Metaphor or Literalness?

[Aibao]

Thank you for all the answers. I am still on my way of being lost, but I feel better mentally thanks to your support.

However, as you know, I am still tired of various questions ...

 

I decided to watch the video that appeared on Youtube today. And...

Could the fact that Jesus was in the tomb for 3 days and 3 nights (and the calculations show that he was not) be considered a metaphor or a rhetorical figure? Some biblical scholar or apologist claims that this is so, that these are not literal 3 days and 3 nights, as if we were saying today give me a minute or I'll be there in a second. In support of this, he cites a passage from the Book of Esther, where she told the Jews to fast for 3 days and 3 nights, but on the third day the fast ended, as did Jesus' stay in the tomb ..... is that really a good explanation?

 

link to the movie (attention! it takes almost half an hour) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-O8b9mITs&ab_channel=MikeLicona

[LogicalFallacy]

To me this is like discussing whether Anakin Skywalker fell to the darkside out of fear or due to a lust for power.

 

An interesting starwars fan question, but has no bearing on our reality. Unless you can prove that Anakin Skywalker was real and there is a thing called the force with a light and dark side the question is meaningless to your actual life.

 

Unlike Starwars however, we have people running around today proclaiming their 2000 year old fable is truely true.

[Joshpantera]

3 hours ago, Aibao said:

Thank you for all the answers. I am still on my way of being lost, but I feel better mentally thanks to your support.

However, as you know, I am still tired of various questions ...

 

I decided to watch the video that appeared on Youtube today. And...

Could the fact that Jesus was in the tomb for 3 days and 3 nights (and the calculations show that he was not) be considered a metaphor or a rhetorical figure? Some biblical scholar or apologist claims that this is so, that these are not literal 3 days and 3 nights, as if we were saying today give me a minute or I'll be there in a second. In support of this, he cites a passage from the Book of Esther, where she told the Jews to fast for 3 days and 3 nights, but on the third day the fast ended, as did Jesus' stay in the tomb ..... is that really a good explanation?

 

link to the movie (attention! it takes almost half an hour) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-O8b9mITs&ab_channel=MikeLicona

 

In mythology there is what is called solar allegory. Mike Licona is very much against this answer and has been fighting with people like me (actually me personally when I was on staff for author DM Murdock) for decades about it. This is basically another poor attempt at trying to apologize away with mythological aspect of the christ fable. The sun appears to stand still in the sky according to observation for three days at the winter solstice. Christmas morning is the time when the sun moves again, visibly to the eye, one degree back to the north again which begins the next cycle towards the summer solstice. 

 

The celebration would begin with what is now christmas, the day after the winter solstice, and then 3 months later after the spring equinox when the days finally become longer than the nights. That's the connection between Christmas and Easter. 

 

The old myths of 3 days in both pagan mythology and in jewish myth, like Jonah in the belly of the fish, all boil down to this simple natural observation of the sun's cycle through the year. The Jesus myths came in behind older myths (including Jonah) which were outlining the same thing. And it was mundane, not special to the jesus myth. Even if the jesus myth ever was about a real person (which is questionable at best), the part of about dying for 3 days and resurrecting is obvious mythology. 

 

Unless you're in the business of christian apologetics like Mike Licona and cannot admit to being completely wrong. 

 

There's no contemporary record of jesus living nor being crucified, let alone being put in a literal tomb or the tomb being found empty. None of that is attested by anyone who was alive at the time recording history. It only exists in myths which come to us from well after the fact projecting their tales backwards in time. That's the important take away here. 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

i see believers spend years focused on minutiae of Greek verbs trying to get at exact meanings, and then others come along and say "Sure it says that, but it's really not literal." I heard one guy on the local Christian radio trying to say that a particular Greek phrase (He cuts off every branch that does not bear fruit) had been mistranslated by EVERY scholar and really meant that "he lifts up every branch that doesn't bear fruit". 

 

The same happens for evangelizing, where you just have to begin to reach towards god and it is done. But say you are now an ex-believer, and somehow belief becomes this complex thing that you didn't do exactly right, so were never really a believer. 

