One simple point, when reading the bible for interpretation I am going to follow logic and reason mixed with study and not study alone. Otherwise I would turn into Fortunately I do see logic and reason in Paul's writings. However, for the parts of the bible that are figurative I have to use my logic or I have to ignore them. A simple example of this is in Genesis. Did we have a literal serpent while crawling on the earth was talking to Eve? That shows no logic and reason. Instead I see this as figurative. Something we all get today is we get truthful thoughts and untruthful thoughts. We simply need to see the truthful and honest thoughts and follow them instead of the untruthful and dishonest thoughts of deception, which we see a lot of in for example politics. And yes, the only real people that Jesus opposed in the first century were the people who strove for power instead of service to humanity. They were the people who mixed religion with politics, the Scribes, Pharisees and Sanhedrin. They used and still use today deception, which spiritually is descriptive of the God of this world called Satan or the devil with the demons. I refer to them as spiritual pis s ants. That is an example of my figurative language. What is yours? And sorry, I don't mean this to insult ants. I like all animals and even insects.
Thanks for posting the entry on Luke from the Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Mark!
"Luke probably remained close by Paul during his two-year imprisonment in Caesarea." That would have been a perfect time for Luke to have gone and interviewed Mary. Thanks again!
If Luke interviewed Mary, he would not have gotten the facts surrounding the Nativity so demonstrably wrong. The internal evidence suggests he did not interview Mary.
Mary would have known that Jesus was already in third grade by the time of the census when Luke says he was born.
Mary would have known the census did not force her to travel with Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
If you want to ignore the evidence and insist Luke wrote the gospel because someone said so 100 years after the fact, you go right ahead. But insisting as fact that Luke interviewed Mary goes from faith to fantasy.
It would make much more sense to conclude that Luke interviewed people who got the Nativity story second hand. Such second or even third hand witnesses are far more likely to have made the kinds of actual errors we see in Luke (although why they left out the return from Nazareth to Bethlehem to rendezvous with the Magi, the flight to Egypt, the return from Egypt, the decision not to return to a place where they did not live and instead to settle in their old home in Nazareth for the first time... again... is anybody's guess).
Whoever wrote the gospel of Luke to me shows love and compassion for all people regardless of their country of origin or religious beliefs. This is seen in the figurative story of "the good Samaritan" written in Luke 10:25-37. This would be in harmony with the friend of Paul named Luke who was the only possible writer of the New Testament that I now know of who was never a believer in Judaism or a citizen of the nation of Israel. Here is a teaching that I wrote and posted on one of my web sites. It covers some of the gospel of Luke.
Raf, your last post shows bias and nothing more. Below is what I originally wrote a few years ago pertaining to Luke chapter 10. Logic and reasons tells me that this is a very good example of someone who was not Jewish writing the gospel of Luke. And the friend of Paul named Luke from what I have read was not Jewish. This should at least state the possibility that the friend of Paul named Luke wrote what is now called the gospel of Luke. And the actual author is secondary to me. What I am more interested in and concerned with is the logic and reasoning behind it. And for anyone who sees God as a god of love and justice this would be in harmony with something written that is inspired by God. And I do see logic, reasoning, love and justice from Luke chapter 10 and the story of "the Good Samaritan". I hope that you do also.
Matt 22:36-40 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" 37 Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." NKJV
And just who is our neighbor according to Jesus Christ? Is our neighbor only our fellow country men? Or is he or she only of the same race or religion that we are? Is our neighbor only some one that we go to church or school with? Jesus answers this question clearly in his parable written in Luke 10:25-37. When a person knowledgeable of the law asked Jesus, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him with a question relating to the man's own understanding, "What is written in the law?" In verse 27, he answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But the man had another question, and asked in verse 29, "And who is my neighbor?"
In replying, Jesus gave his explanation using a parable (figurative story), beginning in verse 30,
30 In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' NIV
So using today's language and scenario we have a lawyer asking Jesus Christ, "who is this neighbor that I know God wants me to love?" And Jesus tells him about a man that recently got beaten senseless with all his money stolen and then tossed on a curb inside a city near a church. Then the local church leaders and those with the lofty title reverend all pass him by and don't help him even though they see his condition and that he is literally dying. But then a common person from a neighboring city traveling through, who just happens to be from a family with a mixture of Jewish and Moslem family members as soon as he sees the man and his condition takes pity on him and does everything he can to help him. (If you know biblical history you know that the Samaritans of Jesus' day were a mixture of Assyrian, Persian and Israel descendents.) The traveler immediately runs to the local drug store and buys bandages and cleaning and sterilization ointment. Then runs back to where the man is lying, thoroughly cleans all his wounds and wraps bandages with first aid antibiotic cream around them. Then lifts him into his car and drives him to the nearest hospital. Then stays with him until he gets medical help. Then tells the doctors and staff to do what ever it takes for this man to recover fully and that he will pay all the hospital and doctor bills.
