"they Knew That They Were Naked"

[Neon Genesis]

 

Yet again you have John 1:1 "In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God". Then you also have John 8:58 '"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"'. Here Jesus is seen stating that he existed long before Abraham, and I have been led to believe that the use of I am was emphasized in the Greek and is a reference to YWHW being the "I am", and that the use of I am was recognized as such back then. Even without that you've got things like alpha and the omega throughout the bible. Again it all really comes down to how your going to harmonize all these different verses, you harmonize it on the side of man, they harmonize on the side of God.

John 1:1 does say that but it never clear what Jesus' divinity means. Like for example, is the Christ a separate divine being that entered into Jesus at the point of his baptism like the docetists believed? The only thing that John is clear about is that Jesus was somehow divine and existed before the creation of the world and was somehow equal with God but doesn't explain how. Interestingly, John never says Jesus was a divine being who existed before the creation of the world who is also born of a virgin like the "official" orthodox view and John's gospel doesn't even mention the virgin birth, so if we accept John sees Jesus as somehow divine, it's still not the modern orthodox view because John rejects Jesus was born of a virgin. However, if you were a Christian in Mark's community and you had no clue about John's gospel, then would you be more likely to believe Jesus was a human or a god and so are the gospels really harmonized?

 

Second of all I believe that the early orthodox church did belief in a kind of deification, that is that, at least in some manner man can become God. St Athanasius I believe is quoted as saying "God became man to make man god". Furthermore I seem to remember perusing a book which was looking into the early church fathers opinion on the subject. So yes humans are God's, after all were made in his image.

However, even among the early "orthodox" church, there were major disagreements among the fathers as to what Jesus' status was as divine and what roles the different Persons played. Like was Jesus of the same substance as God and which Person in the Trinity was he? The "orthodox" view didn't become finalized until years later when the Nicene creed was formed but even in modern times, the "orthodox" view of the Trinity has never been universally accepted. Like don't Mormons believe Jesus and God are united in purpose but not in physical forms and don't the JWs believe Jesus was Micheal the archangel?

 

 

Yes but you've got to take into account that the parable of the prodigal son is presented in such a way that you know it is symbolic. The genesis account is not presented as such, at least not obviously as such.

Yet not all parables are clear if they're parables. Like the mainline churches will say the story of Lazarus and Dives is a parable but fundamentalists still say it's a literal fact, so which one is it intended to be? Another example is how in the Hebrew bible, fundamentalists will say Job is a literal fact yet biblical scholars say it's a book of poetry, so how do we know which it is?

 

As to why fundamentalists refuse to apply the same logic to the Genesis account. It should be obvious to you why they don't want to relinquish it. It's what clearly sets out there God created man, thus making us his property, and gives the account of original sin, which is the lynch pin for why Jesus is needed. We're created in God's image via a process of natural selection really doesn't work as well, as he formed us out of the dust. Nor is it clear how the garden of eden fits in.

This is what Karen Armstrong says in her book The Case For God about Genesis.

This immediately recalls the Upanishadic story of the lonely human person who splits in two to become male and female, but it is obivously a Middle Eastern tale and full of traditional motifs:the crafting of adam from clay, the river irrigating the four corners of the earth, the sacred trees and the talking animal. It is a typical lost-paradise myth. Like any myth, its purpose is to help us to contemplate the human predicament. Why is human life filled with suffering, back-breaking agricultural labor, agonizing childbirth, and death? Why do men and women feel so estranged from the divine?

 

The Eden story is certainly not a morality tale; like any paradise myth, it is an imaginary account of the infancy of the human race. In Eden, Adam and Eve are still in the womb; they have to grow up, and the snake is there to guide them through the rite of passage to maturity. To know pain and to be conscious of desire and mortality are inescapable components of human experience; but they are also symptoms of that sense of estrangement from the fullness of being that inspires the nostalgia for paradise lost. We can see Adam, Eve, and the serpent as representing different facets of our humanity. In the snake is the rebelliousness and incessant compulsion to question everything that is crucial to human progress; in Eve we see our hunger for knowledge, our desire to experiment, and our longing for a life free of inhibition. Adam, a rather passive figure, displays our reluctance to take responsibility for our action. The story shows that good and evil are inextricably intertwined in human life. Our prodigious knowledge can at one and the same time be a source of benefit and the cause of immense harm. The rabbis of the Talmudic age understood this perfectly. They did not see the "fall" of Adam as a catastrophe, because the "evil inclination (yeytzer ha'ra) was an essential part of human life, and the aggression, competitive edge, and ambition that it generates are bound up with some of our greatest achievements.

 

Then furthermore if you make genesis figurative, where do you stop, do you make eternal life figurative, eternal perdition. Without that the religion starts to lose a lot of it's attracting and keeping power.

Bishop Spong apparently thinks so: http://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Life-Vision-Beyond-Religion/dp/0060762063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255009144&sr=1-1 Interestingly, we do know the reasons why an author wrote one Christian book in the ancient world and his reasons for it were not because he believed he was divinely inspired. Bart D Ehrman mentions in his book Lost Christianities, there was a case where there was a popular book that was circulating in the early church called The Acts Of Paul and Thelca. Paul's female disciple, Thelca, was so popular among the early Christians they even made her a saint but it was eventually exposed that this book was a forgery and the author was actually caught in the act of forging it.