 

It is a constant shell game of myths, mysteries, and translation shifting. It is akin to debating what was written in a Spiderman comic. Believers already believe and then try to justify the belief rather than revisiting it to see if the belief makes any sense. They are taught to NOT trust their minds, even though they use arguments to try and reason with people. It is a chaotic bunch of myths and tribal taboos, only loosely held together by a hodgepodge of beliefs about the myths. 

[Joshpantera]

 

[walterpthefirst]

Hello Aibao. 

 

I have to agree with Fuego and LogicalFallacy.  You are focusing too tightly on the tiniest details of the Christian faith.  If you are serious about exiting Christianity, then doing this won't be of any help to you.  Nor will it be of any help to us, if really want us to assist you in doing that.  However, I have a practical suggestion for you.

 

Why don't you apply your question (METAPHORICAL or LITERAL?) to where the Christian faith began... the Garden of Eden?

 

Do you believe that it is LITERALLY true that god created Adam from the soil?  That Eve came from Adam's rib?  That Satan manifested himself in the form of a talking snake?  That the fate of the human race (and the animal kingdom) rested on how Adam and Eve interacted with two magical trees?  That death did not exist anywhere in the universe until they sinned?  

 

You see Aibao, if you believe that Jesus LITERALLY died on the cross to deliver us from the wages of sin, then you have to believe that everything I've written about the mud man, the rib woman, the talking snake and the magic trees is also LITERALLY true.  It also means that billions of people will LITERALLY burn forever in a LITERAL lake of fire, while everyone else will LITERALLY be like the angels in heaven and will LITERALLY be neither male nor female.  

 

But, if you believe that what scripture says about Eden is not literal, but some kind of METAPHOR, then ours sins are only METAPHORICAL and not literal.  So, why did Jesus have to die to set us free from a METAPHORICAL bondage to sin?  And if these things are METAPHORICAL, then how are we meant to understand their true meaning?  People have disagreed about the correct interpretation of Biblical metaphors for thousands of years and they are still doing so.

 

Finally, if you believe that the Eden story is a mixture of the LITERAL and the METAPHORICAL, then surely you have to ask yourself why god would make understanding his Word so difficult for us?  If nothing is impossible for him then it should be easy for him to make his will clearly known to us through his Word.  And if he pitched the Eden story for the eyes and minds of ancient people who could easily accept tales about magical trees, why would he then force billions of people in the modern world to try and see his message through such an antiquated lens?  He must have foreknown that it would be difficult for us to do that?

 

Aibao, I seriously recommend that you look at the early chapters of Genesis and ask yourself if you think they are to be understood LITERALLY or METAPHORICALLY?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

[Aibao]

Thank you very much for your valuable replies. Oh yeah, I didn't think of it that way. Either way, there is a great misunderstanding among Christians as to what is literal and what is metaphor, as I have noticed. And it may make no sense to even try to unravel and divide these things into pieces

[Aibao]

 Josh, forgive my English, but I didn't quite understand Bart's statement: he said that the myth of Lilith arose before genesis or after Christianity? Either I have misunderstood the words or I have misunderstood all by hearing.

 

[walterpthefirst]

4 hours ago, Aibao said:

Thank you very much for your valuable replies. Oh yeah, I didn't think of it that way. Either way, there is a great misunderstanding among Christians as to what is literal and what is metaphor, as I have noticed. And it may make no sense to even try to unravel and divide these things into pieces

 

Ok Aibao,

 

But what I wrote about the literal and the metaphorical was for you to answer.

 

The misunderstandings among Christians about the literal and the metaphorical is not the focus of this thread.

 

You are.

 

The question I put to you is, how do you understand the story of Eden, in the early chapters of Genesis?

 

Do you understand it literally, metaphorically or in some combination of both?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

7 hours ago, Aibao said:

forgive my English, but I didn't quite understand Bart's statement

Professor Ehrman is saying that the legend of Lilith was a rabbinical one started by Jewish teachers after AD 33 rather than a more ancient legend, and it didn't influence whoever wrote Genesis. He is also saying that the Christian art where the serpent is represented as a woman doesn't have anything to do with Lilith, but with how men of old blamed Eve for the fall, so woman/evil is a common concept even in Christianity where they are forbidden to teach men because of the sin in the Garden of Eden. 

