Scripture: What's myth and what's history?

[cassini]

Friend, you do not know the things you say you know. Jesus Christ believed in the things you think are beneath you. The minute you open up the possibility that any of the scriptures are not 100% true you plunge yourself and your hearers into confusion. St. James says that confusion comes from the devil, not the Holy Spirit.

Jesus believed in the Scriptures, 100% with no caveats or exceptions. That settles it for those devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Catholic Johnny

I’m with you all the way. Great stuff.

 

[patg]

It is heresy to say that any part of the Holy Bible was made up. If one part was made up, why do you think the rest is not just the ramblings of poets and drunks?

That really depends on what you mean by “made up”. Totally fictional stories can and often do teach deep truths. The church does not state that all truth must be taught using a non-fictional literary form or that divine inspiration only inspires authors to write literalistically. The dogmatic document Dei Verbum emphasizes this - do you think this document promotes a heresy?

 

[tobinatorstark]

It is heresy to say that any part of the Holy Bible was made up. If one part was made up, why do you think the rest is not just the ramblings of poets and drunks?

Again I too believe that the Bible is 100% true. Give proof of heresy

 

[RobbyS]

The Bible is historically true from Genesis on. That modern “scholarship” currently holds sway does not make that scholarship accurate. It does not mean that history is complete or covers every detail unless that was the intend of the Holy Spirit and the author. But the way some people think really makes scripture useless if what they believe about it is true. I would just as soon leave the faith (as I have seen many do who have had their faith destroyed by what the were told was how we should view the Bible) if I believed what some did about the Bible because they feel it needs to be re-imagined as to appear enlightened to an unbelieving world.

Scripture is to be read in faith and according the genre of each book. That some try to make, say Genesis or other books to be a different genre to make them feel more comfortable with science or so called scholarship is of no consequence. Let God be true and every man a liar.

Of course scripture is not a science text but when people try this baloney about the historical narratives in the Bible being “true myths” it is just nonsense conjured up by latew 19th century and 20th century skeptics with flimsy theories that sadly hold sway. The Patrisitic and historical-grammatical methods of studying scripture make much more sense and line up with the general study of literature in general much better than higher criticism. Which would be laughrd at if applied to nearly any other literary study. It is embarrassing how weak it is and yet scholars feel compelled to tow the line simply because that is the school that their profs adhere to. So you cannot progress if you deviate from the new orthodoxy.

Read scriptures in faith. If it is cleary a narrative take it as such. ingore novel theories that did not exist for 1900 years of church history.

If Fall did not literally happen then it renders the need for a literal redemption and the entire reason for the second Adam non-existent. No first Adam, no need for a second Adam. And really why would God not tell us what really happened and instead give us a myth instead? Ten seconds of thoughts makes such ideas absurd. Jesus and the Apostles believed in a literal Adam and a literal Noah. Nothing more needs to be said. If the second person of the Trinity believed it. It was true. End of discussion.

I agree that Biblical scholarship is worthless to the Christian who wants to increase his faith if it aims to make the Biblical record consistent with the “scientific” record. But the Genesis creation stories may be thought of not as a “scientific” account,
but as a re-imagining of pagan mythology from a radically different view. Just compare the Babylonian myth with Genesis. Instead of a chaos that itself produces the order of things, and even the gods themselves, we have a Creator who brings all things into existence and then shaped them. Instead of gods who have conempt for man as an inferior being, we have A God who make man the"the gardener" for His Creation.
Original sin is man’s disobedience, his refusal to serve, and the result is his expulsion and his subsequent life in the wilderness.
Maybe it is a parable, one that explains how many came to his wretched state, a state when good amd evil men live together, and produce both good and ill. How Creation unfolded materially is something that the Writer is unconcerned about. The wretched evolutionism is, in a way, a kind of return to mythology, which ignores the reality of God, and leaves man at the mercy of “the gods” and ignores the real question: Why is there something rather than nothing?

