Priest says OT is all "just stories"

[meltzerboy]

Do Conservative, Reformed and Reconstructionist sects of Judaism believe Moses wrote the Torah? (this is a rhetorical question…I have Jewish friends who would agree with me as do their rabbis…or perhaps it is I who agree with them) I attended a spiritual formation group at the Episcopal church…Episcopalians, Lutherans, Jews, Unitarians, Baptists and UCC members were in attendance…we had a rabbi that spoke concerning Bruce Feiler’s work “Abraham” and held a very similar view as friend Bruce.

I was not claiming YOU or other Orthodox Jews must accept this strain of modern scholarship…no more than conservative Catholics must…as the priest who stated the OT/Tanach was “just stories”.

There are other ways of reading and believing in scripture than the “conservative” strain is all I was seeking to convey.

Publisher, I am a Reform Jew, not Orthodox. Although many or most Reform Jews do not believe Moses was divinely inspired, some of them still believe he wrote the Torah and that he existed as a major, or THE major, prophet. And I would think most Conservative Jews, also not Orthodox, do believe that Moses was divinely inspired; however, they have a different interpretation of parts of the Law. As you probably know, any individual rabbi may hold their own views; however, this does not mean they represent all of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist Judaism. Still, any rabbi who claims that Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any of the prophets may never have existed or is a composite of other people is intentionally or unintentionally undermining not only the core foundation of Judaism, but also Christianity, in my view.

 

[Publisher]

Publisher, I am a Reform Jew, not Orthodox. Although many or most Reform Jews do not believe Moses was divinely inspired, some of them still believe he wrote the Torah and that he existed as a major, or THE major, prophet. And I would think most Conservative Jews, also not Orthodox, do believe that Moses was divinely inspired; however, they have a different interpretation of parts of the Law. As you probably know, any individual rabbi may hold their own views; however, this does not mean they represent all of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist Judaism. Still, any rabbi who claims that Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any of the prophets may never have existed or is a composite of other people is intentionally or unintentionally undermining not only the core foundation of Judaism, but also Christianity, in my view.

I understand your stance…I do not believe it undermines either Judaism or Christianity…on the contrary…for me studying the historical development of scripture and removing the…(not trying to be offensive) “magic” often imposed upon scripture by many conservative believers has given me a deep respect for scripture and has made my faith come alive and provided a framework for me to believe and trust in God…Robert Price, John Spong, Bart Erhman, Bruce Feiler, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Burton Mack, Eilene Pagels, Joan O’Grady and perhaps a score of others provided me a foundation to build a faith that inspires and provides an ethical basis for me to live a life of faith…perhaps not a faith you or conservative Christians would find satisfying…but they brought me from the brink of unbelief…I see the work and movement of God in history and now can accept the revelation of God in my life…it is not from all indication a basis many on this board would embrace…but it satisfies me and my longing to “know him and the power of his resurrection” in my life…it is faith in God we share…if not the “mechanics” but the faith and experience of God’s movement in my life…and yours.

 

[meltzerboy]

I understand your stance…I do not believe it undermines either Judaism or Christianity…on the contrary…for me studying the historical development of scripture and removing the…(not trying to be offensive) “magic” often imposed upon scripture by many conservative believers has given me a deep respect for scripture and has made my faith come alive and provided a framework for me to believe and trust in God…Robert Price, John Spong, Bart Erhman, Bruce Feiler, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Burton Mack, Eilene Pagels, Joan O’Grady and perhaps a score of others provided me a foundation to build a faith that inspires and provides an ethical basis for me to live a life of faith…perhaps not a faith you or conservative Christians would find satisfying…but they brought me from the brink of unbelief…I see the work and movement of God in history and now can accept the revelation of God in my life…it is not from all indication a basis many on this board would embrace…but it satisfies me and my longing to “know him and the power of his resurrection” in my life…it is faith in God we share…if not the “mechanics” but the faith and experience of God’s movement in my life…and yours.

It is not for me to disagree or argue with your faith and the miraculous things it has done for you. I embrace all people’s faiths, not only because Judaism requires it, but out of personal respect for the power of G-d to work its wonder on our minds, hearts, and souls. Contrary to what some people believe about the Jewish faith, it is really the spirit of the Law that counts the most.

 

[Publisher]

It is not for me to disagree or argue with your faith and the miraculous things it has done for you. I embrace all people’s faiths, not only because Judaism requires it, but out of personal respect for the power of G-d to work its wonder on our minds, hearts, and souls. Contrary to what some people believe about the Jewish faith, it is really the spirit of the Law that counts the most.

