• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

The Bible As Literature

 
 
 
S

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
Joined
Nov 9, 2017
Messages
15,071
Location
seattle
Basic Beliefs
secular-skeptic
I am sure there are books on this topic.



Learner

Could the OT writers have been using allegory and metaphor not interring to be literal? Maybe some of it was just entertaining fictional stories?

If you believe a reference in the bible to a behemoth means humans ran with T Rex why not believe the stories in Homer's Odyssey?

Fiction across cultures was well developed by the time Hebrews were starting to record their narrative and myths.

The OT was never a coherent work. It is a patchwork of different authors at different times.

The Old Testament: Various Schools of Authors Starting around the 7th century B.C., different groups, or schools, of authors wrote them down at different times, before they were at some point (probably during the first century B.C.) combined into the single, multi-layered work we know today.Jul 17, 2020
Click to expand...


en.wikipedia.org

Odyssey - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
steve_bank said:
I am sure there are books on this topic.



Learner

Could the OT writers have been using allegory and metaphor not interring to be literal? Maybe some of it was just entertaining fictional stories?
Click to expand...
I've never been convinced that the writers "never intended" the stories to be literal. Do we actually know anything whatsoever about their intentions? I don't think we do.
 
GenesisNemesis said:
steve_bank said:
I am sure there are books on this topic.



Learner

Could the OT writers have been using allegory and metaphor not interring to be literal? Maybe some of it was just entertaining fictional stories?
Click to expand...
I've never been convinced that the writers "never intended" the stories to be literal. Do we actually know anything whatsoever about their intentions? I don't think we do.
Click to expand...
Yes, because we have a pretty good understanding of when "literal truth" as interpreted by modernist philosophies became a routine part of our social discourse. To push the idea far too back in time is to indulge in anachronism.
 
Politesse said:
GenesisNemesis said:
steve_bank said:
I am sure there are books on this topic.



Learner

Could the OT writers have been using allegory and metaphor not interring to be literal? Maybe some of it was just entertaining fictional stories?
Click to expand...
I've never been convinced that the writers "never intended" the stories to be literal. Do we actually know anything whatsoever about their intentions? I don't think we do.
Click to expand...
Yes, because we have a pretty good understanding of when "literal truth" as interpreted by modernist philosophies became a routine part of our social discourse. To push the idea far too back in time is to indulge in anachronism.
Click to expand...
People never took creation stories as literally true thousands of years ago? I find that pretty hard to believe.
 
GenesisNemesis said:
Politesse said:
GenesisNemesis said:
steve_bank said:
I am sure there are books on this topic.



Learner

Could the OT writers have been using allegory and metaphor not interring to be literal? Maybe some of it was just entertaining fictional stories?
Click to expand...
I've never been convinced that the writers "never intended" the stories to be literal. Do we actually know anything whatsoever about their intentions? I don't think we do.
Click to expand...
Yes, because we have a pretty good understanding of when "literal truth" as interpreted by modernist philosophies became a routine part of our social discourse. To push the idea far too back in time is to indulge in anachronism.
Click to expand...
People never took creation stories as literally true thousands of years ago? I find that pretty hard to believe.
Click to expand...
It's more that it isn't a question that they would have asked. Every generation has its own way of thinking about things. If you ever have a chance to chat with someone who lives in a predominately oral culture, you'll see one major reason why some of the questions theologians ask of these texts would not have made as much sense to the "authors" who were initially passing it down. If you know the author personally, you can easily see the imprint of their ability and creativity on the resulting retelling of the old stories, even admire it. A myth is at its heart a conversation with the ancestors, not a historical claim. If you asked a crowd of Hebrew listeners in the 5th BCE whether the stories their people tell about the beginning of things were "true", they would likely nod affably, but they would not mean by it that "every word of this document here is an objectively proveable fact". Not their time, not their culture, not their questions. They didn't compare notes with the Phoenecians to try and figure out the exact calendar year of the Great Flood, or argue with visiting Amalekite scholars about the exact height of Job. Their stories were retold, not researched, and they were okay with that. If it came up at all, their instinctive commitment would probably have more to do with family loyalty than objective fact (as is secretly true of most in our time as well, if they were honest enough to admit it to themselves!)
 