 

[Joshpantera]

18 hours ago, Aibao said:

Josh, forgive my English, but I didn't quite understand Bart's statement: he said that the myth of Lilith arose before genesis or after Christianity? Either I have misunderstood the words or I have misunderstood all by hearing.

 

Erhman is saying that the myth of Lilith arose after Christianity.

 

The best that scholars know about the serpent in Genesis is that it's just part of the larger 'trickster snake figure' which appears in many mythologies the world over. The idea that it was satan or even Lilith, was a much later development. 

 

Here's another closer look at that issue that you should at least be aware of: 

 

 

 

On 2/28/2022 at 12:17 PM, walterpthefirst said:

But, if you believe that what scripture says about Eden is not literal, but some kind of METAPHOR, then ours sins are only METAPHORICAL and not literal.  So, why did Jesus have to die to set us free from a METAPHORICAL bondage to sin?  And if these things are METAPHORICAL, then how are we meant to understand their true meaning?  People have disagreed about the correct interpretation of Biblical metaphors for thousands of years and they are still doing so.

 

Metaphor under cuts just about all meaning from the general idea of christianity as it's understood today. They depend on taking it literally, even if they claim that they don't. A lot of liberal christians will tell you that they don't take it literally. But if they really didn't, they wouldn't be christian at all. They must take literally the existence of the god of the bible. They must take literally that jesus exists. They must take literally in some way the idea of sin and salvation. This is how you press them against the ropes to find the truth behind what they are claiming. They don't even understand what they're saying. 

 

The issue is that they aren't thinking any of this out very far at all. 

 

On 2/28/2022 at 12:17 PM, walterpthefirst said:

Finally, if you believe that the Eden story is a mixture of the LITERAL and the METAPHORICAL, then surely you have to ask yourself why god would make understanding his Word so difficult for us?  If nothing is impossible for him then it should be easy for him to make his will clearly known to us through his Word.  And if he pitched the Eden story for the eyes and minds of ancient people who could easily accept tales about magical trees, why would he then force billions of people in the modern world to try and see his message through such an antiquated lens?  He must have foreknown that it would be difficult for us to do that?

 

Seems pretty clear. Either this never was the word of god or anything of the sort (as Ehrman was suggesting) or there is a god who has intentionally put forward something so confusing as to be interpreted some 40,000 different ways. There's some 40,000 different christian sects. 

 

Let's say it's on purpose just for sake of conversation. God sent a confusing message that he knew would be impossible to hammer down into one single, clear understanding for all. What value do any of these 40,000 different sects have if that were the case? We can't assume that the value has significance where truth is concerned. And yet each of the 40,000 claim to have "The Truth!" 

 

The issue, again, is that when it comes to the bible none of these christians are thinking it out very well, not paying attention to self-contradictions, not paying attention to logical fallacies, and not paying very close attention to much of anything. And this is what all christian writers and apologists are up against. No matter how well-meaning they may seem. They're stuck in a rut of self-contradiction and logical fallacy and the only way out of it is to let go of these impossible beliefs and positions. 

 

 

 

 

[Aibao]

Walter

Quote

On 2/28/2022 at 6:17 PM, walterpthefirst said:

Hello Aibao. 

 

I have to agree with Fuego and LogicalFallacy.  You are focusing too tightly on the tiniest details of the Christian faith.  If you are serious about exiting Christianity, then doing this won't be of any help to you.  Nor will it be of any help to us, if really want us to assist you in doing that.  However, I have a practical suggestion for you.

 

Why don't you apply your question (METAPHORICAL or LITERAL?) to where the Christian faith began... the Garden of Eden?

 

Do you believe that it is LITERALLY true that god created Adam from the soil?  That Eve came from Adam's rib?  That Satan manifested himself in the form of a talking snake?  That the fate of the human race (and the animal kingdom) rested on how Adam and Eve interacted with two magical trees?  That death did not exist anywhere in the universe until they sinned?  