Then Jesus asks the lawyer, "which of the people that I have just described was a good neighbor to the man who got robbed and beaten?" The legally knowledgeable lawyer then answered, "the traveler from out of town who had mercy on him." Then Jesus told the inquisitive lawyer, "that is the example that you should follow and in doing this you should push aside any race, ethnic or religious prejudice that you might have."
If you have not yet come to this realization. How does this parable tie in with the questions that the lawyer asked, namely, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" and "who is my neighbor?" In answering these questions Jesus stressed the importance of godly fruit and specifically in showing compassion and mercy to all people regardless of race, ethnicity and religious persuasion. This is realized because in Jesus' days on earth the Samaritans were looked down on and often outright scorned by Jesus' fellow countrymen mostly because they were a mixture of Jewish, Assyrian and other descendants. The city of Samaria was part of the nation of Israel, but the blood of the people there had been diluted by people of different races and their religious beliefs had been changed also. And today we have similar circumstances. All over the world today we have people from different countries, ethnicities and religious groups that according to Jesus' teachings and earthly example, we should have compassion on, especially if they too showed compassion to their fellow man. Jesus was never a divider of mankind. He was always a uniter. Jesus even said to "love your enemies".
Again, non sequitur. There may be valid reasons to conclude the writer of Luke was a gentile. The presence of the Good Samaritan story is not one of them.
So my post does not show bias. It merely rejects a poor argument.
Here's an article I read once that doesn't prove my point but earns me clicks that no one is monitoring...
The only reason that the Good Samaritan story should appear in the gospel of Luke is if it is a story Jesus told.
If it is a story Jesus told, then its inclusion is a result of the fact that he told it, not that the author of the gospel was a Gentile.
The only way one can argue that the Good Samaritan story establishes Luke as a Gentile is to argue that the author of the gospel invented the story, rather than Jesus. If that's the case, then you may have proved Luke was a Gentile (you haven't), but you have done so at great cost: you have impugned his reliability as someone accurately conveying the truth of what Jesus taught.
One of the things that Raf is ignoring is that the story of the good Samaritan is seen in only one gospel. This is only seen in the gospel of Luke. This is ignored by the other gospels and their Jewish writers. It is late at night for me to write and below I have copied and pasted logical information on this that I see in Wikipedia. In addition to the below it should be obvious that people of Jewish religious backgrounds are more likely to ignore the story of the Good Samaritan than a gentile converted to following Jesus Christ. Do you remember how long it took one of the apostles to communicate with gentiles regarding Jesus Christ? His name was Peter. And people like Peter communicated with the Jews primarily and not the Gentiles. In contrast, Paul and his doctor friend Luke communicated with the Gentiles about Jesus Christ. Please at least try to follow logic. The story of the good Samaritan will be easier to follow for Gentiles converted to Christ than Jews converted to Christ. This would be a challenge for the Jewish people even those converted to following Jesus Christ. And it should be obvious that a Gentile converted to Jesus Christ would want to teach this more than a Jew converted to Jesus Christ.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a parable told by Jesus and is mentioned in only one of the gospels of the New Testament the gospel of Matthew was know to the Gospel of Luke (10:29–37) a traveller (who may or may not have been a Jew) is stripped of clothing, beaten, and left half dead along the road. First a priest and then a Levite come by, but both avoid the man. Finally, a Samaritan comes by. Samaritans and Jews generally despised each other, but the Samaritan helps the injured man. Jesus is described as telling the parable in response to a question regarding the identity of the "neighbour", whom Leviticus 19:18 says should be loved.
Portraying a Samaritan in a positive light would have come as a shock to Jesus's audience.
And I just noticed the above copied quote from Wikipedia could use some editing, but not tonight for me.
Portraying Samaritans in a positive light would not have come as a shock to Jesus audience in 80-90 AD, by which time Paul's message had been made clear and the church was chock full of Gentiles.
To state that Jewish writers would have ignored the story is both baseless and, frankly, insulting to them. You're actually saying the God-inspired gospel writers would have left out a story they didn't like? Really?
