RE: Meanings of “God” in some scriptures
July 4, 2018 at 3:40 am
(This post was last modified: July 4, 2018 at 4:11 am by jimhabegger.)
(July 4, 2018 at 2:52 am)robvalue Wrote: It is of course impossible to determine exactly what the intended meaning was behind various parts of the bible.
There is also the question of whose intentions we’re trying to determine. God’s intentions? The intentions of the authors, whoever we think they might be? The intentions of whoever put it all together in its current form? Other?
Quote:It's a huge mixture of potential allegory, previous mythology, attempted "scientific" explanations of the time, health and safety, personal agenda, sanitizing history, and more. We don't know much about many of the authors, or often who they were at all.
Agreed.
Quote:I think it's too easy to grant too much credit, and to assume some sort of extreme widsom, retrofitting what we know onto the texts. It's such a vague and contradictory mess in its entirety that you can make it appear to support virtually any viewpoint (moral or theological) if you join together certain parts in the right way.
Agreed, if that’s what a person is trying to do.
What if a person is actually trying to learn from it, and get ideas, inspiration, encouragement and strength from it, to learn to be a better person?
- Jim