 

[juliamajor]

I am not interested in injuring your chin at all.
I don’t know why you assume those who disagree with your particular school as the ONLY or even the best school, are simply uneducated or anti-intellectual. Acting like there is not a diversity of opinion, educated opinion, is anti-intellectual. You must admit that you belong to the newest school. That is not an insult, it is simply true. I am not trying to attack you I am just recommending you broaden your horizons a bit and not assume the worst of those who esteem a different school of interpretations higher are hateful, ingnorant or have bad teeth. I certainly have listened, for years, to those who esteem historical criticism as the highest hermeneutic. I disagree just as much with those who think scripture supports geocentrism and that the earth must be 6,000 years old because they fail to understand how genealogy and figures of speach are used in scripture. I think both extremes display a profound ignorance (or at least bias) based on the fact that they take an extreme position. One is ultra new, and one is genuinely antiquated. I am for as much education as possible and I can assure you that is how I raise my children.

As for the rest of what you said, I could not agree more. I would just suggest you will get more out of scripture if you assume, as the Fathers did, that the specific people in scripture mentioned were real people and that the events are true, historically true, in there essence BUT not that they are comprehensively detailed in all their facts, but only in the ones that God felt it important for us to know. And certainly not meant to explain any particular area of science or to compete with it either. This is the balance. For example to assume Noah was not real and to make it some sort of local flood does violence to the text and the central message of that story. Peter, the first Pope clearly understood it literally. The local flood theory does violence to the entire point that God destroyed a wicked humanity, save one family, who he repopulated the earth with. Plus, the genealogies would be deceptive and meaningless. Clearly for this event to happen there would have to have been some supernatural activity involved - but isn’t that God’s stock in trade all throughout scripture? How is the flood account, of which many disparate ancient peoples believed in for a reason, so much harder to believe that God becoming man, a virgin giving birth, the dead rising and the entire cosmos being made new and without decay? Do you see my point? Hopefully, this post was sufficiently friendly to help you see what I am saying. I truly am not here to argue with you, sister.

But I do have a verse for you 1Tim 2:12.

Peace,

Mel

your very funny.

 

[juliamajor]

Friend, you do not know the things you say you know. Jesus Christ believed in the things you think are beneath you. The minute you open up the possibility that any of the scriptures are not 100% true you plunge yourself and your hearers into confusion. St. James says that confusion comes from the devil, not the Holy Spirit.

Jesus believed in the Scriptures, 100% with no caveats or exceptions. That settles it for those devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

When did Catholics become fundamentalists- I don’t get it.

 

[juliamajor]

Wow. Second guessing what Jesus believed. Amazing how deep the inroads of deconstructionsist Protestant critics of the Bible are today.

I don’t blame you, I blame the Bishops that tolerated this Canaanite syncretism. You are buried in error and you don’t even know it. Jesus is the God Man and His faith is perfect. Anyone who dares to deconstruct the faith of Christ enters in to destroy and not to edify.

Wow- How strong is the fundamentalist poisoning of the Catholic well of Biblical Study.This is fundamentalism- pure and simple- deny it all you want. Never in my entire lifetime have I ever heard this and never in an entire lifetime have I heard the bible exegeted so literally - especially in Catholic Church.Why look at any exegesis at all why have any disciplines at all? If everything is to be taken word for word then , heck- all we need is the Bible and nothing else. With that little slippery slope there will be folks soon saying they don’t need the Magisterum - and we know how that will wind up.in

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

Wow- How strong is the fundamentalist poisoning of the Catholic well of Biblical Study.This is fundamentalism- pure and simple- deny it all you want. Never in my entire lifetime have I ever heard this and never in an entire lifetime have I heard the bible exegeted so literally - especially in Catholic Church.Why look at any exegesis at all why have any disciplines at all? If everything is to be taken word for word then , heck- all we need is the Bible and nothing else. With that little slippery slope there will be folks soon saying they don’t need the Magisterum - and we know how that will wind up.in

Are these documents fundamentalist too?
Proventissimus Deus
Divino Afflante Spiritu
Humani Generis

They are the source of my views.
Please do not conflate redaction criticism with exegesis. Deconstructing the scriptures to come up with errors such as JPED authorship of the Pentateuch, multiple Isaiahs, and deutero-Pauline authorship assume *a priori *that the Fathers, Doctors and Canons couldn’t possibly be right.

Pius XII was in favor of exegetical research provided that it submitted to the Magisterium. Your viewpoints are diametrically opposed to the Magisterium - it is curious that you are concerned that faithfulness to the Magisterium is somehow a threat against the Magisterium.

