I’m perfectly calm. The resurrection is a highly symbolic part of scripture. It follows the visions of the Old Testament prophets who drew from contemporary literature but modified it to correspond with their own literary traditions. The NT flows directly out of this tradition, so there is no compulsion for modern Christians to subscribe to these helpful but primitive stories, which were merely an expression of the constantly evolving corporate vision that continues to change and gives us all a common spiritual goal. Meditating on the symbolic truths behind the virgin birth and resurrection myths brings new hope for a day when all paths to enlightenment become one and our species reaches its full glorious potential. With such powerful symbolism at heart, we can bring about a new age.
Gnosticism is a compromise with contemporary philosophy. It settles for a faith that is fundamentally disconnected from reality. The Lord’s mandate to both Adam and the apostles was domination of the physical world. Western culture is dying not because the end of the world is near. It is dying because the western church swapped her physical inheritance for gnosticism. Gnosticism is the tendency to de-historicise and de-physicalise Christianity. It subtly transforms history into mere ideology and facts into mere philosophy.
You might be willing to die for mere ideology. I’m not.
As I demonstrated, the Hebrew doesn’t give us a choice. These ‘conversations’ are irrelevant, unless of course we have another agenda, which would be a) deliberately discrediting the Word of God, or b) compromising with the constantly revised pop-science and pop-history.
Sorry to be so pointed. I assure you, I’m quite calm.
Hello Neil,
[quote author="Neil Foster"]It strikes me, then, that if it is essential for understanding something written in the Bible to have a context, then the Bible will provide the context. And so, while one can perhaps be sparked to fresh lines of thought by reading the extra-Biblical material, in the end if we can’t support a view by finding it somewhere else in the Bible we ought to be very tentative. And we humans always seem to have a tendency to give a higher priority than we ought to something new, rather than pursuing what we already have in the Bible.
We (principally Gordon and I) have had this discussion before (and elsewhere). The problem with the assertion that the Bible is sufficient for its own interpretation is that it fails to reflect on a number of factors: first, the point you make is in danger of forgetting that our very understanding of the languages in which Scripture was written is heavily dependent upon extra-biblical material. There’s simply no way to understand the Bible without recourse to external information! Second, language and cultural context are inextricably related in such a way that good translation cannot focus on one and ignore the other.
All this means that the assertion that the Bible is sufficient in and of itself is somewhat arbitrary. It is certainly true that some parts of the Bible are more transparent in meaning for us than others (but they still need translation!), but I don’t think this applies uniformly to the entire Bible. When it comes to passages like Gen 1, I think this information is particularly helpful. OTOH, I’d be a little wary of focussing exclusively on EE: there is a wealth of other pertinent literature from the ancient Near East which also has a significant bearing on our understanding of Genesis.
I think that Neil’s comments are essentially on target. Imagine a person of average intellect who has one Bible (in a language they can understand) and nothing else. It seems to me that with careful reading and study they could come to a good understanding of the Biblical message overall and of all the great truths of the Gospel.
But that’s not the issue here with regard to the EE debate (well, not for me at least). Having accepted the premises of the perspicuity of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture, I can still enhance/deepen my understanding of certain parts by reference to external sources - literary, archaeological, anthropological, etc. These sources can inform my understanding of the Bible, but they do not control it.
My difficulty with Gordon’s initial comment on EE ["Do not do it!"] was that it communicated to me a kind of fear of somehow being led astray or corrupted by looking at such material. I’m not saying that Gordon intended that, but it was certainly one way to read his remark. But perhaps I need to refer to external sources in order to better understand the writings of GC! -:)
As I demonstrated, the Hebrew doesn’t give us a choice.
Hi Michael
Without trying to engage with everything you’ve said, I would point out that one quote from James Barr is not really a demonstration of what the Hebrew does or doesn’t do.
Bob
My difficulty with Gordon’s initial comment on EE ["Do not do it!"] was that it communicated to me a kind of fear of somehow being led astray or corrupted by looking at such material. I’m not saying that Gordon intended that, but it was certainly one way to read his remark. But perhaps I need to refer to external sources in order to better understand the writings of GC! -:)
Bob
As with all my writings there is often the faintest whiff of hyperbole in the air.
