What if Judas didn't do it?

[John 6IX Breezy]

if accuracy does not make a story truer, what does?

There could be a way, I just don't know what it is or how to quantify it. You can imagine how this issue arises in courtrooms every day, or even in relationships. Two people can describe the same event, with equal accuracy towards the facts, and yet be telling very different stories.

Bruner simply leaves it at that: "Narrative truth is judged by its verisimilitude rather than its verifiability."

[Anomalocaris]

if accuracy does not make a story truer, what does?

There could be a way, I just don't know what it is or how to quantify it. You can imagine how this issue arises in courtrooms every day, or even in relationships. Two people can describe the same event, with equal accuracy towards the facts, and yet be telling very different stories.

what does that say about a third person who needed considerably more inaccuracy than the other two to tell his story?

is it the right attitude to say “damn I find that story so nourishing so let’s not care why he needed all the inaccuracy to tell it and just assert it is truer”?

[Angrboda]

Relativism comes limping in.

[The Valkyrie]

What if Judas really didn't do it and was framed by the others to get Jesus out of the way so they could have their way with Mary Magdeline?

[Belacqua]

Narratives are laid out across "human time" rather than "clock time." This is time as you experienced it, and as you remember it—an abstraction of the real thing. To quote Jerome Bruner, "It is time whose significance is given by the meaning assigned to events within its compass." This is what I mean when I say the Bible is narrative. It isn't written in expository form, like a textbook or encyclopedia. It is written with a point of view, it is embedded across human time, and often written with self at the center of the narration.

I think this is crucial. It also pinpoints the difference between those who are comfortable with narrative literature and those who feel that only science can tell us things worth knowing. 

You're way more up to date on the subject than I am, but to me it goes back to good old Freud. As you know, he wanted to be a scientist but instead ended up inventing something like "applied literature." The analysand makes sense of his life by making it into a story. 

So someone who can say: "I was abused as a child but in the long run it has made me stronger," has created a story arc that gives meaning. The abuse is no longer random stuff that happened but an event in a narrative with significance to a personal history. 

(And not only Freud. Proust teaches us that the way to redeem a life that's less than admirable is to make it into art.)

Earlier I was saying to somebody that to read the Bible one must be familiar with narrative techniques, and this is what I meant. Human time is not science time. The kind of objective empirical truth that science aims for removes the personal subjective experience which is exactly what gives one's life meaning. Reading the Bible as if it's a timetable of events takes out everything it's meant to do.

[Belacqua]

if accuracy does not make a story truer, what does?

It depends on what the story is doing. 

If you're writing a history of first century Palestine, then accuracy makes the story truer. But if you're writing a narrative that prompts people to consider how they live then what you write may be different. The goal is not to give a journalistic account of events but a story about what certain actions mean for us. 

At its base, it's the good old distinction between is and ought. Disinterested journalism and objective science deal with the former and, by definition, exclude the latter.

[Belacqua]

Among many other books, I'd say that The Divine Comedy presents us with a paradigm case.

Dante includes many real people and true events in his narrative. But all of them are embedded in a fictional matrix which interprets them and gives them a meaning which is larger than just "this is stuff that happened."

When you've read the whole thing, then you're left with a detailed and profound examination of how one ought to live. It gives us a wonderful set of interpretive tools to think about one's own life, and what we should devote ourselves to. The book shows how passionate love and the beauty of life can pull us toward what is good.

As a book about ethics, aesthetics, and human meaning, it isn't true in the way that science is true. It can't be. But that's not what it was meant to be.

As Socrates pointed out a long time ago, what's the good of knowing facts if we're still bad people?

[Ferrocyanide]

Which christians believe that the entire Bible is myth?

A myth is any narrative that functions as a myth. It may have accurate historical elements, or none.

I see.

So the stories in the Bible may contain more or less historical truth and still be myths. The authors of the Bible use the stories to convey ethical and spiritual messages. That is their purpose -- not accurate journalistic reporting.

I think that the Bible contains politics, it contains orders given by the jewish god, it contains history of the jewish people and their neighboring cultures, it contains metaphor, parables.
So, I do think portions of it are intended as accurate journalistic reporting.
Probably +80% is journalistic reporting.

So, do you think that god came to Earth in human form (or he sent his son) and the people who wrote down about him decided not to give any journalistic info as to what happened?
What do you think Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are?
Personally, I think it is intended as journalistic reporting and that is the way christian belief has been for about 2000 y.

It is in the nature of humans to document the past and if you don’t document the past, then future generations will not remember what happened.

All of these things are wrong, but help to emphasize the meanings that certain atheists want to convey.

One side says this and the other side says that. People argue over it all the time.
I have talked to a catholic about the Galileo. His view is that Galileo is a jerk and it is his fault that he ended up in house arrest.

[Belacqua]

So, do you think that god came to Earth in human form (or he sent his son) and the people who wrote down about him decided not to give any journalistic info as to what happened?
What do you think Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are?

I think this question has been answered on this thread.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I think this is crucial. It also pinpoints the difference between those who are comfortable with narrative literature and those who feel that only science can tell us things worth knowing. 

Exactly, choosing narrative instead of exposition for sacred text is incredibly powerful. The fact that not very many intelligent people realize that, almost lends credence to a divine wisdom from a Christian perspective.

There's a lot that could be said about this from a psychological standpoint. But here's one of them: There is a powerful, if not direct, connection between narrative and behavior.

What connects the two is memory. Narrative is deeply connected with our memory systems. You could argue that narrative evolved as part of our episodic memories. Our autobiographical memories construct our narrative self. Narratives are also a lot easier to remember than any other form of information. You can remember stories in ways that you cannot remember a textbook, so our memory system has a bias towards encoding stories.

Now, how does this lead to behavior? Because the whole purpose of memory is to guide future action. You store things in memory to help you navigate the future.

Here's how this connects to the Bible. It is very clear when you read the Bible that God is interested in one thing only—your actions. Not whether you believe the Earth is flat or round. Behavior is what the bible is concerned with, and getting you to choose one set of behaviors over another. Talk to any Christian and they'll tell you the point of Jesus becoming a man wasn't just the crucifixion, it was to provide the template of how to live a holy life.

And so, every story in the Bible is designed to teach an object lesson in a way that guides behavior and can be easily recalled. The focus isn't on the details or their accuracy. The goal is far deeper than that, and a Bible written like a textbook would have never become as successful and widespread as it did.