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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: All scripture is given by inspiration of God.
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
If you look at Mt 12:40-42 you'll see that Jesus refers to Jonah and the Queen of Sheba in the same breath. The argument goes that since the Queen of Sheba is a historical figure and is referred to just as Jonah is by Jesus (in the book of Jonah, not just in 2 Kings), Jonah must be too.
Hmmm, okay. That is a better argument. The stuff I've heard isn't usually that well-thought-out (for example, I've heard creationists say that Mark 10:6 confirms their view of Genesis as vindicated by Jesus).
I still think it's a bit of a stretch. So, staying in Matthew 12; there's the story of Jesus' disciples picking grain and eating it on the Sabbath. In Mark's version of this story, Jesus says "In the days of Abiathar the high priest.."; only turn to the story in 1 Samuel 21, and it's clearly Ahimelech (Abiathar's son) that was High Priest.
ISTM the simplest answer to that contradiction is that Jesus just got it wrong. He remembered the wrong High Priest.* And you know what, it doesn't matter. It doesn't nullify his point. I don't have a problem with Jesus believing that Jonah was a historical character, but being wrong about it. He (or Mark, recalling Jesus' words) might have just been mistaken, as he was about Abiathar.
But I don't even think that the argument above holds enough weight, anyhow. If I say, "He was a beast - like Goliath or the Incredible Hulk", the fact that one is (maybe) historical, and the other fictional is irrelevant to the point I'm making, which is about the physical size of someone.
Likewise, in Matthew 12, Jesus point is about signs, and whether the Jews really need another sign, when they've had loads and the Gentiles have had but a few. It's not about historicity, it's about signs.
* Of course, for the inerrantist, this is a huge problem, so they have to go through lots of awkward justifications to show that Samuel, Mark & Jesus were all consistent, even though one of them must have got it wrong somewhere.
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Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Jonah is proving to be an interesting test case.
On the one hand, there are an abundance of elements pointing to a fictional tale. In addition to the parody aspects you pointed out, there's the fact that the book's dating is some 150 years after the reign of Jeroboam II when the historical Jonah is said to have lived.
(A crucial point is that in 3:3 Niniveh is referred to in the past tense, which apart from any linguistic aspects dates it after the eventual fall of the city, which is known to the day).
On the other hand, while it apparently stretches even Jamat's credulity to think Jonah penned the "psalm" of chapter 2 in stylish poetry in the belly of the fish, I find myself agreeing with him that it loses something of its force if it doesn't draw on the writer's actual, personal emotional experience - although of course that experience needn't be in the belly of a fish.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
Maybe the author had a particular painful romantic break up, and drew on those experiences to give 'Jonah' a voice? ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
"Jonah as revenge porn" would certainly make for an eye-catching Bible college dissertation title...
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
It's Hosea that's actually revenge porn, IMHO.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Goperryrevs : "In Hebrews 11:35, the author refers to the story in 2 Maccabees 7. Therefore Maccabees is Scriptural and historical
I read that as referring to 1 Kings 17:22 where Elijah restored the woman’s son to her.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
* Of course, for the inerrantist, this is a huge problem, so they have to go through lots of awkward justifications to show that Samuel, Mark & Jesus were all consistent, even though one of them must have got it wrong somewhere.
Or perhaps even a copyist of either Mark or Samuel (more likely Mark), the copy having survived but the original lost. Or Mark's amanuensis having misheard.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
I am not in any way seeking to dismiss the significance of textual and historical detail (I am a Classicist by training) but I have often found myself thinking that the inspiration lies in the telling of a story rather than in the verifiable details of a story.
Do we perhaps confuse truth with fact?
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
“I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
A perfect quote from a brilliant book.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
But yeah, MT is well read on this stuff, and he’s worth listening to, Jamat.
I respect that but it seems to be one of those areas where agenda determines opinion. As a former Catholic I am well aware of theirs.
There's a tidy little ad hominem.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Really, Jamat, your argument boils down to, if it agrees with Rome, it can be summarily dismissed. Which is no argument at all, just an admission of irrational bias.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Well, yes, exactly! It does say the Tanah references 3500 years of history. And then goes on to say what the Tanah is!
So you admit you read it wrong. Good.
quote:
I doubt either of us is in a position to definitively tell what the Jewish canon was in apostolic times.
I know which one of us has done a hell of a lot more study into it. Nobody can definitively tell. So that's a meaningless benchmark. So one goes with the preponderance of evidence. About which I know a great deal, and some others on this thread, near enough to fuck-all as makes no difference.
quote:
It seems to me that as one digs there is strong evidence that they endorsed the same books the KJV does though obviously respecting the other writings as part of their history.
Seems to me one should actually do some digging before making pronouncements about it.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
Do we perhaps confuse truth with fact?
With regularity, I think.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Goperryrevs : "In Hebrews 11:35, the author refers to the story in 2 Maccabees 7. Therefore Maccabees is Scriptural and historical
I read that as referring to 1 Kings 17:22 where Elijah restored the woman’s son to her.