However, I’m reacting to the last bit of serious reading on Genesis that I did a year or so ago, where the author told me that he would expertly help me understand the meaning of the text. He would do this by showing me how I was a dunderhead for thinking that the universe might have been created in six days, and that my dunderheadedness would become obvious when I knew all about the Ancient Near Eastern texts that he was going to help me out with, because clearly I knew nothing about these things and he did. (oh, it wasn’t Enkers, in case you wonder. His work on this really is worth reading)
In the end I wasn’t greatly helped by his potted summary, and he had also failed to persuade me that the world couldn’t have been created in six 24 hour days.
To me, the idea that the earth could have been created in less than a week is one plausible and natural way of reading Genesis, and such a reading can neither be proved nor disproved by expert outside knowledge.
You are right. I should have used a different verb. However, I have no doubt that Barr himself could demonstrate what the Hebrew does or doesn’t do or he wouldn’t have allowed that quote to go on record.
As with all my writings there is often the faintest whiff of hyperbole in the air.
Surely not!
He would do this by showing me how I was a dunderhead for thinking that the universe might have been created in six days, and that my dunderheadedness would become obvious when I knew all about the Ancient Near Eastern texts that he was going to help me out with, because clearly I knew nothing about these things and he did.
To try and demonstrate that you are a dunderhead Gordon is, quite simply, the worst kind of dunderheadedness.
To me, the idea that the earth could have been created in less than a week is one plausible and natural way of reading Genesis, and such a reading can neither be proved nor disproved by expert outside knowledge.
Agreed. This is the problem with the whole Creationist v Old Earth debate. Both of them can be reconciled with the Biblical text, and neither of them can be proved without accepting various premises that the Bible itself doesn’t require us to accept.
If the Genesis story doesn’t reflect what really happened, then it’s of no real use, and it’s no better than EE.
Why is it of no use Dannii? Jesus used all sorts of parables, metaphors, references, and other story telling devices. Yet He still communicated real truth making real statements about our real problem with sin requiring real forgiveness from our real God. Yet He did much of this in ‘unreal’ parables. Please explain?
Agreed. This is the problem with the whole Creationist v Old Earth debate. Both of them can be reconciled with the Biblical text, and neither of them can be proved without accepting various premises that the Bible itself doesn’t require us to accept.
From Genesis alone there may be many possible interpretations. However I think other parts of the Bible make certain things clear, such as the cause and reason for death, which greatly reduce the number of interpretations.
Dave, firstly parables are quite a different genre, so I don’t even know if such comparisons are helpful.
This is how I see it:
Suppose some ancient origins myth, called A, makes some claims about God and the world that he made. These claims are false, untrue, disconnected from reality, and even lies.
I think it’s quite obvious that the only way to correct them, polemic style, is with truth that reflects reality, the reality of God and the universe he made. And if myth A purports to be history, then the polemic must be real history.
So if Genesis doesn’t reflect reality, even if it does contradict and correct myth A, it’s no better than myth A itself.
If it does reflect reality, I think it still leaves open many questions about the way to interpret it, how literally to interpret it and so on.
So for a specific example, EE says something about the stars apparently, that they’re the tears of some goddess. Genesis says they’re created after the earth as timekeepers. If Genesis doesn’t reflect and explain the reality of why God created stars, if they weren’t made to be timekeepers, or if the earth was created long after them, then EE hasn’t been corrected.
Actually there is the difference with parables - they’re not meant to be polemics. If there was some other myth at the time of Jesus in the genre of a parable, then if Jesus had refuted it with another parable it wouldn’t have done the job. No, instead he would have refuted it with clear statements from the scriptures.
[quote author="Bob Cameron"]
I think that Neil’s comments are essentially on target. Imagine a person of average intellect who has one Bible (in a language they can understand)…
At this point you’ve tried to hide the fact that you’re already admitting a whole range of external information which has been used to give them a Bible in a language they can understand! So why stop there? Why stop clarifying the meaning of the text at some arbitrary point (and different translations using different methodologies all adopt differing points of cessation in the transfer of meaning from the source to the target)?
[quote author="Bob Cameron"]… and nothing else. It seems to me that with careful reading and study they could come to a good understanding of the Biblical message overall and of all the great truths of the Gospel.
Yes, but as I say, they’ve done so with the implicit input of a great deal of external information. They’re just unaware of it because it’s hidden in the translation process.