Last edited:
GenesisNemesis said:
People never took creation stories as literally true thousands of years ago? I find that pretty hard to believe.
Click to expand...
Same here, although, honestly, I've never read an author who built a case either way. Adam and Eve certainly reads like a story. If you leave out the creation story, there are bushels of stories in the Bible that are constructed like folk tales -- Samson and the foxes, Jesus and the 2000 hogs, Jesus and the coin in the fishy's mouth (Ye gods). And then there's the bizarre nephilim in Genesis 6, thrown briefly into the narrative without any attribution and with no episodes, almost as if the writer told you, "Here's one I used to hear from Grandpap." In the RSV version, it states, "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown." The Good News Bible states, "In those days, and even later, there were giants on the earth who were descendants of human women and the supernatural beings. They were the great heroes and famous men of long ago." It's probably a stroke of luck for the evangelicals that there isn't more to the passage, as it would call into question the uniqueness of Jesus.
Whatever the Hebrew writers meant you to take away from the Eden story, Paul in the NT treats it as if it were history. In Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15 he discusses Adam in contrast with Christ, and bases his theology on what each of them supposedly did for (or to) mankind.
 
ideologyhunter said:
GenesisNemesis said:
People never took creation stories as literally true thousands of years ago? I find that pretty hard to believe.
Click to expand...
Same here, although, honestly, I've never read an author who built a case either way. Adam and Eve certainly reads like a story. If you leave out the creation story, there are bushels of stories in the Bible that are constructed like folk tales -- Samson and the foxes, Jesus and the 2000 hogs, Jesus and the coin in the fishy's mouth (Ye gods). And then there's the bizarre nephilim in Genesis 6, thrown briefly into the narrative without any attribution and with no episodes, almost as if the writer told you, "Here's one I used to hear from Grandpap." In the RSV version, it states, "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown." The Good News Bible states, "In those days, and even later, there were giants on the earth who were descendants of human women and the supernatural beings. They were the great heroes and famous men of long ago." It's probably a stroke of luck for the evangelicals that there isn't more to the passage, as it would call into question the uniqueness of Jesus.
Whatever the Hebrew writers meant you to take away from the Eden story, Paul in the NT treats it as if it were history. In Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15 he discusses Adam in contrast with Christ, and bases his theology on what each of them supposedly did for (or to) mankind.
Click to expand...
He's also wildly reinterpreting the story, though... Christians get their "correct interpretation" of Genesis from Paul, not the other way around, because you wouldn't read Genesis "literally" and come up with Paul's interpretation. Did Paul believe there was an Adam who was the progenitor of the Jewish people? Almost certainly. Did he think Genesis was a "literally" word-for-word true historical account that G-d personally wrote? Who can say, but very probably not. It's quite likely in any case that Paul only heard the Hebrew Scriptures at synagogue, and may have only ever heard that specific story a handful of times. He does quote the Septuagint from time to time in his letters, but seldom if ever in a way that suggests he has a copy right in front of him.
 
Last edited:
Treating every metaphor in the Bible as literal, means we should be preparing for Samson's next fox-lighting contest or the return of giant Nephilim. Some things are better left in the land of allegory—where foxes stay unlit and giants remain in their mysterious, ancient cameo roles. Storytelling was the Netflix of the ancient world.
 
I have been thinking about all this and how it applies to the state of Israel.
Does what a people say about what their god told them have much meaning today politically?
Jacob/Israel, 12 sons, 12 tribes all oral stories past down by elders.
May 14th, 1948.
 
I believe the KJV contains some of the most beautiful writing in English. Even Shelley enjoyed reading it, and he was the most militant atheist of his time.
 
True.

By 'beautiful writing' I am not referring to the content of the Bible, its veracity, its meaning, or purpose. I am referring to the style and poetic beauty of the use of the English language in the KJV specifically.
 
The Prophets are full of metaphors, while the histories use more similes. "The Bible as Literature" is generally a back door way to get Bible study into public schools. For all the noise about the poetic phrasing of the King James Bible, aside from familiar verses(The Lord is my shepherd), a modern person will find Jacobean English as incomprehensible as Chaucer's swiche licour.

One thing about creation stories that usually eludes the modern mind is, back when creation stories were being created, it didn't matter whether a person took the story literally, or not. Your basic 3000 BCE shepherd got up in the morning, tended his sheep, then went to bed. There was not a second of the day when he had to make a decision affected by whether the Earth was a sphere, or if it was created in seven days. On the fourth day, God organized the light He had created on the first day. He put the sun in charge of daylight light and the moon in charge of the night. It's a good story, but any shepherd with time on his hands knows the moon can be seen during the day, and sometimes it's not out at night. So, the story can't be too literal, just based on naked eye observations.

Believing in the Genesis creation story, or any other story, will make air travel navigation very difficult, but that's a modern problem.
 
What modern people can or cannot comprehend says nothing about the beauty and poetry of the KJV. A good many modern readers of English can't even comprehend T.S. Eliot.
 
There weren't any books that anyone other than priests could read, back when the Bible was written, and most common people were illiterate anyway. It was all based on oral traditions passed on by the priests.
 
lostone said:
There weren't any books that anyone other than priests could read, back when the Bible was written, and most common people were illiterate anyway. It was all based on oral traditions passed on by the priests.
Click to expand...
Sure, but by the time of the KJV (by which time the Bible had been around for at least 1,000 years, and had already been translated into English several times*), many ordinary people could and did read.

One of the major reasons for the turmoil of Seventeenth Century Europe was the flourishing of literacy, with both the Thirty Years War and the Wars if the Three Kingdoms being influenced by mass media - pamphleteering - for the first time in history.