As do I…“Love the Lord your God with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself…on this hangs all the Law and Prophets.” Unless BOTH are exhibited the spirit is absent…I believe it is the “spirit of the Law” that counts the most as well.

 

[anne777]

Publisher and Razredge, Do you guys believe in the actual Ressurrection of Jesus and the other miracles in the New Testament. Since you both don’t take the OT seriously as being actual historical events then doesn’t that attitude extend into the New Testament also? That is very dangerous, I believe. You just need to hear the evidence for the historicity of the OT from the right people. Also, you might check on the recent archeological finds that have verified the historicity of the bible accounts, both Old and New Testament.

 

[Publisher]

Publisher and Razredge, Do you guys believe in the actual Ressurrection of Jesus and the other miracles in the New Testament. Since you both don’t take the OT seriously as being actual historical events then doesn’t that attitude extend into the New Testament also? That is very dangerous, I believe. You just need to hear the evidence for the historicity of the OT from the right people. Also, you might check on the recent archeological finds that have verified the historicity of the bible accounts, both Old and New Testament.

I take the OT very seriously…not sure why you would think otherwise…I may not accept your understanding of it’s historicity…but “not take it seriously”???

I believe Jesus of Nazareth lives more surely than you or I do. He was raised to the Father and now sits at the right hand of God…do I believe in an actual throne and that God has a right hand to sit at…no…but the man Jesus is risen and ascended to the Father.

As far as the miracles of the NT and OT for that matter…there is no doubt Jesus of Nazareth was viewed as a healer and wonder worker…but then so were many other Jewish mystics of the time.

I have sat under the instruction of very many conservative believers who accept the view of the Bible as you do…I do not find their reasons or teachings credible…if you do…wonderful…I find the scholars I listed much more credible.

 

[anne777]

Publisher, when I made the remark about not taking the OT seriously I specifically said “as far as its historicity”, and that is what you are doubting, right? So please don’t be offended. I noticed that you referred to Jesus as “the man Jesus”. Do you know him as God, the third person of the trinity? I really am not familiar with Quaker beliefs, I guess.

 

[Publisher]

Publisher, when I made the remark about not taking the OT seriously I specifically said “as far as its historicity”, and that is what you are doubting, right? So please don’t be offended. I noticed that you referred to Jesus as “the man Jesus”. Do you know him as God, the third person of the trinity? I really am not familiar with Quaker beliefs, I guess.

I’m not offended…if your beliefs concerning the miracles and authorship enhances your faith and makes God more real to you…why should I be offended?

“The man Jesus” is a very biblical phrase found in Acts and Paul’s letters…why would using a very biblical phrase deny his divinity? I do not necessarily adhere nor recite the creeds…but in Jesus of Nazareth God is found…“He is the exact representation of his person”…“The Word was God…the Word became flesh and dwelled among us…” “Though existing in the form of God, did not see equality with God a thing to be clung to…but emptied himself and became a servant.”

I take the historical part seriously…there is much verifiable history in the OT…there is lots of embellishment…faith stories…myth…and allegory as well…much of it’s history is told looking back and “interpreting” that history through a very religious lens…“God did xyz”…“God said xyz”…centuries after the fact.

Most of the Pentatuch took it’s final form AFTER the return from exile in the 6th century BCE…it wasn’t written by eyewitness authors…some of the “Books of Moses” may indeed have been written by Moses of antiquity…but for the most part it was compliled and redacted in the 6th century BCE.

 

[Ecoclimber]

**Some recent archaeologists discoveries that are beginning to verify historical accounts within the Bible
**

Archaeologists strike gold in quest to find Queen of Sheba’s wealth

Saturday 11 February 2012
A British excavation has struck archaeological gold with a discovery that may solve the mystery of where the Queen of Sheba derived her fabled treasures

livescience.com/18327-fortress-hill-jonah-prophet.html
Feb. 6
Remains of thick stone walls uncovered recently atop a hill in Israel — where tradition says the prophet Jonah was buried — indicate the site was occupied during the time of the prophet, almost 3,000 years ago.

livescience.com/1548-creature-living-dead-whale.html
Inside a whale

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081850/Proof-David-slew-Goliath-Israeli-archaeologists-unearth-oldest-Hebrew-text.html
David and Goliath

 

[razredge]

Publisher and Razredge, Do you guys believe in the actual Ressurrection of Jesus and the other miracles in the New Testament.

Of course I believe in the Resurrection - there’s no way to explain the origins of Christianity without the resurrection.

