(19 votes, average: 4.74 out of 5)
Loading...When I came to see that there are mistakes in the Bible, I did not jettison it all as a waste of time. Not at all. On the contrary, I continued to value and cherish it, as a book that could reveal truths about God. Yes it had discrepancies, contradictions, historical errors, glaring scientific mistakes, and so on. Of course it did. But that for me was not the ultimate point. The Bible It was a product of its own time, a very human book. Even so, it was a book through which God continued to speak.
I came to think that the Bible was more important for the valuable lessons it conveyed than for the factual (or problematic) information it contained. This view worked on two levels. For one thing, I came to see it was important to realize that even for ancient readers what mattered about the Bible was not its factual accuracy in its details, but for the ideas that it was trying to present. And for me personally, it was important to see how the Bible could speak to the issues of my own day, as those ideas could be translated to my own life and time.
To get a sense of how the first point works, I lift here a section from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, where I explain to my readers how the Bible’s opening chapters (Genesis 1-11), called the Primeval History, can be understood not as a lesson in history or science, but as a meaningful set of myths.
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The Primeval History as Myth
From a literary perspective, it should be clear that it is a real challenge to consider the Primeval History either as science or as history, in the normally accepted meanings of the terms. But that is not to denigrate the narrative. Not in the least! These are terrific, moving, and powerful stories. But they are probably best understood to be stories, not scientific explanations or historical accounts. More specifically, these stories can be best appreciated when they are recognized as “myths.”
The term myth should not be taken in a negative sense. It can be used in a very positive sense. A brief working definition of myth would be…
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This is very much my understanding too. Myth and science both seek truth but myth tends to understand truth as meaning while science tends to see it as factuality. But there’s no reason we have to abandon one for the sake of the other. It makes more sense to strive both for meaning and factuality, but to understand you aren’t necessarily going to find both in the same place.
If it wasn’t for actual religious belief and faith I might actually be able to find the good in the Bible. As it stands I just see a collection of ancient stories and Iron Age morality that now hold the world back from the progress we so sorely need.
Screw Liberal Christianity too. Seems to me Liberals simply want to have their cake and eat it too. They like the warm fuzzies of their fideistic approach to Christianity, but they also like real science and real progress. So their faith gets pushed back further and further into recesses of what is unknown or cannot be questioned by the scientific process. In my mind that’s as bad as believing in fairies and is a faith not worth having. Once I realised that’s what faith actually was I could no longer hold onto it.
As always, I see your point this time about myths and, as usual, you support your point quite well. I tried this approach to the Bible for many years, but, eventually, all the divine killing, the unclear writing, the unclear prophecies about the Messiah, the contradictions, the legendary material, the historical discrepancies, the illogical stuff, and on and on just became too much for me to see the Bible as anything other than an attempt by people long ago to understand stuff. Surely, God would have inspired and, even edited, better stuff. I do understand that there is some really good writing in the Bible, but the problems in it, for me, just became overwhelming and no one in my world seemed interested or capable of really dealing with those problems in a reasonable way other than quoting scriptures at me and praying for me.
Once I saw the Bible for what it is: “A very human book” full of “discrepancies, contradictions, historical errors, glaring scientific mistakes, and so on” then it lost all power over me. Who decides which parts are inspired and which are not? Is it only the parts we like? Maybe the Quran is inspired then? Or Shakespeare? Or the Sunday Newspaper? Or Playboy? Many will scoff at that last statement. “Of course Playboy is not inspired! God would never do that!” Oh really? And on what basis do you make that statement? On what authority?
Seems some Liberals want to have it both ways. They like to make fun of Fundamentalists who think they have a special line to God, but dig a little deeper and they’re not much different. Fideism is at the root of it all. Dress it in modern langauge and set it amongst the ornaments of modern science, but at the end of the day it is still the same pre-scientific dogmatic kind of faith it always was. Dig just a little and you will see there is still a dogma or two that the modern liberal believer is simply unwilling to question or doubt.
You say “(Genesis 1-11), called the Primeval History, can be understood not as a lesson in history or science, but as a meaningful set of myths.” And that is he modern approach. But is it the ancient approach? Finkelstein would not think so. He believes the stories are fictionswith, perhaps based on a kernel of ancient history, but written mostly for political reasons. It’s quite a reasonable scenario and fits the data very well. The other is a modern re-interpreted that says more about us than it does about a supposed god.
