Posted on 03/02/2013 10:15:26 PM PST by TBP
Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, who is writing an upcoming book titled “Killing Jesus,” proclaimed on his program Wednesday night that “a lot of the Bible is allegorical,” and the New Testament Gospels contradict themselves.
O’Reilly made the remarks during an interview with “Touched by an Angel” star Roma Downey and her husband Mark Burnett, executive producers of “The Bible” TV miniseries which begins this Sunday night on the History Channel.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
“Contradictions in the Bible is truth or God’s mysteries hidden in plain sight.”
The mysteries have been reveled, they are no longer mysteries:
Col. 1:25-27 “of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Eph. 3:8&9 “ To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ;”
“Also the bible is not to be understood by man’s intellect or human reasoning because human reasoning and man’s intellect is flawed compared to God’s ways or thoughts”
God disagrees with you...God says his word is Truth.
John 17:17 “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.”
Not only that, God’s word was not written by “MERE MEN” It was written by men “inspired” of God. The Holy Spirit guided these men In ALL TRUTH and they wrote it down.
John 14:25-26 “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”
John 63:12-152 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.3 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.”
“The bible is to be understood through the eyes of the holy spirit...”
The Spirit guided the writers of the Bible and they wrote it so that you and I could understand it, that’s why the scriptures can be trusted, they weren’t written by “MERE MEN” but by God Himself.
I Cor.2:10-12 “ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”
“and what does the bible, or Jesus say sometimes ? he who has eyes to see, let him see, or he who has hears to hear ? let him hear what the spirit of God is saying.”
Correct. The Spirit speaks to us through God’s word. He does not speak of “Himelf”, He can only speak of Christ. The Spirit speaks to us by teaching us God’s gospel of His Son. It is that gospel that saves us. The gospel of Christ.
Romans 1:16&17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
You and I are drawn to God through His Son Jesus by being taught the gospel of Jesus Christ.
John 6:44&45 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.
You and I “hear” and “learn” by God’s word.
Hebrews 1:1 teaches us that God speaks to us ONE WAY and ONE WAY ONLY and that’s through HIS SON...!
Hebrews 1:1&2 “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;”
>> Posting histories just don’t go away. <<
I’m sure I’ll regret asking this, but please link the comment(s) you were referring to.
By the way, cothrige, I want to thank you for the cordial discourse we are having. It’s so nice to discuss these things without a lot of drama.
I should rather say thank you, as I am the one whose post is open to accusations of controversy, though that is not my intention. And, I definitely agree, it is always nice to be able to discuss something without all the personality and heat.
I was just thinking about what you were saying, and in your defense, if there were no chapter 1 of Genesis, if all we had was chapter 2, looking at some English translations, it could appear that man was created before the animals. This is because some translations render the passage in simple past tense, “God formed” rather than as a plu-perfect, “God had formed”.
I can certainly understand your point, and others, about the tenses and how that can affect the meaning, however, I personally think this way of understanding the text still requires a somewhat unnatural reading. It just makes little sense for the author to keep inserting odd comments meant to apply at a different time, and yet keep all the words consistent for a more linear reading.
Let me draw attention to what I think may be a good example of what I mean. God's statement that "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." is followed immediately by the story of the actual creation of the animals and birds which is ended by the very meaningful statement: "but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him." These two phrases regarding a "helper fit for him" bookend the animal section leaving little room to avoid the natural conclusion that these animals were created in response to the need for a helper and were found wanting in that regard. It is only then that the woman is created. I won't deny what you suggest regarding previous creation and only then bringing them to him, but I just think that requires a strange way of viewing the text as it makes things bounce from one form of narrative to another, back and forth. It can work, but it just seems to require quite a lot of creative reading in order to maintain perfect consistency, and I am not convinced that such was ever the intent of the Spirit or the authors.
