Is Jesus Lucifer ?

[HeadingNorth]

I think this is a really good way of looking at the Biblical texts. What Tea4two points out is that the Bible is not a simple text to be taken as literal history. It seems to me to be full of parables, full of astrological understanding, full of symbology and metaphor.

 

Some of these we can still perhaps interpret in a meaningful way, but other meanings, that would once have been widely recognised, have been lost over time. Even the subtlest of nuances can change a person's perspective of what is written if they understand them- think of sarcasm, some people can pick up on it easier than others. We can't possibly understand the nuances of the Bible in their entirety- we live in different times and with a very different culture.

 

The problem is of course, that in absence of knowable truth, then any and all opinions must be considered valid.

 

An excellent post.

 

Sometimes, proper meaning can still be extracted; I don't think there is anyone left who continues to believe that unicorns exist simply because the Bible mentions them.

[flamingjimmy]

Did anyone think the bible was a book full of parables and not to be taken literally say, 1500 years ago?

 

Or is it only now that we know that much of the bible is nonsense that people have begun to say that?

[HeadingNorth]

Did anyone think the bible was a book full of parables and not to be taken literally say, 1500 years ago?

 

1500 years ago, probably not. At the time it was written, much of the Bible was known to be metaphor, parable and inspiration. During the dark ages in Europe, it came to be regarded as inarguable truth.

 

Ruth, Esther, Daniel, to take but three, were written as inspirational stories, and only later did people start assuming they were historical record. Kings and Chronicles, on the other hand, largely are a historical record - which is why they're just about the most boring books in the whole Bible.

[flamingjimmy]

1500 years ago, probably not. At the time it was written, much of the Bible was known to be metaphor, parable and inspiration.

That's interesting, how do we know this?

 

Ruth, Esther, Daniel, to take but three, were written as inspirational stories, and only later did people start assuming they were historical record. Kings and Chronicles, on the other hand, largely are a historical record - which is why they're just about the most boring books in the whole Bible.

 

What about important stuff like genesis, the exodus, and the zombie apocalypse resurrection?

[Grahame]

An excellent post.

 

Sometimes, proper meaning can still be extracted; I don't think there is anyone left who continues to believe that unicorns exist simply because the Bible mentions them.

 

 

"The earliest description is that of Ctesias, who (Indica opera, ed. Baehr, p. 254) states that there were in India white wild asses celebrated for their fleetness of foot, having on the forehead a horn a cubit and a half in length, coloured white, red and black; from the horn were made drinking cups which were a preventive of poisoning. Aristotle mentions (Hist. anim. ii. t; De part. anim. iii. 2) two one-horned animals, the oryx, a kind of antelope, and "the so-called Indian ass." In Roman times Pliny (N.H. viii. 30; xi. 106) mentions the oryx, the Indian ass, and an Indian ox as one-horned; Aelian (De nat. anim. iii. 41; iv. 52), quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse, and says (xvi. 20) that the Monoceros was sometimes called Carcazonon, which may be a form of the Arabic Carcadan, meaning rhinoceros (see Rev. W. Haughton, "On the Unicorn of the Ancients," in Annals and Mag. of Natural History for 1862, p. 363). Strabo (lib. xv.) says that in India there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads."

 

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Unicorn

[Berberis]

Did Jesus ever exist? He only appears in religious books, while historians of the time who where in the same area of the world make no mention of the guy.

 

A lot of what is attributed to Jesus is very similar to that of Egyptian gods.

[HeadingNorth]

What about important stuff like genesis, the exodus, and the zombie apocalypse resurrection?

 

 

No more likely to be true than any other religious creation myth.

 

The early parts of Genesis reached their final form during the Babylonian exile, when the Jewish priesthood needed an acceptable religious justification for taking a day off in every seven. Prior to that, "Sabbath" referred to the festival of the full moon (Babylonian "Sappatu"), and there is still an odd reference to it as such dotted in the very early parts of the Bible.

[Grahame]

1500 years ago, probably not. At the time it was written, much of the Bible was known to be metaphor, parable and inspiration. During the dark ages in Europe, it came to be regarded as inarguable truth.

