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Yeah, I've had a glitch here and there since I uploaded the .avi file straight instead of converting to .mpg first. Anyway, I find those to books to be the most disturbing and difficult in the entire collection. But I don't judge the rest of the collection by them. And I don't think they need to be emphasized while we try to understand them.

that has me truly confused. i'm reading the study data on the site, and the only conclusion i'm coming to is whoever did this thinks that recognizing the names is more important than the stories that accompany them. i have to study and have people "dumb it down" for me so i can understand what's expected of me and how to apply it to life. what good is knowing all the names in the bible if i still can't walk the path God wants me to?

Perhaps because the picture of God in Genesis is one that I can live with. But the picture of God in Joshua and Judges is very difficult for me.

And I don't think that the way we see the Bible is so clearly demarcated as you suggest. The Bible is, in the view of Christianity, both God unfolding God's self to us and us writing about that unfolding in our imperfection. It's messy and not clear. That's why my view is a little muddled, I think.

Are you fearful of taking that one extra step and letting the muddled water become clear? I spent too much of my life confused and muddled, but now with just a tweak to my paradigm the whole of scripture is woderfully clear as I see it as a human product so I no longer look to it for a difinitive answer about God. Now I can take the whole book seriously as it is a wonderful story about how our ancestors of faith answered difficult questions and challenges me not to make the same niave mistakes.

RLP, was this your intent? I can't quite tell whether the previous writer attributes the "paradigm tweak" to your influence. But I sense in several posts the attitude that we can better appreciate scripture once we recognize it as a human creation, not divinely inspired (or the latter only some very watered-down sense). Whereas (tabling discussion about Gen 1-11 for a moment) I don't think you meant to say that. We need to get smarter about how to read scripture, and sometimes that means recognizing the imprint of human culture, individual human personality, etc. But to regard the books of the Bible as just "human product" is, in most cases at least, to read them as something other than they themselves purport to be or were understood to be by their human writers and audience.

Since we're quoting Lewis here ... "A 'liberal' Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material."

While waiting for RLP to respond, I'll offer that I disagree with the C.S. Lewis approach mentioned above. Lewis completely misunderstood the liberal Christian approach because he couldn't get past the same argument that caused RLP to stumble here. He like RLP, may be comfortable seeing the human imprint and imagination in the Genesis myths but he fails to recognize the same type of prophetic imagination in the rest of the Bible. That is a common flaw in theological thought through the centuries.

For instance the famous lines of the Gospel of John where the author has the character of his gospel, Jesus, say very metaphorical things like "I am the way the truth and the life" and "I am the bread of life" and other such things that the historical Jesus likely didn't say about himself. Failure to understand that even events told in the NT (and very much so in John's Gospel) are often told through metaphor is what caused Lewis to make his mistake of assuming "either Jesus was the devine son of God or he was a lunatic" (my paraphrase). What Lewis forgot to do through proper exegesis is to understand the nature of the book of John, its human author, and audience, then realize that it wasn't intended to be direct quotes of Jesus but instead revealed what Jesus had become to Christians many decades after his death. For them he was the bread of life, the way, logos, etc. But it is extremely unlikely that Jesus said those things himself. The point of this and what RLP makes is that you can't read the entire bible as a single document and assume it all comes from the same point of reference. The Bible is a mixed bag of history "remembered" told through the poetry of creative story telling. Lewis missed option 3 which is that Jesus did't say those things, but that is what people came to feel about Jesus as he was a powerful force in transforming their lives.

I hope RLP jumps in to clarify how he sees the problem of myth vs fact in the Bible. Otherwise, I'm content to let this thread wind down. However, Lewis speaks directly to the topic--right down to the charge the guys like him misunderstand the fourth gospel--in "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (Christian Reflections, ed. W. Hooper).

Hi,

I've moved on to another essay and a conversation thread there. But let me say that not all the Bible is myth. But some is. No one knows exactly where the line is. The problem with Joshua and Judges is the message behind the myth (or the mythic history. Probably real events behind these stories). I hate the message of these books. Kill everyone and take their land. Kill the women and the babies and the puppies and kitties. Yeah, there's other stuff too, but remember, even as we celebrate the falling of the walls of Jericho, what that meant for those in the city.

That's tough stuff to deal with. Remember that I'm doing these videos for people who are unfamiliar with the Bible. I'd rather them not deal with those books on the first go around. That's really all I wanted to say.

Regarding inspiration and whether the words in the Bible go from God to humanity or vice versa. I'm probably more liberal than most here, but I'm telling you how I see it. I see the Bible as inspired by God and used to tell us the story of God. And I see it as a very human book, often containing our understandings and maybe misunderstandings about the nature of God. It's a messy slippery slope figuring it out, but that's the reality. It IS a slippery slope. Can't be anything else.

I think the Bible drives us into community and relationship as we try to work these things out. That's a good thing.

RLP, thanks for the response. I wanted to push a little hard there so I could be sure I understood your position. I think I know where you stand. Your site and this series has been a blessing! Thanks for staying involved in the discussion.