There’s more than one kind of inspiration, you know. Anything that captures the imagination of people across many generations could be said to be inspired, religious or not. Poets and artists talk about ‘The Muse’–you know where that word comes from, right?
Interesting how you hate liberals as much as fundamentalist Christians do.
Because you’re just the other side of the same coin. “Only I have the truth, and everyone else is wrong.”
Dr. Ehrman, I’m sure that when you were a hardcore evangelical the idea that the Bible could be relegated to “myths” was unthinkable. I’m curious, at what point did it become thinkable for you?
Once I say that the literal meanings simply could not be true in places.
Bart – Am I correct in understanding that you “believe” there is not a creator of all things – matter, life, etc? That there is a “scientific” explanation for the existence of matter and life? That the complexity of life is a matter of spontaneous generation and not designed by a creator?
I ask these questions because if matter and life is not a result of a creator and there is nothing beyond this life than death and non-existence, then what’s the purpose of spending a lifetime of study on a book written a couple thousand years ago.
Yes, that’s what I believe. University professors study thousands of things that they don’t “believe” in — from Chaucer to the Third Reich to Marxism to crime to Nietzsche to … you name it. We study things that are historically and culturally important.
Bart – I truly appreciate your responding to the many comments/questions of your blog readers and also your openness to communicate your personal beliefs.
I embedded a link to a study in a previous comment and was wondering if you actually read the study – and what your thoughts were about it?
“Why Abiogenesis is Impossible”
https://www.trueorigin.org/abio.php
I’m reluctant to embed links in comment sections for fear of being seen as a spammer or troll. I only add this link because of its relevance to my question and your response.
Thank You
Sorry, I haven’t been able to read it. Not enough minutes in the hours, hours in the day, or days in the week! But thanks for passing it along.
Hi Bart,
“Why Abiogenesis is Impossible” sounds very dogmatic, I will guess this is a young-earth creationist link.
Regardless, there is a great 10 minute clip on You Tube explaining abiogensis research!
Just search for “the origin of life – abiogensis – dr. Jack szostak”
Jack is one of the leading researchers in origin of life, the slides are played to
Beethoven’s 9th – a very enjoyable 10 minutes.
See Jerry Bergman’s qualifications on rationalwiki.
For Abrahamic fundamentalists, many of them believe that Adam and Eve, and inhabitants in the animal and aquatic kingdoms, were designed to live forever, physically; there was no such thing as dualism; pain and suffering was not present in the garden of Eden before the fall of grace.
But…
When God tells humans that they have “dominion” over the creatures of the earth, does this not show that dualism was already present in the world before the fall?
And when God tells Eve that is going to “multiply” her birth pains because she disobedient, does this not show that pain and suffering was already present in the world before the fall? For example, God doesn’t say: “Because you disobeyed me I’m now going to make you have pains of birth.” No. He says I’m going to multiply or increase the pain of birth.
This particular point of pain and suffering raises theological questions about all sorts of things that are connected to the literalistic tradition that says the human family wasn’t separated from God before the fall. Pain and suffering challenges most people to experience inner conflict and almost always leads to deep reflections of the presence and power of God in a world where he took an active, personal interest in it. And for many people, including myself, that inner tension can not be resolved by the claim that God is truly present and engaged in the stressful mess of tragedy.
Adams and Eve, and conceivably their offspring, wouldn’t have to had to disobey God in the garden to experience sorrow and struggle and death and separation from God. It was already designed in the system of creation.
Your thoughts, Dr. Ehrman?
Yes, I think that’s one way to read the story. But I think the story was traditionally read to indicate that the “sin” created a new situation that differed radically from the utopian life prior.
Since these were oral stories before they were written, would the writers of the Primeval history know that it was myth?
It seems from the Bible that everyone thought of the people and events written in the Hebrew scriptures as actual real events. And that belief and thinking made it all the way to the Christian churches in the 21 century!
I doubt they had categories such as “myth” “legend” “history” “biography” and so on….
What I meant was that someone at some point knew that they were adding to and changing the stories. Then the story was written and at some point became “scripture.” The story tellers would know that they are making changes while the story was oral. But the person writing the story for the first time might have thought he had an historical story. It certainly seems that everyone in the Bible thought that the written stories were historical. And most Christians ever since!
