How much of the Bible do you take literally?

[Mystophilus]

So Jesus should have been a college professor instead of the redeemer of the world? Is it all up to God to ensure our every moment is one of natural happiness on this earth? Where did God promise us that?

Who suggested any of that? Those are your ideas and your words, I am afraid, not mine.

My point was that the fact that he talked to people in terms which they could understand is no proof that those terms were what he understood to be true.

And how do you know the intentions of the compliers of the creation stories?

Once more, you are adding in words and ideas not mine. As I said, “That fact is a very strong indicator”. The difference between that statement and an assertion of knowledge about someone else’s intentions is enormous.

There is no need to divide the verses as you have done.

There is if it is taken as literal history, because there are two distinct narratives there.

No part of the story is merely symbolic, if you mean it didn’t happen like that.

Sorry, but I cannot see any reason to presume that to be probable, let alone to assert it.

Each part describes an epoch leading up to the creation of man, which is what God was preparing the earth for.

So, you read each of the seven “days” as a longer period? How does that work with the different sequence of chapter 2, in which the man is created before the animals?

 

[Della]

Who suggested any of that? Those are your ideas and your words, I am afraid, not mine.

My point was that the fact that he talked to people in terms which they could understand is no proof that those terms were what he understood to be true.

Once more, you are adding in words and ideas not mine. As I said, “That fact is a very strong indicator”. The difference between that statement and an assertion of knowledge about someone else’s intentions is enormous.

I merely took your words to their logical conclusion. But I will give you that you probably never thought of these things like that before.

There is if it is taken as literal history, because there are two distinct narratives there.

Who says they are “distinct narratives” there? I’ve read it too and I don’t see that at all. I see a reiteration and a continuation of what was already narrated.

Sorry, but I cannot see any reason to presume that to be probable, let alone to assert it.

And what proof do you have that it is merely symbolic except reading it that way? God did create the heavens and the earth in the order given. It all falls nicely into place if properly understood.

So, you read each of the seven “days” as a longer period? How does that work with the different sequence of chapter 2, in which the man is created before the animals?

The text does not say that man was created first–you are reading that into it. It merely says that God brought the animals he had created to Adam to be named. In other words, Adam was given the auhority to rule over the other creatures of God’s creation. The animals were already there. This was merely God endowing Adam with kingship over creation and nothing more than that.

The days and nights are epochs. Reliable biblical scholars have told us so. The Hebrews and other ancient peoples used terms like day and night to describe long periods of time. We would say several months or several years to say the same thing. It’s an expression not a literalistic term.

 

[MaryCA]

Concerning Genesis chapter 1 & Genesis chapter 2:

Check Dr. Brant Pitre’s web site: http://brantpitre.com/excerpts.html

Choose the outline for “Genesis and the Books of Moses.” On pages 17 to 19, it talks about Genesis 1 & 2. Please read that & read Genesis 1 & 2.

Genesis 1 & 2 do not contradict each other. Genesis 2 is about domestic plants & animals. Domestic plants and animals differ from “wild” plants & animals. Humans must exist before domestic plants & animals. There has to be a human to till the “fields” & care for the domestic plants & animals. Genesis 1 is a broad overview of creation. Genesis 2 focuses on humans & their interaction with creation.

I believe that God created everything over a long span of time–probably about 13.4 billion years.

 

[Mystophilus]

I merely took your words to their logical conclusion. But I will give you that you probably never thought of these things like that before.

The statement “In the Gospels, he never teaches anyone about … things which we understand today” does not logically imply “Jesus should have been a college professor”. The statement “That fact is a very strong indicator” does not logically imply “you know the intentions of the compliers”. In both cases, your conclusions require the addition of other ideas, which makes them your conclusions, not the logical conclusions.

The text does not say that man was created first–you are reading that into it.

Nope:
7
then the LORD God formed the man* out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.d
8
The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east,* and placed there the man whom he had formed.e
9

• Out of the ground the LORD God made grow every tree that was delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.f
  …
  15
  The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.h
  16
  The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the gardeni
  17
  except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.* j
  18
  The LORD God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him.* k
  19
  So the LORD God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name.

The days and nights are epochs.

