Welcome to Gaia! ::

Glad you accepted the invite Demo. Feel free to ask questions. We may not have all the answers but we're open for discussion.

Hey welcome Nick. I'm glad to have you here. I'm Robbie in case you missed my intro. I hope you find places to discuss in and discussions to start. I love that Galatians quote. Galatians is one of my favorite letters of Paul's.

Welcome. Sorry for the late reply. I may not agree with that exegisis method of the Bible but okay. I'm sure there will be some interesting discussions.

It's inevitable and everyone does it to some degree. That's where peer review and historical analysis comes into play. Literal interpretation is a relatively recent phenomena from what I understand and is reactionary to the rationalist movement of the 19th century. I lean toward Thomas Aquinas's stance that interpretation of the Bible should not contradict scientific established truth so passages that do so are to be taken metaphorically. I also am a bit post-modern and see Bible as a mythic text. This does not mean that I see scriptures as untrue but that they are stories with meaning conveying a message, spiritual experiences, and/or preserve cultural practices at the time and using the body knowledge at the time and current events at the time of writing to compose each text. Regardless of whether the events literally happened or not is irrelevant since it misses the point of the message being conveyed. Now being the human that I am some of my personal experiences and/or ideas do color my interpretation but I try to distinguish when I give opinion based on evidence or opinion based on guesswork. I acknowledge that I could be wrong since I am human and am open to feedback if someone thinks that I'm wrong and welcome explanations for why I'm wrong. I tend to be a stubborn person at times so it might take me a while to admit it and much debate but I try to be honest with myself and others the best I can.

You look at it from a stunningly logical perspective, and that's quite impressive! Thing is though I can't believe literal interpretation is a rececnt phenomenon just given the history of christianity. It started out as a bunch of predominantly illiterate jews memorizing stories and traditions, scripture and putting them in their hearts, and I know they believed them as they were told. If it wasn't historical and they didn't believe it as it was told, i can't see them going out and flipping the world upside down, let alone dying for their cause. You can take the disciples for one, who they started out not getting a thing jesus told them, then he died, and they got the spirit, and then doubting peter rose up the church and died i believe on a cross, and they changed drastically from a bunch of fishermen. The idea of we allways have to interpret makes sense, but i'll have to say more later.

Thank you.

Really? I mean the Early Christians seemed to take a less than literal perspective when it came to accepting Jesus as the Jewish messiah despite not fulfilling the requirements according to Hebrew Tradition.
Well yeah history back then wasn't about "just the facts" like it is today. History before the rationalist movement was primarily about fostering group identity, promoting political/social ideals, and projecting future political/social directions. It was very biased, subjective, and exaggerative but it was memorable and purposeful.
Well yeah they believed it as the history of who they were as a people and that's what they were taught by their elders as fact then yes you are correct. Again before the scientific revolution and changing ideas about how history should be treated, it was subjective, biased, and exaggerative. This was how all people recorded history up until then. But if evidence was made clear that something didn't happen a particular way, they didn't out right reject it. They wrote new scriptures to factor it in or amended scriptures to factor it in. This is why you have two creation accounts, two flood myths, two accounts of how Aaron died, etc all lumped together. Next Judaism did not have a closed canon until the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
[quot]You can take the disciples for one, who they started out not getting a thing jesus told them, then he died, and they got the spirit, and then doubting peter rose up the church and died i believe on a cross, and they changed drastically from a bunch of fishermen. The idea of we allways have to interpret makes sense, but i'll have to say more later.I'll wait to see that when you can. No rush.

I'll wait to see that when you can. No rush.
Less literal in what sense, (ps i'm not sure how to do the awesome multiquote thing so i'll try and do all at once)
I just remember them going out and being nailed to crosses as christ said to pick up your cross and follow me, and they went out, leaving their homes, and their lives and preaching the good news of Mark 1:15 "the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near, Repent and believe in the good news!"
they went out and did what they were told to of healing the sick, casting out demons, being hated for following christ, and paul rebuked them for falling back into sin as was told in the old testament, (granted not all the OT) and food laws didn't apply, but being lukewarm got the response of being vomited out of his mouth.
The greek idea of telling a story, also wasn't giving out the facts, but it was to give the real teaching, to portray the real message, rather than to use Q (the list of all jesus said) and quote it, but they'd lay out the theology, or the truth of the message and that's what we've got as a text today.
The cannon of hebrew scripture wasn't complete, but what was written after 400 BC wasn't accepted by the church, jerome, josephus all rejected them, and jesus never quoted them, but were reinstated to agree with church doctrines of the catholic church. sad sad sad
Jesus's teachings also continually rejected the idea of promoting a movement, or preserving an ethnic identity, but called people to through out that idea entirely in favor of following the will of the Father (god) like he said the greatest commandment was to love god with all your heart and strength and mind, etc.
what do you think?

It takes practice but it's not hard to do the multiquoting thing.

Less than literal meaning they had to stretch interpretations of the OT in order to make Jesus fit the role they were putting him into. Have you read the arguments of why Judaism does not accept Jesus as messiah? It's based on a very literal interpretation of the OT. The number one reason is Jesus' lineage. He is a Jew because of being a child of Mary but he is regarded as tribeless. Why? Because one of the major claims in Christianity is that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, meaning anyway you cut it he is a b*****d child, thus has no claim to being part of the tribe of Judah. Yes one could argue that he was adopted into the tribe of Judah but because he was not Joseph's literal son, he has no claim to lineage to David and thus no claim to being the Jewish Messiah. That doesn't include the verse in Numbers where it clearly states "God is not a man", or the verses in Deuteronomy that states that "A prophet of God will not tell people to disobey the Law of Moses". This is what I mean by "less than literal" because a literal interpretation blows the whole religion out of the water.
Yes this was the common for most of the ancient world.
The entire Bible was put together the way it is to agree with Catholic Theology. All modern Bibles are Catholic because they still are either translations of the Vulgate or based on St. Jerome's notes on compiling the Vulgate. The only thing different about "protestant Bibles" is that they have texts removed from them to support general protestant stances.
Yes that is true he did say that but any social group will have a group identity and goals for the group. The Christian group identity is that we are decendants of Adam and though being Gentiles were adopted into a new Covenant to take part in the Kingdom of God through Christ. Loving the Lord your God and Loving Your Neighbor as yourself is the ideal that Christians as a Group move toward and actively promote. Granted each group has a different method and ideas about how this should be accomplished, the fact remains that this is what Christians move toward.