On what basis should the bible be taken literally?
Certainly in cases when it specifically states so. For example Luke (1:1-4):
"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fullfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellant Theohilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."
This sounds like to me someone that is expecting his readers to view what he is writing as actual historical events. He’s not starting it with “Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away”. He goes on to describe specific people, in specific places, at specific times. Many of these people and places have been independantly confirmed through archaeology and the testimony of others.
Just a spontaneous example of my “rewriting†the Bible:
Paul is said to be moved by the overwhelming witness of religious practice he saw. Great works of art and the investment of much wealth had been made to erect the statues of the many Hellenistic gods. He apparently saw people going to and fro, bringing some kind of sacrifice according to their needs. Epimenides is said in a pestilence to have advised the sacrifice of a sheep to a befitting god whoever he might be, but if a sacrifice was dedicated to the wrong deity, the Athenians feared the anger of the other gods, so Epimenides suggested they also had “altars to gods unknown†(bÅmoi theÅn agnÅstÅn).
Paul makes the connection with this practice, showing his knowledge of Greek culture, and uses it to tell the Athenians about a God previously unknown to them. He does so in a curious way and tells them first of all that the statue can hardly be God, nor does a God who made the cosmos live in buildings made by human beings. He isn’t even served in the manner that the Athenians believed to be obligated to serve, since what needs can human beings fulfil for a God?
Paul says that God can be sought, even “groped†for, because he really is not far from us and, quoting Epimenides, he says that “… in Him we live and move and are …†In the original poem, Minos addresses Zeus and says,
They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.
In the same way Aratus of Cilia is quoted by Paul out of his “Phaenomenaâ€:
Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.
For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.
Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity.
Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.
For we are indeed his offspring…
It is strange for an Apostle of Christ to quote attributes associated with Zeus with regard to the Jewish God. He obviously isn’t disturbed by the chance that people could think that Zeus and God are one, nor does Luke who is supposedly quoting Paul. Paul also curiously affirms the unity of the human race with a common origin and with God as the Creator. He contradicts Greek exclusiveness which treated other races as barbarians, but he also contradicts Jewish pride which treated other nations as heathen or pagan. Paul’s cosmopolitanism rises above the labels “Jew†or “Greek†and proclaims the one God, whether he is called “Zeus†or “YHWHâ€, as the Creator of the one race of human beings.
We can see that Paul is further than we are. He has overcome barriers that we have yet to overcome – but, as we know, he also made himself some enemies in doing so. It shouldn’t surprise us then, that the same spirit can bring about animosity in the present day. We find the same spirit in his dealing with meat from temples, which had been sacrificed to the various gods. His position was that there is only one God, so the sacrifice was null and void and the meat unharmed but, out of love for his brother, if this one had difficulties with such practice, he would not keep it up but rather abstain.
In this episode we can see what made Paul special and destined to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. His spirit was “stirred†or “provoked†by the fact that the city was altogether given to idol worship, the old enemy of the God of Israel. Paul the Jew of Tarsus was in the city of Pericles and Demosthenes, Socrates and Plato as well as Aristotle, Sophocles and Euripides. In its Agora Socrates had taught, here was the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Porch of Zeno, the Garden of Epicurus and yet the city was given to idol worship, a religiosity built on fear and ignorance. It is more out of being aggravated than intention that Paul embarks on an attempt to call the people to reason.
A point of contention is said to be the resurrection of the dead, but there were some who wanted to know more, and there were some who were apparently ready to join him and leave their idols, namely Dionysius and Damaris. It begs the question whether we are ready to leave those objects of adoration for which we work behind, and whether we are prepared for a call to freedom. Paul’s freedom was apparently able to transcend race and culture and rise above pride and prejudice. That is where his faith brought him, even though he had not been able to go down the path he had thought was his, and perhaps it is an example of humility that he can accept the challenge presented him.