Pretty much every commentary I’ve looked at says it’s a reference to both the Kings and the Maccabees passages.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Really, Jamat, your argument boils down to, if it agrees with Rome, it can be summarily dismissed. Which is no argument at all, just an admission of irrational bias.
I don't know about Jamat, but I don't think the original Reformers/Protestants "summarily dismissed" the deutero-canonical books just because of Rome.
The Reformation kicked off not just because of RC abuses like the purgatory/indulgences thing, but also because of considerable gains in learning resulting from Western Europe's exposure to the East - both to the Orthodox church and to Islamic learning. This led to what we call the 'Renaissance' including for example the availability of a more reliable Greek NT which called into question some of the Latin 'Vulgate' translations.
It was realised both that Jewish scholarship did not necessarily recognise the deutero-canonicals, and that many of the RC abuses were supported only by texts from those works. With also awareness that the circumstances of the LXX translation might have resulted in not-strictly-scriptural intrusions, this led Protestants to reject them and accept what they understood to be the Jewish canon.
One wonders - did those texts truly support the questionable RC positions or had they been misinterpreted? That might enable a reconsideration....
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The Reformation kicked off not just because of RC abuses like the purgatory/indulgences thing, but also because of considerable gains in learning resulting from Western Europe's exposure to the East - both to the Orthodox church and to Islamic learning.
Wait, what, so the benefits of new (for the time) critical insights from advances in scholarship and cultural development are OK (in their day) when it comes to kicking out the Deuterocanonicals, but not when it comes to modern critical approaches to the Bible?
[ 17. February 2018, 11:16: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Well, the way I would see it is that for the RCC or Eastern Orthodox to justify their inclusions.
We use the Bible the Church has used from its infancy. You do not. The OT canon was not fixed in the 1st century CE. The LXX contained certain books -- which the Anglicans call "apocrypha" and the Catholics call "deuterocanonical" and we call "books of the Bible." You are factually incorrect that the LXX did not contain Maccabees. It most assuredly did, and Tobit, and Sirach, and the rest.
You seem to be referring to the Masoretic Text, or MT, which was selected by a bunch of rabbis in I believe Jamnia after the fall of Jerusalem. As such it was created after the Church and the Synagogue went their separate ways, and there is no reason at all to think it is binding upon the Church.
Jerome the Smartass wanted to pare down the canon from the LXX canon (as it appeared in Rome) to the MT canon, but was slapped down by the Church. Do you have evidence that it was because of Purgatory? Please produce it. His reasoning was that only books written in Hebrew should be in the OT, and only (as he supposed) the books of the MT were written in Hebrew. (As it turns out, copies of two of the other books were found in Qumran in Hebrew originals -- how that fucks up the "Hebrew originals only" argument!) The church countered that the LXX was always its OT and it saw no reason to change it now, TYVM.
No, the Orthodoxen and the Catholics are using the Church's bible from of old (modulo a couple of books, no doubt because of different extant copies of the LXX east and west of the Adratic, a discrepancy left as-is, no doubt, because it doesn't really matter).
We did not add any books. Let me repeat that. We did not add any books. We used the books handed down to us from second Temple Judaism.
The Church's Bible remained that way until the Reformation. It is the job of those who deface a document to explain why they have defaced it.
Excellent.
I hearby unconditionally repent of all bias against the Septuagint and to any Reformation or other Western defacing.
Being a Jewish chippie, what TaNaKh did Jesus use? In synagogues it would have been Hebrew surely? I fully accept that the apostles majorly, 95% approx. of the 190? NT OT quotes, used the LXX in the NT.
Bel and the dragon here we come.
[ 17. February 2018, 15:08: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
When discussing the Deuterocanonicals, can I reiterate a plea I made in 2012? quote:
I hope that a new, possibly simpler [thread] may be in order (one major headache in the old one is "MT" being used interchangeably for "Mousethief", "Mama Thomas" and "Masoretic Text" by the protagonists...)
Thank you.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
It's really quite simple. Use "mt" for me and "MT" for the Masoretic Text.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
Thanks Mousethief for your longer text and in particular the comment that it does not really matter. In the long run, that's what counts.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
We came across an interesting verse in the context of this thread in our church's epoch-long Bible study on Romans this week. Romans 15:4 says (NASB): quote:
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope
Paul is pretty obviously referring to the OT with "whatever was written", although it's not explicit as some translations suggest.
More intriguingly, and contra what I've been arguing, it suggests the Scriptures in and of themselves provide encouragement and hope, indeed the word translated by "encouragement" is parakleseos which surely brings to mind the related word used of the Holy Spirit.
However, before I had to recant from my "the Bible is a dead letter absent the work of the Spirit" position, somebody pointed out that the passage concludes in verse 13 with the blessing quote:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In Paul's mind at least, it seems that any encouragement and hope we derive from the Scriptures is indeed ministered to us by the "Holy Paraclete".
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
About 6 months after my conversion, I had a discussion with a local high church CofE vicar about the inspiration of scriptures. He just asked me what I thought. I said "well, I don't know about anyone else, but they inspire me! And confuse me. Seems to depend on where I look"
He chuckled. "Yes", he said. "But that's not at all what I expected you to say."
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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