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angel12
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A non-existent being has confessed. Interesting.
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Gorgias
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When you read Shakespeare, or Beowulf, you take into account the culture that gave rise to that piece of literature, don’t you? (I mean, if you don’t, then you end up with all sorts of weird anachronistic interpretations!)
Same thing goes with the Bible. In the culture of the day, they didn’t understand or believe in secondary causation. To them, each and every thing that happened in the world literally happened because God wished it to be so. (In fact, it would have been proof to them that God is not omnipotent if anything happened that God didn’t literally and directly cause!)
So, to their minds, when they saw the child die, they presumed that God killed him. That’s not what we would believe today. In fact, when people say things like that to Jesus, he rebuts their assertions.
So, if you say that God tortured and killed David’s firstborn by Bathsheba, then your hermeneutic approach is kinda ‘off’, I’d say…
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wkj_123
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Look I have already stated that I’m arguing from a position of accepting God is real. No offense but if you can’t understand that your going to have trouble adding anything to the conversation.
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wkj_123
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So you don’t believe God killed that baby? You believe the baby died naturally and due to the cultural understanding of the day the writer just assumed it was God?When you read Shakespeare, or Beowulf, you take into account the culture that gave rise to that piece of literature, don’t you? (I mean, if you don’t, then you end up with all sorts of weird anachronistic interpretations!)
Same thing goes with the Bible. In the culture of the day, they didn’t understand or believe in secondary causation. To them, each and every thing that happened in the world literally happened because God wished it to be so. (In fact, it would have been proof to them that God is not omnipotent if anything happened that God didn’t literally and directly cause!)
So, to their minds, when they saw the child die, they presumed that God killed him. That’s not what we would believe today. In fact, when people say things like that to Jesus, he rebuts their assertions.
So, if you say that God tortured and killed David’s firstborn by Bathsheba, then your hermeneutic approach is kinda ‘off’, I’d say…
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Gorgias
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There are three things going on in that text:
- First, the ancient notion that there’s no such thing as heaven and hell; rather, we’re rewarded on this earth for our good actions here, and punished on this earth for our evil actions here. When we die, they believed, we all just go to the “abode of the dead.” All of us.
- The words of the prophet (“since you sinned, the child will surely die”). Well, umm… duh! Yes, all people die! But, he’s giving voice to the “punishment in the here and now” notion.
- Finally, the author’s assertion that it was God who killed the baby. Now, that was certainly his take on it, and it was based on his perspective (after all, we don’t believe that God dictated the Bible to the inspired authors, but allowed them to write from their own perspectives). That doesn’t mean that the Bible is false; it just means that it’s written through the lens of the understandings of those who did the writing.
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wkj_123
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Hmmm maybe your onto something. If the Bible can plainly say God killed the child, but he really didn’t it’s just the writers cultural bias coming through, then maybe that will work for other things in the Bible. Eternal hell doesn’t fit well at all with modern notions of punishment and reform. Maybe hell doesn’t exist then? The historical writers of the time believed in such a terrible system but their lives we’re usually shorter and filled with cruelty. Eternal hell made sense to them. We know now how ridiculous the notion is, so perhaps it was just their cultural understanding when writting the New testament.
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Arkansan
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I didn’t ask for a post in this thread, I asked for a citation from the OT.
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Gorgias
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How did I know that this is where you were gonna go? There’s a particular nuance here, though: to your specific question, we see Jesus asserting that there’s heaven and hell. You can’t make the same argument about “human bias” when Jesus Himself is talking about stuff.
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kainosktisis
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Where is God reportedly confessing…?
Does your view take into consideration that God can resurrect the dead & that while the physical body may be dead, the soul isn’t?
Does your view take into consideration that God can resurrect the dead & that while the physical body may be dead, the soul isn’t?
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guanophore
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Ok, they are all there, if you are interested in looking.
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angel12
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Since you don’t understand that people 2000+ years ago understood causality differently than we do, you’re already having trouble adding anything to the conversation.
And since you say God doesn’t exist, there’s no reason for you to care. I certainly don’t care what Zeus is up to.
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wkj_123
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Oh I understand it don’t worry. I a dually like that argument. @gorgias and now apparently you are trying to argue that people precieved the child’s death as an act of God when it wasn’t. Problem is that it made it into the Bible that it was. So basically we have the Bible telling us that the Lord will kill David’s son. By the arguments put forth here we now know that was not true, the Lord didn’t kill David’s son. So know that we have established that the Bible can be wrong about what the Lord will do, how far does it go? How can we trust it anymore. We can’t.