As Ehrman has suggested it is hard to know just how the people of ancient civilizations understood their own origin myths. I think the prototype would be the Akkadian creation myth “Enumah Elish” and its previous Sumerian iterations. How did the Akkadians and Sumerians understand these stories? What were they used for and how were they used?
It might help to go back to the Greeks to understand how they developed the concepts of ‘myth’ and ‘history’. The first time that we see the use of the word ‘myth’ is in Homer’s Iliad. The scene is at the beginning of the poem during a council meeting of the Greek commanders. The scepter is passed to Achilles and he has the floor. He tries to persuade the Greeks to follow his council and it is here that Homer uses the word ‘myth’, meaning, obstensibly, a powerful speech meant to persuade.
Of course, over time the Greeks changed the definition of myth with the advent of philosophers and allegorists. However, even then the concept still conveyed the idea of a story meant to persuade others about certain truth claims, regardless of its status of dubious factuality. This plays well to Ehrman’s own analysis of the intentions of the creation stories (if you agree that there is more than one creation story in the beginning of Genesis). Why did the author(s) write these ‘myths’ the way that they did and what purpose did these stories serve? I think Ehrman gets it right.
Next, given the extensive time period that the words ‘ancient’ and ‘antiquity’ cover the concept of history is fairly new. It famously starts with Herodotus and his “Histories”. For the first time the concept of history is defined with criteria (given by Herodotus). He will only include a story in his Histories if it meets the criteria he sets. Of course for Thucydides Herodotus’ criteria on what stories can be counted as historical was way too liberal and loose. Regardless, we could rightly say that biblical stories, even the Gospels, were “historical” even if their factuality is questionable according to our current standards of what is or is not historical.
What has to be kept in mind is that we cannot retroactively impose our modern concepts on that of the ancient world. It is then that we get ourselves into trouble. Instead, as Ehrman explains, we must first understand how the ancient world saw these origin myths and how they used them, given that from the time of their conception to their written forms the ideas of ‘myth’, ‘legend, ‘history’ and the like did not exist (at least not the way we currently understand them to be).
I hope I got your analysis correct, Bart.
As Ehrman has suggested it is hard to know just how the people of ancient civilizations understood their own origin myths. I think the prototype would be the Akkadian creation myth “Enumah Elish” and its previous Sumerian iterations. How did the Akkadians and Sumerians understand these stories? What were they used for and how were they used?
It might help to go back to the Greeks to understand how they developed the concepts of ‘myth’ and ‘history’. The first time that we see the use of the word ‘myth’ is in Homer’s Iliad. The scene is at the beginning of the poem during a council meeting of the Greek commanders. The scepter is passed to Achilles and he has the floor. He tries to persuade the Greeks to follow his council and it is here that Homer uses the word ‘myth’, meaning, obstensibly, a powerful speech meant to persuade.
Of course, over time the Greeks changed the definition of myth with the advent of philosophers and allegorists. However, even then the concept still conveyed the idea of a story meant to persuade others about certain truth claims, regardless of its status of dubious factuality. This plays well to Ehrman’s own analysis of the intentions of the creation stories (if you agree that there is more than one creation story in the beginning of Genesis). Why did the author(s) write these ‘myths’ the way that they did and what purpose did these stories serve? I think Ehrman gets it right.
Next, given the extensive time period that the words ‘ancient’ and ‘antiquity’ cover the concept of history is fairly new. It famously starts with Herodotus and his “Histories”. For the first time the concept of history is defined with criteria (given by Herodotus). He will only include a story in his Histories if it meets the criteria he sets. Of course for Thucydides Herodotus’ criteria on what stories can be counted as historical was way too liberal and loose. Regardless, we could rightly say that biblical stories, even the Gospels, were “historical” even if their factuality is questionable according to our current standards of what is or is not historical.
What has to be kept in mind is that we cannot retroactively impose our modern concepts on that of the ancient world. It is then that we get ourselves into trouble. Instead, as Ehrman explains, we must first understand how the ancient world saw these origin myths and how they used them, given that from the time of their conception to their written forms the ideas of ‘myth’, ‘legend, ‘history’ and the like did not exist (at least not the way we currently understand them to be).
I hope I got your analysis correct, Bart.
Doesn’t the myth also teach that God lies and the serpent speaks the truth?