 

You see Aibao, if you believe that Jesus LITERALLY died on the cross to deliver us from the wages of sin, then you have to believe that everything I've written about the mud man, the rib woman, the talking snake and the magic trees is also LITERALLY true.  It also means that billions of people will LITERALLY burn forever in a LITERAL lake of fire, while everyone else will LITERALLY be like the angels in heaven and will LITERALLY be neither male nor female.  

 

But, if you believe that what scripture says about Eden is not literal, but some kind of METAPHOR, then ours sins are only METAPHORICAL and not literal.  So, why did Jesus have to die to set us free from a METAPHORICAL bondage to sin?  And if these things are METAPHORICAL, then how are we meant to understand their true meaning?  People have disagreed about the correct interpretation of Biblical metaphors for thousands of years and they are still doing so.

 

Finally, if you believe that the Eden story is a mixture of the LITERAL and the METAPHORICAL, then surely you have to ask yourself why god would make understanding his Word so difficult for us?  If nothing is impossible for him then it should be easy for him to make his will clearly known to us through his Word.  And if he pitched the Eden story for the eyes and minds of ancient people who could easily accept tales about magical trees, why would he then force billions of people in the modern world to try and see his message through such an antiquated lens?  He must have foreknown that it would be difficult for us to do that?

 

Aibao, I seriously recommend that you look at the early chapters of Genesis and ask yourself if you think they are to be understood LITERALLY or METAPHORICALLY?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

I am not referring my question to the place of Eden, because just as someone mentioned to me before - there are Christians who believe in evolution and there are Christians who do not believe in it. You ask if I believe it - my answer is I don't know how it was, but I hope evolution is real, if I've seen Christians refute evolution issues, maybe I'll put a question here someday. As for whether death existed before people sinned, I don't think it existed (I once watched a video where some believer universalist said that death was on earth, it was normal, and in Genesis when eating the fruit from the tree it was about spiritual death, not physical, she was already in paradise).

Exactly, if I were to define myself, it seems to me that the Bible is a mixture of literal and metaphorical. Why would God make it difficult for others to understand his word? Maybe so that those people who are not chosen would not understand and go to condemnation (Jesus says it somewhere, I don't remember where).

Anyway, I even found the website

https://answersingenesis.org/

and they refute the arguments of evolution there, which scared me a lot, so I don't know where I am, the more that I don't understand evolution myself and I can be deceived and manipulated. because  I have no knowledge...

[Aibao]

Josh, Fuego - thank you for explaining the movie with Bart Ehrman about Lilith

[Joshpantera]

6 hours ago, Aibao said:

Exactly, if I were to define myself, it seems to me that the Bible is a mixture of literal and metaphorical. Why would God make it difficult for others to understand his word? Maybe so that those people who are not chosen would not understand and go to condemnation (Jesus says it somewhere, I don't remember where).

Anyway, I even found the website

https://answersingenesis.org/

and they refute the arguments of evolution there, which scared me a lot, so I don't know where I am, the more that I don't understand evolution myself and I can be deceived and manipulated. because  I have no knowledge...

 

All we can do is try to help. 

 

I know it's hard to just take me at my word, but I promise you with all my heart that answers in Genesis is guaranteed to be wrong. It's a horribly biased source. 

 

Let's just focus on the content of their specific arguments that you think might seem compelling. 

 

Here's an example of the fact that creations will always, always, misrepresent evolution in order to try and refute it. It never works out. It's not possible to win anything that way: 

 

 

[Joshpantera]

 

 

This outlines how dense it is to try and promote Genesis are literal and / or scientifically correct. It's terrible. And completely untenable. It's just not even an option that Genesis is anything other than old creation myth which isn't to be taken as science in any way. 

[walterpthefirst]

8 hours ago, Aibao said:

Walter

I am not referring my question to the place of Eden, because just as someone mentioned to me before - there are Christians who believe in evolution and there are Christians who do not believe in it. You ask if I believe it - my answer is I don't know how it was, but I hope evolution is real, if I've seen Christians refute evolution issues, maybe I'll put a question here someday.