The story would have been shocking to the people who heard Jesus tell it, but it would absolutely not have been shocking to the Christian audience that had already been exposed to the letters of Paul.
You are declaring, once again with no basis in fact, that a Gentile writer would include this story while a Jewish writer would not. Would Paul have included thst story? Yes. He would. So the fact that the story is included emphatically does not prove the gospel was written by a Gentile.
Another way to ask the question is this: Does the truth that the author of II Timothy 3:16 wrote pasa graphe theopneustos require plenary verbal inspiration? That is to say, Does the fact that Paul told Timothy all the Tanakh was given by inspiration of God mean that EVERY (plenary) WORD (verbal) of our evanglical-protestant canon was originally dictated by God in a perfect manner, jot by jot, tittle by tittle? Does it mean that the people (women as well as men) who were slapping ink on the parchment were mere automatons, channeling the Holy Spirit through automatic writing? Does it mean that the original autographs of the Bible could NOT have contained any contradictions? Does it mean that if we find a contradiction in the Bible, even one single one, then the whole thing is a tissue of lies, having no value to anyone except to con men and swindlers like Elmer Gantry and V.P. Wierwille?
I think you and I have already agreed on what "God-breathed" does not mean, that the answer to the question posed in the title of this thread is "yes," but all we've done is dodge the question of what it does mean.
That is, if "God-breathed" does NOT mean without error or contradiction, and if a work can be useful for doctrine reproof correction instruction in righteousness without being God-breathed, then what does God-breathed mean?
I think you and I have already agreed on what "God-breathed" does not mean, that the answer to the question posed in the title of this thread is "yes," but all we've done is dodge the question of what it does mean.
That is, if "God-breathed" does NOT mean without error or contradiction, and if a work can be useful for doctrine reproof correction instruction in righteousness without being God-breathed, then what does God-breathed mean?
That's the $64,000 question, Raf!
My own thinking is going places where I've never been before, and that's one of the reasons I'm glad YOU have chosen to go along with me on this journey.
Point of clarification: I no longer believe in the idea of "God-breathed," but as an academic exercise, I am willing to say that the presence of errors and contradictions doesn't rule out a work as God-breathed unless excluding errors and contradictions is part of the definition.
For Wierwille (to cite an example), the presence of errors and contradictions disqualifies a work as God-breathed. This disqualifies his own work as well as the Bible.
It would be out of place in this thread for me to argue that there's no such thing as God-breathed. So all I'm saying here is, assuming there is such a thing, errors and contradictions would not be disqualifiers.
One of the reasons conversation on this topic is so difficult is because the language we are accustomed to using is so freighted with excess baggage. The language has been used by the unscrupulous to deceive and swindle, and most of us on this website know what that means at the most personal level. It's hard for us to separate the things we are talking about from the swindlers. And I don't mean just TWI. There have been elements of swindle in EVERY church since the fourth century CE.
So I'm proposing to use the word "mythos" to describe and point to the Bible. A mythos is a story relevant to a particular culture or some other group. A mythos is not necessarily mythical or even fictional. A mythos is just a story that has relevance. Parts of it may be "fictional." Parts of it may be "historical." I would also interpose a category of "legendary" accounts, narratives based around historical persons or events that have acquired fictional components.
The Bible is a story that has relevance to a particular culture, or should I say, relevance to a considerable number of differing cultures.
There are other mythoi (the proper plural of mythos), some competing with the Bible, others not competing.
Appeal to supernatural origin is not very helpful in comparing and contrasting mythoi, because many, if not all of them, do so.
I would propose a 5-point vertical scale of "usefulness" for evaluating and comparing mythoi:
most useful
very useful
useful
not very useful
least useful
Useful for what? I would respond "Useful for making sense out of the things that are happening to me."
We will talk about people who have a "high view" of scripture, and people who have a "low view". When we are talking about high and low views, we will be talking about positions on the usefulness scale.
----
Here are some examples from my own life:
Back in the 1960s, when I was in my teens, I first read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. I found it very useful for making sense of the things that happened to me, and I have continued to do so to this day. Seven years ago, when I was in my 50s, I read Tolkien's trilogy over the course of an academic year with a group of eight seventh-graders. I am still learning more about and from that mythos. LotR is not a story of "good vs. evil". It is a story of those things that are noble in human nature versus those things that are base, and it was inspired by the trauma of life and death in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme. For fifty years I have found the Tolkien mythos very useful, and before I learned how to read the Bible with understanding for myself, I found LotR most useful. I have a high view of the Lord of the Rings.