I am familiar with the usage. I was checking whether you meant it that way because you apparently do not accept the biological consensus on evolution, which makes accepting the geological consensus on the age of the Earth rather surprising.

 

[theCrow]

Has science proven that Adam and Eve were real? According to a recent study, Adam — or the most common ancestor of modern man — dates back 8,300 years further than scientists had originally thought. The leader of the research team, Dr. Eran Elhaik, stated that the earliest ancestors of modern man “emerged in Africa a little over 200,000 years ago.”

This reconfiguration of the timeline when the first ancestors of humans walked upon the earth places the origins of modern man back at least 9,000 years earlier than previous estimates.

According to Dr. Elhaik of the University of Sheffield, the most recent estimates mentioned in the study now put the emergence of humans in Africa back to “a little over 200,000 years ago.”

The research findings of the team are very different from those of a study made by researchers from the University of Arizona. That study stated that the Y chromosome of modern males possibly originated because of interbreeding.

Dr Elhaik states that the new study he and his colleagues worked on has refuted the University of Arizona one, and has shown that it “lacks any scientific merit.”

Furthermore, if the University of Arizona study was true, he said that it would result in a “sort of space-time paradox.” That’s because the Arizona study, in effect, would mean that the most ancient member pf the Homo sapiens species “has not yet been born.”

Dr. Elhaik doesn’t claim that there were one man called Adam and one woman called Eve were the fathers and mothers of all of humankind. However, he does suggest that there were small groups of Eves and Adams who co-existed side-by-side, wandering about togther and starting families.

How were the researchers able to p(name removed by moderator)oint how ancient the ancient bones of Adam were?

The researchers calculated the age of the bones, and eventually came up with a formula that takes into account the average age that males had their first child at, how many children males have, how many mutations in the Y chromosome appeared in each generation, and how long it took for any mutation to show itself.

Dr. Elhaik accuses the previous paper published by the University of Arizona of manipulating “each one of these variables.” They did this to draw more attention to the research, probably.

The study of Dr. Elhaik and his team of researchers calls the earliest known small groups of modern human ancestor Adams and Eves, and it also describes, in part, how they interrelated with each other.It’s likely they banded together in part to maintain their perceived identity as being different, and for comfort and safety, and to gather or hunt food more efficiently.

However, the Adam the study was based on and the Mitochondrial Eve likely never knew each other, and might never have even met. While the most recent study written by Dr. Elhaik and his fellow colleagues did not prove that there was an Adam and Eve in the sense that the Bible details in Genesis, most men do seem to get their Y chromosome from a single common ancestor, and most females get their mitochondrial DNA from a single female.

Written by: Douglas Cobb

 

[grannymh]

Has science proven that Adam and Eve were real? According to a recent study, Adam — or the most common ancestor of modern man — dates back 8,300 years further than scientists had originally thought. The leader of the research team, Dr. Eran Elhaik, stated that the earliest ancestors of modern man “emerged in Africa a little over 200,000 years ago.”

This reconfiguration of the timeline when the first ancestors of humans walked upon the earth places the origins of modern man back at least 9,000 years earlier than previous estimates.

According to Dr. Elhaik of the University of Sheffield, the most recent estimates mentioned in the study now put the emergence of humans in Africa back to “a little over 200,000 years ago.”

The research findings of the team are very different from those of a study made by researchers from the University of Arizona. That study stated that the Y chromosome of modern males possibly originated because of interbreeding.

Dr Elhaik states that the new study he and his colleagues worked on has refuted the University of Arizona one, and has shown that it “lacks any scientific merit.”

Furthermore, if the University of Arizona study was true, he said that it would result in a “sort of space-time paradox.” That’s because the Arizona study, in effect, would mean that the most ancient member pf the Homo sapiens species “has not yet been born.”

Dr. Elhaik doesn’t claim that there were one man called Adam and one woman called Eve were the fathers and mothers of all of humankind. However, he does suggest that there were small groups of Eves and Adams who co-existed side-by-side, wandering about togther and starting families.

How were the researchers able to p(name removed by moderator)oint how ancient the ancient bones of Adam were?

