Its certainly not in doubt that people used to believe the things their religions told them - and, ofc, some still do. Even things which you don't believe today and think are silly.

These religions are silly, news at ten. My favorite is the "who but a god could make and tame a dragon" line in magic book. That argument pretty much only works on people who believe in dragons, huh?

(March 25, 2021 at 5:38 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Its certainly not in doubt that people used to believe the things their religions told them - and, ofc, some still do.  Even things which you don't believe today and think are silly.

These religions are silly, news at ten.  My favorite is the "who but a god could make and tame a dragon" line in magic book.  That argument pretty much only works on people who believe in dragons, huh?

I would say that it is a guarantee that most believers believed what the tanakh told them (***), starting from Genesis and onwards. Because if you are going to claim that that is a metaphor, people are going to ask, "Well who made all this stuff and why are we on this terrible planet?".
At which point of the tanakh does it switch to fairy tale mode to reality mode?

***I'm talking long ago, before modern science came along, which I would say started up somewhere in 1700. It was in the 1800 that it became clear to many scientists that the Earth is ancient, in the tens of millions of years old. Some estimated to 100 million y.


"who but a god could make and tame a dragon"

==Where does it say that?

--Ferrocyanide

Depends on the timeframe. Judaism is a bit further along in it's development than, say, christianity. They hit on the realization that the narratives are metaphor sooner. They've been trying to explain that to christians for quite some time, but you know how those guys are when it comes to insisting that jewish people got jewish myths all wrong.

To answer your question, multiple instances. Psalms has a concentration of them. In fact, you could just search the terms leviathan and behemoth to find any of them - and that's precisely because the dragon was almost exclusively used in the context of asserting their gods existence, power, dominion, and primacy. They stand out as prime examples of thematically canaanite elements in jewish mythology. Harkening back (and intentionally so) to the types of beliefs and myths that they had only recently diverged from as fresh henotheists asserting a disparate origin and establishment for their sub-culture.

The thing that I, personally, find super interesting about it, is the line between metaphor and truth in many of our discussions. We use metaphors precisely because we think that the truth of the one can buttress the other as truth. Even more specifically, how the truth on one or the other side of the line may be more important - and the ways that we've damaged that line-side truth by servicing and maintaining the superstitious line-side to it's detriment. Can we safely posit that these dragons are the primordial forces of chaos, land and sea, and do double duty as the enemies of their people (also conceived of as agents of chaos, for what it's worth) - and can we guess that the expressions are myth braking narrative. I think so, yes, and the reason that they felt compelled to tell -those- truths with a story about a dragon boiled down to beliefs they held or their audience held about dragons. Common, not at all seen to be ludicrous or ignorant beliefs, at the time. So, for them, as with any other metaphor today, the truth of one set seemed to express the truth of the other.

It wasn't either/or it was and. Dragons are awesome and powerful - and my god can make them, and my god can compel them to do it's bidding, and my god can destroy them. You think that your god can do all of this, but you're wrong - it was my god that did all of that.

(March 25, 2021 at 8:07 am)Ferrocyanide Wrote: I would say that it is a guarantee that most believers believed what the tanakh told them (***), starting from Genesis and onwards. 

Unless, like St. Augustine and every other theologian you can name, they read Genesis as allegory, symbol, etc.

How do you guarantee what you say? Do you have an argument or historical references? Or is it something you just know? I'd be interested to see evidence.

Quote:At which point of the tanakh does it switch to fairy tale mode to reality mode?

To determine this you have to use your brain. 

The old time people whom you consider to be naive were in fact often more sophisticated about reading texts than modern people. Today people assume that every sentence has to be a straightforward declarative sentence unless proved otherwise. But not in the old days. Have you read any Plato? 

Hermeneutics is an old field.

Quote:Unbelievers are also deceived by false documents which ascribe to history many thousand years, although we can calculate from Sacred Scripture that not 6,000 years have passed since the creation of man.