 

When he explained why he had forged the book, he didn't claim he was being inspired by God to justify his actions, but he said his reasons were because he admired Paul so much, he just wanted to write more stories about him. So, here's one instance where somebody was writing a Christian book that people believed in but was not intended to be written as divinely inspired. There were other cases as well, like the Infancy Gospel Of Thomas. This book was written to explain what Jesus' childhood was like because the canon gospels were silent on them, but it was not believed to be literal fact, rather it was written for entertainment value. So, it's not entirely impossible for the authors of the canonized scripture to have written it without believing they were divinely inspired because apparently it's happened with other Christian books in the ancient church.

[NotBlinded]

 

Yet again you have John 1:1 "In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God". Then you also have John 8:58 '"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"'. Here Jesus is seen stating that he existed long before Abraham, and I have been led to believe that the use of I am was emphasized in the Greek and is a reference to YWHW being the "I am", and that the use of I am was recognized as such back then. Even without that you've got things like alpha and the omega throughout the bible. Again it all really comes down to how your going to harmonize all these different verses, you harmonize it on the side of man, they harmonize on the side of God.

John 1:1 does say that but it never clear what Jesus' divinity means. Like for example, is the Christ a separate divine being that entered into Jesus at the point of his baptism like the docetists believed? The only thing that John is clear about is that Jesus was somehow divine and existed before the creation of the world and was somehow equal with God but doesn't explain how. Interestingly, John never says Jesus was a divine being who existed before the creation of the world who is also born of a virgin like the "official" orthodox view and John's gospel doesn't even mention the virgin birth, so if we accept John sees Jesus as somehow divine, it's still not the modern orthodox view because John rejects Jesus was born of a virgin. However, if you were a Christian in Mark's community and you had no clue about John's gospel, then would you be more likely to believe Jesus was a human or a god and so are the gospels really harmonized?

You know, I don't know how true it is, but I heard that it may be possible that John is actually older than the other gospels.

 

I just looked and Wiki has something on this:

 

The non-canonical Dead Sea Scrolls suggest an early Jewish origin, parallels and similarities to the Essenne Scroll, and Rule of the Community.[29] Many phrases are duplicated in the Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are sufficiently numerous to challenge the theory that the Gospel of John was the last to be written among the four Gospels[30] and that it shows marked Greek influence.[31]

 

The traditional view is supported by reference to the statement of Clement of Alexandria that John wrote to supplement the accounts found in the other gospels.[32] This would place the writing of John's gospel sufficiently after the writing of the synoptics. However, there are modern scholars that now view the Gospel of John as thoroughly Jewish and his Gospel perhaps the earliest of the four.[31]

Wiki

 

I posted this to lead into my next area of quoting that has to do with the understanding of the word Logos.

 

Here is what John states:

 

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it." [Prologue to the Gospel of John: 1-5]

 

We have Sohia in the Old Testament as Wisdom, the creative aspect of God, and this was immanent in the world.

 

Then we have the philosophers using it such as Hericlitus, Plato and Aristotle. They all see this Logos as immanent in creation.

 

For the Stoics, this was nothing less than an intelligent, self- conscious world-soul, an indwelling Logos. Considering the Logos as God, and as the source of all life and all wisdom--then our 'human reason partakes of its nature, because this Logos dwells within us. For this reason we can follow the God within and refer to ourselves as the offspring of God." [ibid, p.20]

 

Fideler packages these ancient concepts of the Logos as follows: "Logos designates the power of 'reason;' the pattern or order of things; the principle of relationship; and an articulation of something."

 

In general, the Logos has the following meanings: 1.) Order or pattern. 2.) Ratio or proportion. 3.) A discourse, articulation or account, even a 'sermon.' 4.) Reason, both in the sense of rationality and in the sense of an articulation of the cause of something. 5.) Principle or cause (logoi=principles, ratios, reasons). 6.) A principle of mediation and harmony between extremes." [David Fideler, JESUS CHRIST SUN OF GOD: ANCIENT COSMOLOGY AND EARLY CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM, Quest Books, 1993, p. 38]

 

Further discussing the meaning of the Logos, Sanford also stresses the "equally important influence of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we find an idea of God's creative spirit immanent within the creation and residing even in the human soul that is as old--or perhaps older--as that of the Greeks." [MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY, p. 21]

The Logos Continuum: Ancient Meaning

 

This is the "I Am" that Jesus was talking about. I'm thinking that Jesus saw everyone as divine.

[★ Citsonga ★]

If the genealogies are proof that the bible was intended to be read literally, why did Matthew and Luke have two entirely different genealogies that contradict each other when they could have just copied each other since Luke was copying from Matthew?

 

Luke was not copying from Matthew. Both Matthew and Luke copied parts of Mark, which is why when all three synoptics record the same event, there usually aren't many discrepancies. However, when Matthew and Luke record things that are not also in Mark, they quite often contradict each other. The genealogies are an example of that. Whoever put the genealogy in Matthew and whoever put the genealogy in Luke were probably both trying to claim a literal descendancy, but were writing independently. In other words, both genealogies are bs, but unless their works were midrash, I would think that they meant to be taken literally.

 

Why do the scriptures go out of their way to completely change the plot points of stories, like the drastically different accounts of King Saul's death which are entirely different from each other?

 

Revisionism, I suppose. Revisionists often believe that they are presenting the true history.

 

Actually, could you be more specific? 1 Samuel 31 has an account of Saul's death, but my quick BibleGatewy search for "Saul" in 1 Chronicles didn't yield a text about his death.

 

But the bible also says that a day is a thousand years to God and a thousand year is a day.

 

That is quite often abused with regard to this. That quote comes from the NT and has nothing to do with the creation account. It's arguing for believers to be patient until Jesus' return, because they don't know when it's going to be. It's quite a different scenario than writing about something that supposedly happened in history. Trying to impose a much later quote from one religion onto a much older text of another religion doesn't seem to be a very good historical approach.