When I was an undergrad at Anderson College in the late-60s, I took several Bible courses, not because I was a "believer", but because they were required. (Oddly enough, I have my transcripts from that period setting here on my desk as I type!) I read the OT in Fall '67-'68 and the NT in Spring '67-'68. I made Bs in both those classes. All we did in them was read the Bible to see what it said. I didn't believe any of it, but I had read it. I took 3 hours of Christian Beliefs that I failed because I argued with the instructor. I took 3 hours of Biblical Archaeology to make those hours up, and that was one of the BEST classes I ever took. I made a B in it too. I had been exposed to the mythos of the Bible, but I still found it least useful. I had a low view of the Scriptures and continued to do so for another 15 years or so.
In 1971-'72 I took crash courses in mathematics from scratch to differential calculus, in physics from scratch to enough to understand the six factor formula of reactor kinetics (quantum rudiments), chemistry from scratch to inorganic, electrical theory, fluid flow, thermodynamics and metallurgy, as training in the Navy's Nuclear Power Program. From 1972 forward I was reading Toynbee for history and Jung for psychology. None of these things were mythoi in themselves, but they all have made important contributions to the popular mythos of early-21st century American culture. They were things that were shaping my thinking when I first attended a twig meeting in 1979. Oh, and I had also read Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter that summer. I remember it had a big influence on my thinking before I took PFAL and since. I think I view the current pop cultural mythos as not very useful, a moderately low view, though there are elements whose values vary from that.
This conversation is necessarily going to progress slowly for several reasons: 1. My thinking is not the fruit of biblical "research"... It is the fruit of contemplating what life itself consists of, a contemplation brought on by my current proximity to death. 2. I don't have the physical or mental stamina or speed to participate in intense debate, the way I used to have when I would engage in three-hour proof-text duels with trinitarians. 3. It will take time for the implications of what we're talking about to sink in. 4., 5., 6., etc.
The first thing to do is to establish a language we can use that doesn't pre-suppose a result... hence, referring to the Bible as a mythos, a story having relevance to a particular culture or group, and setting a way of taking about the values of various mythoi on a scale, not of degrees of "inspiration", but of degrees of usefulness in terms of "making sense of what is happening to me."
I can foresee the conversation covering a number of questions, at least in the beginning. Other important questions may arise as the discussion develops...
1. Of what exactly does life consist?
2. What is the nature of a word?
3. What is "information"?
4. What factors regulate the flow of information?
5. How can we distinguish, as SETI tries to do, between a signal from an intelligent source and a signal from an unintelligent source?
And more...
After miss-spelling the word "source" as "souse" a couple of sentences ago, I am tempted to go re-watch W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick, a mythos if ever there was one!
Hoping you're being melodramatic about your health, but otherwise, proceed at whatever pace makes you comfortable.
Best wishes.
I'm not being melodramatic about my health. One night at the end of last July, about 11 pm, I started coughing up phlegm. The phlegm came so thick and fast that the cough became a spasm and I could not breath. I passed out. If I had been by myself, I would have died. As it was, my sister-in-law called 911 and I woke up in the emergency room about 1:30 am. My CO2 was at a lethal level. They kept me in the ICU for several days, and under observation for few more to watch my heart. After going back home, they had me call my vitals in on a daily basis for about another month. The episode was a recurrence of the pneumonia that had me in the hospital for about a week at the beginning of April. My kidneys have taken damage, and I have anemia as a result. Sometimes I feel as weak as a kitten. I have enough stamina to be active for a whole day, but not two days in a row. I have lost the mental speed I had when I was taking Greek. I will complete this semester of Hebrew at a reduced pace, but I won't sign up for the second semester.
As you may imagine, I have been giving a lot of concentrated thought to what it means for ANYTHING to be breathed.
I am thankful for your best wishes, Raf! When I was a boy, my dad was the city editor of the local morning paper. His desk was in the middle of the newsroom with pneumatic tubes going to other parts of the operation. Sometimes, when he had charge of me but had to be at work, he would take me into the newsroom, seat me at the desk of a reporter who was out, and give me a stack of cut newsprint and a pencil with a big fat black lead. He wouldn't let me open the drawers, so I can't say whether or not there was whiskey in them! I would sit there doodling away and imitating the drawings in the daily comic strips. That was how I learned how to tell stories from professional story tellers. I would sit there, sometimes for hours, surrounded by guys (and a gal or two, it was the fifties, you know) who were busy cranking out stories on their typewriters. But while they were working on their stories for the paper, they were also spinning side stories with each other about all sorts of things that WEREN'T going to make it into the paper. Looking back on it, it was quite an education.