God: “when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Gen 2:17)
Serpent: “You will not certainly die” (Gen 3:4)
And instead of dying “Adam made love to his wife Eve” (Gen 4:1)
and they lived happily ever after.
Yes, it’s an odd moment in the text.
Off topic question: Dr. Ehrman, have you addressed this issue in one of your posts (not in a book) that you can refer me to?
Many moderate Christian apologists have asked me this question: If we accept the skeptic assertion that the disciples had hallucinations (or vivid dreams, visions, or simply illusions) of a resurrected Jesus, where did they get this concept? Medical experts tell us that hallucinations contain content that already exists in the brain. For instance, a man living in fourteenth century England is not going to hallucinate driving a ’67 Buick. Such an hallucination would be impossible as the concept of automobiles would not have existed in the brain of a fourteenth century man.
If scholars are correct that Jesus did NOT predict his death and resurrection to his disciples; that these statements in the Gospels were later interpolations, where did the disciples get the concept of one single person being resurrected as this concept did not exist in first century Judaism or paganism? Thanks.
People have always had visions of deceased loved ones, so far as we can tell. So I don’t think they would have had to have had some kind of previous concept of the phenomenon before experiencing it. What matters for the origins of Christianity is that they interpreted the visions as indicative of “resurrection.” And *that* was an idea they brought to the experience, not one they learned at the experience.
Ancient writings, like the Bible, can show how people felt about things, had values, and sought meaning in life. From that, I can feel a connection with those humans who lived thousands of years ago. We can’t expect them to have understood modern science. But we can see they shared our human emotions and concerns.
Genesis refers to seven days, but I gather that the seven day week was not invented until around 500 BCE (and was not based on Genesis). I thought J and E were writing in the 800-900 BCE time period, but does this suggest that Genesis was written much later, no earlier than 500 BCE? Or is it coincidental that Genesis uses seven days and we later adopted a seven day week (doesn’t seem likely)?
What makes you think that a seven day week was not invented until 500 BCE?
Ah! I Googled it! The first three sources I looked at all said it was the Babylonians around 500 BCE. But now that I look further, I see other sources say it was earlier. As Emily Litella would say: never mind!
Wonderful. As always, thank you.
Another way I’ve heard this phrased is that Myth is a story (told in the form of a historical tale) that a culture tells itself in order to more deeply portray a religious or cultural truth.
Similarly, in classical mythology, tales like the Iliad and Odyssey could be viewed, at their core, not as “historical documents”, but as stories that encoded and described the nature of how the underlying early Greek culture saw itself, and its rituals and beliefs. (Anyone interested in this view should see the excellent works by Gregory Nagy.)
Another, more recent example might be the role of the “Western” in viewing American history. While no one would study such movies and novels as sources of historical fact, the tales are still be a valuable source for understanding how Americans thought about themselves, and saw themselves and their role during that period
[[P.S. As a brief further aside on this topic:
One the most interesting 24hr-periods in my life begin with an evening lecture on the nature of Mythology, which made many of these points concerning Myth as a story that attempts to portray a deeper religious or cultural reality.
The next morning I happened to attend a lecture by the cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. Much of his lecture dealt with his metaphor that the conscious mind is primarily a “story” that the brain tells the individual in order to make sense of our physical and sense-interactions with the world.
I’ve greatly simplified what could easily be multi-hour lecture (I would invite anyone who might be interested in these things to seek out Dr Gazzaniga’s books, all of which I highly recommend).
But the point here is that I found this parallelism (i.e. “Myth” as a story depicting a culture’s historical/religious experience; and “Mind” as a story portraying an individual’s interactions with the world) to be fascinating.]]
Hi Bart,
I’d like to know how why you still believe the Bible is inspired by God? And what does ‘inspired’ truly mean? Does it mean that he moves people to write something which they kind of feel they are being told and to write in in a way which other people will learn something from it? I just find it inconsistent to think that people are moved by a feeling and can end up writing things that so many end up coming to different conclusions about. Surely literature in the senses of ‘myth; can be dangerous if misinterpreted, so why use this medium?
Thank you Bart!
I *don’t” believe that, in no small part because I’m an atheist!
DR Ehrman:
Is the witness of Paul about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, a myth?
And is what Paul wrote in Romans 11:25-27 about Israel and the deliverer coming to Jerusalem also a myth? Can a myth be fulfilled in the future. Paul believed that the salvation of the Jews as a nation, and their restoration to the land was still in the future.