 

Also, just because someone quotes a story to make a point doesn't mean you literally believe it was true or else everyone in this thread would be Christians simply from quoting bible stories to make our points.

 

How in the world can you make that drastic of a comparison? The whole context of this discussion implies that we're not believers of it. Exodus 20, on the other hand, was clearly written to promote the ideas being set forth. Also, Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 were canonized into the same set of Scripture. What we're doing here doesn't even come close to resembling the Exodus references to creation days.

 

In closing, though, I do acknowledge that we really can't know for certain what the original authors and editors meant. I'm just saying what seems most likely to me.

[Neon Genesis]

 

This is the "I Am" that Jesus was talking about. I'm thinking that Jesus saw everyone as divine.

Or maybe Jesus was a fan of Divine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_(actor)

[NotBlinded]

 

This is the "I Am" that Jesus was talking about. I'm thinking that Jesus saw everyone as divine.

Or maybe Jesus was a fan of Divine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_(actor)

Maybe...you never know what went on in those temples! Back in those days, it would have to be a secret because of their narrowmindedness. Of course it would have to have been a different Divine living at the time, because, you know, Jesus hasn't returned yet and couldn't have known this Divine.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Personally I think the problem here is that we're trying to guess at the intentions of authors who wrote over 2000 years ago. Authors who's culture and way of thinking are in all likelihood completely alien to our own. Add to that the fact that we know pretty much nothing about them, we don't even know whether they even believed this stuff themselves or were just trying to make a quick buck, we don't know whether they might have been insane, and we don't know whether they were just regular people who were just trying to get across what they'd heard. My thinking is that trying to work out what the original authors intentions were at this point is impossible. Even if you did come up with an answer it would be impossible to know whether you were right.

 

It's very easy to understand why fundamentalists take it literally however. They're worshiping a God who is revealed to them solely through this Book. Bona fide, verifiable, personal interaction with this God is non-existent. They have to deal with other religion's which all believe they have the true God and their own holy books to back them up. You've got to ask yourself the question if the miracles and acts of God written down in the bible are just figurative and not literal, why the hell should I believe that this God even exists. Oh and there's also that little thing about if you don't believe you'll burn in hell forever. You don't want to accidentally not believe something which is mandatory, you'll be kick yourself for that for a long time.

 

Very good points there. Though I have acknowledged that we can't know for sure, maybe I have too strongly asserted what I think to be most likely. Indeed, I did come from an "inerrancy" background, so that may be affecting my understanding of the texts.

 

Is there anything known about ancient Rabbis' take on "inerrancy"? Not that they would use our modern terminology, but is there anything out there regarding how reliable they considered their Scriptures and how literally they took them? And how far back does that go?

 

For all I know, there may not be much to go on regarding that. Hmmm.....

 

But there's still the Exodus 20 issue I raised earlier, which to me wouldn't make much sense unless that author took the creation days to be normal days.

 

Now my head hurts. Gotta let this go for now....

[Neon Genesis]

 

 

Very good points there. Though I have acknowledged that we can't know for sure, maybe I have too strongly asserted what I think to be most likely. Indeed, I did come from an "inerrancy" background, so that may be affecting my understanding of the texts.

 

 

Now my head hurts. Gotta let this go for now....

I also came from an inerrancy background and I didn't get how it could be otherwise at first either but reading different views from scholars and historians has helped me to see that it's not as easy or clear as fundamentalists want us to believe. I also posted this thread you might be interested in on this subject of whether or not the biblical authors saw themselves as divinely inspired: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?/topic/33726-did-the-biblical-authors-believe-in-the-inerrancy-of-scripture/

[dagnarus]

John 1:1 does say that but it never clear what Jesus' divinity means. Like for example, is the Christ a separate divine being that entered into Jesus at the point of his baptism like the docetists believed? The only thing that John is clear about is that Jesus was somehow divine and existed before the creation of the world and was somehow equal with God but doesn't explain how.

 

Fundamentalists have the Nicene Creed to tell them what Christ's divinity means. It has a lot of big words in it which nobody understands, and really doesn't mean anything anyway, but they can assume that theses people knew what they were talking about anyway. Either way John does say that he was God, and nothing came into being except through him. Either way one gets the impression that he is a heck of a lot more than your run of the mill man.

 

Interestingly, John never says Jesus was a divine being who existed before the creation of the world who is also born of a virgin like the "official" orthodox view and John's gospel doesn't even mention the virgin birth, so if we accept John sees Jesus as somehow divine, it's still not the modern orthodox view because John rejects Jesus was born of a virgin. However, if you were a Christian in Mark's community and you had no clue about John's gospel, then would you be more likely to believe Jesus was a human or a god and so are the gospels really harmonized?

 

What makes you say that John rejects the orthodox view that Jesus was born of a virgin? What does that have to do with him being God anyway? That said when I was a Christian my church looked at John as such, the reason why he doesn't talk about Christ's human origins is because he is trying to present him as God, Hence why it starts out in the beginning was the word, if he went into Christ's human origin being born of virgin, being possessed by the divine logos or whatever then that would confuse the point. Is this true? I don't know. But it does kind of make sense. Finally I have little to no idea what Mark's community actually believed, I do however know what the current fundamentalist community believes, and that is that the Bible in it's entirety is the inerrant word of God, therefore they pretty much have to believe Mark and John was on the same page, hence the need to harmonize. Furthermore consider what it would mean to the Fundamentalists if the accepted that Mark and John were of basically two different religions with completely different views of Christ? This would basically require them to come to a point where they accepted nobody knew what the fuck was going on back then.