I know that YOU are a professional story teller, too, Raf, and that's one of the reasons I value your input.
And in case I haven't mentioned it, I deeply appreciate how welcome you are of my input, even given my change of heart about the Bible, the existence of God, etc. I'm trying to keep my lack of faith in its place and engage in discussions on their own terms. Not that I make a secret of where I stand, but facts is facts. "The Bible contains errors and contradictions" is a fact, and I'm prepared to argue that (you seem to be somewhat in agreement, although we may quibble on what "error" means in the context of our discussions). But "therefore the God of the Bible is not real" is an opinion (or, more to the point, a conclusion), and that's not always a welcome viewpoint or fair game in a discussion. In THIS thread, it's out of line, so I refrain from saying it. (That's also why I moved the thread, and I appreciate your graciousness in accepting that decision).
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waysider
I buried Paul. Sincerely, The Walrus
Steve Lortz
There is a thing we've been taught to do at Anderson University (all the way from freshman introductory Bible courses to grad school exegetical papers) called the hermeneutic or the exegetical circle.
Steve Lortz
I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious
Steve Lortz
Indeed, waysider, indeed!
Love,
Steve
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Mark Sanguinetti
One simple point, when reading the bible for interpretation I am going to follow logic and reason mixed with study and not study alone. Otherwise I would turn into
Fortunately I do see logic and reason in Paul's writings. However, for the parts of the bible that are figurative I have to use my logic or I have to ignore them. A simple example of this is in Genesis. Did we have a literal serpent while crawling on the earth was talking to Eve? That shows no logic and reason. Instead I see this as figurative. Something we all get today is we get truthful thoughts and untruthful thoughts. We simply need to see the truthful and honest thoughts and follow them instead of the untruthful and dishonest thoughts of deception, which we see a lot of in for example politics. And yes, the only real people that Jesus opposed in the first century were the people who strove for power instead of service to humanity. They were the people who mixed religion with politics, the Scribes, Pharisees and Sanhedrin. They used and still use today deception, which spiritually is descriptive of the God of this world called Satan or the devil with the demons. I refer to them as spiritual pis s ants. That is an example of my figurative language. What is yours? And sorry, I don't mean this to insult ants. I like all animals and even insects. 
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Steve Lortz
Thanks for posting the entry on Luke from the Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Mark!
"Luke probably remained close by Paul during his two-year imprisonment in Caesarea." That would have been a perfect time for Luke to have gone and interviewed Mary. Thanks again!
Love,
Steve
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Raf
Again with Luke interviewing Mary?
If Luke interviewed Mary, he would not have gotten the facts surrounding the Nativity so demonstrably wrong. The internal evidence suggests he did not interview Mary.
Mary would have known that Jesus was already in third grade by the time of the census when Luke says he was born.
Mary would have known the census did not force her to travel with Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
If you want to ignore the evidence and insist Luke wrote the gospel because someone said so 100 years after the fact, you go right ahead. But insisting as fact that Luke interviewed Mary goes from faith to fantasy.
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Raf
It would make much more sense to conclude that Luke interviewed people who got the Nativity story second hand. Such second or even third hand witnesses are far more likely to have made the kinds of actual errors we see in Luke (although why they left out the return from Nazareth to Bethlehem to rendezvous with the Magi, the flight to Egypt, the return from Egypt, the decision not to return to a place where they did not live and instead to settle in their old home in Nazareth for the first time... again... is anybody's guess).
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Mark Sanguinetti
Whoever wrote the gospel of Luke to me shows love and compassion for all people regardless of their country of origin or religious beliefs. This is seen in the figurative story of "the good Samaritan" written in Luke 10:25-37. This would be in harmony with the friend of Paul named Luke who was the only possible writer of the New Testament that I now know of who was never a believer in Judaism or a citizen of the nation of Israel. Here is a teaching that I wrote and posted on one of my web sites. It covers some of the gospel of Luke.
http://www.christian-universalism.info/
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Raf
This is a non-sequitur. The presence of the Good Samaritan story does not prove the author of Luke was a Gentile.
