divinity, his words from among all others in the Bible, isn’t it?

How are these things reconciled?

Oh, crap. On preview I see insistent company has arrived while I attempted to write this. If my post seems in any way combative in the altered context, I assure you it is not intended to be.

32

Hmmm. As I read through my previous post in the light of day, helped by coffee to attain a state somewhere near wakefulness, it appears to me that I’m guilty of setting up a straw man. And that doing it sprang from my own personal ambivalence on the issues of faith and belief.

My apologies, [b[Polycarp**, for using you in an argument with myself.

33

Well … the literal truth of the Resurrection (or otherwise) has been a subject of debate in my section of the Church at least since I was a wee nipper, so it’s not something I regard as a clear-cut thing in the literal sense. (I’d refer you to an interesting book called The Myth of God Incarnate, and to the subsequent comments of other Anglican theologians - most notably Dr. David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham, who, in affirming the spiritual truth of the Resurrection, denied that it was any mere “conjuring trick with bones”).

Bluntly, I don’t have any guarantees about the afterlife and my place in it that would convince a non-believer; I have my faith and my irrational convictions, but those aren’t evidence, as we all know. However, even if I’m wrong about the hereafter, I still believe that following God’s commandments, as expressed by Christ, recorded by (possibly fallible) human beings, and interpreted by my (often fallible) reason, is the right thing for me to do.

34

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, I try to act the same way (although, in my case, it’s out of an inner sense of morality and a philosophical belief that all people should be treated the way I would like to be treated, and not because of any belief in a deity).

Regards,

Barry

35

JThunder, it would seem that you want to reduce morality to a question of sexuality in your arguments.

Abraham was condemned for taking Hagar as concubine, but Jacob was not for similarly taking Bilhah and Zilpah, simply because the taking of Hagar showed a refusal to believe a direct and overt promise of God – that he and Sarah would be the parents of nations.

David was condemned for sending a loyal man to his death simply so that he could lay hands on the man’s wife. (And, as Homebrew will be by presently to point out, he was not condemned for his love of Jonathan.) Adultery, kind sir, is not evil because it’s sexual, but because it is the breaking of a promise.

The point behnd Adam and Eve is that they “did what came naturally” in being fruitful and multiplying. My Michael and his wife Tami were together for over three years and had two daughters before they applied to the State of New York for a license to marry. They were committed to each other; it was merely that Tami was “once burned, twice shy” about the formal commitment Were they "married in the eyes of Gd as you say Adam and Eve were, or not? If so, where do you draw the line? Are two fifteen year olds who sleep together because their love is something the world has never seen and eternal, in their eyes at least, also married?

John, what Tom said is what I intended. And no, I don’t intend to rewrite Genesis to accord with modern science – it’s a story fraught with meaning already. If that’s not adequate for you, too bad. As for the slavery, maybe you would have preferred if Jesus had become the Conquering Hero Messiah which the Jews expected (and till expect). He dealt with the world as he found it, and tried to change people’s heartzs, not their socal customs. You do raise a valid point, that he “condoned” servitude by failing to denounce it. As far as we know, anyway. In what way, however, does that make it accord with what he did command, i.e., love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you?

FWF, to the contrary, you raise a valid point. I’d considered throwing abortion into the mix, since that was known in his day and remains controversial. I decided not to, to avoid inculcating a hijack. (There’s a variant on Godwin’s Law that says any thread in which abortion is mentioned degenerates into an argument on the morality of abortion.)

badchad, it’s an interesting question about my own psychology, which I would have thought about if Barry had noted that I had overlook it, but since you ask, no. I choose not to explain my self-analysis in response to a question of the sort you decided to quote, with the tone in which you raise it. My apologies, Barry.

Allow me to finish this post by associating myself in every detail with the second paragraph of Steve Wright’s post just above. It says eloquently something I wish I had said.

36

To the extent the categorical imperative ^^^ is from the Bible, I justify believing it because it is the only simple philosophical rule that works most of the time. Throw in the proviso on people always being ends unto themselves and never means to an end to weed out the pro-torture Utilitarians, and I think at least one part of the Bible is brilliant secular philosophy.

37

^^^ meant godzillatemple. Cat. imp. = “do unto others.”

This party’s pumpin’ jumpin’…

38

Actually it is, tomndeb, but evidently it depends on what dictionary one is using. Try my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary which is about six inches thick and myth is defined as this:

So, I see no reason to use that word as anything other than how I was stating it earlier as: a fictitious story or legend.

JZ

39

You are, of course, welcome to use whatever definition of myth that you choose. Of course, given the literacy of this board and the number of people who post here who are familiar with the efforts of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Mary Douglas, and a host of others who have discussed religion from an anthropological perspective, you should realize that your definition might be seen as inadequate when applied to culture.

Feel free to use it to mean fiction, but if you do, be prepared to go through this cycle of clarification, again.

40

No, I’m not, and I’m astonished that you would say such a thing.

What I am saying is that none of jimbino’s examples do anything to undermine the Bible’s authority on matters of marriage. The point is that even if you grant that Abraham and company had violated their marital vows or otherwise committed adultery (as David most certainly did!), this does nothing to prove that the Bible is somehow inconsistent in such matters. Rather, it shows that these men were acting in disobedience to God’s Word. Their actions do not prove Yahweh’s commands to be false.

In fact, as I explicitly pointed out, the Bible soundly criticized many of the actions that jimbino underscored. This alone shows that its reporting of these events does not amount to approval thereof.