Shalom

 

[TMC]

Are these documents fundamentalist too?
Proventissimus Deus
Divino Afflante Spiritu
Humani Generis

They are the source of my views.
Please do not conflate redaction criticism with exegesis. Deconstructing the scriptures to come up with errors such as JPED authorship of the Pentateuch, multiple Isaiahs, and deutero-Pauline authorship assume *a priori *that the Fathers, Doctors and Canons couldn’t possibly be right.

Pius XII was in favor of exegetical research provided that it submitted to the Magisterium. Your viewpoints are diametrically opposed to the Magisterium - it is curious that you are concerned that faithfulness to the Magisterium is somehow a threat against the Magisterium.

Shalom

None of those documents say “Jesus believed in the Scriptures, 100% with no caveats or exceptions. That settles it for those devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

 

[juliamajor]

Are these documents fundamentalist too?
Proventissimus Deus
Divino Afflante Spiritu
Humani Generis

They are the source of my views.
Please do not conflate redaction criticism with exegesis. Deconstructing the scriptures to come up with errors such as JPED authorship of the Pentateuch, multiple Isaiahs, and deutero-Pauline authorship assume *a priori *that the Fathers, Doctors and Canons couldn’t possibly be right.

Pius XII was in favor of exegetical research provided that it submitted to the Magisterium. Your viewpoints are diametrically opposed to the Magisterium - it is curious that you are concerned that faithfulness to the Magisterium is somehow a threat against the Magisterium.

Shalom

You best look over all those documents especially ‘divino’

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

If the Holy spirit inspired the Bible how can anything in the bible including History and science not be true?

This looks like the “perfection fallacy”:​

• God is perfect
  therefore
• His effects must be perfect
  It doesn’t follow. It’s like saying:
• God is omnibenevolent & omnipotent
  therefore
• there is no evil in the world.
  Doesn’t follow, unfortunately.

The perfection fallacy also ignores the existence of the rest of creation - as though the books were composed in a vacuum. That is not true either. The logic is fine - but life is not reducible to logic; it often contradicts what logically valid propositions say. It may be a logically valid proposition that the Bible is true because inspired - but that does not make it a fact.

IMO, far too much attention is spent on the issue of the truth of the Bible - it’s only one facet, & not even the most important, of a much larger & more interesting & (far more valuable) reality.

The authors were men of their times - inspiration is not revelation: to expect the Apostles to be abreast of nuclear physics is absurd, & the same applies to earlier & later authors. They were no more made Nobel Physics Laureates by inspiration than they were made into walking Britannicas - they were men of their times, not of any other, so they had to work within the limitations of those times. Jesus did this in the Incarnation - their activities were “incarnated” in their times & places in a similar way.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

The Bible is the inspired word of God and is inerrant in whatever it proposes to teach - history, geography, or anything else. People who don’t believe that God, who created the whole universe out of nothing, could make a donkey talk have no faith at all.

It is interesting that the “Bible as myth” people in this thread have apparently received a formal Church education, while the “Bible as inspired and inerrant word of God” people are faithful laypeople who have not had a formal Church education.

What does that tell you about what’s been going on for the last 30 years with Catholic education?

The trouble with arguments from God’s omnipotence is that they allow anything at all to happen. “God could have” solved the problems in loading the ark with every species of animal on earth by propelling it through a rip in the time-space continuum - there is nothing against this, & a lot for it. That doesn’t give it the status of an historical fact. “God could” make hundred-handed giants, as in some Greek myths - there is no reason to think He has. Just as there is no reason to think a Hebrew myth stops being mythical merely because it’s in the Bible.​

Fundamentalists may want to reduce the Bible to the level of a “Superman” comic (maybe the Patriarchs died for lack of Kryptonite, found only in the Garden ?) - but the critics, by directing attention to the text, are helping to protect the Bible from such extravagances.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Why the hysterical personal attacks? I wrote about what Gottle said, not him as a person.

“You will know them by their fruits.” (Matt 7:16) If the fruit of your modernist education is the type of condescension, name-calling, and narrow-mindedness that you display in these posts, it doesn’t say much for it being an education centered in the love of Christ Jesus. I guess that’s what happens when you think of Jesus as a theory and the inspired word of God as a bunch of fairy tales.

