Forum theists: when you have a moment, please...

[Angrboda]

In most instances, Jor takes reasonable and nuanced positions. Not in this case. The question at hand is whether some interpretations of the bible are better than others. First, she denies this on the grounds that the bible is a sacred text. She then offers here own interpretations i.e. that it is largely fictitious, contains forgeries, and that the canon was assembled politically. All that may or may not be true. But she cannot escape the fact that by rendering those judgments she has expressed an opinion about how the text should be received. Either some opinions are better than others or not. She’s trying to have it both ways.

No I did not. I pointed out that a realistic interpretation of this particular text is ruled out by reality herself. You want to make your ad hoc attempts to rescue the text from interpretive nihilism somehow priviliged. That's a contradiction with the consequence that the text is not literally true, but is claimed to be in some other sense true. It is your inability to raise this other sense as somehow justified above others that renders your belief in better and worse interpretations of the bible in error. As Nietzsche said, "there are no facts, only interpretations." That the exodus didn't occur, that the flood didn't occur, that there are forgeries in the bible, that the assemblage of the book is thoroughly ad hoc - these are facts. They render a historical interpretation of the text untenable. All you have left are arbitrary interpretations. You must purely arbitrarily choose what to treat as fact and which as metaphor or other. That makes your interpretation no better than any other. As long as you hold that the bible is "true," you've forced yourself down an alley of ad hoc interpretation that is demanded by the mismatch between reality and text.

Is the bible true according to you?
Is the account of the flood true?
What is your answer?