The first Christian. All the world still believes in the authorship of the “Holy Spirit” or is at least still affected by this belief: when one opens the Bible one does so for “edification.”… That it also tells the story of one of the most ambitious and obtrusive of souls, of a head as superstitious as it was crafty, the story of the apostle Paul–who knows this , except a few scholars? Without this strange story, however, without the confusions and storms of such a head, such a soul, there would be no Christianity…
That the ship of Christianity threw overboard a good deal of its Jewish ballast, that it went, and was able to go, among the pagans–that was due to this one man, a very tortured, very pitiful, very unpleasant man, unpleasant even to himself. He suffered from a fixed idea–or more precisely, from a fixed, ever-present, never-resting question: what about the Jewish law? and particularly the fulfillment of this law? In his youth he had himself wanted to satisfy it, with a ravenous hunger for this highest distinction which the Jews could conceive - this people who were propelled higher than any other people by the imagination of the ethically sublime, and who alone succeeded in creating a holy god together with the idea of sin as a transgression against this holiness. Paul became the fanatical defender of this god and his law and guardian of his honor; at the same time, in the struggle against the transgressors and doubters, lying in wait for them, he became increasingly harsh and evilly disposed towards them, and inclined towards the most extreme punishments. And now he found that–hot-headed, sensual, melancholy, malignant in his hatred as he was-- he was himself unable to fulfill the law; indeed, and this seemed strangest to him, his extravagant lust to domineer provoked him continually to transgress the law, and he had to yield to this thorn.
Is it really his “carnal nature” that makes him transgress again and again? And not rather, as he himself suspected later, behind it the law itself, which must constantly prove itself unfulfillable and which lures him to transgression with irresistable charm? But at that time he did not yet have this way out. He had much on his conscience - he hints at hostility, murder, magic, idolatry, lewdness, drunkenness, and pleasure in dissolute carousing - and… moments came when he said to himself:“It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.”… The law was the cross to which he felt himself nailed: how he hated it! how he searched for some means to annihilate it–not to fulfill it any more himself!
And finally the saving thought struck him,… “It is unreasonable to persecute this Jesus! Here after all is the way out; here is the perfect revenge; here and nowhere else I have and hold the annihilator of the law!”… Until then the ignominious death had seemed to him the chief argument against the Messianic claim of which the new doctrine spoke: but what if it were necessary to get rid of the law?
The tremendous consequences of this idea, of this solution of the riddle, spin before his eyes; at one stroke he becomes the happiest man; the destiny of the Jews–no, of all men–seems to him to be tied to this idea, to this second of its sudden illumination; he has the thought of thoughts, the key of keys, the light of lights; it is around him that all history must revolve henceforth. For he is from now on the teacher of the annihilation of the law…
This is the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity. Until then there were only a few Jewish sectarians.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak, s.68, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Yes, the idea of literalism was strong in that day and people were called to show colour, but whether Paul was one of the most ambitious and obtrusive of souls, and as superstitious as he was crafty, I cannot tell. Obviously there was more than catches the eye, but I can’t evaluate Paul’s peculiarity.
I think that the assessment is correct to a certain degree since Paul was obviously driven by something that he noticed in himself which put him at odds with the Law. The “wretched man†is autobiographic, probably not expected in young years but something that became apparent as he grew older. The fanaticism is generally found in younger years and people mellow as years go on, reconciling with the past and with those with whom one was at odds with. Whether it was homosexuality, like Bishop Spong thinks, or just the confrontation with loving people of simple faith, something forced him to rethink his theology.
I get a very different picture from his letters, that his thinking was too sophisticated for his Jewish brothers and too educated in Greek philosophy to be comfortable. At the same time he seems to have been steeped in Jewish Mystery and taken some time (in Arabia) to sort these thoughts out, bringing Christ into perspective, seeing him as the first of a new creation (the Son of Man) living under an new covenant under which the Law of Love is dominant.
Although I think that Nietzsche is not fully wrong, I think that the polarity he spoke of between the way of this world and the way of the spirit is more an observation than something that he himself had on his conscience. “Fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like†are quite normal in society – even today. I think that this is the point he was making. On the other hand, he observed that spiritual people enjoyed the opposite kind of fruits, such as “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-controlâ€, against which, he says “there is no law.†This was the sign to him that his Gospel was a fulfilment of the Law, against the opinion of his critics.