 

 

Yes, please do that Aibao.  When you are ready.  The RedNeckProfessor, as well as being one of the Moderators of this forum is also a scientist who knows a great deal about genetics and evolution.  I'm sure that he will be able to help you.

 

When it comes to those Christians who believe in evolution, they generally accept the science behind it and the billion-year timescales over which it took place.  This is, of course, totally different to the Young Earth Creationist Christians at answersingenesis, who believe in a literal 6-day creation and a universe and Earth that is no more than 10,000 years old. 

 

When it comes to what the evolutionist Christians believe, please look at this thread.  It's almost impossible to reconcile evolution and Christianity if you start asking difficult questions about what happened before humans evolved.

 

https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/85825-ten-questions-for-theistic-evolutionist-christians/

 

8 hours ago, Aibao said:

 

 

As for whether death existed before people sinned, I don't think it existed (I once watched a video where some believer universalist said that death was on earth, it was normal, and in Genesis when eating the fruit from the tree it was about spiritual death, not physical, she was already in paradise).

 

Yes, there is a difference between spiritual and physical death in the scriptures, Aibao.  According to the Bible Adam died spiritually on the day that he disobeyed god and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But his body did not physically die until he was 930 years old.  It says so in Genesis 5 : 5

 

But the point I was making was related to what the apostle Paul says in Romans 5.  Here Paul is talking about Jesus dying physically on the cross and then in verse 12 he writes...  12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

 

But this is not just spiritual death that Paul is talking about, it is physical death too.  That's because Jesus did not just die a spiritual death, he died a physical one too. So, Paul is saying that where there is spiritual death, there is also physical death.

 

And this was my question to you.

 

Do you believe that physical death came into the world through the actions of one man (Adam) just as Paul describes or do you believe that physical death existed for billions of years earlier, when bacteria, amoeba, ancient fish and dinosaurs lived and died, just as the fossil record tells us?

 

One option is a literal interpretation of scripture and the other option is a metaphorical one.

 

 

8 hours ago, Aibao said:

Exactly, if I were to define myself, it seems to me that the Bible is a mixture of literal and metaphorical. Why would God make it difficult for others to understand his word? Maybe so that those people who are not chosen would not understand and go to condemnation (Jesus says it somewhere, I don't remember where).

 

Does that sound like the actions of a loving and compassionate god to you?  Where, instead of making it easy for people to be saved, he makes it more difficult?  If you could explain to me how making it difficult is a loving and compassionate thing for god to do Aibao, I'd be interested to hear it.

 

8 hours ago, Aibao said:

Anyway, I even found the website

https://answersingenesis.org/

and they refute the arguments of evolution there, which scared me a lot, so I don't know where I am, the more that I don't understand evolution myself and I can be deceived and manipulated. because  I have no knowledge...

 

Uh... no.  They don't.  You needn't worry Aibao.

 

If you are scared by what the YEC's at answeringenesis are saying, then just ask the RedNeckProf about it and he will put you straight.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

[pantheory]

On 2/27/2022 at 3:00 PM, Aibao said:

Thank you for all the answers. I am still on my way of being lost, but I feel better mentally thanks to your support.

However, as you know, I am still tired of various questions ...

 

I decided to watch the video that appeared on Youtube today. And...

Could the fact that Jesus was in the tomb for 3 days and 3 nights (and the calculations show that he was not) be considered a metaphor or a rhetorical figure? Some biblical scholar or apologist claims that this is so, that these are not literal 3 days and 3 nights, as if we were saying today give me a minute or I'll be there in a second. In support of this, he cites a passage from the Book of Esther, where she told the Jews to fast for 3 days and 3 nights, but on the third day the fast ended, as did Jesus' stay in the tomb ..... is that really a good explanation?

 

link to the movie (attention! it takes almost half an hour) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-O8b9mITs&ab_channel=MikeLicona

 

Albao,

 

Many of us here question whether there really was a historical Jesus. Many think the Bible Jesus was just a fictional amalgam of fabled stories of persons living in those times and before, with possibly some bases in history. Many of us also believe that even if there was a historical Jesus of some kind, the resurrection story in particular was fabricated. If so, three days and three nights would not be a literal or a metaphor; it would simply be fiction.

