J
JapaneseKappa
Guest
I mean, I am sympathetic to the view that the stories in the bible are designed to have an overarching spiritual message, while all the individual fiddly little details in the stories are not as important. But such an admission is not a carte blanche to simply ignore the details and invent whatever overarching story you want. For example, the whole story of Noah is predicated on:Since I know for a fact that God is not subject of time, this an invalid interpretation.
I cannot accept this bias interpretation.
Now we can “ignore the details” and say that God didn’t really change his mind, and that the flood represents a punishment instead of extermination, but these things are in my mind core parts of the story. In my mind the fiddly details are things like the measurements of the ark and animals and the exact counts of the days.And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times, It repented him that he had made man on the earth. And being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, He said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, from man even to beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them.
I am always extremely cautious and skeptical when a religious person tells me that the “real” interpretation of their religious text is the exact opposite of the literal meaning. This is in contrast to saying that the literal meaning is insignificant (i.e. not useful at all, like the measurements of the ark) or had certain cultural connotations that add nuance to the literal meaning.