Romans 11:25-27
25-For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;
26-and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written,
“THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION,
HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.”
27-“THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM,
WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.”
And what about Abraham? Was Abraham also a myth to Paul?
I agree that the OT books were altered and edited, and additions and subtraction were made according to the biases of the scribes who copied them in each subsequent generation, the result being that IN SOME BOOKS MORE THAT IN OTHERS, we have a corrupted, historically unreliable version of the original narrative. Genesis Chapter 1 and 2 is a good example.
Jeremiah wrote about this fact in his own generation:
Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie.
Jeremiah 23:36“For you will no longer remember the oracle of the LORD, because every man’s own word will become the oracle, and you have perverted the words of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God.
So, yes I agree that we don’t have the original writings of Moses, nor do we have any of the original writings of any of the patriarchs of the OT.
However I do not agree that the accounts are mythological stories.
Paul certainly thought it was a historical reality. I, of course, do not. Some myths are not known to be myths by the person telling them.
Imaginative stories by definition are false. To say something is myth and by extension imaginative, is asserting that it is false. For us to say something is a myth, we have to be sure that it is entirely false. Or is it not the case?
Thanks! Your comment inspired today’s post!
hasankhan:
How can one be ENTIRELY SURE that the accounts, wisdom and words Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, King David, King Solomon, The prophets of Israel, Jesus, Peter, Paul and John which spanned two millennium or so were totally based on myths?
The problem I have with appreciating the “myths” of the Bible is that so many of them make God look so bad! Like the flood story you mentioned – God wipes out almost all of humanity only to turn around and recognize it was a mistake because human nature is not going to change (Gen. 8;21). He didn’t know that before wiping out all those people? Or the terrible things God says He will do to His people if they disobey (at least according to His prophets), far worse than I can imagine any father wishing upon his children. I suppose I can learn to cherry-pick the “nice” verses like most people do.
Yes, they often teach unpalatable lessons!
If you could “bullet-point” the top 5-10 truths-that-are-not-facts in the Bible that you still find some useful value in, what would that list look like?
Aw — that’s a good one. I’ll have to think about it!
Dr Ehrman,
I think you recommended a book on the Old Testament in an earlier comment section. Looking back, I have not been able to find the name of that book. Would you post again what books you recommend in getting an overview of the Old Testament.
The two I typically recommend are Richard Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible, and Silberman and Finkelstein, Unearthing the Bible.
But of course, Genesis is just the first book of the Bible (and not, of course, originally written with the idea it would be anthologized in such a way as to become a sort of mythic history of the Jewish people and their relationship with God and their neighbors.)
You can pretty much always find a counterpoint to every point made in any part of the bible. For example, the story of Jonah suggests that God cares just as much about animals as people, and that animals (such as the great fish/whale that swallows Jonah) are more faithful servants to him–that nature is the truest reflection of God’s being.
The thing about truth–anybody’s truth–is that truth is not the same as fact. There are rival truths, always. As Susan Sontag once write, “The opposite of fact is fiction. The opposite of one great truth may be another great truth.” Comprehending this necessary duality of truth is the first step towards tolerance. And it’s a very very hard thing for some people (theists and atheists alike) to comprehend.
P.S. I know this is a harsh thing to say, but I have read the whole Bible a half dozen times, including the New Testament in Koine Greek, and, actually, outside the four Gospels and the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, I find almost all of the rest of the Bible to be terribly boring with each book being fairly unconnected to the other books so I deduced that God certainly could have inspired something better than this. It’s just hard to read it and deduce that it is the “Word of God.” I wish I could, but just cannot…. I understand that, like with most everything else, if I knew more I could appreciate it better, but ….
Ha! Why do you keep reading it then? 🙂 (There are other really good books out there! :-))
The problem is the way people have been taught to interpret the Bible. Most of the problem is the interpretation and the way people perceive the Bible.
For example most people claim that the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus refers to the rich man’s torment in hell fire and Lazarus being in heaven. However others find a different meaning for the following reasons:
The Bible is full of parables that are basically analogies.
