RCIA said old testament just "stories"

  • Thread starter Thread starter rosebudfantasy
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
R

rosebudfantasy

Guest
I have a sister-in-law that has come into the faith and went thru RCIA classes a couple years ago. She told me that they told her that the old testament stories (i.e. noahs ark etc.) are just “stories” told for us as examples. I didn’t know that the church thought this way. Why is this?
 
rosebudfantasy said:
I have a sister-in-law that has come into the faith and went thru RCIA classes a couple years ago. She told me that they told her that the old testament stories (i.e. noahs ark etc.) are just “stories” told for us as examples. I didn’t know that the church thought this way. Why is this?
Click to expand...
The church does not think this.
 
They are stories that talk about the Truth. Are they 100% true? YES. Are they 100% historically accurate? Probably not!

Stories must be read in the proper context. The main goal of the Bible stories was about the Truth. You can be historically accurate and be misguiding about the truth at the same time.

The best way to understand how the Old Testament was written is to look at the book “How to Read the Old Testament” By Etienne Charpentier. It is really interesting.
 
Cristiano said:
They are stories that talk about the Truth. Are they 100% true? YES. Are they 100% historically accurate? Probably not!

Stories must be read in the proper context. The main goal of the Bible stories was about the Truth. You can be historically accurate and be misguiding about the truth at the same time.

The best way to understand how the Old Testament was written is to look at the book “How to Read the Old Testament” By Etienne Charpentier. It is really interesting.
Click to expand...
thank you so much for this response… it tells me so much more than the previous post.
 
rosebudfantasy said:
I have a sister-in-law that has come into the faith and went thru RCIA classes a couple years ago. She told me that they told her that the old testament stories (i.e. noahs ark etc.) are just “stories” told for us as examples. I didn’t know that the church thought this way. Why is this?
Click to expand...
Genesis in particular (were there any examples from another book?) is highly metaphoric and mythical. Consider the story of creation – Genesis says six days, everything right there waiting to be named, yet the Church says the theory of evolution is not in conflict with the faith. The six-day account of creation is not necessarily strictly true by human standards; all the Church requires is that its members believe God was responsible for it all, no matter what method he chose to use.

The fall of Adam and Eve can be looked at as another metaphor. It certainly has the characteristics of myth – it explains natural phenomena (legless serpents, pain in childbirth) through supernatural occurrences. And it gives a reason for human possession of free will. There never necessarily was an apple of knowledge of good and evil; but humanity exists in an imperfect state.

Noah’s ark is an interesting one as well. It’s a story shared with the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, in which an old man named Utnapishtim recounts to the hero the story of how he was commanded by a god to tear down his house and build a boat to hold all kinds of animals before a deluge came. Utnapishtim’s ark even lodged in a mountain as the waters subsided just as Noah’s did. Both were blessed after the flood; the point of the story is that God will never utterly destroy humanity.

In Genesis, it’s the themes that matter most, not the events 🙂
 
Some “stories” in the Old Testament are 100% historical fact-- just like Jesus rising from the dead is 100% historical fact.

That bothers some people. It shouldn’t bother anyone who is Catholic.
 
I am glad someone asked this question.

My own Priest said they are just stories too. They are not to be taken literally. They are akin to the Parables.

I did a double take at the Priest and filed it away for later.
 
Go tell your priest that David was an actual historical person and the temple in Jerusalem actually and historically existed.

If You don’t believe it go to the wailing wall and see it in person.

Does that mean that everything in the bible is to be taken literally? Of course not. The point is though that there really is much of the Bible that can be taken literally and is 100% historically and literally true.
 
I agree with everything as Christiano stated it. I would also like to add that many of these stories were originally passed down through oral tradition before the were written and set in stone (or papyrus) so there was probably plenty of opportunity to change an element, forget another, etc. In addition, they have also been translated numerous times which also leads to changes. The old testament is the history of the Jewish/Hebrew people as they understood it and were inspired to write it down. It is Jesus’s history (and family tree) and the New testament refers to it and parallels it.
 
Why are there 2 creation stories in Genesis? I’ve always heard the answer to be so that we would know not to take it literally.

Jerry-Jet, yes, there are historical elements in the Old Testament. David really existed as did the temple and Solomon. Those books are usually referred to as Histories, as opposed to the Prophetic books, the Poetry books, and of course the Torah which is a mixed bag of law and allegory and maybe history (hard to tell at this point in time).
 
a_cermak said:
Why are there 2 creation stories in Genesis? I’ve always heard the answer to be so that we would know not to take it literally.
Click to expand...
There are also two Noah stories, probably for the same reason. The bible is not an easy book to read and understand; that’s why God gave us a Church. 🙂
 
Some Protestants claim there is only one story of Creation. If that is the case then Adam and Eve are not the first man and woman. They were created after the sixth and seventh day.
 
JoeyWarren said:
Some Protestants claim there is only one story of Creation. If that is the case then Adam and Eve are not the first man and woman. They were created after the sixth and seventh day.
Click to expand...
Not to mention that God created the plants and the animals twice. :hmmm:
 
One of my bibles is a St. Joseph Edition NAB. At the very beginning, it has a short chapter on “How to read your Bible.” It covers this issue in some detail. If you have an NAB you might want to look at that chapter.

On the down side, I’ve heard that the foonotes in the NAB are not really very “Catholic”, so it’s possible that this chapter isn’t as well.
 
ricmat said:
One of my bibles is a St. Joseph Edition NAB. At the very beginning, it has a short chapter on “How to read your Bible.” It covers this issue in some detail. If you have an NAB you might want to look at that chapter.

