The Bible is Rediculous!

[_beastie]

You would have preferred some other kind of woman?

LOL. Now that was funny!

I find no meaning in those passages taken metaphorically. I find it more likely they are literal. That and of course the whole Holy Ghost thing.

If you can find no meaning in those passages taken metaphorically you are suffering from a remarkable lack of imagination.

[_huckelberry]

I get the impression that the only people who read the passage were Roger and Nehor. Roger's explanation is pretty straightforward. The passage is literal as he explained.

I am reminded of the Jack in the Box ad, 99 tacos for two cents.

[_The Nehor]

If you can find no meaning in those passages taken metaphorically you are suffering from a remarkable lack of imagination.

I disagree but it may be about the nature of the passages. If I read a mythical story about a woman being impregnated by the power of God, raising up a righteous Son who claimed to descend from God who died and then lived again I could come up with all kinds of metaphors about it.

The New Testament doesn't read like that. It talks about a guy born in an actual town in an actual year. The account deals with messy local politics, includes irrelevant details with no significance like Jesus writing in the dirt, and ends with him caught in a legal battle. He dies under the order of a man whose governorship is real, the rising from the tomb lacks drama in the usual sense, and all of his followers (except a few women) refuse to believe it or think he's a ghost.

I've read legends and myth before. This is nothing like them. It purports to be historical in a way that no legend or myth does. You can call the whole account a lie if you want but thinking that the writers intended it to be metaphorical is a colossal joke. If they did they were idiots.

[_beastie]

I disagree but it may be about the nature of the passages. If I read a mythical story about a woman being impregnated by the power of God, raising up a righteous Son who claimed to descend from God who died and then lived again I could come up with all kinds of metaphors about it.

The New Testament doesn't read like that. It talks about a guy born in an actual town in an actual year. The account deals with messy local politics, includes irrelevant details with no significance like Jesus writing in the dirt, and ends with him caught in a legal battle. He dies under the order of a man whose governorship is real, the rising from the tomb lacks drama in the usual sense, and all of his followers (except a few women) refuse to believe it or think he's a ghost.

I've read legends and myth before. This is nothing like them. It purports to be historical in a way that no legend or myth does. You can call the whole account a lie if you want but thinking that the writers intended it to be metaphorical is a colossal joke. If they did they were idiots.

So your stance is that if a story includes details, and is couched in the context of actual history, then it cannot possibly be a myth?

[_Roger]

Beastie:

So your stance is that if a story includes details, and is couched in the context of actual history, then it cannot possibly be a myth?

I don't think Nehor said it would be impossible. I think what he said was, given the evidence, it would be unlikely. I agree. I think you would have a difficult time arguing that the Jesus story is complete myth. You might have an easier time arguing that the walking on water, casting out demons, restoring sight to the blind, etc. were mythological elements added later, but it is pretty well established that there actually was a Jesus of Nazareth.

[_The Nehor]

I disagree but it may be about the nature of the passages. If I read a mythical story about a woman being impregnated by the power of God, raising up a righteous Son who claimed to descend from God who died and then lived again I could come up with all kinds of metaphors about it.

The New Testament doesn't read like that. It talks about a guy born in an actual town in an actual year. The account deals with messy local politics, includes irrelevant details with no significance like Jesus writing in the dirt, and ends with him caught in a legal battle. He dies under the order of a man whose governorship is real, the rising from the tomb lacks drama in the usual sense, and all of his followers (except a few women) refuse to believe it or think he's a ghost.

I've read legends and myth before. This is nothing like them. It purports to be historical in a way that no legend or myth does. You can call the whole account a lie if you want but thinking that the writers intended it to be metaphorical is a colossal joke. If they did they were idiots.

So your stance is that if a story includes details, and is couched in the context of actual history, then it cannot possibly be a myth?

No, what I'm saying is that it wasn't written as myth or legend which is why I don't see the need to read it as metaphorical or symbolic and I don't believe that it was written with that intent. I'm assuming we're still on the same topic as before which was not about the truthfulness of the account but the intent and whether someone can logically believe it is metaphorical.

It reads like a series of events someone saw. There's nothing like it in Greek, Norse, or Egyptian myth (only ones I'm familiar with). Tolkien's Silmarillion is closer to myth then the New Testament.

[_Thama]

The convenient thing about communication about virtually anything is that you can misread it if you so choose by choosing to make it literal. For example, I could respond to your first sentence in this post by pointing out that it is ludicrous to suggest that a patch of some kind can be used to bind together intellectual statements.

Luckily, you don't even need metaphor for that sentence: patch (verb) in Websters yields "1: to mend, cover, or fill up a hole or weak spot in". Alternate, accepted definitions for words are not the same thing as metaphor.