BTW, I hope I am not coming across as dogmatic on this. I have no reason to think my opinion is superior to anyone else's, but rather it just happens to be the one I feel most comfortable personally taking. I don't pretend to have any expertise on the subject.
thus an *apparent* contradiction that doesn’t invalidate the whole system, is a clue to you that it is not really a contradiction. so a single real falsification would introduce chaos and confusion in the whole.
Well, sadly, I am not very up on logical systems. Just ask my wife. ;-) However, you may think I am really saying more than I mean to imply. When I speak of "apparent contradictions" the issue that I am thinking about is the nature of revelation and inerrancy. As I see it inerrancy does not require that every record of every event necessarily agree in all the details. Such consistency is only necessary if it deals directly with the subject of revelation. Therefore, these contradictions can only really be called that if the reader insists that the Spirit is actively seeking to reveal the order of the creation events. However, I don't think we can say this is necessarily so. It may be, I won't deny that, but it may not be. If not, then the contradiction is not a contradiction at all because the information is ancillary to revelation and is not revelation itself. The order may convey something in one telling, and something else in another and therefore can be fitted to the narrative in order to make the revelation itself more meaningful and clear.
That is why these "apparent" contradictions don't affect the scripture in any negative way to my mind. The contradiction is only about things which were not really being revealed by God as such, but rather were being used by the authors as a means to help elucidate the reader in some way regarding what was really being revealed. I don't know what was actually created first, as far as the scriptures are concerned, birds or man, and I honestly don't believe that God is concerned with which we favour. Rather, the creation narrative was intended to reveal something much more profound and important to us. It hardly matters to our salvation whether we are older or younger than birds, but it does matter that we are children of God with a purpose within creation. This, I believe, is what this narrative is about. Though I won't pretend my opinion in this has any more weight than that of anybody else. It just happens to be the one I have found most reasonable.
Yes it was serious. For God to have a Son. It would require a female of the God species. It’s called biology not magic.
Because there is no such thing as magic.
Christ has never held you back. Get to it then.
Well, that much we agree on.
Simply put, YOU are narrowing YOUR mind so that God can fit into YOUR understanding. “It would require...” You base your assumptions about God based on what you know. In this view, God must fit your (my, anyone’s) finite understanding. If that is all God is, then HE is no God.
Or is He someone Who asks us to “lean not on our own understanding” when it comes to who He is? Is God someone who “surpasses knowldedge”? Does He in fact stoop down awfully low just to reveal the little bits of him our own finite, limited, narrow minds can grasp? The scriptures say as much. And then, when we get OUR minds around the fact that HE is God and WE are not, then OUR understanding, OUR knowledge becomes less important and finding out who God is becomes the goal.
There’s really no magic to it at all.
Jer. 29:13
We are in agreement.
Chapter and verse, please, for where Mark says he was silent the entire time of the crucifixion. In fact, Mark has him crying out specific words with a loud voice during his crucifixion:
33 When the [o]sixth hour came, darkness [p]fell over the whole land until the [q]ninth hour. 34 At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 35 When some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, “Behold, He is calling for Elijah.” 36 Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink, saying, “[r]Let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down.” 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last. 38 And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 When the centurion, who was standing [s]right in front of Him, saw [t]the way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was [u]the Son of God!”
Cordially,
re: “BTW, I hope I am not coming across as dogmatic on this. I have no reason to think my opinion is superior to anyone else’s, but rather it just happens to be the one I feel most comfortable personally taking.”
We are all on our journey to the truth and I think we need to be open to where the truth leads us. I have been a student of the Bible for over 40 years, yet I am still learning about language, context, history - it all relates. While the Bible is just as relevant now as it was when the different books included in it were written, we have to remember that it was written over a period of 2000 years and, of course, language, cultural practices, political events as well as theology all have an impact how the properly interpret the meaning of the Scriptures.
There are certain things that are dogmatic, yet there are other things open to differences of opinion.