With all due respect to Nietzsche, unless he presented some historical evidence to back up this scenario, it represents nothing more than an unsubstantiated opinion. It’s nothing more than “Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, the Apostle Paul etc, etc, etc.”, fill in whatever speculation you wish to make up.
First of all, you aren’t gonna find any evidence of a “resurrection”. Ever. If you think you have evidence, it is pseudo-science, heresy, or planted by some religious conspirator.
Concerning the question I dodged…I would suggest that spend more time trying to answer, with a straight face, my question to you about said events described in the bible. You cannot, so don’t bother.
What I presented was not an argument, but an analysis and profiling of this “Paul”.
Observe the bold. Paul is raised in the Jewish atmosphere, and wants to aspire to its highest respectability, wants to be the perfect example. To do so, he begins to see himself as an authority, as someone who is qualified to punish, to reprimand, and to scold those who transgress.
Now his conscience bites him. He finds himself to be a hypocrite. He himself cannot uphold the honor he charged others with not upholding. He is turning sour.
Now he becomes frustrated, tortured, exhausted. He turns on everything in his anger. He begins to hate himself for this.
He identifies himself with Christ…whom he uses as an excuse to justify his own struggle and frustration with the Jewish law.
Paul then invents an entirely new religion, using Jesus as a template. All of this originating with his own failure to succeed and comply with the Jewish religion.
That is all. Nietzsche’s psychoanalysis here is very easy to understand. Why? Because Paul was human, and terribly simple. Once you unlearn everything you think you know about Christianity, all the spellbinding mysteries and chimera, you see at its base a very simple man with very simple emotions…and you see the beginning of Christianity. THE ONLY alternative to this psychoanalysis is to suggest some kind of supernatural intervention, some kind of miraculous event(s)…and to suggest that, nay, to DEFEND THAT, is one hundred times more complicated then the simple analysis Nietzsche provides.
Paul was just a man. Nothing more. And to plot the development of Christianity as a simple invention of this one man is so utterly easy I’d rather spend time debunking the flying spaghetti monster.
Is someone here claiming that Paul wasn’t “just a man”? Of course he was. So was Nietzsche. In this case, Nietzsche is mistaken. Paul did not see Christ as the annihilator of the law. He saw him as the purveyor of another law. Let me try an analogy. The peregrine falcon does not annihilate the law of gravity to fly from Alaska to Argentina. She applies another law, the law of flight, if you will. Christ did not annihilate the Law of God, he applied another law, the law of the spirit of life. That was what Paul discovered.
First things first, we’ll get to this, you still have not answered my question.
The validity of Nietzsche’s claim cannot be discussed unless it is known what the source of information about Paul he used as a basis to make his analysis. Obviously, since Nietzsche never personally interviewed Paul, he is basing his profile on some kind of historical evidence. It’s not that hard a question, what specific historical evidence is he using? How did he learn enough about Paul to make this analysis?
Based on this “analysis and profile” of Paul, you just made all kinds of historical claims. So it’s more than just a profile of Paul, it’s a historical theory about the origins of Christianity. I’m just asking for what the specific historical evidence used to back it up.
I think you’re reading into the text. It’s not clear that Paul had any appreciation for anything the Athenians were doing. He simply realizes that the best way to reach this audience with the gospel is to use parts of their own culture. Evangelists have been doing the same thing ever since. But that doesn’t mean they think these cultural practices have any inherent spiritual value. In fact Paul says…
1 Corinthians 10:19-21
19Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.
Does that fit well with your idea of Paul?
Again, I think you’re reading into the text what you want to see. I think Paul and Luke would have been extremely disturbed by the notion that Zeus and God are one and the same. Indeed Luke explicitly states so…
Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
I think you’re letting your imagination get the better of you when you read the bible.
Right Bob. When you read the Bible, make sure you park your mind at the door and accept only the standard, shallow fundamentalist/evangelical interpretations. Only they will save you. [-o<
The case might be that you’re all wrong… there is no way to be certain… but that’s what you get for being a theist… it’s not exactly science to be tested or proven, now is it?
The “sniping” was intended to be humorous. I was bristling at the suggestions that Paul was speaking disingenuously when he appropriated aspects of Greek religion in his speech and the counsel against imaginative reading of the Bible.
