Posted By: Jack Blandiver
31-Aug-14 - 07:54 AM
Thread Name: BS: Special thread on Evolution & religion
Subject: RE: BS: Special thread on Evolution & religion
I can't see how you think Jesus regarded Jonah as "real." Where do you get that impression? And then, of course, what do you define as "real"?
Jesus gives very clear support of the OT scripture : 'For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.' (Matt 5:18). Very much a man of his time, there's little reason to believe he took the OT stories in any sense other than literally, as all good Christians should of course instead of adopting a secular scientific view of the godless Cosmos as part of their Godly cause. In this sense I'd say Pete from Seven Stars Link has it absolutely spot on.
OK, I gotta repeat Jack's post to refute it. I don't think that "literal" interpretation at the time of Jesus, was the same as the literal interpretation of modern-day fundamentalists. I picked Jonah because of all the books of the Bible, Jonah is one character that is most clearly identifiable as fictional, because the entire book is written in language that is clearly fictional (it's a great story, and I think it's the funniest book in the Bible). I would imagine that Jesus took the story of Jonah much as Americans take the semi-mythological stories of George Washington and Abe Lincoln and Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan. We know there are elements of both fact and fiction in those stories, and we don't bend over backwards to separate fact from fiction. The stories are part of our culture and we more-or-less respect the integrity of those stories without really bothering to carefully define what is fact and what is fiction. I mean, why bother? They are good stories and they serve a purpose, so why not just tell the stories and not go to the trouble of careful explanation of what is what?
And then if you go to the creation stories in Genesis (there are two), you may note that both Adam (human) and Eve (living one or source of life) have very generic-sounding names that could well be translated as "everyman" and "everywoman." Those are really big clues that these people with symbolic names are very likely to be mythological. I think the Jews of the time of Jesus had an understanding of their sacred stories that was similar to the understanding that pre-Columbian Native Americans had of their ancient stories. The stories were part of who they were, and they were told as factual - but with an understanding that they were not "facts" as modern-day Europeans and Americans understand fact.
It seems pretty clear that there were fundamentalists at the time of Jesus, but their fundamentalism was expressed in legalism, in seeing the Law as governing every moment of life. And Jesus and his followers were forever getting into trouble for transgressing the restrictions of that legalistic fundamentalism.
Now, I'm sure Jesus didn't spend any time trying to refute what we call the "biblical account of creation" - evolution was most certainly not part of his vocabulary [so, you want to blame Jesus for not teaching evolution?]. But on the other hand, there is no evidence that Jesus followed the anti-intellectual, anti-scientific literalism of current-day fundamentalists.
So, that's my point. I suppose you could argue that ancient peoples took a literal view of their mythology - to a point - but I just can't bring myself to believe that their literalism was anti-intellectual and anti-scientific like current-day literalism.
-Joe-