 

However, even among the early "orthodox" church, there were major disagreements among the fathers as to what Jesus' status was as divine and what roles the different Persons played. Like was Jesus of the same substance as God and which Person in the Trinity was he? The "orthodox" view didn't become finalized until years later when the Nicene creed was formed but even in modern times, the "orthodox" view of the Trinity has never been universally accepted. Like don't Mormons believe Jesus and God are united in purpose but not in physical forms and don't the JWs believe Jesus was Micheal the archangel?

 

With regards to deification I was referring to the deification of Christ. I was referring to the deification of Christians. This is to say many of the church fathers believed that Christians were becoming God.

 

Yet not all parables are clear if they're parables. Like the mainline churches will say the story of Lazarus and Dives is a parable but fundamentalists still say it's a literal fact, so which one is it intended to be? Another example is how in the Hebrew bible, fundamentalists will say Job is a literal fact yet biblical scholars say it's a book of poetry, so how do we know which it is?

 

I don't really see the problem here. Fundamentalist's can see obvious parables as such where as when they become less obvious as parables they make them literal this is consistent with the Fundamentalist view that Genesis is literal. Their is no inconsistency in there interpreting here.

 

This is what Karen Armstrong says in her book The Case For God about Genesis.

This immediately recalls the Upanishadic story of the lonely human person who splits in two to become male and female, but it is obivously a Middle Eastern tale and full of traditional motifs:the crafting of adam from clay, the river irrigating the four corners of the earth, the sacred trees and the talking animal. It is a typical lost-paradise myth. Like any myth, its purpose is to help us to contemplate the human predicament. Why is human life filled with suffering, back-breaking agricultural labor, agonizing childbirth, and death? Why do men and women feel so estranged from the divine?

 

The Eden story is certainly not a morality tale; like any paradise myth, it is an imaginary account of the infancy of the human race. In Eden, Adam and Eve are still in the womb; they have to grow up, and the snake is there to guide them through the rite of passage to maturity. To know pain and to be conscious of desire and mortality are inescapable components of human experience; but they are also symptoms of that sense of estrangement from the fullness of being that inspires the nostalgia for paradise lost. We can see Adam, Eve, and the serpent as representing different facets of our humanity. In the snake is the rebelliousness and incessant compulsion to question everything that is crucial to human progress; in Eve we see our hunger for knowledge, our desire to experiment, and our longing for a life free of inhibition. Adam, a rather passive figure, displays our reluctance to take responsibility for our action. The story shows that good and evil are inextricably intertwined in human life. Our prodigious knowledge can at one and the same time be a source of benefit and the cause of immense harm. The rabbis of the Talmudic age understood this perfectly. They did not see the "fall" of Adam as a catastrophe, because the "evil inclination (yeytzer ha'ra) was an essential part of human life, and the aggression, competitive edge, and ambition that it generates are bound up with some of our greatest achievements.

 

I'm arguing for why the Fundamentalists would not be willing to consider the creation account as being a myth. What does Karen Armstrong's take on it have to do with that. What fundamentalist is going to accept that, you know what, mankind eating the tree of knowledge wasn't the mortal sin which sentenced us all to hell unless we receive Christ's Redemption, it was mankind's growing up as a species. Even now they want mankind to be wholly dependent on God. As to the fact that it's from an even older myth, all that proves is that other people wrote it down so it must have happened but the dirty heathens bastardized it like the bastards they are.

 

My argument still stands they need the creation account to tie their God to man's creation, and they need original sin to condemn all man to death.

 

Then furthermore if you make genesis figurative, where do you stop, do you make eternal life figurative, eternal perdition. Without that the religion starts to lose a lot of it's attracting and keeping power.

Bishop Spong apparently thinks so: http://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Life-Vision-Beyond-Religion/dp/0060762063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255009144&sr=1-1 Interestingly, we do know the reasons why an author wrote one Christian book in the ancient world and his reasons for it were not because he believed he was divinely inspired. Bart D Ehrman mentions in his book Lost Christianities, there was a case where there was a popular book that was circulating in the early church called The Acts Of Paul and Thelca. Paul's female disciple, Thelca, was so popular among the early Christians they even made her a saint but it was eventually exposed that this book was a forgery and the author was actually caught in the act of forging it.

 

When he explained why he had forged the book, he didn't claim he was being inspired by God to justify his actions, but he said his reasons were because he admired Paul so much, he just wanted to write more stories about him. So, here's one instance where somebody was writing a Christian book that people believed in but was not intended to be written as divinely inspired. There were other cases as well, like the Infancy Gospel Of Thomas. This book was written to explain what Jesus' childhood was like because the canon gospels were silent on them, but it was not believed to be literal fact, rather it was written for entertainment value. So, it's not entirely impossible for the authors of the canonized scripture to have written it without believing they were divinely inspired because apparently it's happened with other Christian books in the ancient church.

 

While this is a good example of a biblical author (or wannabe biblical author) writing something which he never considered to be factual, I don't see what it has to do with the part of my post which you quoted. Furthermore it is also obvious why a fundamentalist would reject this. They need the bible to be inerrant, it's a staple of their religion. And it's reasonably easy for their mindset to reject your argument. The acts of Paul and Thecla are not in the canon nor were they ever in their canon. The Holy Spirit lead those who made their canon to put in only the holy spirit books.

[dagnarus]

We have Sohia in the Old Testament as Wisdom, the creative aspect of God, and this was immanent in the world.