Christ often quoted Scriptures from the part of the Bible that was originally written in Hebrew and used those revenues to make different analogies or parables. He used analogies tp compare people to i.e. sheep, fishermen, he used the reference to Isaiah chapter 5 that compared the House of Israel to a “vineyard”and used that comparison in his parable of the “husbandmen” of a Vineyard and applied this parable or analogy when speaking to the Pharisees, referring to the Pharisees as the “husbandmen” of the parable.
For this reason and a careful comparison of different scriptures in the Bible something explain the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus as having a different meaning than provided in most Bible commentaries.
They explain that Christ was using the Rich Man and Lazarus to compare the Rich Man to the Pharisees and Lazarus was used as an analogy to refer to the common people. Both Lazarus and the Rich Man “died” to the former status. “Rich Man” or the Pharisees fell into a disfavored state while “Lazurus”, the common people came into a more favorable state. Then the “Rich Man” or the Pharisees were “tormented” by the “fiery” judgment messages of “Lazarus” or the common people. Etc…
Meaning some say those parables have a “deeper meaning” than obvious to most people who cannot perceive “deeper” than the surface of the Scriptures.
Please delete the first posting of the earlier comment on the Rich man and Lazarus parable and leave the second one.
I could not agree more. Now if we could just convince our fundamentalist brethren of these ideas!
In many ways I also appreciate Biblical myths and stories. It is confusing, though, that the same people that recognize these creation stories as myths also affirm that God did actually create the world and all that is in it. Is it viable to use myths to justify beliefs about ‘historical’ reality? Haven’t people throughout history done this, regardless of whether they saw the stories as myth or as historical accounts?
I would guess that one of the primary purposes of myth is to give structure and order to humanity. One of the more sinister motives of these early myths seems to be to place women in a subsidiary role to men, and to make women more responsible for evil than men are. While both genders are included in each story, presenting woman as if she is born of man, rather than man coming out of woman’s body, is a myth that turns reality upside down. Like Athena popping out of Zues’s head, it seems that this myth is designed to subordinate women by denying the reality of one of the essential functions of women – the birthing of each and every human being. What do you say about this role of myth and the way myth is used in oral and written contexts?
Was the myth of creation used to justify God’s image as the creator of the universe? Was it designed to marginalize women? Did it function in it’s cultural and religious contexts to place men in a superior role, not only over animals but also over women?
Interesting point. And to all your final questions: yes indeed!
Hi Bart
Ideas for posts.
I know it’s not you particular area expertise but would be interested to hear your thoughts on the LXX translation especially when it’s then turned in English, compared with modern translations directly from the Hebrew.
Are there any major differences or errors we know of today especially since the evangelists would have been using this as there guide.
Thanks
John
Great question. Unfortunately, I have no expertise in it!
I’m looking for an English translation of the writings of Tertullian, as well as one for Irenaeus, that includes a scripture index and perhaps a mini running commentary. Something along the lines of the well known Hendrickson edition of ‘The Complete Works of Josephus’. Any recommendations?
Probably the best way to go are the first three volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (done in the 19th century but available in reprint editions today).
I don’t believe we can ever fully get to the same level of understanding that the ancients had of the creation accounts simply because we are modern day thinkers.
Our modes of thinking are just too far removed in time
to relate to their modes of thought. Especially for those of us from Western cultures. Genesis is written from the perspective of an ancient Semitic mindset. To gain a greater perspective on what the accounts tell us and why, we must include in our studies the external Jewish writings in the Talmud (Mishna, Gemara), and Rabbinical commentaries of Rashi, Rambam, and many others. Overlaying and projecting the NT gospel theological myths and doctrines that were not formulated until thousands of years later onto the Jewish Tanakh (OT) with its own Hebraic meanings (both mythical, and historical) is horrifically erroneous. Its a Jewish book. Jewish sources must be consulted.
An ex-fundamentalist being facetious. The Ten Acts of Creation. Over the span of 4.5 billion years, the rotational speed of the Earth has changed from roughly a 5 hour day to our present 24 hour day. (4.5 divided by 19 hour difference equals 0.237 times 10 acts of creation equals 23.7 or roughly 24. Divine inspiration knew that the ability to comprehend all of the years involved in the “actual” creation would be very difficult so broke it down into the six days for our sake.
God delegates authority. It is sort of like a hierarchy.
God is at the top. He is a Spirit. Under him, number two in command is another spirit creature who is Jesus who was a spirit creature (the first born of all creation, or first born of every creature as Colossians 1:15 puts it) before God transferred him from heaven into the womb of the Jewish virgin named Mary.