The ability to discern metaphor from literalism is something we do routinely. If you assumed a literal understanding of everything the world would be a very confusing place:

"My dogs are calling me." (Her pets are murdering her?)
"After I said that, he exploded at me and went crazy." (spontaneous combustion?)
"I can't figure this damned thing out." (The object is going to hell?)

Excellent point. Also to be noted is the fact that each of the examples you used are of very common, accepted figures of speech. So common, in fact, that they are a part of the definition of the words that are being used figuratively. Were you to say in place of the second example that "After I said that, he did the flamenco and slit his own throat", you would have to assume either mental illness on the part of the man in the story, or inaccuracy (mental illness?) on the part of the person recounting the story. Is it possible that this was a metaphor? Certainly... the vigor and clapping of the flamenco might have been representative of the strength of his emotions, the blood from his throat representative of the horrible words coming from his throat and mouth, etc. But you wouldn't be able to just assume that because this metaphor is not commonly used. You'd have to presuppose that both the subject and the recounter of the story were both reliable and sane, and only then would a metaphorical interpretation be the most likely one. Even then you could interpret the metaphor in whatever convenient way you saw fit, with no established meaning to restrict you.

All languages use this kind of metaphor. From context I'm pretty sure Ezekiel is not telling us to cook with dung but is trying to drive in a point. I consider this a passage where to assume it's literal is to be deliberately naïve.

To assume that this is the kind of metaphor you explained above, you would need to find some other text from that language or culture in which dung consistently adopts a non-literal meaning that would be consistent with its usage here. I'm not aware of any such meaning, are you?

[_Doctor Scratch]

The Nehor is committing a literary theory sin known as the Intentional Fallacy. I'm kind of amazed that he would do this, since he claims to have majored in English. For those not in the know, The Intentional Fallacy says that it is improper to interpret a text based on authorial intent. That is to say: authors cannot control the way(s) that their text(s) will be interpreted. Sometimes authors aren't quite sure what they meant. Sometimes what they did actually mean gets interpreted incorrectly, or gets lost in translation, or the original meaning/intent gets buried in some way. Sometimes authors deliberately write material that is highly symbolic or nonsensical in nature. Thus: for The Nehor to say that the Bible is not myth simply because the authors somehow did not "mean" it to be a myth is completely absurd. This is to say nothing about the various other religious texts---ancient Greek myths, for instance---which he himself probably treats as "symbolic" or "mythic," but which others' did or do view as literal and documentary.

[_The Nehor]

The Nehor is committing a literary theory sin known as the Intentional Fallacy. I'm kind of amazed that he would do this, since he claims to have majored in English. For those not in the know, The Intentional Fallacy says that it is improper to interpret a text based on authorial intent. That is to say: authors cannot control the way(s) that their text(s) will be interpreted. Sometimes authors aren't quite sure what they meant. Sometimes what they did actually mean gets interpreted incorrectly, or gets lost in translation, or the original meaning/intent gets buried in some way. Sometimes authors deliberately write material that is highly symbolic or nonsensical in nature. Thus: for The Nehor to say that the Bible is not myth simply because the authors somehow did not "mean" it to be a myth is completely absurd. This is to say nothing about the various other religious texts---ancient Greek myths, for instance---which he himself probably treats as "symbolic" or "mythic," but which others' did or do view as literal and documentary.

Scratch of course fails to understand the fallacy. The fallacy exists mostly to judge creative poetry and/or fiction in a way that does not cripple the text with a fixation on what the author was trying to do.

The New Testament texts don't fall into the category; other works about history don't either. When I read Josephus recounting a battle he was in I don't think it's wise to detach authorial intent from the account. In a poem what the author intended is irrelevant to enjoying or appreciating the poem. When you are reading a historical account where the author was there trying to convey what actually happened ignoring the author's intent in favor of any understanding of the text may increase artistic appreciation but it will cripple you in trying to figure out what actually happened.

Apparently unlike Scratch I spent a whole class period with an intelligent instructor in which we discussed when this fallacy is applicable. It is not applicable while dealing with seriously stated historical accounts like the Gospels or Josephus or dozens of others.

Nice try Scratch.

[_The Nehor]

To assume that this is the kind of metaphor you explained above, you would need to find some other text from that language or culture in which dung consistently adopts a non-literal meaning that would be consistent with its usage here. I'm not aware of any such meaning, are you?

I disagree. I think I know enough about language to discern when these kinds of expressions are being used with a reasonable degree of accuracy even if I have no prior knowledge of that particular expression. For example, when I've gone to different cultures that share a common language (Britain, Australia) I've heard expressions I've never heard before but through context and basic reasoning I know they're not literal right away despite never having heard them before and usually get what they mean immediately.