 

Then we have the philosophers using it such as Hericlitus, Plato and Aristotle. They all see this Logos as immanent in creation.

 

For the Stoics, this was nothing less than an intelligent, self- conscious world-soul, an indwelling Logos. Considering the Logos as God, and as the source of all life and all wisdom--then our 'human reason partakes of its nature, because this Logos dwells within us. For this reason we can follow the God within and refer to ourselves as the offspring of God." [ibid, p.20]

 

Fideler packages these ancient concepts of the Logos as follows: "Logos designates the power of 'reason;' the pattern or order of things; the principle of relationship; and an articulation of something."

 

In general, the Logos has the following meanings: 1.) Order or pattern. 2.) Ratio or proportion. 3.) A discourse, articulation or account, even a 'sermon.' 4.) Reason, both in the sense of rationality and in the sense of an articulation of the cause of something. 5.) Principle or cause (logoi=principles, ratios, reasons). 6.) A principle of mediation and harmony between extremes." [David Fideler, JESUS CHRIST SUN OF GOD: ANCIENT COSMOLOGY AND EARLY CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM, Quest Books, 1993, p. 38]

 

Further discussing the meaning of the Logos, Sanford also stresses the "equally important influence of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we find an idea of God's creative spirit immanent within the creation and residing even in the human soul that is as old--or perhaps older--as that of the Greeks." [MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY, p. 21]

The Logos Continuum: Ancient Meaning

 

This is the "I Am" that Jesus was talking about. I'm thinking that Jesus saw everyone as divine.

 

Intriguingly enough my old church wouldn't have necessarily have disagreed with this. They believed that all men were created with a spirit to contact God. This spirit was somehow deadened when the fall occurred. When somebody becomes a Christian there spirit is regenerated and they can use it to contact God. Then as believers their requirement is to live by this spirit, and the spirit alone to the point that the soul life which is the self dies. This would probably have a bearing on my skepticism about people having a deep contact with some entity outside themselves, I've already seen a group of people who successfully deluded themselves into thinking they were living by such.

[Abiyoyo]

I'm curious about others' thoughts on this. After Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit and get the knowledge of good and evil, we are told this:

 

Genesis 3:7

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

 

Now, at this point Adam and Eve were supposedly the only people in existence, and they were basically husband and wife, so why would they have any shame about being naked? Are we supposed to believe that they were really concerned about the animals seeing them? What can we make of this part of the myth?

 

I always saw it as a contemporary added to the original. Two sets of creation stories in essence. But that is just my opinion. Christ in the Gospels said that they were made male and female, ..my focus was always that it is plural, ..they. So, that makes me wonder if the Adam story would have been just the Hebrew side of things, and other cultures developed their own creation stories, as God made many, male and female. It doesn't necessarily say that, but it has crossed my mind a few times.

[Shyone]

 

I always saw it as a contemporary added to the original. Two sets of creation stories in essence. But that is just my opinion. Christ in the Gospels said that they were made male and female, ..my focus was always that it is plural, ..they. So, that makes me wonder if the Adam story would have been just the Hebrew side of things, and other cultures developed their own creation stories, as God made many, male and female. It doesn't necessarily say that, but it has crossed my mind a few times.

That's using your noggin. Or at least part of it.

 

I used to have a book of creation stories. There were many many such stories. Even some similarities which leads some investigators to think that there are some historical events behind the myths. One must be careful about assuming that though. The flood narratives from the middle east are truly ancient and, since they lived in "mesopotamia" it makes sense. Egypt, with the Nile, had regular flooding which was much less destructive. and more predictable.

 

Not to scare you, but the study of ancient civilizations that predated the Hebrew culture was an important part of my deconversion. I learned about religions in general, how they developed, what they had in common, and about how the writings about false gods have poetry and beauty - some of which wound up in the Bible.

 

The religions of India are interesting, as is their history. Some Hindus, however, reject some archeological evidence about their religion (involving some cultural aspects) because they find the ideas abhorent since they contradict some of the Hindu teachings.

 

Silly people. Rejecting modern evidence because if refutes some ancient writings.

[Neon Genesis]

 

 

What makes you say that John rejects the orthodox view that Jesus was born of a virgin? What does that have to do with him being God anyway? That said when I was a Christian my church looked at John as such, the reason why he doesn't talk about Christ's human origins is because he is trying to present him as God, Hence why it starts out in the beginning was the word, if he went into Christ's human origin being born of virgin, being possessed by the divine logos or whatever then that would confuse the point. Is this true? I don't know. But it does kind of make sense. Finally I have little to no idea what Mark's community actually believed, I do however know what the current fundamentalist community believes, and that is that the Bible in it's entirety is the inerrant word of God, therefore they pretty much have to believe Mark and John was on the same page, hence the need to harmonize. Furthermore consider what it would mean to the Fundamentalists if the accepted that Mark and John were of basically two different religions with completely different views of Christ? This would basically require them to come to a point where they accepted nobody knew what the fuck was going on back then.

Bart D Ehrman argues in Jesus Interrupted that John didn't believe Jesus was a man born of a virgin who also existed before creation as God because John is based on a different tradition than the Synpotic gospels and there is no reference to the virgin birth myth in John's gospel at all. If John is focusing on Jesus' divinity at the exclusion of Jesus' humanity, then where do "orthodox" Christians get the idea Jesus is fully human and fully divine from a gospel that doesn't focus on Jesus' humanity?

 

 

 

I don't really see the problem here. Fundamentalist's can see obvious parables as such where as when they become less obvious as parables they make them literal this is consistent with the Fundamentalist view that Genesis is literal. Their is no inconsistency in there interpreting here.