Since you both don’t take the OT seriously as being actual historical events then doesn’t that attitude extend into the New Testament also? That is very dangerous, I believe. You just need to hear the evidence for the historicity of the OT from the right people. Also, you might check on the recent archeological finds that have verified the historicity of the bible accounts, both Old and New Testament

Hardly, most people seem to forget that the Bible is a collection of different texts, not all of them are historical. The NT is far better attested than the OT which has undergone a lot of redaction and editing over the millenia.

And I’ve looked into plenty of historic research into the OT, i’m afraid it doesn’t support the historicity of many of the books.

 

[Bev17243]

Am I the only one here who thinks picking and choosing what is true and what is not from the Bible is wrong?

I am with you on this, Marianna.
to add-I believe that biblical accounts should be taken literall unless its a clearly allegorical. I guess I don’t get why so many people think that Job being swallowed by the fish is some sort of fairy tale, or that Genesis itself is allegorical as well. Really?

 

[TryingToLearn]

Literalistic = What the explicit meaning of the words express isolated from the author’s intent.

Literal = The message the author intended to convey.

Example 1: “It was raining cats and dogs.”

Literalistic = Dogs and cats were falling from the sky out of the clouds.

Literal = It was raining really hard.

Example 2: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.”

Literalistic = There was an actual farmer that went out and sowed some seeds and some real birds came and ate it.

Literal = “The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.”

We are obligated to believe the literal meaning; what God intended to communicate. The literalistic is just the means God used to teach and He does teach using stories, sometimes elements of the literalistic are also important, like Adam and Eve being the first man and woman that committed the first sin.

We should always read the Old Testament in the light of what Jesus, God Incarnate revealed about who God is and how He tries to relate to us.

 

[grannymh]

Of course I believe in the Resurrection - there’s no way to explain the origins of Christianity without the resurrection.

The Resurrection conquered human death and thus made it possible for us to enter eternal happiness with God. Human death came about as a consequence of the first human’s disobedience to his Creator. With this act, the creature scorned his Creator.

 

[NYCATHOLICGIRL]

This is also from Pope Pius XII Humani Generis
39. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers.

I am glad that I read this because I went to a Bible Study through the NY Archdiocese. This was a pretty expensive course, and I remembered being floored to hear that Adam and Eve were a myth. It especially confused me when Jesus’s geneology was read, starting off with Adam.

I’m glad I read this thread! Praise the Lord!

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

As a learned poster has commented, none of this OT stuf was committed to paper before 600 BCE.
The tale of Adam and Eve is a myth, but it is based on historical fact.
It refers not to a creation in 4004 BCE, which anyone with more than 3 brain cells knows to be false, but recalls from ancient traditions, a disaster which occurred about 120,000 years ago, when a super volcano eruption reduced mankind to about a dozen families, widely dispersed on the planet.
The Genesis tale even implies this, for the offspring of Adam and Eve found spouses from outside their family.
4004 BCE also encodes another event, which was a mutation to a gene in the population in the middle east, which gave a small, but significant increase in intelligence. This coincides with the beginning of writing, and agriculture.
Incidentally, Adam is just Hebrew for ‘a man’, and Eve for ‘giver of life’
The unspoken name IHVH, when pronounced by Samaritans sounds like ‘Ayev’, which is not very different from ‘Eve’
In the Creed, we name G_D as the LORD, the GIVER OF LIFE.
The simple story is then just a myth.
It does however contain deep truths.
Trying to hold to the historical veracity of the myth allows the deeper truth to be lost.

 

[anne777]

Voco Pro Tatiano, are you serious? What a bunch of drivel. I feel sorry for people who are so full of false teaching about the scriptures that all their joy in the Lord is taken from them. The simple faith to believe the truth of the scriptures and that these events really took place in the real world, even if they are told in a poetic way, leads to peace. I wish that for you and not to be so mixed up.

 

[RevG]

Just out of curiosity, since you posed the question this way, who decides for you what is true in the bible and what is not? You already recognize that allegory is used in the bible. How do you know for sure what’s allegorical and what isn’t? And if the bible is so plain and easy to understand, do you think we may as well do away with the fields of hermeneutics, exegesis, the study of Biblical languages, higher or historical criticism, etc?,

I will answer backwards for you. I do think all of these are necessary in understanding the Bible, that is why I have a BA in Theology and am finishing a Masters of Divinity in a few weeks. I have stiudied biblical Greek and Hebrew for years, as well as apologetics, hermeneutics, Old Testament, New Testament, Systematic Theology and other aspects of theology. They are very important to proper understanding, the most important thing in understanding Scripture is the leading of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Binle tells us God is Spirit, therefore any time we see God related in human terms we must understand this is metaphor for us to understand God more clearly. He does not have a face, hands, feet, or wings and feathers. All are referenced to God in Scripture. Scripture tells us that God is spirit so we can make the leap to metaphor without issue on these issues. God used parables in the New Testament where he conveyed truths without necessarily using historical persons. In the case of Job and Jonah there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that they did not exist. The great fish, it was not a whale, is referenced as Leviathon elsewhere in Scripture. If you begin to justify making people in the Bible just stories because it fits your desires then it is only a small step to make Jesus just a story.