The researchers calculated the age of the bones, and eventually came up with a formula that takes into account the average age that males had their first child at, how many children males have, how many mutations in the Y chromosome appeared in each generation, and how long it took for any mutation to show itself.

Dr. Elhaik accuses the previous paper published by the University of Arizona of manipulating “each one of these variables.” They did this to draw more attention to the research, probably.

The study of Dr. Elhaik and his team of researchers calls the earliest known small groups of modern human ancestor Adams and Eves, and it also describes, in part, how they interrelated with each other.It’s likely they banded together in part to maintain their perceived identity as being different, and for comfort and safety, and to gather or hunt food more efficiently.

However, the Adam the study was based on and the Mitochondrial Eve likely never knew each other, and might never have even met. While the most recent study written by Dr. Elhaik and his fellow colleagues did not prove that there was an Adam and Eve in the sense that the Bible details in Genesis, most men do seem to get their Y chromosome from a single common ancestor, and most females get their mitochondrial DNA from a single female.

Written by: Douglas Cobb

It would be more accurate to say that scientists are **not looking for the ***possibility *of two first human parents (biblically known as Adam and Eve) because they are working from the theory that human nature occurred as an on-going transformation of a population. In other words, there were no true first founders of humankind. Instead, a population served as founders of humankind.

These sentences from post 46 are representative of current paleoanthropology. Emphasis is mine.
Dr. Elhaik doesn’t claim that there were one man called Adam and one woman called Eve were the fathers and mothers of all of humankind. However, he does suggest that there were small groups of Eves and Adams who co-existed side-by-side, wandering about together and starting families.

Please note that “small groups of Eves and Adams” (population) directly opposes the Catholic doctrines on human origin and human nature.

 

[Della]

The statement “In the Gospels, he never teaches anyone about … things which we understand today” does not logically imply “Jesus should have been a college professor”. The statement “That fact is a very strong indicator” does not logically imply “you know the intentions of the compliers”. In both cases, your conclusions require the addition of other ideas, which makes them your conclusions, not the logical conclusions.

I responded to ALL you wrote not these selected words. But, let’s not quibble. Jesus intended to tell us what we need to know for our salvation. Other topics were not his concern. And you cannot claim to know by “indication” or any other way what the compliers of the text meant unless you are a biblical scholar who has studied such things.

And the point of citing Genesis 2 text was? As I already mentioned I am well aware of the text. The USCCB’s website states nothing about it being a conflicting account of creation, so I don’t know why you cited it. It is as I and others have stated simply a continuation of what had already been related in Genesis 1. Chapter 2 goes into more detail about man’s position in God’s creation. I have a B. A. in religious education, and while that doesn’t make me a biblical scholar it does mean I have some understanding of biblical interpretation. It is not what you claim for it no matter how much you see it that way. This is why we have a Magisterium to decide such things, not merely our own opinions.

I am familiar with the usage. I was checking whether you meant it that way because you apparently do not accept the biological consensus on evolution, which makes accepting the geological consensus on the age of the Earth rather surprising.

I never stated that I did not accept some form of bioligical evolution. Perhaps you are confusing me with someone else.

 

[Mystophilus]

It is not what you claim for it no matter how much you see it that way. This is why we have a Magisterium to decide such things, not merely our own opinions.

Sorry, but I am interested in dialogue, not monologue.

 

[Dorothy]

Obedience to legitimate authority keeps us on the right track.

Thanks be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

 

[grannymh]

The statement “In the Gospels, he never teaches anyone about … things which we understand today” does not logically imply “Jesus should have been a college professor”. The statement “That fact is a very strong indicator” does not logically imply “you know the intentions of the compliers”. In both cases, your conclusions require the addition of other ideas, which makes them your conclusions, not the logical conclusions.

When I look at the logic (using the deductive method of reasoning) of the first three chapters of Genesis, I usually begin with these two axioms. God as Creator exists and God as Creator interacts with His human creatures. While many paths lead from these two truths, one could ask what does God teach in His interaction with us? Genesis 1: 1 clearly points to the teaching priority of the first three chapters of Genesis. Following is Genesis 1: 26-27; Genesis 2: 15-17; Genesis 3: 11; and Genesis 3:15.