After Jesus completed his mission on earth he returned to heaven to be with God again and God rewarded him for his successful mission on earth and exalted him to a higher level of authority in heaven than he had before he was sent to earth for his mission.
For this to happen it is required for God and the other spirit creature, whom was later known as Jesus Christ, to be separate beings.
God created the pre-human Jesus as a separate spirit creature before the rest of creation was created but God used the pre-human Jesus spirit creature as his agent to create the rest of creation after the pre-human Jesus was created. He was God’s first creation. (As Colossians 1:15 puts it “the first born of every creature or as some translations put it-” the first born of all creation!!!”) Therefore the pre-human Jesus, Jesus Christ, and the post-human Jesus is a created spirit creature whom is and was a separate creature than the only true God, YHWH. He cannot be God regardless of what people have been taught and what most Bibles say, there is a “counterfeit form of Christianity”
(the Babylon church, complete with Babylon’s doctrines, festivals, customs, and holidays .
Roman Emperor Constantine and other “false Christians” found “Christian” replacements for Babylon’s and Rome’s Trinity doctrine and also a replacement for the Roman Saturnalia and Babylon’s observance of December 25th as a holiday and the same was done with Babylon’s “Easter” holiday and Babylon’s “immortal soul” doctrine. People went through the Scriptures looking for “Christian” replacements for Babylon’s, and other then-existing belief systems doctrines to create a “hybrid” belief system everyone could accept, except those who wanted a “pure” Christianity.) and this is why most people believe this false Trinity doctrine.
Christ remained his integrity to God while under trial unlike Adam did in the Garden of Eden and this proved that a perfect human (like Adam was before he sinned) can keep his integrity to God even if it cost him his life, so Christ could replace Adam and pay for the wrong Adam did in Eden
Doesn’t the Bible say that there are false doctrines and the Devil has deceived the whole world?
Didnt Isaac Newton say the Trinity doctrine was a false doctrine?
I’m not sure if these are rhetorical questions.
The Bible is full of history and often there are symbolic parallels to these historical facts in the symbolic and prophetic books of the Bible.
The understand the symbols scattered throughout the Bible one must understand the historical parallels elsewhere in the Bible.
One part “unlocks” the other parts. I have often found this explains a lot of the symbolic language
Bart,
This, by far – is my favorite post. It’s authorship certainly resonates to the tone of that pithy statement, attributed to Aristotle, that –
“The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it”.
i.e. empathize w/o necessarily agreeing. It did stimulate a bit of response here in the comment section.
“Some myths are not known to be myths by the person telling them” – Is this an Ehrman original? lol
& “unpalatable lessons” Ha!
Anyways, now from an inevitably secular position, are you ever impressed or pleasantly surprised w/ the dimension or quality of understanding, suggested in the ancient authorship of scripture & some of its possible meanings/deliberations therein?
As a piece of human literature that, h/e similar (the overlaps w/ other Mesopotamian/Egyptian/Hellenistic/ influences), has its novelty.
Or what about the brilliant perspectives, that were forged in the minds of those who claim to have been influenced/inspired by meaning they’ve seen in scripture?
Or is the authorship mostly seen as primitive or petty?
or superstitio?
In regards to the perspectives forged in minds of those who claim to be influenced by scripture there are examples, Locke, Hegel (on “original sin”), Erasmus, etc. . .
As a new member I realise I’m very late to the table here but I’ve been reading through this thread on how your beliefs evolved once you accepted the many inaccuracies etc. in the bible and I’m wondering, when you came to see the bible as reflecting wider truths about God and the world, rather than as relaying historical facts, did you wonder why God would allow it to be so open to interpretation? I mean, he must’ve known that for centuries many people would accept it as transmitting scientific and historical information (even if they didn’t believe it was actually dictated by God to its writers) and he must also have foreknown the conflict this would cause – between the Church and individuals (e.g. Galileo), between different denominations (which exist precisely because the bible is interpreted in so many different ways) and within the minds of individual believers trying to reconcile what they read with their increasing understanding of how the world actually works. Did it ever strike you that this God who wanted to be known by all his creation was really unclear in communicating with them?!
Yes, that was a very hard and long thought process for me — and ended up changing my life. I talk about it in several books, such as Misquoting Jesus and Jesus Interrupted.