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guanophore
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13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.” 2 Sam 12
Actually, what the prophet said was that David deserved to die for the sins of murder and adultery, but God had a larger plan. Part of that plan is that the adulterous child would die.
This does not equate to "God torturing and killing. Your perspective assumes some kind of wrathful and vengeful nature of God. God allows sickness and death to occur, as a result of the free choice of Adam and Eve. It does not equate to it being His perfect will for humanity.
I don’t know that one should call it “cultural bias”, but certainly the writers are within their own world view. In that sense, we all have a “cultural bias”. Your “bias” seems to be that “God tortured and killed the child”, though the text does not say this. It is a form of eisegesis, or reading into the passage your own ideas.
I think this is going backwards. The text reflects what the writers believed. What modern persons believe does not influence the text itself.
Any interpretation of ancient documents needs to be done from the persepective of those writing.
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wkj_123
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Yes it does. God caused a child to become sick(torture) and die(killing). God punished the child for David’s sins. Had David not sinned, the child wouldn’t have had to be killed.
As per the thread Jesus says:
This is obviously a total lie. God did punish the baby for his father’s sins. It’s really not hard to grasp.
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guanophore
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Again you are projecting your own judgments into the text. For them, this is not a “terrible system”.
Suit yourself. I pray you will not find yourself having experiential knowledge of this “ridiculous notion”!
Yes, the whole court perceived it this way, because God spoke through the prophet Samuel that the consequence of David’s sins were contention in his household and the loss of the child. God has permissive will, and allows people to suffer the consequences of their choices.
No, we don’t. We have the bible saying that the child shall surely die. This is a prophetic word, along with the prophetic word that David would see his concubines taken by another man in full “sunlight”. Both these predictions came true, although the child’s death much before the other.
You seem to have a very concrete way of thinking. The child died, as it was prophesied. The death of the child was caused by David choosing to sin.
Did you ever?
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Gorgias
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The Bible says many things that are meant allegorically (talking snakes, anyone?) or which are stories that are misunderstood by some who tell them or listen to them.
So, when Eve believed the snake, who said that she would be “like God” if she ate the apple, do we believe that this is true? After all, “it made it into the Bible”. And when people do all sorts of horrible things, do we assert that they’re morally good? After all, these too “made it into the Bible.”
Your argument only works if we see the Bible as something that is wholly and completely literalistically true – a science or history book rather than a book of theological truth about salvation. That’s not the way that Catholics understand the Bible. So, if you want to make the claims you’re making, you’d get better traction with fundamentalist Christians, who do see the Bible in the way you want to attack it.
The writer presumed that God was behind the death of the child. Yep. Does God affirm that conclusion? If you have a quote, I’d love to see it.
As you read through the Old Testament (I mean, you have, haven’t you, so that you can make these kinds of assertions, right?), you find that the people of God did and said many things that weren’t virtuous. The testimony of the Old Testament is one of people getting it wrong in many ways, and only slowly and gradually coming to understand what God really was asking of them. The fact that their misunderstandings are recorded there only shows the process unfolding.
By looking to an authoritative source to help us understand the context and content of the Bible.
You can’t, perhaps. Don’t overreach, though… you’d be making the same kind of error we see OT writers making…
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irenaeus1
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I would say that this is not quite accurate. Jesus is stating suffering is not NECESSARILY the result of parents’ sinning or even one’s own sins. Certainly, we know that our sins can have consequences on ourselves as well as others. Those ‘punishments’ can be natural consequences or structured (meaning as intended and/or permitted by God).
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wkj_123
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Of course allegory how can I forget.
2nd Samuel 12:15 And Nathan returned to his house. The Lord also struck the child which the wife of Urias had borne to David, and his life was despaired of.
Is the above statement true or not? The Bible tells us the Lord struck the child. Is that true or not? A simple yes or no will clear it up.
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wkj_123
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Excellent, your getting very close to understanding. The death of the child was because of David’s sin. Who allowed the child to die as punishment for David’s sin?
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wkj_123
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Do you need the verses in God’s inspired book where God killed people? Really? I can post them if you do.
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