Second Temple Hermeneutics

[mick]

I deconverted mainly over the inability to reconcile "goodness" to the Evil God of the Bible, and the concept of Hell. And also, the absurdity of the stories of the Bible, I.e. Noah's Ark, people living 600 to 900 years, etc.

 

I have been FULLY deconverted for 1 and 1/2 years. I think I am an atheist at this point. (I think, if you THINK you are an atheist, then you probably are one. LOL)

 

A new area that is really fascinating me is how very poorly the New Test authors misquote, and wrongly interpret "scriptures" from the Old Test. I want to note, this had nothing to do with my deconversion. This interest developed later.

 

There is a concept called "Scond Temple Hermaneutics". I probably have a weak definition of that here, but basically it means to change the clear meaning of the context of a scripture and give it a new, additional meaning, or in some cases clearly contradict what it clearly meant in origianl context.

 

Now that I am a former CHristian, I am able to so clearly see that the NT authors are doing this all the time when they quote the OT, expecially when they are supposedly referring to Christ and supposed prophecy. I have alot of specific deatil I could go into here, but these things show clear error in the Bible, especially the NT.

 

One example is in Hosea when it says "From out of Egypt I called my Son." In the Gospels this verse is quoted to be about Christ. In it's original context it was clearly, emphatically, about the Hebrew people of the Exodus. It was literally about them, specifcally. The NT author essentially reintreprets in to mean Christ. (Plus they just made up the part about Christ having to run to Egypt to make it fit at all) The verse in Hosea is NOT a prophecy, it is not ambiguous about who it is referring to either. Some Christians defend these things by saying that these verses had double meanings, but this is folly. Essentially these folks are taking the "Analogy of Faith" approach to scritpure. That essentially means, "The Bible is true, and cannot contradict itself or be wrong in any way, so therefore you must assume you are wrong if you think it does contradict, or have error". Think about how foolish that its. Obviously, if you decide ahead of time that something DOES NOT have error or CONTRADICT, than you are not going to find error.

 

Another interesting one is where in Genesis it refers to "Abraham's seed" which clearly is talking about the "many" or "plural" specific descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (I.e the Israelite people) Paul takes this exact verse in Galatians and says that the "seed" is NOT the many, but the ONE, Christ. He reinterprets the Genesis verse to mean something other than what it clearly means. This is not a small point. In other words he is NOT simply giving it a SECOND meaning, but he is CHANGING what it clearly means. I will get the specific scripture references. This is a clear cut error in the NT author's use of the OT.

[Garnet]

I can relate to what you're saying here, mick. My own deconversion was triggered by reading the Bible from front to back without the filters put in place by my church. It was clear to me that many of the things I was told about prophecy were just flat wrong. It was also clear to me that things like the creation stories, Job and the flood were written by distinctly different people and were not intended to be taken literally. The insistence of my church teachers that these stories were indeed literal caused quite a bit of cognitive dissonance in me.

[mwc]

At one point I had downloaded a list of some 300+ OT prophecies "fulfilled" by jesus. I then went and started verifying each one myself just to see what the "spin" was that had been applied. A number (the "big" ones) were just as stated here but after those they were so vague that most anyone could have qualified as the "messiah." After wading through what seemed like countless numbers of those "prophecies" I just stopped altogether.

 

The exercise is a bit tedious but it's a good one for anyone who wants to see with their own two eyes how much twisting the NT authors did to the OT to get their "messiah" to do his thing.

 

mwc

[Mongo]

The exercise is a bit tedious but it's a good one for anyone who wants to see with their own two eyes how much twisting the NT authors did to the OT to get their "messiah" to do his thing.

 

mwc

 

 

Kind of reminds me of the Cheesh and Chong routine... "looks like shit..."

 

Its one of those things that you just have to squish it together with your fingers and smell it to know without any doubt that its a pile of shit.

 

MWC... I like your style. Rock on.

 

Mongo