The identification of the author of Luke as a Gentile does not limit the possible authors to Luke.
And neither establishes that the gospel is God-breathed.
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Mark Sanguinetti
Raf, your last post shows bias and nothing more. Below is what I originally wrote a few years ago pertaining to Luke chapter 10. Logic and reasons tells me that this is a very good example of someone who was not Jewish writing the gospel of Luke. And the friend of Paul named Luke from what I have read was not Jewish. This should at least state the possibility that the friend of Paul named Luke wrote what is now called the gospel of Luke. And the actual author is secondary to me. What I am more interested in and concerned with is the logic and reasoning behind it. And for anyone who sees God as a god of love and justice this would be in harmony with something written that is inspired by God. And I do see logic, reasoning, love and justice from Luke chapter 10 and the story of "the Good Samaritan". I hope that you do also.
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Raf
Again, non sequitur. There may be valid reasons to conclude the writer of Luke was a gentile. The presence of the Good Samaritan story is not one of them.
So my post does not show bias. It merely rejects a poor argument.
Here's an article I read once that doesn't prove my point but earns me clicks that no one is monitoring...
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Raf
The only reason that the Good Samaritan story should appear in the gospel of Luke is if it is a story Jesus told.
If it is a story Jesus told, then its inclusion is a result of the fact that he told it, not that the author of the gospel was a Gentile.
The only way one can argue that the Good Samaritan story establishes Luke as a Gentile is to argue that the author of the gospel invented the story, rather than Jesus. If that's the case, then you may have proved Luke was a Gentile (you haven't), but you have done so at great cost: you have impugned his reliability as someone accurately conveying the truth of what Jesus taught.
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Mark Sanguinetti
One of the things that Raf is ignoring is that the story of the good Samaritan is seen in only one gospel. This is only seen in the gospel of Luke. This is ignored by the other gospels and their Jewish writers. It is late at night for me to write and below I have copied and pasted logical information on this that I see in Wikipedia. In addition to the below it should be obvious that people of Jewish religious backgrounds are more likely to ignore the story of the Good Samaritan than a gentile converted to following Jesus Christ. Do you remember how long it took one of the apostles to communicate with gentiles regarding Jesus Christ? His name was Peter. And people like Peter communicated with the Jews primarily and not the Gentiles. In contrast, Paul and his doctor friend Luke communicated with the Gentiles about Jesus Christ. Please at least try to follow logic. The story of the good Samaritan will be easier to follow for Gentiles converted to Christ than Jews converted to Christ. This would be a challenge for the Jewish people even those converted to following Jesus Christ. And it should be obvious that a Gentile converted to Jesus Christ would want to teach this more than a Jew converted to Jesus Christ.
And I just noticed the above copied quote from Wikipedia could use some editing, but not tonight for me.
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Raf
Portraying Samaritans in a positive light would not have come as a shock to Jesus audience in 80-90 AD, by which time Paul's message had been made clear and the church was chock full of Gentiles.
To state that Jewish writers would have ignored the story is both baseless and, frankly, insulting to them. You're actually saying the God-inspired gospel writers would have left out a story they didn't like? Really?
Remind me again what God-breathed means?
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Raf
The story would have been shocking to the people who heard Jesus tell it, but it would absolutely not have been shocking to the Christian audience that had already been exposed to the letters of Paul.
You are declaring, once again with no basis in fact, that a Gentile writer would include this story while a Jewish writer would not. Would Paul have included thst story? Yes. He would. So the fact that the story is included emphatically does not prove the gospel was written by a Gentile.
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Steve Lortz
Another way to ask the question is this: Does the truth that the author of II Timothy 3:16 wrote pasa graphe theopneustos require plenary verbal inspiration? That is to say, Does the fact that Paul told Timothy all the Tanakh was given by inspiration of God mean that EVERY (plenary) WORD (verbal) of our evanglical-protestant canon was originally dictated by God in a perfect manner, jot by jot, tittle by tittle? Does it mean that the people (women as well as men) who were slapping ink on the parchment were mere automatons, channeling the Holy Spirit through automatic writing? Does it mean that the original autographs of the Bible could NOT have contained any contradictions? Does it mean that if we find a contradiction in the Bible, even one single one, then the whole thing is a tissue of lies, having no value to anyone except to con men and swindlers like Elmer Gantry and V.P. Wierwille?
Love,
Steve
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Raf
I think you and I have already agreed on what "God-breathed" does not mean, that the answer to the question posed in the title of this thread is "yes," but all we've done is dodge the question of what it does mean.