[quote author="Bob Cameron"]But that’s not the issue here with regard to the EE debate (well, not for me at least). Having accepted the premises of the perspicuity of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture, I can still enhance/deepen my understanding of certain parts by reference to external sources - literary, archaeological, anthropological, etc. These sources can inform my understanding of the Bible, but they do not control it.
But only because you’ve overlooked the aspects which do “control” your understanding that I’ve pointed to above. ISTM that the only way around this is to believe either that (a) you have an innate ability to understand the meaning of the original languages in their historical context or (b) the Bible was written in modern English (of your preferred translation).
Now I don’t think that the implications of this are that the authority of the Bible is compromised, but I do think a doctrine of Scripture which claims that “all you need is the Bible” is overly simplistic and not substantiated by the Bible itself.
Part of the problem is trying to make sense of the structure of the Bible’s creation account from a modern western worldview. It looks odd. There appears to be no obvious reason for the order of events.
BUT
The creation was a worship service. It followed a liturgical structure that resounds throughout the Bible like soundwaves
- in the history from Adam to Noah
- in the 7 chapters that describe the Tabernacle
- in the first seven books of the Bible
- in the history of Israel from Abraham to Christ
- in the structure of each of the patriarch narratives
- in the structure of the life of Moses before the exodus
- in the structure of every Covenant renewal
- in the 7 annual feasts in Lev 23
- in the history of Israel from Egypt to Canaan
- Joseph’s life follows the pattern twice
- in the structure of the prophets
- Ezra and Nehemiah follow the pattern individually and as a unit
- Esther follows the pattern twice
- in the structure of the first and last chapters of Matthew and the last chapters of the other gospels
- in the structure of both the beatitudes and the woes in Matthew (these are contrasted in the chiasm)
- in the structure of the last supper
- in Christ’s seven last words on the cross
- in the history of the New Testament from Christ to AD70
- as the deep structure of the New Testament Scriptures
- as the structure of the book of Jude
- as the deep structure of the book of Revelation
- as the structure of every chapter in the Revelation and often within each point of each structure
- as the basic structure of our worship services
(and these are just the ones I have found)
God spoke the Word. The Creation week started the pattern and history repeats it over and over again.
Even human gestation, the average human day, and human life follows the pattern. It is inescapable in the Bible. The creation pattern is the DNA of the Bible.
If anyone is interested in further info, you can email me at print at bullartistry dot com dot au
The Tabernacle is an architectural model of the world. God pictures the world as his house, which is why the Bible describes it as having foundations, pillars and windows.
Each of the seven speeches of the Lord (Exodus 25-31) is introduced with a variant of the phrase “Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying...”
Day 1 - Light, the Ark (gold is solid light - the Most Holy Place had no natural light)
Day 2 - The Firmament, the veils delineate the holy place, the heavenly chamber where the priesthood “flew about” ministering before the throne (their garments in Hebrew have “wings”, translated “tassles").
Day 3 - Land and Sea, the Bronze altar (the four-cornered Land); Grain and Fruit plants, the Table of Showbread
Day 4 - Sun Moon and Stars (5 stars - the visible, moving planets), the Lampstand - the governing lights, seven eyes watching over the Table
Day 5 - Birds and Fish (clouds/swarms/armies), the Incense Altar
Day 6 - Man, The priesthood of Aaron, washed in the Laver to enter the holy place
Day 7 - Sabbath
A new Covenant is a new heavens and a new earth. Isaiah uses these terms when he predicts the Restoration era.
I’ll admit it this symbolism initially sounds odd to us “Greeks”, but it plays out again and again in the Bible. It’s also crucial in interpreting Revelation.
A good example would be Israel being the “four-cornered Land”. Symbolically speaking, Israel was the altar raised out of the Gentile Sea, a mountain with four horns purified with blood, with the laver (crystal sea) above it. If you remember, Moses and the elders climbed Sinai and feasted with God, and He didn’t kill them. They saw Him walking on a sapphire pavement above the mountain - the crystal sea. (The Tabernacle is a ladder to heaven laid out on the ground horizontally.)
If we don’t start thinking like this, great portions of the Bible remain closed to us. If we do, a lot of the weird bits start to make sense. The symbolism is consistent.
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