 

Ruth, Esther, Daniel, to take but three, were written as inspirational stories, and only later did people start assuming they were historical record. Kings and Chronicles, on the other hand, largely are a historical record - which is why they're just about the most boring books in the whole Bible.

 

I'm not sure about that HeadingNorth, I really am not.

[Cavegirl]

Did anyone think the bible was a book full of parables and not to be taken literally say, 1500 years ago?

 

Or is it only now that we know that much of the bible is nonsense that people have begun to say that?

 

I think that what you have to remember here is that religion was once the only means of understanding and interpreting the world, it mixed 'science' with spirituality.

 

The Bible is part science, but without the modern interpretation of science. The creation is the original version of Darwinism (who are we?, where did we come from?), much of the symbology can be referenced to astrological events or natural disasters/ events etc.

 

Science, as we know it, only developed during the Enlightenment and it is with modern, scientific minds that some people deride everything in the Bible as 'nonsense'.

 

Parts of it do seem nonsensical to us, but it wouldn't have seemed that way to the people who it was written for at the time. They would have read it as a manual that aims to answer some of the more abstract and complex questions of life, a spiritual document, a historical document, an astrological document and a study of natural history (as they saw it) all rolled into one.

 

The world has a long history of wrapping 'truth' up in symbology. Edgar Wind's book 'Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance' explains how this is done in a comprehensive, but quite dull to read way. He talks of Dionysius the Areopagite who wrote "All those who are wise in divine matters and are interpreters of the mystical revelations prefer incongruous symbols for holy things, so that divine things may not be easily accessible". So the Bible has a face that is portrayed to the masses, a literal story, but behind that face the 'initiated' can read the symbols of the divine.

 

These are the 'truths' that have either been retained, lost or mistranslated along the path of time.

 

Take away our smug view of being able to look back on this attempt at understanding the world and we should be able to appreciate what a phenomenal study of human understanding of the world it was for its time. It should be valued for that if nothing else.

 

Unfortunately, I appreciate, people's views of the Bible have been tainted by the politics and history of several millenia.

[flamingjimmy]

I think that what you have to remember here is that religion was once the only means of understanding and interpreting the world, it mixed 'science' with spirituality.

 

The Bible is part science, but without the modern interpretation of science. The creation is the original version of Darwinism (who are we?, where did we come from?), much of the symbology can be referenced to astrological events or natural disasters/ events etc.

 

Science, as we know it, only developed during the Enlightenment and it is with modern, scientific minds that some people deride everything in the Bible as 'nonsense'.

Pretty much agree with all of that.

 

Parts of it do seem nonsensical to us, but it wouldn't have seemed that way to the people who it was written for at the time. They would have read it as a manual that aims to answer some of the more abstract and complex questions of life, a spiritual document, a historical document, an astrological document and a study of natural history (as they saw it) all rolled into one.

 

The world has a long history of wrapping 'truth' up in symbology. Edgar Wind's book 'Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance' explains how this is done in a comprehensive, but quite dull to read way. He talks of Dionysius the Areopagite who wrote "All those who are wise in divine matters and are interpreters of the mystical revelations prefer incongruous symbols for holy things, so that divine things may not be easily accessible". So the Bible has a face that is portrayed to the masses, a literal story, but behind that face the 'initiated' can read the symbols of the divine.

What reason is there to assume that there are any 'divine truths' in the bible at all?

 

These are the 'truths' that have either been retained, lost or mistranslated along the path of time.

For what reason do you assume there are any deep 'truths' to be had in the bible at all?

 

I agree wit the whole 'the bible is like a science book of it's time' idea.

 

But that doesn't mean it's worth reading.

 

I mean you wouldn't go and read a 200 year old science book to find out about something like, say, continental drift. Because as far as they were concerned it didn't happen.

 

Would anyone argue the the old ideas (that the continents have always been the way they are now) still hold some 'truth' in them even though they're wrong?

 

No, so why do it with the bible?

 

It is in effect an obsolete science book.