True we all might be wrong. But are you saying that history and textual criticism are beyond science? If so, it would seem that you have a low estimate of the scientific method.
OK, but you are associating Corinthians, written by Paul, with Acts, written by Luke. At the same time, you are taking statements which were at different times. I was pointing to the report that Luke gives us of the experience at Athens, which Luke tells us arose as a result of Paul being “stirred†or “provoked†at what he saw. What do you mean by Paul not having any “appreciationâ€? Do you mean that he couldn’t grasp, or discern what was going on? Or do you read me that I said that he approved of what he saw? In the case of the latter, it would be you reading into what I have written.
In the quote from 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an image is anything, or that an image is anything? But what the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.†This supports what I said. The Daimonion, translated “demons†in your translation, offer for example Socrates “extra-rational†information that does not compete against reason, but has a divine origin and are described as a “kind of voice†or a “signâ€; a nondiscursive acoustic sign or signal that occurs adventitiously and that is believed to come from an unidentified daimôn or theos. I am quite convinced that the demonic connection in the contemporary sense is construed and the ambivalent use of the word is the reason why Paul was the opinion that the Daimonion, as a supposed “sign†of the numinous, was nothing to get worried about. However, they are not God and they were to be avoided.
I also observe that in Arabic countries, the name of God is Allah, also for Jews and Christians speaking Arabic, or Alaha when speaking Aramaic. My point about Zeus or YHWH is that the concern we have today was not Paul’s concern – because it amounts to superstition. If the name given is equated with the reality behind that metaphoric name, then that amounts to idolatry as well.
Please note your use of the word “explicit†which something fully and clearly expressed or demonstrated, but your quote does not demonstrate what you meant. In fact, Luke quotes Peter speaking of “the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth†in whom Salvation is found, not “Godâ€. I also didn’t say that Zeus and God are one and the same, but that Luke and perhaps Paul are not worried about the use of the word “God†in referring to quotes about Zeus. At least there was absolutely no attempt to differentiate.
Strange to see what you deem to be “imaginationâ€, whereas you are not concerned about what you imagine I have written. This slipshod dealing with language is also something that continually colours the preaching of evangelists and is a means of emotionalising a text. I read Paul as someone who plays such assumptions down, calming his readers and calling to reason.
1 Cr 10:20 But I [say], that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
1Cr 10:21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.
1Cr 10:22 Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?
That looks like a pretty strongly negative reaction, and not ambivalence, to me. Either way, he’s clearly saying that what the Gentiles were sacrificing to, and the Lord, are mutually exclusive, so it makes it pretty clear that Paul’s comparisons of the Lord to Zeus were for instructive/conversion purposes only, and not to give any great honor to the Hellenistic pantheon.
Sorry about being ambivalent myself - the ambivalence I meant was the ambivalence in Greek society when using the word Daimonion, and in the text in question (not 1 Cor.) Acts 17 in the use of the word theos when referring to Zeus or the Jewish/Christian God.
It isn’t about “giving honour” or on the other hand condemning but rather that Paul doesn’t go to such extremes but remains calm and collected, despite him being known for his outbursts in letters (mind you - only in letters). I think that the superstition we have about Daimonion and other devils, demons and whatnots is the sign of confused worried minds, whereas the message of Christ is, “fear not”!
Where does it say that Paul placed any value in Greek religion?
Imagination is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t help us understand what Paul intended to say. By it’s very nature, imagination is a personalized rendering of something. Although that might be nice for the person in question, it has almost no value when communicating with others.
Man 1: Hey buddy what do you think of President Bush?
Man 2: Well, I imagine him to be a swell guy who would play a mean deck of cards.
Man 1: Yeah but what do you think of his policies?
Man 2: Well, I imagine them to be full of intelligence and wisdom.
Man 1: Yeah, but what about his mistakes, like the invasion of Iraq?
Man 2: Well, I imagine he actually was against it and those pesky generals are to blame.
Man 1: Are you on the same planet as me?
Man 2: Well, I imagine…
](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7c349bf1053f368a5729d053e1e91215f22ce66c.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
[-o<