For example, I am not a “young earther” - that is, I do not believe the earth is only 10,000 years old. The first chapter of Genesis, I believe, allows for the universe and the earth to have been around for billions of years (created by God) because the text simply says, “When God created the heavens and the earth it was without form and void”. In other words, the universe and the earth could have been in existence for quite a while before God began to do something with the earth itself.
Anyway, Cothrige, take care and I hope to see more posts from you. God bless you.
Yes, that is well known. We do not have anything close to an original copy of any of the books of the Bible.
And what kind of 'alterations' are you talking about? Any that are actually substantive in nature, or are the scribal errors that do exist essentially the equivalent of our modern typos?
We don't know, although in some cases we can piece together a reasonably good idea of what the original probably said and thus get an idea of the alterations. However, the likelihood is that it's both. Throughout the copies we have, for centuries while they were being copied by hand, we see numerous examples of both kinds of alterations. (Translation sometimes alters the meaning, too.) Thus, it is reasonably safe to assume that we see both kinds in the period between the original writings and the earliest copies we have.
So tell me,. then, how it is that in one place, they go directly to Egypt, but in another they go home to Galilee.
There is no contradictions in the crucifixion
One Gospel records a silent Jesus. Mark, I believe, has the despairing Jesus saying "Why hast thou forsaken me?" Yet, he is recorded elsewhere not as despairing, but as blessing everyone and telling the thief hanging next to him "Today thous shalt be with me in Paradise."
You cannot harmonize those accounts, or you get a story that is incompatible with the story any of the Gospel writers told.
Every scholar does not know it.
The Vast majority do, those with no agenda. This is taught in all the leading seminaries. Simple textual analysis shows it very clearly.
Because people like him look at the Bible with an agenda
False. Professor Ehrman started out as a fundamentalist, evangelical, Bible literalist. Then his examination of the Bible and his studies at places like Moody Bible Institute led him away from that view. He is today one of the foremost authorities on the New Testament.
That is just a silly statement. What one's faith is or isn't has nothing to do with scholarship.
Not at all -- but take it for what it is: a book of inspirations, some of them contradictory, written by human beings to tell a story and promote certain ideas.
They didn't always agree on what views were to be promoted, and if you're going to "tell the story of the Bible", you sometimes have to pick and choose which version you will tell.
The one thing you shouldn't do is take it all literally, because then the contradictory reports and interpretations will knot you up like a pretzel.
Use it as a source of wisdom and inspiration, and use what reaches you, because God shows up for each of us in the way we are individually most likely to recognize and understand. Much of that is shaped by culture, upbringing, and theology.
Who told you that? Most Bible experts believe it's eitehr written by an unidentified writer, known as P, or by a combination of unidentified writers.
Who told you that? Most Bible experts believe it's either written by an unidentified writer, known as P, or by a combination of unidentified writers.
No, actually, you didn't. You twisted them around to contort them into some shape that you think makes them fit, but these contradictions (but a few of many) are qutie contradictory. Your post does not "clear them up" at all. Nor do they "go away."
You do not except the Bible as the Word of God
No, nor do a LOT of everyday Christians. You see it as 100 percent completely accurate, factual, and noncontradictory. In that, I believe you are in a distinct minority.
Much of it is indeed allegorical, with valuable insights and lessons, but not to be taken literally. And the different books have been altered over the years, and were written for different audiences in the first place.
To take it literally is to misunderstnad what it is.
No, actually, you didn't. You twisted them around to contort them into some shape that you think makes them fit, but these contradictions (but a few of many) are qutie contradictory. Your post does not "clear them up" at all. Nor do they "go away."
You do not except the Bible as the Word of God
No, nor do a LOT of everyday Christians. You see it as 100 percent completely accurate, factual, and noncontradictory. In that, I believe you are in a distinct minority.
Much of it is indeed allegorical, with valuable insights and lessons, but not to be taken literally. And the different books have been altered over the years, and were written for different audiences in the first place.
To take it literally is to misunderstand what it is.
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