“[C]ondescension, name-calling, and narrow-mindedness” are (to say the least of it) hardly confined to “modernists” (your word BTW). And please, don’t misrepresent what people write - I did not say Jesus was a theory.​

Why not engage with the OP’s ideas instead of attacking her education & character ?

 

[Xenos8]

If everything is to be taken word for word then , heck- all we need is the Bible and nothing else. With that little slippery slope there will be folks soon saying they don’t need the Magisterum - and we know how that will wind up.in

Why wouldn’t things in the bible be taken word for word?
Who needs the Magisterium? Look what John wrote:

1John 2:27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

St Basil speaks to us from his homiles on the Creation Week:

Basil warns of going too far afield from the plain meaning of the text too quickly.

“Shall I then prefer foolish wisdom to the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Shall I not rather exalt Him (God) who, not wishing to fill our minds with these vanities, has regulated all the economy of Scripture in view of the edification and the making perfect of our souls? It is this which those seem to me not to have understood, who, giving themselves up to the distorted meaning of allegory, have undertaken to give a majesty of their own invention to Scripture. It is to believe themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and to bring forth their own ideas under a pretext of exegesis.” Hexaemeron 9:1

The issue is twofold:

1. Who is speaking in Genesis?;
2. Are we approaching the Sacred Word with appropriate reverence?
3. Tradition is overwhemingly on the side of Moses who spoke to God “face to face” - what do you suppose they discussed on Sinai for 40 days and nights?
4. St.John tells us to “test the spirits” ( I John 4:1) and St. Paul says that the Spirit of God testifies that “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:1ff) - clearly, the spirit of evolutionary theory contradicts the Spirit of Divine Revelation and emanates from atheistic sources.

Again, St. Basil:

Hexaemeron (Homily 1)

1. It is right that any one beginning to narrate the formation of the world should begin with the good order which reigns in visible things. I am about to speak of the creation of heaven and earth, which was not spontaneous, as some have imagined, but drew its origin from God. What ear is worthy to hear such a tale? How earnestly the soul should prepare itself to receive such high lessons! How pure it should be from carnal affections, how unclouded by worldly disquietudes, how active and ardent in its researches, how eager to find in its surroundings an idea of God which may be worthy of Him!

But before weighing the justice of these remarks, before examining all the sense contained in these few words, let us see who addresses them to us. Because, if the weakness of our intelligence does not allow us to penetrate the depth of the thoughts of the writer, yet we shall be involuntarily drawn to give faith to his words by the force of his authority. Now it is Moses who has composed this history; Moses, who, when still at the breast, is described as exceeding fair; Moses, whom the daughter of Pharaoh adopted; who received from her a royal education, and who had for his teachers the wise men of Egypt; Moses, who disdained the pomp of royalty, and, to share the humble condition of his compatriots, preferred to be persecuted with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting delights of sin; Moses, who received from nature such a love of justice that, even before the leadership of the people of God was committed to him, he was impelled, by a natural horror of evil, to pursue malefactors even to the point of punishing them by death; Moses, who, banished by those whose benefactor he had been, hastened to escape from the tumults of Egypt and took refuge in Ethiopia, living there far from former pursuits, and passing forty years in the contemplation of nature; Moses, finally, who, at the age of eighty, saw God, as far as it is possible for man to see Him; or rather as it had not previously been granted to man to see Him, according to the testimony of God Himself, If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.*** My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house, with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently and not in dark speeches. ***It is this man, whom God judged worthy to behold Him, face to face, like the angels, who imparts to us what he has learned from God. Let us listen then to these words of truth written without the help of the enticing words of man’s wisdom 1 Corinthians 2:4 by the dictation of the Holy Spirit; words destined to produce not the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who are instructed by them.

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1 I stop struck with admiration at this thought. Shall I show forth the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith? The philosophers of Greece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to destroy one another. Those who were too ignorant to rise to a knowledge of a God, could not allow that an intelligent cause presided at the birth of the Universe; a primary error that involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse to material principles and attributed the origin of the Universe to the elements of the world. Others imagined that atoms, and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form, by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider’s web woven by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.** Deceived by their inherent* atheism ***it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that was all was given up to chance. To guard us against this error the writer on the creation, from the very first words, enlightens our understanding with the name of God; In the beginning God created. What a glorious order!

