(May 8, 2022 at 9:58 am)h311inac311 Wrote: Welcome to the forum Diogenes,
It's a little hard for me to tell exactly what you are advocating for, because on the one hand you are saying that we shouldn't take this story from Genesis literally but on the other you are offering, and defending, physical evidence as well as historical evidence from areas near Sodom and Gomorrah.
I'm trying to gain a better understanding of just what exactly you mean here. The Bible speaks to many layers of truth, historical, literal, spiritual and metaphor, just to name a few. But the book of Genesis falls under the category of history so I tend to read it in that context first, just like the Psalms are mostly poetry or music so they are heavy laden with metaphor and ought to be read as one would read poetry.
As for the bears which attacked children for telling Elisha to, "rise up you bald head" it reveals to us that when a true servant of God calls down a curse from heaven God is not slow to answer. Now God could have just given the boys a tummy ache, but instead he chose to kill 42 of them. These boys were telling a prophet to "rise up" or go to heaven already. Basically they were wishing death upon him, apparently neither God nor Elisha took that lightly. This verse always gets brought up when people are looking for indictments against YHWH but it never really bothered me that much. You shouldn't wish death upon one of God's servants, perhaps the reason why we don't take such ideas as seriously today is because we live under the New Covenant where the holy spirit is far more active here on Earth and Christians are called to love not just their neighbor but also their enemy.
Boru
I'm pointing out that what is considered the "Literal" interpretation of the Bible, is not from the Bible, but a religious narrative put on top of the Bible.
It does seem to be difficult to understand. See how many people here are claiming that I've said things I have not, because they are only seeing the mainstream Religious narrative, and not seeing that I am not speaking from it. This is the key though. It is very difficult to get people engaged in the conversation, instead of repeating either side of the false dichotomy.
The Literal Interpretation of the Bible says that Evolution cannot exist, because in Genesis, the vision of creation as described by Moses, uses the word 'kinds' which has the Ideological interpretation under Young Earth Creationism as "A singular unchanging form", which is of course not what it actually says. For another short example.