 

[RevG]

As a learned poster has commented, none of this OT stuf was committed to paper before 600 BCE.
The tale of Adam and Eve is a myth, but it is based on historical fact.
It refers not to a creation in 4004 BCE, which anyone with more than 3 brain cells knows to be false, but recalls from ancient traditions, a disaster which occurred about 120,000 years ago, when a super volcano eruption reduced mankind to about a dozen families, widely dispersed on the planet.
The Genesis tale even implies this, for the offspring of Adam and Eve found spouses from outside their family.
4004 BCE also encodes another event, which was a mutation to a gene in the population in the middle east, which gave a small, but significant increase in intelligence. This coincides with the beginning of writing, and agriculture.
Incidentally, Adam is just Hebrew for ‘a man’, and Eve for ‘giver of life’
The unspoken name IHVH, when pronounced by Samaritans sounds like ‘Ayev’, which is not very different from ‘Eve’
In the Creed, we name G_D as the LORD, the GIVER OF LIFE.
The simple story is then just a myth.
It does however contain deep truths.
Trying to hold to the historical veracity of the myth allows the deeper truth to be lost.

At the risk of getting a citation from the forum I must say you just spouted a bunch of bologna. Anyone who reads the post you wrote will be a bit further from God while they attempt a composed Christian response. I feel sorry for anyone who feels this way about Scripture.

 

[RevG]

Paul said, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that all scripture is inspired by God but referring to the Septuagint and Hebrew scriptures, not the Gospels or his own letters or others. It was the Catholic Church who determined that what we have of the NT today is inspired by God.

[BIBLEDRB]Gen 3:8-11[/BIBLEDRB]

If we interpret this as literal, we destroy half the Christian concept of God or establish major contradictions in scripture. Therefore, allegorical interpretation is necessary.

Allegory is not necessary, metaphor is. The Bible states that God is spirit. Since He is spirit he can not literally walk, but in order for us to understand the relationship God re
Aged it to us through the author, Moses, in terms we can understand. scripture interprets Scripture.

And no the word used by Paul is literally God Breathed. And Peter clarified that what Paul wrote was Scripture. And do you really think God was absent in the protection of the books He wanted included in the Bible? Do you honestly think it was the church alone? I believe that God was in control of the process and the accepted books were included

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Allegory is not necessary, metaphor is. The Bible states that God is spirit. Since He is spirit he can not literally walk, but in order for us to understand the relationship God re
Aged it to us through the author, Moses, in terms we can understand. scripture interprets Scripture.

Scripture interprets scripture? Really? Gen 1:13-16 states God created the sun and the stars after creating the earth, scientific evidence shows the sun is older and definately proves other parts of the universe is way older. In the same group of verses it states that God made the day and night cycle, on the third day. While on previous verses, Gen 1:8 indicates that there was already a day and night cycle on the first day. All this at the same time, philosophy proves that time does not affect God. So you have scientific, philosophical, and scriptural contradiction with a literalist interpretation. Allegorical interpretation is necessary.

And no the word used by Paul is literally God Breathed.

So God actually breathed on the pages? This another literalist interpretation? Define “God-Breathed”, does it contradict what I said?

And Peter clarified that what Paul wrote was Scripture.

Where? 2 Peter 3:15-16? Hardly an apostolic edict claiming the letters were divinely inspired. If that’s your interpretation, it’s grasping at straws. Even if this was the case, you’re assenting to the authority of the first Pope. Regardless, all you have is that St. Paul’s letters were equated in difficulty of understanding as the Old Testament. Nothing in scripture states that the Gospels, St. Paul’s letters, St. Peter’s letters, Revelation, etc… are inspired by God, it was the authority of the Catholic Church who recognized what was inspired and proclaimed what was the New Testament.

And do you really think God was absent in the protection of the books He wanted included in the Bible? Do you honestly think it was the church alone? I believe that God was in control of the process and the accepted books were included

Who said anything about absent in protection? I was speaking of who determined what was inspired. Hard fact, the Catholic Church declared the canon of the New Testament. She didn’t make what was canon inspired at the moment the first council declared this, but recognizing what is inspired already and arranging the table of context for the New Testament.