 

[sirach2v4]

Had a great debate in small group church meetings recently about this.
So how literal do most Catholics/Christians take the Bible?
For example:
How old is the Earth?
Did Adam and Eve really exist?
Was the Ark real?
Jonah in the whale…etc…
The consensus in the group was that these were meant as metaphorical studies, but
scientifically there was no real Adam and Eve…

There may be different levels of this discussion. One point of view is that of “50,000 feet.”
Or, in other words, if you take a couple steps back from the actual wording of the Bible, what does it mean to you?

The Bible is a spiritual book, not a science or history book. It wasn’t written by or for people with college degrees or the like. But, it’s definitely not written as a child’s story book, either. It is the way God reveals himself in history.

The Church recommends reading the Bible prayerfully and with faith. Pray for faith that you may understand. (People usually want it the other way around – they refuse to believe until they understand – but there would be no faith required if we had scientific certainty about everything in the Bible.)

In Genesis, God is seeking man. “Where are you?” He says.

In our lives, we need to be searching and seeking for the LORD. We have to be open to His Word, Jesus Christ.

The best advice is given in the first verses of Psalm 1 – not to walk in the way of sinners or to stand with the wicked or to sit with scoffers (atheists).

 

[Della]

Sorry, but I am interested in dialogue, not monologue.

There is nothing monolithic about the Magisterium. All I mean is that we accept the teaching authority Christ gave to his Church. The Church hasn’t/doesn’t comment on every verse of Scripture, but she has told us the basics of what we must believe. For the average layman Bible reading isn’t an exercise in determining the rightness/wrongness of passages, but of spiritual insight with the goal of growth in holiness. We have professional Bible scholars and theologians enough.

 

[juliamajor]

it depends what part of the bible you are talking about. Genesis creation -to Noah-myth and symbol. We are talking prehistory here. who was around at creation to write about it? without a writing method you don’t have history- you have pre history. When you go past noah you are walking into real time,with real people .

adam and eve -symbolic names ‘earth’ and ‘mother of all things’
theologically- one set of original parents means we are ALL related to one another.We are all brothers and sisters of YHWH who created everything and everyone out of love.
Notice what comes hard upon the creation and fall- the murder of Abel-when Cain asks God " am I my brothers’ keeper?" we are to answer for God “YES” for that brother and every other human being-because of the commonality of our “parents” adam and eve.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . In Genesis, God is seeking man. “Where are you?” He says.

In our lives, we need to be searching and seeking for the LORD. We have to be open to His Word, Jesus Christ. . .

Also, with regards to Noah:
I would not relegate Noah to mythology.
While the story does reveal the truth now, of our relationship as a church with God, this new creation had to have happened in time.
So, while I will not quibble about the details of the event, I think Noah was a real person.

 

[juliamajor]

the church teaches you can believe noah’s ark or not. the point of the story is what is important.
The Noah Story is predated by many other flood tales that resemble the biblical tale.

 

[Mystophilus]

When I look at the logic (using the deductive method of reasoning) of the first three chapters of Genesis, I usually begin with these two axioms. God as Creator exists and God as Creator interacts with His human creatures. While many paths lead from these two truths, one could ask what does God teach in His interaction with us? Genesis 1: 1 clearly points to the teaching priority of the first three chapters of Genesis. Following is Genesis 1: 26-27; Genesis 2: 15-17; Genesis 3: 11; and Genesis 3:15.

That sounds fair enough to me.

 

[Mystophilus]

May I gently suggest that Catholicism may be the only Christian religion left which considers the reality of Adam essential because that comports with the teachings of St. Paul regarding Original Sin and the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

I, for one, am very happy for you to suggest this, but I do wonder about the necessity of assuming Adam to have been a historical person on that basis: St. Paul’s letters are also coherent with Adam’s being a symbolic character.

 

[grannymh]

I, for one, am very happy for you to suggest this, but I do wonder about the necessity of assuming Adam to have been a historical person on that basis: St. Paul’s letters are also coherent with Adam’s being a symbolic character.

Would you consider the possibility that St. Paul could use both reality *and *symbolism to teach us Divine Revelation?