On the down side, I’ve heard that the foonotes in the NAB are not really very “Catholic”, so it’s possible that this chapter isn’t as well.
Click to expand...
If it’s got an Imprimatur and a Nihil Obstat, then it’s as Catholic as it needs to be. That said, we are certainly free to disagree with the footnotes in our Bibles; they aren’t Holy Writ - and Catholic Bible scholars have a variety of perfectly acceptable opinions on a variety of things. 😉
 
If you will permit me a bit of seminary history.

From my seminary days, there was much talk of understanding the Bible using the the word “myth”. Hold on now!!

I rebelled at that at first too. What was meant by that was that a myth presents a truth in a story format. Sounds like what Christiano said, right?

Now here is the problem. While “technical” use of the word myth may be correct, using the definition I stated above, it is too easily confused with the more “normal” use of the word myth which means “something made up.”

We HAVE to use words carefully. Too many people are being hurt by “playing around” with psuedo-intelligent words and phrases.

Rosebudfantasy, and all those confused or hurt by any of my brother priests who can’t see past their pseudo-intelligence: I apologize. May God send you a priest who can speak simply and clearly for your soul.

I know well the agony some of you feel when facing some of my fellow priests. It is part of what drove me into the priesthood.

(Sorry, this touches a “button”:o ) God bless.
 
I’ll like to recommend this book to anyone interested in the Bible
“**And God said What?” - An Introduction to Bible Literary Forms.**A
revised edition of a bestseller that introduces reader to the importance of understanding the various literary forms that appear in Scripture.

Author -Margaret Nutting Ralph is secretary of educational ministries for the Roman Catholic diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, and director of the masters degree programs for Roman Catholics at Lexington Theological Seminary. She is the author of eight books on Scripture and has given workshops on Scripture throughout the U.S. and in Canada.

Available at Paulist Press, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and others.
paulistpress.com/4129-9.html

=======================================
A Teaching by Dr Scott Hahn & Team

Genesis 1 – God Prepares a Home

To Moses and those for whom he wrote,
the process of creation and the scientific nature of things were shrouded in mystery too deep for man to comprehend.
  • It was the fact that God created everything, and that
  • He made man in His image that was important.
How He went about doing it was His business, as Job was to discover. (see Job 38-39).

If we approach Genesis 1 as though it is God’s revelation of scientific truth, we stumble immediately upon difficulties:
  • How was there “evening and. morning, one day” (vs. 5) when the sun had yet to be created?
  • How did the fruit trees grow and bear fruit before there were days and nights or seasons? And
  • how do we reconcile creation in six literal, 24-hour days with modern geological science?
Approach Genesis 1 as divine revelation of spiritual truth,
and these troubles evaporate.
  • Genesis is more like a hymn than a treatise.
    It uses poetic language, with symbols and images,
    to relate the history of the created universe.
As such it concerns itself not with how created beings developed over time, but
  • how they came to exist to begin with,
  • by whose decree and to what purpose.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us,
“.the first three chapters of Genesis .express in their solemn language the truths of creation-its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation” (CCC 289).

Like all good poetry, the language of Genesis is packed with layers of meaning. Only a slow, careful reading will reveal the depths and riches of truth it has to offer.

We are therefore going to approach chapter 1 (and chapters 2
and 3) differently from the way we approach later chapters.
We will take it very slowly, soaking in the chapter as a whole and observing as much as we can about
  • who God is,
  • what and why He created,
  • who we are and our purpose on earth.
========================
To continue - Part 2 of 2
 
Cont… Part 2 of 2

Genesis 2 – God Creates a Family

In Genesis 1, we saw God speak the universe into existence, then form it into a house, or habitation. He filled it with life by the power of His Word.

With help from the New Testament, we understood that the creation of the natural order was a work of the Blessed Trinity.

It culminated in the presence of man and woman on earth, creatures made in the image of God and reflecting Him in their vocation of fruitfulness and dominion.

The poetic language of that chapter was itself a sign that God’s purposes for His creation, most especially for the creatures who would be His presence on earth, cannot be exhaustively described by words.

Poetry always moves beyond the words it uses.
The words of Genesis 1 were just a hinting at the glory that lies at the heart of creation. By the end of that chapter, all that was contained in it throbbed with the love of God-an ecstasy of goodness.

In the next chapter of Genesis, (Gen 2)
the focus of the story will be on the human creatures.

Having watched God build a home for them in the previous chapter, now we will observe more closely the creation of Adam and Eve, their relationship with God and with each other.

In fact, chapter 2 is where we begin to see that God is not simply “Master of the Universe.” He is not only “Creator.”
His intention for His creation was always that it would exist with Him as His family.

How do we know this?
One clue appears right away in Genesis 2, but in order to recognize it, We have to understand a feature of a Hebrew word. The word translated as “seven” in our English text is the Hebrew word (sheba) for “oath-sharing.”

When men in ancient times came together to form a relationship in which they would treat each other as family, they swore an oath to seal the agreement. In Hebrew, “to swear an oath” means literally “to seven oneself.”

This kind of agreement is called a “covenant.” In contrast to a contract, in which there is an exchange of property, in a covenant there is an exchange of persons: “I am yours, you are mine.”

We don’t see the word “covenant” yet in this chapter, but keep your eyes open for the clue that God intended to father a family in His creation of the universe.

Thus the 2 accounts of Creation makes sense when we better appreciate the purpose of the Inspired human authors.

End
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top