St Augustine - noted unbeliever in a literal reading of magic book. He also believed in a literal global flood. The water, the mountain, the boat, the animals, Noah the specific man....the whole bit. He went on about it, and his response to arguments against the notion, at length. Attempts to launder his reputation as something other than a literal believer in a literal magic book rest on the hilarious bit of trivia that he didn't think earth was made in seven days. He thought it was made in an instant and not too long ago.

(March 25, 2021 at 8:41 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Depends on the timeframe.  Judaism is a bit further along in it's development than, say, christianity.  They hit on the realization that the narratives are metaphor sooner.  They've been trying to explain that to christians for quite some time, but you know how those guys are when it comes to insisting that jewish people got jewish myths all wrong.

To answer your question, multiple instances.  Psalms has a concentration of them.  In fact, you could just search the terms leviathan and behemoth to find any of them - and that's precisely because the dragon was almost exclusively used in the context of asserting their gods existence, power, dominion, and primacy.  They stand out as prime examples of thematically canaanite elements in jewish mythology.  Harkening back (and intentionally so) to the types of beliefs and myths that they had only recently diverged from as fresh henotheists asserting a disparate origin and establishment for their sub-culture.

The thing that I, personally, find super interesting about it, is the line between metaphor and truth in many of our discussions.  We use metaphors precisely because we think that the truth of the one can buttress the other as truth.  Even more specifically, how the truth on one or the other side of the line may be more important - and the ways that we've damaged that line-side truth by servicing and maintaining the superstitious line-side to it's detriment.  Can we safely posit that these dragons are the primordial forces of chaos, land and sea, and do double duty as the enemies of their people (also conceived of as agents of chaos, for what it's worth) - and can we guess that the expressions are myth braking narrative.  I think so, yes, and the reason that they felt compelled to tell -those- truths with a story about a dragon boiled down to beliefs they held or their audience held about dragons.  Common, not at all seen to be ludicrous or ignorant beliefs, at the time.  So, for them, as with any other metaphor today, the truth of one set seemed to express the truth of the other.

It wasn't either/or it was and.  Dragons are awesome and powerful - and my god can make them, and my god can compel them to do it's bidding, and my god can destroy them.  You think that your god can do all of this, but you're wrong - it was my god that did all of that.

“We use metaphors precisely because we think that the truth of the one can buttress the other as truth.”

==You mean to say that we use metaphors when were are communicating with each other?
If that is what you mean, that doesn’t seem unusual. Yes, it does happen. It’s pretty common.
Sometimes it is obvious that it is a metaphor and sometimes it is not.

Here are text extracts from the Bible. I think you were referring to these:
Psalms 74:13 KING JAMES VERSION
Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
{74:14} Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, [and] gavest him [to be] meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

Isaiah 27:1 KING JAMES VERSION
In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that [is] in the sea.

“Can we safely posit that these dragons are the primordial forces of chaos, land and sea, and do double duty as the enemies of their people (also conceived of as agents of chaos, for what it's worth)“

==It is possible that the format of these expressions is to replace the non-intelligent problem entity with an entity that has a brain.
For example, if our space ship gets hit by a fast moving space debris, I could say
“Oh Satan, on that day you came and you made a hole in my ship!”

So, in the case of Psalms 74:13, if I demetaphorize that sentence, it might look something like this:
You did divide the sea with your strength. Sometimes, there are strong winds on those seas and you stopped them. We thank you. {74:14} Also, there are some strong winds and you converted the atoms that make up those winds and you rearranged them and converted it into meat and gave it to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

“It wasn't either/or it was and. Dragons are awesome and powerful - and my god can make them, and my god can compel them to do it's bidding, and my god can destroy them. You think that your god can do all of this, but you're wrong - it was my god that did all of that.”

==So, there is conversation going on between 2 sides where one side says my god can do this and that and the other side disagrees with them and they claim that it is their god that can do this and that.