That is, if "God-breathed" does NOT mean without error or contradiction, and if a work can be useful for doctrine reproof correction instruction in righteousness without being God-breathed, then what does God-breathed mean?
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Steve Lortz
That's the $64,000 question, Raf!
My own thinking is going places where I've never been before, and that's one of the reasons I'm glad YOU have chosen to go along with me on this journey.
Another quote from Tolkien:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it on weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Love,
Steve
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Raf
Well, because of my answer, I can only go so far. But I will be more than happy to assist in the critical thinking department. :)
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Raf
Point of clarification: I no longer believe in the idea of "God-breathed," but as an academic exercise, I am willing to say that the presence of errors and contradictions doesn't rule out a work as God-breathed unless excluding errors and contradictions is part of the definition.
For Wierwille (to cite an example), the presence of errors and contradictions disqualifies a work as God-breathed. This disqualifies his own work as well as the Bible.
It would be out of place in this thread for me to argue that there's no such thing as God-breathed. So all I'm saying here is, assuming there is such a thing, errors and contradictions would not be disqualifiers.
Hope that clears things up for anyone wondering.
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Steve Lortz
Thanks, Raf! :)
More later... my activities of the day have exhausted me for now...
Love.
Steve
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Steve Lortz
One of the reasons conversation on this topic is so difficult is because the language we are accustomed to using is so freighted with excess baggage. The language has been used by the unscrupulous to deceive and swindle, and most of us on this website know what that means at the most personal level. It's hard for us to separate the things we are talking about from the swindlers. And I don't mean just TWI. There have been elements of swindle in EVERY church since the fourth century CE.
So I'm proposing to use the word "mythos" to describe and point to the Bible. A mythos is a story relevant to a particular culture or some other group. A mythos is not necessarily mythical or even fictional. A mythos is just a story that has relevance. Parts of it may be "fictional." Parts of it may be "historical." I would also interpose a category of "legendary" accounts, narratives based around historical persons or events that have acquired fictional components.
The Bible is a story that has relevance to a particular culture, or should I say, relevance to a considerable number of differing cultures.
There are other mythoi (the proper plural of mythos), some competing with the Bible, others not competing.
Appeal to supernatural origin is not very helpful in comparing and contrasting mythoi, because many, if not all of them, do so.
I would propose a 5-point vertical scale of "usefulness" for evaluating and comparing mythoi:
most useful
very useful
useful
not very useful
least useful
Useful for what? I would respond "Useful for making sense out of the things that are happening to me."
We will talk about people who have a "high view" of scripture, and people who have a "low view". When we are talking about high and low views, we will be talking about positions on the usefulness scale.
----
Here are some examples from my own life:
Back in the 1960s, when I was in my teens, I first read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. I found it very useful for making sense of the things that happened to me, and I have continued to do so to this day. Seven years ago, when I was in my 50s, I read Tolkien's trilogy over the course of an academic year with a group of eight seventh-graders. I am still learning more about and from that mythos. LotR is not a story of "good vs. evil". It is a story of those things that are noble in human nature versus those things that are base, and it was inspired by the trauma of life and death in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme. For fifty years I have found the Tolkien mythos very useful, and before I learned how to read the Bible with understanding for myself, I found LotR most useful. I have a high view of the Lord of the Rings.
When I was an undergrad at Anderson College in the late-60s, I took several Bible courses, not because I was a "believer", but because they were required. (Oddly enough, I have my transcripts from that period setting here on my desk as I type!) I read the OT in Fall '67-'68 and the NT in Spring '67-'68. I made Bs in both those classes. All we did in them was read the Bible to see what it said. I didn't believe any of it, but I had read it. I took 3 hours of Christian Beliefs that I failed because I argued with the instructor. I took 3 hours of Biblical Archaeology to make those hours up, and that was one of the BEST classes I ever took. I made a B in it too. I had been exposed to the mythos of the Bible, but I still found it least useful. I had a low view of the Scriptures and continued to do so for another 15 years or so.
In 1971-'72 I took crash courses in mathematics from scratch to differential calculus, in physics from scratch to enough to understand the six factor formula of reactor kinetics (quantum rudiments), chemistry from scratch to inorganic, electrical theory, fluid flow, thermodynamics and metallurgy, as training in the Navy's Nuclear Power Program. From 1972 forward I was reading Toynbee for history and Jung for psychology. None of these things were mythoi in themselves, but they all have made important contributions to the popular mythos of early-21st century American culture. They were things that were shaping my thinking when I first attended a twig meeting in 1979. Oh, and I had also read Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter that summer. I remember it had a big influence on my thinking before I took PFAL and since. I think I view the current pop cultural mythos as not very useful, a moderately low view, though there are elements whose values vary from that.