Why do we need it to be historical??? Let the story tell itself and not make further demands on it. The people who told these stories thought about their world very differently from us. We have a very scientificly and empirically based understanding of what is and has been. But, that's not the approach of our ancestors. To speak of myth is not to say something is "false." (And I thought RLP tried to make that clear.) Myths are stories that help orient us to our world and understand the world.

Why try to squeeze goddays out of the word "day?" One way or another you have to bend the words of the story to do that -- you have to make the words take on meanings that they really don't have: and then we have the connundrum of truth and falsity (YIKES!). Don't force the words.

But even once we make days into millions, or even billions of years, the sequencing isn't right as reckoned by what geology tells us. Really, if God wanted us to know that a day meant "a billion years" why didn't he just say it that way? It's not like we're somehow smarter or brainier than our ancestors -- they were pretty clever people who with minimal technology accomplished great feats: apart from pyramids there are calendars, notoriously difficult things to get right.

I think going to the Bible for a history, or geology, lesson is a mistake. Go to it for spiritual nourishment. It's been tried and tested as a spiritual guide and has fared quite well as such. But, in terms of the ultimate spiritual questions, I don't see how it matters whether God created the world in six days or the world/universe unfolded through the chaos of the big-bang.

Celle T.

Just curious, does anyone know just when the 24-hour day and 7-day week was established? This discussion reminds me of how very rigid we are with our concepts of time; especially up north here where the days are unbelievable short (and mighty cold) in the dead of winter.

Must be pretty hard to try and shrink the whole beginning of the universe and all it's pieces, great and small, into a few pages... I like the way C.S. Lewis describes it in the Narnia series; Aslan speaking his world into being.

"Really, if God wanted us to know that a day meant "a billion years" why didn't he just say it that way?"

I don't begin to know but I wonder if it has anything to do with giving us some slightest kind of idea that time, for God, is not cut up into 24-hour slices and that maybe his perspective of everything is different than ours.

Fascinating discussions, folks.
Mich

Well, the issue isn't mythology vs history, but the issue of the message behind the books. I find the message in much of Genesis to be redemptive, but the message of Joshua and Judges is pretty harsh. Kill every living thing and take their land. Then for the rest of history you can claim that land in my name. It's not the historicity but the message that is hard.

p.s.

I should have added that I've been really enjoying this series, love your blog, and really appreciate your inclusive language i.e. God pronoun issues. *s* Thanks, RLP

KQ

Wow, that is a gorgeous way to look at it; leave it to C.S. Lewis to say something like that. I just posted something about his perspective in a comment above.

I'm thinking that "the humiliation of God' refers to God becoming a little helpless human baby and then ending up humiliated on the cross. Just my guess....

"but i feel a little humiliated for believing the myth for so long. i think it is so much a part of my own faith journey. and i think somehow i will continue to believe it."

I'm with you, definitely. Myth does not necessarily equate with untrue.
Mich

I have a problem with C.S. Lewis' view on this. He has worked backwards from a view that the NT is historical fact and then structured an argument to suit that end result. Shouldn't you do proper exegisis of the whole of scripture and recognize the human nature built into ALL scripture both myth, prophetic critique, gospels, letters, and imaginative dreams? All of them must be filter through the individual lenses of their communities of origin.

As a purely intellectual exercise and analysis of the Bible, I suppose you could be right. But, for me, anyway, it isn't a purely intellectual exercise and analysis.

Facts are funny things. Actually, I've read some factual things of late that seem far stranger than fiction particularly where human behaviour and experiences are concerned. Now, let's throw spiritual experiences or beliefs into the mix. OOwee. That gets to be way more tricky to communicate especially when someone prefers that the answer to 2+2 always be 4.

"He has worked backwards from a view that the NT is historical fact and then structured an argument to suit that end result."
Why would he do otherwise if he believed it to be fact. I haven't read the book myself, but in it, is he not writing as a believer?

M

I think that you're both right, you and the commentor above whose point was that we can't obtain perfection no matter how hard we try. All we can do is follow Christ and put our trust there.

M

Humor yes, exaggeration yes, AND rigor. Jesus was a good rhetorician. There are plenty of places, not just in Matt 5, where Jesus clearly means to hit his audience between the eyes, and hard. In Matt, see middle of ch 7, end of ch 10, and end of ch 25 for just a few examples.

Me again, now registered right and proper.

My concern about Matthew is similar to RLP's hesitancy in regard to the Judges (et al): it may seem too harsh and legalistic for a newbie, esp if the newbie doesn't get a good commentary. Granted, RLP recommends folk get a good commentary or annotated Bible, but there's always the possibility a person won't follow that recommendation.

As for exaggeration, humor, etc, I can allow for that. But many who chose to interpret scripture "literally" will insist the words mean exactly what they mean on the page, in a 21st century sense.
Jonah
http://jacsongs.blogspot.com

Okay, granted: if we're thinking about where someone new to the Bible should start, it's fair to worry about things in Matthew that could be misunderstood.

I'm just trying to make the point that naivete comes in various forms. One form is literalism ("I'm just reading what it says"). But another form is "Anything I find uncomfortable, I'm going to treat as metaphorical." That, too, is a mistake newbies sometimes fall into.

Must be a google thing then, because they host the files.