It is certainly possible.
And perhaps at some point, someone decided that these stories told by his ancestors should be written down.

--Ferrocyanide

(March 26, 2021 at 1:28 am)Ferrocyanide Wrote: ==You mean to say that we use metaphors when were are communicating with each other?
If that is what you mean, that doesn’t seem unusual. Yes, it does happen. It’s pretty common.
Sometimes it is obvious that it is a metaphor and sometimes it is not.

The obviousness of the metaphor would have been assumed (and credibly so) with a contemporaneous reader.   If i make a comparison between a nation state that's about to roll me and a dragon......

Quote:==It is possible that the format of these expressions is to replace the non-intelligent problem entity with an entity that has a brain.
For example, if our space ship gets hit by a fast moving space debris, I could say
“Oh Satan, on that day you came and you made a hole in my ship!”

Not at all.  The speaker is discussing a very intelligent problem with a brain.  Other people.  Also, a dragon.  The one is like the other. Though, it's worth pointing out that..yes, we could conceive of a hole in our ship that way, and clearly, many religious people have done so.

Quote:==So, there is conversation going on between 2 sides where one side says my god can do this and that and the other side disagrees with them and they claim that it is their god that can do this and that.

In that specific instance, yes, myth breaking.  We think that the author was speaking to other people, other myths..belittling their gods while aggrandizing his own

Quote:It is certainly possible.
And perhaps at some point, someone decided that these stories told by his ancestors should be written down.

--Ferrocyanide

A few centuries after the fact, yeah...but not by his literal ancestors.  By people who manufactured an entire alternate history out of the thematic elements of their grievances with their own very canaanite past.

(March 25, 2021 at 9:00 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(March 25, 2021 at 8:07 am)Ferrocyanide Wrote: I would say that it is a guarantee that most believers believed what the tanakh told them (***), starting from Genesis and onwards. 

Unless, like St. Augustine and every other theologian you can name, they read Genesis as allegory, symbol, etc.

How do you guarantee what you say? Do you have an argument or historical references? Or is it something you just know? I'd be interested to see evidence.

Quote:At which point of the tanakh does it switch to fairy tale mode to reality mode?

To determine this you have to use your brain. 

The old time people whom you consider to be naive were in fact often more sophisticated about reading texts than modern people. Today people assume that every sentence has to be a straightforward declarative sentence unless proved otherwise. But not in the old days. Have you read any Plato? 

Hermeneutics is an old field.

“Unless, like St. Augustine and every other theologian you can name, they read Genesis as allegory, symbol, etc.”

==This is what I need:
1. I can’t name them. You name them.
2.  St. Augustine.
He thinks that Jacob didn’t go out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran?

“How do you guarantee what you say?”

==This is something that me and you have to explore. First off, what do you say?

What I say:
Unfortunately, most of the population between 1500 BCE to 1700 CE did not record a video stating whether they took the Genesis story literally or not. I’m not aware of any searchmonkey or askmonkey type of poll.
I don’t know. Is there such data available?

I just did a quick search and it turned up
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/q...rmeneutics

Someone wrote:
“In the very earliest Church there were two chief schools of interpretation, coming out of two different catechetical centers: Alexandria and Antioch. The Alexandrian school, of which Origen is perhaps the examplar, favored allegorical interpretation. The Antiochene school, of which Theodore of Mopsuestia is perhaps the highest achievement, favored a more literal interpretation.”

but why was that happening?

“Have you read any Plato?“

==Yes, a long time ago in school.

--Ferrocyanide

It's interesting to note that historical records have no use for allegory or metaphor so much as fiction does.

(March 26, 2021 at 2:03 am)Ferrocyanide Wrote: Unfortunately, most of the population between 1500 BCE to 1700 CE did not record a video stating whether they took the Genesis story literally or not.

They did take the Genesis story literally up until the 19th century