----
All for now... more to come...
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
This conversation is necessarily going to progress slowly for several reasons: 1. My thinking is not the fruit of biblical "research"... It is the fruit of contemplating what life itself consists of, a contemplation brought on by my current proximity to death. 2. I don't have the physical or mental stamina or speed to participate in intense debate, the way I used to have when I would engage in three-hour proof-text duels with trinitarians. 3. It will take time for the implications of what we're talking about to sink in. 4., 5., 6., etc.
The first thing to do is to establish a language we can use that doesn't pre-suppose a result... hence, referring to the Bible as a mythos, a story having relevance to a particular culture or group, and setting a way of taking about the values of various mythoi on a scale, not of degrees of "inspiration", but of degrees of usefulness in terms of "making sense of what is happening to me."
I can foresee the conversation covering a number of questions, at least in the beginning. Other important questions may arise as the discussion develops...
1. Of what exactly does life consist?
2. What is the nature of a word?
3. What is "information"?
4. What factors regulate the flow of information?
5. How can we distinguish, as SETI tries to do, between a signal from an intelligent source and a signal from an unintelligent source?
And more...
After miss-spelling the word "source" as "souse" a couple of sentences ago, I am tempted to go re-watch W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick, a mythos if ever there was one!
Love,
Steve
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Raf
Hoping you're being melodramatic about your health, but otherwise, proceed at whatever pace makes you comfortable.
Best wishes.
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I'm not being melodramatic about my health. One night at the end of last July, about 11 pm, I started coughing up phlegm. The phlegm came so thick and fast that the cough became a spasm and I could not breath. I passed out. If I had been by myself, I would have died. As it was, my sister-in-law called 911 and I woke up in the emergency room about 1:30 am. My CO2 was at a lethal level. They kept me in the ICU for several days, and under observation for few more to watch my heart. After going back home, they had me call my vitals in on a daily basis for about another month. The episode was a recurrence of the pneumonia that had me in the hospital for about a week at the beginning of April. My kidneys have taken damage, and I have anemia as a result. Sometimes I feel as weak as a kitten. I have enough stamina to be active for a whole day, but not two days in a row. I have lost the mental speed I had when I was taking Greek. I will complete this semester of Hebrew at a reduced pace, but I won't sign up for the second semester.
As you may imagine, I have been giving a lot of concentrated thought to what it means for ANYTHING to be breathed.
I am thankful for your best wishes, Raf! When I was a boy, my dad was the city editor of the local morning paper. His desk was in the middle of the newsroom with pneumatic tubes going to other parts of the operation. Sometimes, when he had charge of me but had to be at work, he would take me into the newsroom, seat me at the desk of a reporter who was out, and give me a stack of cut newsprint and a pencil with a big fat black lead. He wouldn't let me open the drawers, so I can't say whether or not there was whiskey in them! I would sit there doodling away and imitating the drawings in the daily comic strips. That was how I learned how to tell stories from professional story tellers. I would sit there, sometimes for hours, surrounded by guys (and a gal or two, it was the fifties, you know) who were busy cranking out stories on their typewriters. But while they were working on their stories for the paper, they were also spinning side stories with each other about all sorts of things that WEREN'T going to make it into the paper. Looking back on it, it was quite an education.
I know that YOU are a professional story teller, too, Raf, and that's one of the reasons I value your input.
Love,
Steve
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Raf
And in case I haven't mentioned it, I deeply appreciate how welcome you are of my input, even given my change of heart about the Bible, the existence of God, etc. I'm trying to keep my lack of faith in its place and engage in discussions on their own terms. Not that I make a secret of where I stand, but facts is facts. "The Bible contains errors and contradictions" is a fact, and I'm prepared to argue that (you seem to be somewhat in agreement, although we may quibble on what "error" means in the context of our discussions). But "therefore the God of the Bible is not real" is an opinion (or, more to the point, a conclusion), and that's not always a welcome viewpoint or fair game in a discussion. In THIS thread, it's out of line, so I refrain from saying it. (That's also why I moved the thread, and I appreciate your graciousness in accepting that decision).
Get better.
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