IMO Shakespere did beauty and poetry a little earlier and far better than the KJV.

Late C16th and C17th English was very well suited to that style of writing. English became more precise and less poetic during the Industrial Revolution, presumably as speakers (and readers) had less time on their hands.

The KJV is nothing special, compared to other contemporary English writing.









*Coverdale's English translation of a German Bible pre-dates the KJV by seventy years. James I and VI commissioned the KJV to put an end to all the bickering about which version was 'correct' (this was utterly ineffective, and actually made things worse, at least for the next century or so)
 
Last edited:
I agree about Shakespeare, in fact have gone on and on about him in several other threads. I consider him the greatest poet in English (but not necessarily the greatest dramatist - I'd give that to G.B. Shaw).

Just so others know, I wouldn't, and didn't, say there was anything 'special' about the KJV. That sounds like another word for 'God-inspired'. Not that you meant that. I don't suggest anything of the sort. I come at it as an agnostic, and I don't regard it as holy or sacred. Neither did Shelley, Hitchens, or Dawkins, hardcore atheists who nonetheless lauded the KJV for its literary excellence.
 
Sometimes it seems hard to imagine what ancient people were thinking, or rather how they thought. But the human brain does NOT evolve all that quickly. If you want to know how ancient people thought, maybe it's sufficient to consider how present-day people think!

(I do think Julian Jaynes' insights are valid and useful, but I doubt there was an abrupt transition. There were humans thinking for themselves before the legendary Odysseus of Ithaca; and there are people with bicameral brains today.)

Politesse said:
GenesisNemesis said:
Politesse said:
GenesisNemesis said:
steve_bank said:
Could the OT writers have been using allegory and metaphor not interring to be literal? Maybe some of it was just entertaining fictional stories?
Click to expand...
I've never been convinced that the writers "never intended" the stories to be literal. Do we actually know anything whatsoever about their intentions? I don't think we do.
Click to expand...
Yes, because we have a pretty good understanding of when "literal truth" as interpreted by modernist philosophies became a routine part of our social discourse. To push the idea far too back in time is to indulge in anachronism.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
This sounds almost mysterious to me. WHEN did literal truth become routine in discourse?

Politesse said:
Politesse said:
People never took creation stories as literally true thousands of years ago? I find that pretty hard to believe.
Click to expand...
It's more that it isn't a question that they would have asked. Every generation has its own way of thinking about things. If you ever have a chance to chat with someone who lives in a predominately oral culture, you'll see one major reason why some of the questions theologians ask of these texts would not have made as much sense to the "authors" who were initially passing it down. If you know the author personally, you can easily see the imprint of their ability and creativity on the resulting retelling of the old stories, even admire it. A myth is at its heart a conversation with the ancestors, not a historical claim. If you asked a crowd of Hebrew listeners in the 5th BCE whether the stories their people tell about the beginning of things were "true", they would likely nod affably, but they would not mean by it that "every word of this document here is an objectively proveable fact". Not their time, not their culture, not their questions. They didn't compare notes with the Phoenecians to try and figure out the exact calendar year of the Great Flood, or argue with visiting Amalekite scholars about the exact height of Job. Their stories were retold, not researched, and they were okay with that. If it came up at all, their instinctive commitment would probably have more to do with family loyalty than objective fact (as is secretly true of most in our time as well, if they were honest enough to admit it to themselves!)
Click to expand...

I think we see this clearly in American politics. In some recesses of their brains climate change deniers probably understand that scientists are more knowledgeable than them. But they want to believe what they want to believe. Post-rational politics is riddled with this problem.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

For many Christians, Jesus' miracles are essential to his identity; but some Christians just think He was an unusually good person, whose morals should be emulated.

I'd thought that the historic Buddha was treated as just a good man, with the stories that he could walk at birth and that lotus flowers sprouted wherever he walked just fairy tales to intrigue children. But I've posed the question to a few Buddhist adults and they seem to believe the lotus flowers were real.

TL;DR: -- I do NOT know the answer to these questions. It is an interesting topic though.
 
WAB said:
What modern people can or cannot comprehend says nothing about the beauty and poetry of the KJV. A good many modern readers of English can't even comprehend T.S. Eliot.
Click to expand...
I guess that's a matter of opinion. I've never found the KJV of the Bible to be beautiful.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Maybe it's because I was once an English major, who eventually lost all interest in English literature, especially the old stuff. It's time is past imo. Now I only read non fiction, so maybe it's me. I can't even stand to read Shakespeare any longer and I barely remember any of his writing, despite taking an entire course in Shakespeare while in college. To each their own. Glad you enjoy those old school writings. Next you'll be telling us that you like Chaucer too. ;) I think I was forced to read his stuff in college as well. But, hey. Whatever floats your boat is fine with me, as long as I get to politely disagree. :)

If I were to read a Bible, I'd prefer a more modern translation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom