Good grief?
God tells us that He wrote the Bible. Now we have George Bush, like so many atheists, declaring that the Bible isn't "literally true".
Do you happen to know which parts of Scripture George Bush knows to be untrue? Because we weren't treated to that bit of information in the article.
Talk about "good grief".
Isaiah 38:8 was used to prove that the Bible “literally” said the sun revolved around the earth. We believe that the shadow of the sun went back 10 steps, but can now understand that the truth is that the earth revolves on its axis and also revolves around the sun.
In the same way, we understand that the four corners of the earth in Revelations 7 is not literal and that it was possible in Genesis to have an evening and a morning before there was a moon or sun.
He used a typewriter. :-)
You embarrass yourself.
"...It doesn't take very long to realize that a thorough understanding of the Bible -- and this would actually apply to any complex work from any culture -- requires specialized knowledge, and a broad range of specialized knowledge in a variety of fields. Obviously the vast majority of believers spend their entire lives doing little more than reading the Bible in English (or whatever native tongue) and importing into its words whatever ideas they derive from their own experiences. This process is very often one of "decontextualizing" -- what I have here called "reading it like it was written yesterday and for you personally." ... ["trailer park scholarship" ].
Let's anticipate and toss off the obvious objection: "Why did God make the Bible so hard to understand, then?" It isn't -- none of this keeps a person from grasping the message of the Bible to the extent required to be saved; where the line is to be drawn is upon those who gratuitously assume that such base knowledge allows them to be competent critics of the text, and make that assumption in absolute ignorance of their own lack of knowledge -- what I have elsewhere spoken of in terms of being "unskilled and unaware of it."
And is my observation to this effect justified? Well, ask yourself this question after considering what various fields of knowledge a complete and thorough (not to say sufficient for intelligent discourse, though few even reach that pinnacle, especially in the critical realm) study of the Bible requires:
[snip]
That's quite a list, but there's one more note to add -- the holistic ability to put all of it together. How serious is this? Very. A carefully crafted argument about a text being an interpolation can be undermined by a single point from Greco-Roman rhetoric. A claim having to do with psychology can be destroyed by a simple observation from the social sciences. Not even most scholars in the field can master every aspect -- what then of the non-specialist critic who puts together a website in his spare time titled 1001 Irrefutable Bible Contradictions? Do these persons deserves our attention? Should they be recognized as authorities? No, they deserve calculated contempt for their efforts. (By this, I do not mean emotional or behavioral contempt, but a calculated disregard for their work from an academic perspective.) They have not even come close to deserving our attention, and should feed only itching ears with similar tastes. ... engaging what I will call from here on "trailer park scholarship" ..."
In Bible class, we were taught that the CONCEPTS of the Bible have withstood all of the translations of the Bible. Any time something is translated, something is changed - but not what the meaning.
God inspired human writers to write the Bible. Muslims believe that the Koran is revealed, not inspired, truth.