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

Jesus gives complete credulity to the Scriptures:

In the Christian Scriptures, in the Book of Matthew (5:17-18), during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is recorded as having said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."In English, *jots *and *tittles *are best described as the cross of a t and dot of an i, respectively. In the original written Greek of the Christian scriptures they were *iota *and keraia, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet and a serif or accent mark. In the spoken Aramaic of Jesus’ time and place, they were probably the yodh (the smallest letter in the Aramaic alphabet) and small diacritical marks, hooks, and points that help to distinguish one letter from another. The point in all three cases is attention to the smallest detail.

Jesus again confirms His faith in the written revelation:

Jn.10: 34 Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken…

When Jesus was tempted by satan in the desert, what did he use to confute the tempter? “It is written…” Whom did he quote? Moses.

Answering the Sadduccees (the liberals of Jesus’ day) he says,

And Jesus answering said to them, Do you not therefore err, because you know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?

Mk 12:24

And in Luke 21:22, Jesus tells His disciples,

For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written

.
How can we as mere disciples change the meaning of the scriptures? Are we wiser than Christ? Is our so-called science too sophisticated for the Son of God? Or are we approaching the Holy Word of the Living God while under the influence of the spirit of this age?

 

[Mea_Culpa]

The trouble with arguments from God’s omnipotence is that they allow anything at all to happen. “God could have” solved the problems in loading the ark with every species of animal on earth by propelling it through a rip in the time-space continuum - there is nothing against this, & a lot for it. That doesn’t give it the status of an historical fact. “God could” make hundred-handed giants, as in some Greek myths - there is no reason to think He has.​

I don’t remember reading about this in the Holy Scriptures.

Just as there is no reason to think a Hebrew myth stops being mythical merely because it’s in the Bible.

Greek myth, Hebrew myth - to a modernist, they’re all the same. The Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. How can you compare that to a pagan myth?

Fundamentalists may want to reduce the Bible to the level of a “Superman” comic (maybe the Patriarchs died for lack of Kryptonite, found only in the Garden ?) - but the critics, by directing attention to the text, are helping to protect the Bible from such extravagances.

This doesn’t even make sense. People who believe in the inspired, inerrant nature of the Bible can be written off as “fundamentalists.” How convenient. What point are you trying to make with the Superman comments? They don’t make any sense. Are you saying there are people that think Superman comics are the inspired, inerrant Word of God?

Comparing the Holy Scriptures to pagan myths, calling them “Hebrew myths,” and then comparing them to Superman comics shows a lack of reverence towards the inspired, inerrant Word of God that only a modernist could have.

 

[cassini]

Again I endorse Catholic Johnny 100%. But here is the question for the non-literalists like gottle on geer on this thread:

How could the Church claim to be the infallible interpreters of the Scriptures if many of the scholastic readings have to be revised because of the ‘progress’ of science?

 

[Pete_Holter]

Again I endorse Catholic Johnny 100%. But here is the question for the non-literalists like gottle on geer on this thread:

How could the Church claim to be the infallible interpreters of the Scriptures if many of the scholastic readings have to be revised because of the ‘progress’ of science?

Hi Cassini,

The Church only claims infallibility for herself when interpreting the Bible “in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine” (First Vatican Council).

Gottle hasn’t said any such thing- you read into and interpret the way you want it to be.If you read more of Gottle’s posts then you’d know what a good Catholic he is.

Hi Julia,

I seem to remember Gottle writing that he denies the perpetual virginity of Mary. Maybe I’m mistaken and maybe he’s changed his mind.

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

Hi Cassini,

The Church only claims infallibility for herself when interpreting the Bible “in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine” (First Vatican Council).

That’s not what Pius XII said in Divino Afflante Spiritu:

When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the "entire books with all their parts" as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as “obiter dicta” and - as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, published on November 18 in the year 1893, justly and rightly condemned these errors and safe-guarded the studies of the Divine Books by most wise precepts and rules.