The Bible. Myth or Reality?

Greatest I am

Greatest I am

Valued Senior Member
The Bible. Myth or Reality?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAEpc1zhcuo

As a Gnostic Christian I see literal reading of the Bible as a gross distortion of what the Bible was written to do. That being to inspire people to seek God and his best laws and rules. Literal readers just become idol worshipers and do not seek God the way Jesus instructed.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Literal reading has created and idol worshiping closed minded people who have settled for an immoral God whom we name as a demiurge as his morals, if literally true, are more satanic than God like.

Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.

What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?
Remember please that if not a book of myths, then real talking serpents are somehow supposed to still exist and believers have to believe in a lot of supernatural phenomenon without any evidence whatsoever.

Literalist Christians, it seems to me, have suspended rational judgement that has created in Christians a new Dark Age of thought and an Inquisitional attitude towards all other thinking. They no longer seek God and are true idol worshipers instead of the God seekers that Jesus wanted to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvBxFXQy7-M

Do you think the Bible to be a book of myths or a book trying to show reality and history?

Regards
DL
 
Photizo said:
Reality.
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All of it? Talking animals, a water walking God and the seven headed monster of Revelation, and God using genocide against the whole world?

If so, talking serpents are supposed to still be here hurting us. Where are they?

Regards
DL
 
Photizo said:
Reality.
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Can't be. It even contradicts itself.

The Bible is the written form of an oral tradition going back millennia. The stories did not survive intact, nor are all the stories from the same place. Some are parables, some are real events, some are real events as modified by a new religion struggling to find relevance.

While study of the Bible can be a valuable endeavor and can reveal a lot about the time it was written and the various Christian faiths, it is a mistake to take it literally. It is not a literal account, nor was it intended to be.
 
Greatest I am said:
That falls under reality then.

I asked Photizo to expand in post 5. Care to answer the same post?

Regards
DL
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By historical epic I mean that there is some historical truth (the sematic tribes existed, they had some interaction with Egypt, they migrated, etc.) but everything was written in the context of mythology - along the lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
 
billvon said:
Can't be. It even contradicts itself.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_paradox

78033188.jpg

"The Bible is the written form of an oral tradition going back millennia. The stories did not survive intact, nor are all the stories from the same place. Some are parables, some are real events, some are real events as modified by a new religion struggling to find relevance. While study of the Bible can be a valuable endeavor and can reveal a lot about the time it was written and the various Christian faiths, it is a mistake to take it literally. It is not a literal account, nor was it intended to be."
 
"...it is a mistake to take it literally. It is not a literal account, nor was it intended to be."

Thus a myth, not reality.
 
spidergoat said:
Thus a myth, not reality.
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Something doesn't have to be literally true to be "real" or "true" in a transcendent sense. Granted, I don't think of the Bible as that for me, since I'm a Hellenist; but I'm not the only person in the world and it would be supremely narcissistic to think of my beliefs as objectively true.
 
origin said:
By historical epic I mean that there is some historical truth (the sematic tribes existed, they had some interaction with Egypt, they migrated, etc.) but everything was written in the context of mythology - along the lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
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Perfect. Thanks.

If Constantine had left it as myth and not pushe the 4 only gospel literacy, we might habe by-passed the Dark Ages of free thought and Inquisitions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D

Regards
DL
 
Photizo said:
The Bible is the Word of God to man. Ignore It/Him and you will certainly perish.
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Please listen to Bishop Spong on how the bible became the Word of God. Start it up at about the 17 min.mark, although the whole link is worthy of your listening.


Why did God give man two creation stories and two flood stories that respectively contradict each other.

These are scriptures that were written by Jews.
Jews are generally not literalists and do not see it as the word of God. Why do you?

Do you not think it strange that Christianity reversed the morals of some of the stories?

For instance, Genesis, to Jews, was a place of man's elevation.

Christianity turned that into a fall.

Should the Jewish view not take precedence?
After all, it is their God and scriptures.

Regards
DL
 
billvon said:
Nothing so complex as a physical paradox.
Here's a simple one. Did cows come before people?
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I think not. Cows were quite similar looking animals to the present cow, I suspect but had much smaller utter and gave little if any milk year long. Man made them via selective breading same way he made various types of dogs.
 
billvon said:
In the same way that old history textbooks are myths, yes. (Which is to say, they contained a lot of mistakes, and a lot of stuff was conflated to a Christian view of the world, but were generally true.)
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In other words, full of shit.
 
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