Breaking: The Bible is not all factual (Catholic Bishops of England)

[rodeodance]

Breaking: The Bible is not all factual
By Matthew Wheeland
Posted on November 4, 2005, Printed on November 5, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/wheeland/27832/

It may seem shocking to those of us living under the reign of the so-called Christians that make up the extreme religious right here in the U.S., but earlier this month, Catholic bishops in England, Wales and Scotland announced that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," the bishops write in a teaching text distributed to the faithful.

According to the bishops, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are among the made-up portions of the Bible. These are the big sections, the ones where God makes the Earth and humankind in six days.....

Now we're told that these chapters "cannot be 'historical.' At most, they say, they may contain 'historical traces.'"......

[YDogg]

1. Why do you hate 'merica?

:+

[HereSince1628]

2. Why did they do that? Are they trying to fend off fundamentalist

evangelizing?

[Kipling]

4. They don't want to look ridiculous.

[Skittles]

5. too late

:o

[HereSince1628]

6. Maybe but I suspect there is additional motivation.

I suspect there is a broader social issue they feel they need to address.

The obvious suspect is is fundamentalism and that movement's inherent intolerance.

[HeeBGBz]

12. Trying to distance themselves from the fundies

Would be my guess

[struggle4progress]

19. They believe that the Divine Word has come, not only in ..

.. old writings, but in living tradition and in continuing personal revelation, so far as people have been able to hear clearly and understand correctly. And the growing maturity of their wisdom suggests to them that people have NOT always heard clearly nor understood correctly ...

[teach1st]

3. So that serpent thing isn't true?

I'm devastated.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. You mean an apple a day is good for you?

sheesh.

[orpupilofnature57]

7. The Big Book also talks about false bishops and prophet's, COE included..

Unfortunately uneducated people tend to take things in a literal way, while educated people think their conclusions are infinite.

[Generarth]

8. theres a word missing in your post

it's "At"

[otohara]

18. LOL

:evilgrin: :rofl:

[dime.end]

10. Have you heard of the Reformation?

This is pretty old news.

The Catholic church has always believed that the church is the authority of God. Which is to say that that Popes and bishops and priests got to tell people what God wanted them to do.

Dissidents like Martin Luther protested that God's truth was to be found in the Holy Bible. ( A document that the Catholic church made almost inaccessible to the common man.)

The problem with relying on "the church" is that you are ultimately relying on humans. Humans tend to be pretty selfish and mean when you give them enough power. The corruption of the church in Martin Luther's time was massive and pervasive.

Martin Luther was returning this spiritual authority to the common man. He wanted each person to read the word of God and determine what the truth was, not for people to rely on the church to provide them with "trickle down" truth.

What came out of this rejection of the Catholicism was the Protestant movement, and groups like Methodists and Baptists and the like. They to point to the Bible as the source of spiritual truth, a truth expressed to the individual, not an organization.

[xchrom]

11. martin luther would be rolling over in his grave

''the people'' got out of hand.

didn't jesus say to legalists and literalists of his time that you cannot love the law more than god?

you can't ''worship'' the bible and be a christian.

[Bridget Burke]

25. Too bad some of the Protestants took it too far....

They believe that every word in the Bible is literal truth, from Genesis through Revelations. And some of them want everyone else to live according to their twisted version of The Truth.

Yes, I've heard of the Reformation.

[TreasonousBastard]

13. No big deal...

modern theologians have long accepted that scripture is neither a history lesson nor a scientific treatise. Jews, who, ummm... wrote the OT, have long questioned the meaning of Jonah living in a whale, talking serpents, how many critters could live in an ark for over a month...

Catholics, unlike some other sects, insist on dotting the i's on their teachings, and this is a clarification of what they have long believed. Most Christians, other than the Biblical literalists who are so loud but not really that numerous, only ask where the lines between Christian fact and mythology lie. Truth is accepted as coming from both, but in different ways.

[rodeodance]

14. the article gives a few reasons here.

Even more shocking to these eyes are the reasons for this change of story. The Times story says the bishops have announced this new concept in order to stem the tide of intolerant religious fundamentalism, while this reader can't help but imagine said bishops gesticulating furiously in the direction of the United States. The bishops wrote:

"Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others."

And concerning Revelation, the scary, apocalyptic part of the New Testament, the bishops add:

"Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come."

[TreasonousBastard]

15. Well, I can say that...

I work on issues with some very liberal Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and a few others. Jews, too.

None of the priests, rabbis or ministers I deal with accept a literal understanding of much of the Bible. We all know that even the quotes from Moses, Jesus, and Yahweh hisself were written long after the fact and no one knows what was really said.

What we do accept is that whatever is in there reflects the fundamental concepts of the religion, whether spelled out literally in some places or symbolically in others. Ultimately, it makes no difference to us whether or not Job really lived and those things happened to him. What is important is understanding the relationship between Job and God and between Job and his "friends" and relating it to our lives.

Same thing with Revelation-- hardly any modern scholars actually think any of that is in the future. It was written for the early churches with codes and allegories giving them instruction on how they should conduct themselves and as a celebration of the emergence of Christianity as a major religious movement.

Back then, anyone reading Revelation would be familiar with the currents of Zoroastrianism, Egyption mysticism, Buddhism, and all the other religious movements passing through those crossroads. The "wise men from the East" were not in the Gospels by mistake or as an afterthought-- they symbolized the diversity of religious thought that early Christians often saw themselves as unifying. Revelation was written for those early Christians, but remains relevant today as a history of how the early church grew and where it might grow now.

Considering how misunderstood it is today, perhaps it would have been better for the early church to have left it out of the canonical Bible. But it's too late now.

[Bridget Burke]

26. The announcement is not a "change of story"--it's a reminder.

The Catholic Church has long taught that much of the Bible should not be taken literally.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

16. Catholics (at least per my church-school upbringing)

historically haven't held the Old Testament as factual per se; rather as metaphorical stories to instruct our current morality.

[alcuno]

22. That's right. This isn't news to most Catholics.

We were never taught that the OT was a given.

[sarcasmo]

17. WWFSMD

[sarcasmo]

20. WWFSMD

[applegrove]

21. The intrinsic religious are even afraid of the extrinsics. People who

walk the walk have every reason to be scared of schoolyard bullies. Not what Jesus taught. Thank god that the great religious types have some gonads. They should be way out in front of any trial with evil.

[LibertyorDeath]

23. Now that's one big ass understatement

Here's the factual part

There was a man named Jesus

the rest is suspect

[yellowcanine]

24. Hmm - how about the anti gay (really anti -homosexuality) stuff in

Leviticus?