So, why is it that when Jesus commands to give up all your possessions to follow him, why don't fundamentalists interpret that literally to mean to live a life of voluntary poverty?

 

My argument still stands they need the creation account to tie their God to man's creation, and they need original sin to condemn all man to death.

Expect that original sin is a later Christian belief that was invented by the Catholic church and is not found anywhere in the scriptures. Even when I was a fundamentalist, although I believed Genesis was a literal scientific fact, I didn't believe in original sin because I believed that humans were created in God's image and since God was perfect, since humans were made in his image, we were created without sin and didn't start to sin until we became old enough to make choices for ourselves. What evidence is there that Christians believed in original sin before St. Augustine started preaching it? Did the Jews believe in original sin? Interestingly, there's a third creation account in Isaiah chapter 40 and it does say in verse one what the purpose of it is:

Comfort, O comfort my people,

says your God.

 

 

 

While this is a good example of a biblical author (or wannabe biblical author) writing something which he never considered to be factual, I don't see what it has to do with the part of my post which you quoted. Furthermore it is also obvious why a fundamentalist would reject this. They need the bible to be inerrant, it's a staple of their religion. And it's reasonably easy for their mindset to reject your argument. The acts of Paul and Thecla are not in the canon nor were they ever in their canon. The Holy Spirit lead those who made their canon to put in only the holy spirit books.

Yet when they say the bible was written to be inerrant and literal, does this include the Catholic bible? The Catholic church were the ones who "finalized" the bible canon, so why do they accept that the Holy Spirit guided the church fathers to be right about the Protestant bible canon but they weren't being guided by the Holy Spirit when it came to the Catholic canon if it was so obvious which books were intended to be written literally and inerrant?

[dagnarus]

What makes you say that John rejects the orthodox view that Jesus was born of a virgin? What does that have to do with him being God anyway? That said when I was a Christian my church looked at John as such, the reason why he doesn't talk about Christ's human origins is because he is trying to present him as God, Hence why it starts out in the beginning was the word, if he went into Christ's human origin being born of virgin, being possessed by the divine logos or whatever then that would confuse the point. Is this true? I don't know. But it does kind of make sense. Finally I have little to no idea what Mark's community actually believed, I do however know what the current fundamentalist community believes, and that is that the Bible in it's entirety is the inerrant word of God, therefore they pretty much have to believe Mark and John was on the same page, hence the need to harmonize. Furthermore consider what it would mean to the Fundamentalists if the accepted that Mark and John were of basically two different religions with completely different views of Christ? This would basically require them to come to a point where they accepted nobody knew what the fuck was going on back then.

Bart D Ehrman argues in Jesus Interrupted that John didn't believe Jesus was a man born of a virgin who also existed before creation as God because John is based on a different tradition than the Synpotic gospels and there is no reference to the virgin birth myth in John's gospel at all. If John is focusing on Jesus' divinity at the exclusion of Jesus' humanity, then where do "orthodox" Christians get the idea Jesus is fully human and fully divine from a gospel that doesn't focus on Jesus' humanity?

 

Here my answer is the bolded part of my previous quote. We are not talking about early Christianity, we don't even really know what early Christianity truly believed. We are talking about current Christianity which draws it's authority from these particular writings, and bases it's authority upon the fact that it is inerrant and inspired by God. Therefore they come at it from the point of view that both Mark and John were on the same page and harmonize it as such. They have to because how else would they be able to understand Jesus's significance except through these writings.

 

So, why is it that when Jesus commands to give up all your possessions to follow him, why don't fundamentalists interpret that literally to mean to live a life of voluntary poverty?

 

You've got to remember that there is more to the new testament than just the Gospels. If you were to look through the entirety of the new testament you would see several people, in good standing, who didn't in fact give away all their possessions. Thus they can quite successfully harmonize these two facts so that only certain people were required to give away all their possessions, by certain people of course they mean, not themselves.

 

My argument still stands they need the creation account to tie their God to man's creation, and they need original sin to condemn all man to death.

Expect that original sin is a later Christian belief that was invented by the Catholic church and is not found anywhere in the scriptures. Even when I was a fundamentalist, although I believed Genesis was a literal scientific fact, I didn't believe in original sin because I believed that humans were created in God's image and since God was perfect, since humans were made in his image, we were created without sin and didn't start to sin until we became old enough to make choices for ourselves. What evidence is there that Christians believed in original sin before St. Augustine started preaching it? Did the Jews believe in original sin? Interestingly, there's a third creation account in Isaiah chapter 40 and it does say in verse one what the purpose of it is:

Comfort, O comfort my people,

says your God.

 

Again we are not talking about early Christianity, nor are we talking about Judaism. We are talking about modern day Christianity and this doctrine is definitely an important one to fundamentalists. That said the foundations of it definitely seem to be in the bible anyway.

 

Romans 5:12Therefore, just as through (X)one man sin entered into the world, and (Y)death through sin, and (Z)so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

 

13for until the Law sin was in the world, but (AA)sin is not imputed when there is no law.

 

14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned (AB)in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a [a](AC)type of Him who was to come.

 

15But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of (AD)the one (AE)the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by (AF)the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.

 

16The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand (AG)the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.

 

17For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned (AH)through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will (AI)reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

 

18So then as through (AJ)one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one (AK)act of righteousness there resulted (AL)justification of life to all men.

 

19For as through the one man's disobedience (AM)the many (AN)were made sinners, even so through (AO)the obedience of the One (AP)the many will be made righteous.

