DJS, when I was a kid (a long time ago) we were taught the "George Washington could not tell a lie" story as history. As an adult I learned that the story of Washington admitting to his father that yes he had chopped down the cherry tree was not historical. But that did not make George Washington, his father, or cherry trees, myths in themselves. The story was a lesson in telling the truth taught to elementary school children. The lesson served its purpose, I remember it well. As an adult I can still appreciate the value of that lesson even though it actually never happened. The Adam and Eve story is for adults not children who take everything they read as literal.
Jehovah kicks a puppy
by Simon 41 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Hold Me-Thrill Me
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DJS
Hold Me,
So you are telling me that all of the references to Satan, the Lion, the Serpent, etc. used by Jesus, Paul, Peter, John and others are all myths and stories? I suppose we can also glean from this that the references to Jesus made by Paul, Peter, John, etc. are also myths. George was a real person. Are you saying Satan isn't? Jesus isn't? Which parts are we to believe and which to ignore as fantasy?
I think you just made Simon's point.
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CalebInFloroda
While I cannot speak directly for Hold-Me, I can state that none of the texts DJS cites state that the snake from Genesis 3 was held to be a factual and historical account.
Also, Christian theology through the centuries shows that the belief in “Satan the Devil” was a new revelation from Jesus of Nazareth who connected the symbols of the adversaries of Scripture to evil unseen forces battling against humankind. This is a technique known as “midrash” which is still used today by Jewish rabbis. It is a retelling and resetting of Scriptural stories, whether true or false, in the light of current thought. Word play is heavily employed in this technique when speaking in the original Hebrew, and an etymological methodology must be employed when attempting to reconstruct the meanings therein. Face-value readings are never implied or allowed in midrash, especially in the face of a doctrine that was clearly in developing stages in the first century.
Around the time the New Testament canon was being settled, St. Gregory Nazianzen, working from and building upon current Christian theology about “the Fall,” taught that the narrative in Genesis 3 was symbolic of something far more complex. The death of the characters in the play symbolize God’s killing of death, he explained. This didn't contradict the then accept doctrine of the Evil One now in full stature in the Christian religion, but it does show that their belief that the Devil was real and symbolized from the protoevangelium did not rely on the symbols being facts.
Similarly, the tales of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, the mythical details of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, and the various tall-tales which practically deify Abraham Lincoln do not keep thinking and reasoning Americans from remaining patriotic and supporting their country. All cultures have their mythology, but those myths are used as transports for essential truths important to the culture that devises them. George Washington may not have chopped down the cherry tree, but the truth in the myth is still real: he was a man of high character. The fact that these stories are just "fairy tales" doesn't make people pack up and leave America or abandon democracy. Americans still build upon these legends to create realities in their lives regardless.
In the same manner, while New Testament theology builds upon the midrash of “the satan” figure as a literal spirit entity that is bent on causing more than a little trouble for humans, it isn’t saying that the literal figure makes some of the narrative dramas fact. Nor does it mean that the use of “the satan” from Old Testament sources via midrash implies that “the satan” in places like Job is the same figure as the Satan of New Testament texts.
The above isn’t new theology or new views on Scripture and the devil either. It is theology that the uneducated leaders of the Watchtower ignore and keep from their adherents. While I don’t expect that atheists have to be totally educated in an academic approach to Scripture, these very few points should at least make one pause before projecting the naïve Watchtower approach we once fatally trusted in to what scholars and theologians of Scripture have taught for centuries. They are very much not the same thing.
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DJS
Someone else pick it up from here. I've already violated one of my prime directives. Plus, I"m getting nauseous trying to read and understand the circular reasoning.
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CalebInFloroda
In simplest form, DJS, critical scholarship and theologians believe the term "the satan" is borrowed from Old Testament legends by Jesus for a real entity. The fact that an actual entity is given the name used in mythology doesn't mean the entity is really the same person.
