coemgen said:
Melon, I don't know who's feeding you this mythic speech crap about the Bible, but I can tell you that's a false statement. Maybe parts of it are allegorical, in the form of a parable or poetic, but the Bible itself isn't mythical. In fact, most of it should be taken as historical and straight forward talk; black and white. And I don't know about it being written to not be proven wrong or proven right. What are you saying? How do you know this?
Prove to me it's a false statement.
I think you're confused as to my usage of "mythic speech." Don't confuse it with the word "myth." Mythic speech is to phrase something in a way that nobody can question it. Religion, in general, is nothing but mythic speech. You say that the Bible should be taken as "historical"; what evidence do you have beyond what you have been taught to believe? To say the Bible is "historical" is a matter of faith and faith alone.
There are contradictions in the Bible. Even if I believe that science has made a mockery of literal creationism, no one has ever solved this overlooked Genesis conundrum:
If Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel were the first humans, then how did Cain marry a woman from the land of Nod after being cast from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 4:16-17)? How do "Nodites" even exist? After all, if there are only three people on Earth (after the death of Abel), Cain should have no one to marry, let alone a whole pagan tribe. This is generally why I believe that the creation myths of Genesis were never meant to be applied globally, but were, rather, the story of the creation of the "Chosen People." Genesis 4 more than implies that the world has long existed before Adam and Eve were even created. I theorize that early Judaism believed in the existence of multiple gods, but would only worship one: their own. However, they may have believed in the existence of other tribal gods, each of which would have been the creator of the tribe (i.e., "Baal" as the creator of the Phoenicians, etc.).
Post-exilic Judaism is probably genuinely monotheistic, but even in the NT, there is a disconnect between the Sadducees (old time Jews) and the Pharisees (Pharisee derives from "Parsi," referring to Persian Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Persian Empire where they were exiled. The Magi ("Three Wise Men") are Zoroastrian priests, BTW.). The Sadducees hated the Pharisees who believed in Zoroastrian beliefs about a Messianic savior, and it is the text of the Pharisees that make up the Old Testament. The Pharisees, while believing a Messiah would come, did not believe Jesus was it. The Sadducees would not have believed in a Messiah at all.
Secondly, the story of Noah's Ark makes no sense. I would challenge Noah to have been able to snatch some polar bears or kangaroos for the ark, let alone the myriad of freshwater life that would not have survived a salty ocean deluge. Additionally, a global flood would have left clear scientific evidence for us to study, even if the flood dried up. There would be a clear layer of sediment, not to mention fossil evidence from all the dead animals (after all, Noah only supposedly saved a few of each animal, not all) and dead humans.
However, there is clear scientific evidence that the Black Sea is a result of the Mediterranean Sea breaching a weak land wall, plunging the area that is now the Black Sea with 500 feet of water 5,000 years ago. There is clear evidence of civilization, since the lower layers of the Black Sea are anoxic (no oxygen), meaning things like wood never decay. This is likely the origin of "Noah's Ark." No global flood, but an event so horrifying as to be passed down in distorted, mythical form.
I can back up my claims with plenty of historical and scientific evidence, not to mention applying logic. As to how I know this, the secular study of the Bible is quite an interesting subject to study. We know that the Bible is not a fixed text, due to evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are some additions (and Martin Luther's "apocryphal" OT texts are in the Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning he was wrong). Logically, it makes sense; with no printing press until the 1400s, you had to make books manually and it lends itself to contemporary additions. The idea of "preservation" is a modern value, not a traditional value.
I enjoy studying religion, and like the early Founding Fathers, I tend to approach it quite scholarly. In my opinion, to understand God, one must understand His creation, and that is only going to be understood through science and finding out, historically, what really happened. I was never a fundamentalist, and, through the centuries, there is a clear tradition of philosophizing about the nature of God outside of the Bible.
Melon
... It was me who said it was an excellent poem...
To me, and I'd be happy to post examples again, the numerous prophecies in the OT that were fulfilled by Christ in the NT prove without a doubt the Bible's authority, authenticity and accuracy. To those who doubt it, and I don't mean to sound cocky, but have you read it?