 

20(AQ)The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, (AR)grace abounded all the more,

 

21so that, as (AS)sin reigned in death, even so (AT)grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

Looking at these verses I wouldn't be hard pressed to think that we are all condemned regardless of whether we sinned or not, and that they reason why this is is probably because of Adam eating the tree of knowledge.

 

Yet when they say the bible was written to be inerrant and literal, does this include the Catholic bible? The Catholic church were the ones who "finalized" the bible canon, so why do they accept that the Holy Spirit guided the church fathers to be right about the Protestant bible canon but they weren't being guided by the Holy Spirit when it came to the Catholic canon if it was so obvious which books were intended to be written literally and inerrant?

 

My best guess would be because the Catholics are dirty idol worshipers but other than that, from memory aren't the books in the protestant canon based upon the earlier church councils.

 

I think of it like this. When a Christian comes up to you, to preach the gospel, he is saying that he knows the secret of where the universe comes from, he knows the meaning of life, exactly how you should live and everyone else should live. Furthermore he knows that you are going to go to hell unless you believe in Jesus Christ. How does he know this because the Bible tells him so. If the bible isn't the complete inerrant word of God he can't know that any of this is true, he can't know the means of salvation, he can't even really know that his God exists. Christians need the Bible to be authoritative in order for their believes to have any authority. Otherwise they'd have to admit they are just a bunch of clueless berks blindly feeling around for meaning in a complicated world just like the rest of us. And quite frankly a Christianity like that probably wouldn't be Christianity.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Expect that original sin is a later Christian belief that was invented by the Catholic church and is not found anywhere in the scriptures.

 

I was going to post the passage from Romans 5, but I see that dagnarus beat me to it. Anyway, just because the term "original sin" isn't in there doesn't mean that the concept isn't. After reading Romans 5, doesn't it seem likely that it was the source of the church's "original sin" doctrine?

[mwc]

I was going to post the passage from Romans 5, but I see that dagnarus beat me to it. Anyway, just because the term "original sin" isn't in there doesn't mean that the concept isn't. After reading Romans 5, doesn't it seem likely that it was the source of the church's "original sin" doctrine?

Probably not. Where the hell's Yoyo? NOW is the time for him to be blathering on about his pet A&E story (and the Assumption of Moses and whatnot).

 

mwc

[Neon Genesis]

 

 

Again we are not talking about early Christianity, nor are we talking about Judaism. We are talking about modern day Christianity and this doctrine is definitely an important one to fundamentalists. That said the foundations of it definitely seem to be in the bible anyway.

 

 

 

Expect those verses are only talking about death and don't mention anything about sin being caused by Adam. Besides, I thought it was Eve who took the first bite, so if Paul is reading this literally, why does he change this to being Adam's fault? Also, what about Ezekiel 18:19-20?

Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. 20The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own.

Here this verse is saying that people should only pay the price for their own sins and not for anyone else's which was the view I held as a Christian, that Jesus died for our sins, not just the sins of Adam and Eve.

[dagnarus]

 

 

Again we are not talking about early Christianity, nor are we talking about Judaism. We are talking about modern day Christianity and this doctrine is definitely an important one to fundamentalists. That said the foundations of it definitely seem to be in the bible anyway.

 

 

 

Expect those verses are only talking about death and don't mention anything about sin being caused by Adam.

 

It definitely implies that we are all sinners because of Adam's disobedience.

 

Romans 5:12Therefore, just as through (X)one man sin entered into the world, and (Y)death through sin, and (Z)so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

 

19For as through the one man's disobedience (AM)the many (AN)were made sinners, even so through (AO)the obedience of the One (AP)the many will be made righteous.

 

Besides, I thought it was Eve who took the first bite, so if Paul is reading this literally, why does he change this to being Adam's fault?

 

Firstly because this is a zealot 2000 years ago, woman aren't important. Secondly Because he's using Adam as a type of Christ, Adam is the first Adam through whom sin and death came into the world, Christ is the second Adam in through whom life and righteousness came in. Eve does not work in this type, she's his type for the church.

 

Also, what about Ezekiel 18:19-20?

Yet you say, ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?’ When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. 20The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own.

Here this verse is saying that people should only pay the price for their own sins and not for anyone else's which was the view I held as a Christian, that Jesus died for our sins, not just the sins of Adam and Eve.

 

Here's Exodus 34:6-7

 

Exodus 34:6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

 

The bible contradicts itself, but we already knew that. True it only says unto the third and fourth generation, but hey. Irregardless Paul says that sin came in through Adam and we're screwed because of his transgression, Ezekiel, says we shouldn't be punished for the sins of others, whereas many other parts of the old testament say that we should. Well obviously we didn't understand Ezekiel correctly and Paul is right. There problem solved, there is no contradiction.

[Guest I Love Dog]

I'm curious about others' thoughts on this. After Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit and get the knowledge of good and evil, we are told this:

 

Genesis 3:7

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

 

Now, at this point Adam and Eve were supposedly the only people in existence, and they were basically husband and wife, so why would they have any shame about being naked? Are we supposed to believe that they were really concerned about the animals seeing them? What can we make of this part of the myth?

 

I suspect that the first humans were very hairy, so would not have needed the fig leaves, anyway!

 

Australian aborigines in the outback, even up to 40-50 years ago were naked. They had no shame and it was the white people who forced them to wear coverings over their genitals.

 

It's all part of the false modesty thing that we are now mostly cursed with. Religions have a lot to answer for.

[Onyx]

Ah, nudity is as nudity does... it've never killed anyone (unless in places like Siberia!) and why should it start to now?

Sure it presents situations that defies your aesethetics, but it would also provide opportunities for hypocrisy if you said only people who are _____ should be nude or not nude. It kills joy in the world.

 

Christianity have turned it into a mountain when it's just a slope and nothing more.

Perhaps if the weather doesn't require warm/protective clothing, it should be okay to bare all regardless of how you look, it should provide new perspectives. I don't believe in false modesty and why should I start again?

 

Perhaps, if Christians allowed nudity, they'd have no reason to oppose pornography or sex or free spiritedness. Pornography in this context is superfluous because nudism de-eroticizes the nude body therefore killing two birds with one stone. But there'd alway be eroticism and so it should alway remain. Eroticism (and noneroticism) is a fantastic part of humanity and it is a part of what it means to be human. Sexuality, asexuality and romanticism also really affirms the human experience and spirit. Killing these parts would destroy all that joy and aliveness then replace us with automatons who only repeat their masters' thoughts. (ugghhhhh!)

 

Not all of us are the same and thank Kosmos for that!

[Neon Genesis]

 

 

It definitely implies that we are all sinners because of Adam's disobedience.

 

 

 

Yet even St. Augustine, who was the one who came up with the doctrine of original sin, didn't believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis or that original sin was depenent on the literal reading. St. Augustine thought reading Genesis literally was absurd because he didn't see how you could explain how God could create the light before creating the sun. St. Augustine believed that if scripture and science came into conflict with each other, then Christians must side with science.

[★ Citsonga ★]

 

 

It definitely implies that we are all sinners because of Adam's disobedience.

 

 

 

Yet even St. Augustine, who was the one who came up with the doctrine of original sin, didn't believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis or that original sin was depenent on the literal reading. St. Augustine thought reading Genesis literally was absurd because he didn't see how you could explain how God could create the light before creating the sun. St. Augustine believed that if scripture and science came into conflict with each other, then Christians must side with science.

 

That's cool. And, to be fair, the idea of "original sin," though implicit in the Romans passage, is not mentioned or even remotely alluded to in Genesis.

[Ouroboros]

I heard an interview with a rabbi once, he argued that the "first sin" was not A&E eating the fruit, but the story about Cain slaying Abel. Eating the fruit only enabled humans to sin, but it wasn't a sin in itself. Sin is only recognized if a person knows the difference between right and wrong, and since A&E didn't know it before eating the fruit, they were not sinning. To him, I think, the term "sin" was about intentional doing wrong, and about not doing wrong out of ignorance. This would also lead to that God wouldn't save someone, or take them to Heaven, just because they believed, but only based on what they did with their lives. Christianity doesn't fit this theology, since Christianity is based on what you believe, not what you do.

[★ Citsonga ★]

I heard an interview with a rabbi once, he argued that the "first sin" was not A&E eating the fruit, but the story about Cain slaying Abel. Eating the fruit only enabled humans to sin, but it wasn't a sin in itself. Sin is only recognized if a person knows the difference between right and wrong, and since A&E didn't know it before eating the fruit, they were not sinning. To him, I think, the term "sin" was about intentional doing wrong, and about not doing wrong out of ignorance.

 

That would certainly make more sense. I've made the point before myself (I don't recall if in this thread) that it's rather absurd to think that Adam and Eve could be considered to have done something "evil" when they couldn't have the "knowledge" to discern between "good and evil" until after doing the deed.

 

And, of course, what the hell is so damn evil about eating fruit anyway? lol....

[dagnarus]

 

It definitely implies that we are all sinners because of Adam's disobedience.

 

Yet even St. Augustine, who was the one who came up with the doctrine of original sin, didn't believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis or that original sin was depenent on the literal reading. St. Augustine thought reading Genesis literally was absurd because he didn't see how you could explain how God could create the light before creating the sun. St. Augustine believed that if scripture and science came into conflict with each other, then Christians must side with science.

 

First off, I heard that St. Augustine wrote a treatise on lying and went into the situations when it is okay to lie. Would this be one of them? That is would he have been willing to tell the rank and file that this wasn't literal?

 

Second, who cares what St. Augustine believed. Most of the early church fathers believed in Christian deification, this includes Athanasius, the guy behind the Nicene creed (not certain about Augustine). If you were to ask your average fundamentalist about this today they would say this is obvious heresy, most likely residue from old Greek influences. They don't care there God is the bible not the old saints.

 

Thirdly, this is complete conjecture on my part. Isn't fundamentalism a reasonably recent phenomenon. It could very well be that people were more willing to consider it as being simply a figurative story before evolution and the big bang and what have you. Now that science has realized how life came about, and have a fairly good Idea about how the universe came about, all without the need for reference to their God, they need to circle their wagons around the bible in order to hold out against the threat of athiesm.

[dagnarus]

I heard an interview with a rabbi once, he argued that the "first sin" was not A&E eating the fruit, but the story about Cain slaying Abel. Eating the fruit only enabled humans to sin, but it wasn't a sin in itself. Sin is only recognized if a person knows the difference between right and wrong, and since A&E didn't know it before eating the fruit, they were not sinning. To him, I think, the term "sin" was about intentional doing wrong, and about not doing wrong out of ignorance. This would also lead to that God wouldn't save someone, or take them to Heaven, just because they believed, but only based on what they did with their lives. Christianity doesn't fit this theology, since Christianity is based on what you believe, not what you do.

 

I can't quote verses of the top of my head I remember that even in the old testament if you sinned by accident or unintentionally you still had to make an offering for your sin.