The reality of Jesus Christ being True God is clear when St. Paul speaks about the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15: 20 as well as in other citations. 1 Corinthians 15: 21 speaks about the True Human nature of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Divine Person of the Holy Trinity Who has two natures, Divine and human. 1 Corinthians 15: 22 explains: “For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life,”

Death is a fact of human life. Jesus conquered human death. “Where, O death is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15: 54-55)

In Romans 5: 12-21, St. Paul tells us that death is attributed to one person, Adam. He and his readers studied the first three chapters of Genesis. In St. Paul’s comparison of the transgression of one person which brought judgment with Jesus’ action which brought acquittal, we know that the one person Adam is real because Jesus hanging bloody on His cross is real. Romans 5: 17-18 is saying that Jesus’ abundance of grace is for all. Because of the obvious unity of the human race, we can understand that all humans descend from one set of parents and thus all humans are eligible for Jesus’ abundance of grace and the gift of justification.

In my personal opinion, Romans 5: 12 “… in as much as all sinned --” could be seen as symbolic on top of being reality. For me, it is the word “all” which raises wonderment. Only two parents (Genesis 1: 27-28; Genesis 3: 20) are described in the first three chapters of Genesis. While I can pictures descendants, it is hard to picture Adam. Here is where a distinction has to be made. Adam is real and not a symbolic character; yet, his real person can be *described in a symbolic manner. *It is definitely a both - and situation.

Historically, the reality of both Adam and his descendants" is affirmed in the Sacrament of Baptism. Historically, Divine Revelation is completed in Jesus Christ. It then became the responsibility of the writers of the New Testament to pass on the truth. (Chapter 14, Gospel of John)
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, paragraph 66.
“Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.”

It is the era of the major ecumenical Trent Council, which made more explicit the teachings of St. Paul regarding Adam and Original Sin. Even then, there was the recognition of “mystery”.
CCC, paragraph 404 is a very good explanation.
**"**How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”. By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act."

 

[Aloysium]

the church teaches you can believe noah’s ark or not. the point of the story is what is important.
The Noah Story is predated by many other flood tales that resemble the biblical tale.

To me the story reveals the presence of the Word in time: the creation of a new Eden, the beginnings of God’s church on earth and the washing away of original sin.
This happened at a point in actual physical reality - the destruction of the unrighteous, the wood enveloping the seeds of the new world progressing towards the fulfillment of time in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The Word reaches out to us, in this instance setting the foundation of God’s Church.
(Something like that)

The fact that there exist other flood tales is evidence of its veracity.

 

[Mystophilus]

Would you consider the possibility that St. Paul could use both reality *and *symbolism to teach us Divine Revelation?

I would: he seems to have been fond of typology.

we know that the one person Adam is real because Jesus hanging bloody on His cross is real.

This is the point at which it becomes less clear: Adam could be used as a symbol, as an object lesson, and even as a comparison with Jesus whether or not he were real. This is not just a modern idea, since Plutarch understood it (q.v. the beginning of his life of Theseus).

In my personal opinion, Romans 5: 12 “… in as much as all sinned --” could be seen as symbolic on top of being reality. For me, it is the word “all” which raises wonderment.

There is actually a rather tricky linguistic point just there, regarding “sinned”. The Greek for that passage is εφ’ω παντες 'ημαρτον, rendered by Jerome as in quo omnes peccaverunt. The crucial difference is that the Greek 'ημαρτον is in a curious tense called the Aorist (the ‘undefined’), which could be simple past (“sinned”) or could be simple present (“sin”). Latin did not have a tense which could do both of those, and Jerome went with the past tense peccaverunt. Augustine followed him (and Calvin followed Augustine), believing that everyone sinned with Adam, whereas Chrysostom went the other way with the Greek, assuming that it meant that everyone has (present tense) the habit of sinning, not that everyone was somehow personally involved in Adam’s defection.

Where this is all relevant to our discussion here is that Chrysostom’s reading does not depend upon Adam to have been a real, historical person: as a type for humanity, he sinned, and we sin too. (From memory, Chrysostom does elsewhere describe Adam as a real, historical person.)

I understand what you are saying about Adam, and about Catholic teaching about Adam, but I am afraid that, personally, I have not encountered sufficient cause to believe something which I would describe as both improbable and unnecessary.