 

The acclamation of Christianity: The Roman Emperor Constantine's mother became a Christian. Maybe Constantine thought that such a Roman-decreed state religion and written canonized Christian Bible would make his mother happy and help to unite and better control the masses by making them more passive and obedient to him via a passive religion and religious hierarchy. He was proclaimed a Christian Bishop (religious leader) of Rome and Constantinople. Besides being the Roman Emperor, this religious title had some Christian leadership similarities to the Pope today.

 

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/constantine-and-helena-judea-under-christian-rule

 

 

[Joshpantera]

 

[Aibao]

Josh, thank you for this video. The video you sent I divided myself into 3 days of watching. I finished today. I was surprised to find that Hebrew Bible writers used previously written sources, such as Enuma Elish or the Epic of Gilgamesh (although I already knew about Gilgamesh). This got me interested, so I typed "enuma elish and bible" into the Youtube search engine to see comparisons and similarities. As always, I have to come across some apologetic explanatory video. So I watched this one:

Here you can see the differences between Enuma Elish and the Bible in more detail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtuHH_18Lb4&ab_channel=EvidenceUnseen

 

Anyone have an idea how to solve it? Maybe someone knows some good articles about Enuma Elish?

Finally I found a statement by someone scholar:

 

He explains that the first myth about Enuma Elish was created, and only then the Bible or the Book of Genesis (I think it's about the myth of the creation of the world and people). But does something arise earlier and must first immediately assume plagiarism? All in all, if these stories were put together, one would rather find more differences than similarities, even in the names of the gods themselves ... for example, in Enuma Elish, gods command man to work, as if they use man for work so that they can rest, and in the Bible it is different: man is condemned to hard work not because of God but because of sins - the Bible in relation to the myth of Enuma Elish seems to actually know about this myth and know it, but rather than copying it says: no, no, wrong! it's not like that! it was really different - and presents its version. Do you understand what I mean? - It seems to me that this is not so much plagiarism as a response to the myth of Enuma Elish and a critique of this myth by presenting its own "truth"/own "history"....

[walterpthefirst]

 Do you understand what I mean? - It seems to me that this is not so much plagiarism as a response to the myth of Enuma Elish and a critique of this myth by presenting its own "truth"/own "history"....

 

 

Uh, no Aibao.

 

It means that the bible isn't the perfect and absolute truth that it claims to be.

 

It means that it's just one of many truths from ancient history.

 

It means that all of these ancient truths have one common denominator.

 

They were all written by men and none of them were written by god.

 

None of them were even inspired by god.

 

You are looking for something that isn't there, Aibao.

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

21 hours ago, walterpthefirst said:

 Do you understand what I mean? - It seems to me that this is not so much plagiarism as a response to the myth of Enuma Elish and a critique of this myth by presenting its own "truth"/own "history"....

 

 

Uh, no Aibao.

 

It means that the bible isn't the perfect and absolute truth that it claims to be.

 

It means that it's just one of many truths from ancient history.

 

It means that all of these ancient truths have one common denominator.

 

They were all written by men and none of them were written by god.

 

None of them were even inspired by god.

 

You are looking for something that isn't there, Aibao.

 

 

 

Thinking about it a bit further Aibao...

 

 

It is your emotional involvement with Christianity that is causing you to look for something that isn't there.  This same emotional involvement is why you are attempting to justify the bible over other ancient writings.  And this emotional involvement is why you keep on diving into the minutiae of this book, that text, this papyrus, that translation, this commentary, this, that, etc., etc.

 

You are not yet emotionally ready to give up on Christ and Christianity and so you are trying to chase down every possible reason to keep on believing.

 

I know, because once did as you are doing.  Just as other Ex-Christians have also done.  We recognize your behaviour because we behaved the same way too.  I hope that you can see what I mean here, see it within yourself, see where you are at and see what you are doing.

 

This isn't knowledge found in an ancient book.  This is self-knowledge.  The realization and understanding of what you are doing and why you are doing it.

 

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.