The more I read here, the more I see what’s going on and it’s disturbing. People, the pope was clear on this matter to me, but obviously is taken completely out of context for the opposing side on this debate. He was trying to spoon feed us the truth and it has been taken too literally on this account. Sure, there are parts of the bible that should not be taken as literal accounts, to me, it’s quite easy to discern those elements, I’ve never needed a church authority to point those elements out. According to the mistranslation along his perspective clearly shown here, let’s expand upon this context, ie. if it doesn’t fit in with scientific understanding, it is allegory. Christ being risen from the dead, that is unscientific, nothing which is clearly dead rises from that state, especially when the body is mutilated with severe mortal wounds, yet he was ressurrected. Matter that is heavier then air/water always sinks, yet Christ walked on the water. Loaves and fishes being held in a basket, no matter how compressed you place them into it will never feed the myriads of crowds, and yet again, in Christs hands they did. Water doesn’t turn to wine, and again, in Christs hands, it did. You see the logic that is missed by you guys here for your literal interpretations yourselves, you missed the message all together. According to your own logic, of which you think is the popes, since Christ’s birth, life, death and ressurrection is contradicting scientific understanding, then he must have been allegory, and the bulk of the NT is just that.
This issue is not one of “science” versus “faith”, or of “reason” versus “faith”, or even of “the Bible” versus “modern scholarship”- it’s none of these things, whatever the way in which one combines them.
The Life of Christ is not the same kind of issue as the issue of the historicality (or not) of Gen. 6-8 - all they have common, is that both are concerned with incidents that are not matters of everyday experience.
One of the ways in which they are not alike at all is that belief in the Life of Christ does not require rejection of what is known about the world & the way it works: the miracles of Christ do not contradict how the world works, because they do not belong to the world at all; they could not be measured by anything in the world, even if we want to do that, because they are acts of the man Who is God. So they are utterly unique. They can no more be classed with events originating in the world, than God can be classed as man.
This BTW is why the Resurrection of Christ cannot be proved by historical evidence - it’s not a historical event; it is far too real for anything as dreamlike as mere history to contain it,because it is an unmediated Divine Act, an Act of God; so there is nothing in the world of human experience with which it can be compared; the study of history works by means of comparisons - with the miracles of Christ, & the Resurrection, there is nothoing for such a method to work with. So these great things can be believed only by faith: faith is what discloses their meaning, not history.
I just don’t buy it, not your perspective, nor your understanding of scripture, it simply does not wash well at all in my heart. There is an even higher authority then the Pope himself that obviously is not a prominent element in the opposing sides lives, it’s sad really, but I already gave this group a chance to reveal that one and as usual, the poll came out vastly short. Those with ears to hear will understand what I say, those without, stick to your microscopes…
The Flood is quite different. There is a great deal of evidence against the very idea that it took place as described in Gen. 6-8. This evidence from the natural world, based on knowledge of the world which has its foundation a realist philosophy that look on things as having natures in virtue of which they can do some things (& not others) because they are particular things (& not others). A fox behaves like a fox, because a fox is what the animal called a fox is. If it were a slice of cheese, and were left outside for a week, it would grow mould. This is one of the reasons foxes don’t grow mould - they are not slices of cheese, but foxes. Things act in accordance with the natures proper to them - not the natures proper to entirely different things. If this is not true, then the book of nature is being set against the books of the Bible; & that needs to be accounted for, since the One God is the Author of both.
So in the rest of the world God has created: men do not live until they are 600 hundred, let alone 950 as is recorded of Noah. Living things include camels, elephants, & microbes: the text makes no allowance for the fact (for fact it is) that many animals live thousands of miles apart, are of very various habits, & that different kinds of animal are so numerous that they simply couldn’t all be accommodated in the Ark. Even if they could be, the problems in looking after them, & protecting them from one another, would be enormous; & many of them are deadly to human beings.
If lions, tarantulas, alligators, giraffes, wolves, ichneumons, fleas, mosquitos, rats, vampire bats, & elephants had to live together in such close proximity, how many of them would survive so long & terrible a journey ? The narrative, to be plausible as a narration of real events, would need to have a very different content, because as it stands it requires the world to be a different world from the one it is, if words mean anything.
Positively, it is far more likely to be an Israelite variant of a familiar type of story that is recorded in several versions, all recognisably alike, that was current when the OT wasa being composed. And for this possibility, there is no shortage of evidence - which is where the other explanation is so weak; for it raises one problem after another, so that to solve one is to start another going.
Why should the Flood narrative
not be a “sacred fiction”, as an OP has suggested, & be a variant of a familar story ? Why
must it be an historical text ? What is lost, Biblically or doctrinally or devotionally or theologically or in our lives as Christian disciples, if it is not an historical text ?
A little more insight here, Cherie has not commented in this thread for quite some time, yet we still are getting people quoting her, attacking her. I look at what she wrote and she’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am, she cares about the souls that reside on this board and she has prayed with a contrite heart about you people, regardless of the fact you ridicule her, she has nothing to gain personally. This is an individual God can work with, not because of her mightly knowledge of scripture, but because her heart is in the right place.
Good for her. That doesn’t guarantee that the position she is defending is a good one; or that she is right. This thread is not about the admirable (or even the deplorable) personalities of those posting on it: it’s about answering a question about a much-discussed part of the Bible. And different posters have very different views as to what that part of the Divine Word means: it’s all tosh to imagine that thinking the passage is not relating an historical event, must mean that people are denying that the passage is true or inspired. Truth =///= historicality.