Just because you have a child and name the child "Luke Skywalker" doesn't mean the child is the same person as the fictional character in the Lucas opera.
Midrash is a technique that is employed in the development of the spirit entity known as the devil. The fact that midrash is employed of itself suggests that what is being done is linking two separate things, in this case mythology with what Jesus taught was real.
By the way, just because I am stating this should not be confused with what I personally believe. I'm just adding to the conversation from the standpoint of someone who teaches this stuff to students. I personally don't agree with much that modern religion does or the way many of its adherents act as a result of adhering to their belief systems.
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DJS
Yeah, Caleb,
I've read that stuff too. It's spin. Not very good spin either. George was a real person; the cherry tree story was a story. You can't read the references about Satan made by Jesus, etc. in the NT and tell me that none of them thought he was a real personage. There are too many of them and they are made at some of the most crucial points in the NT. It is an insult to anyone's intelligence to ask them to swallow that without throwing all of it out as rubbish, including the existence of Jesus, Michael, Moses and the apostles, which is what Simon is saying in this OP.
Cherry picking the parts you like slays me. OK, now I'm through. I don't enter theist discussions; it's against my religion. Substitute Satan, Serpent, Roaring Lion, etc. with Easter Bunny or that really scary guy living under your bed makes as much sense.
But Caleb, it is sweet that you came to the rescue of Ms. Caleb. I like that.
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SimonSays
The absence of cultural truth should be redefined to those differences. A point made by our ancestors.
One point of which would be religious reasoning.
Puritan:
a member of a group of English Protestants of the late 16th and 17th centuries who regarded the Reformation of the Church of England under Elizabeth as incomplete and sought to simplify and regulate forms of worship.
· A person with censorious moral beliefs
The Atlantic Passage of the Puritans
Puritan Reasons for Leaving
England
William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury
At the time Archbishop William Laud was the head of the Church of England. The king sent him a decree giving him the power to visit all the churches and buildings controlled by the church to state the condition of the properties. When he went he found that the Puritans had been abandoning the Church of England’s elaborate rituals, and allowing ecclesiastical property to fall in to disuse and in some cases disrepair. Contrary to the universal practice of the church, children in these nonconformist towns were going through life not having participated in confirmation.
This air of nonconformity prevailed in these separatist towns because the lecturers who were unauthorized by the church and as such had freedom from clerical control. With this newly gotten freedom, these lecturers would encourage their congregations to side with the nonconformists. Even those who were ordained by the church were ripe for a change. When William Laud was mad the Arch Bishop of Canterbury in 1633, he began his war on nonconformity almost immediately.
A Stone Church from Cheshire England
When Laud was given the power to visit all the churches poor houses, hospitals and schools in the province of Canterbury, he authorized all the Justices of the Peace to arrest all non-conformists who met in private, behind closed doors, to carry on conventicles contrary to the law and to hale them before the Ecclesiastical Commission.
Some of the earliest efforts of the Archbishop included compelling foreigners that still believed in their protestant ways to conform to the Church of England. He suggested to the King and the council the best way to rid the overwhelming sense of nonconformity found in the highly diverse immigrant communities was to make them conform to the Anglican ways. At first these rouge churches said they were exempt from the authority of the Church of England, but Laud stuck with it and finally the churches came around but not in the numbers Laud and the Kind had originally hoped for. Laud wanted more than just partial conformity for the good of the church.
Laud proclaimed, he was not actuated by a desire to abolish toleration, but by a “Fear the existence of such independent ecclesiastical units, each maintaining its own discipline, would impair the unity of the Church of England, and might establish what would be, in substance, a state without a state”. On his visitations, the archbishop found in certain quarters, evidence of a fast growing Puritanism accompanied by a general indifference, and sometimes, by an open hostility to the Church.
The symbol of the Church of England
This desire to unify all of England under one church, the Church of England, was what set off the migrations of the Puritans. Whom the church was unable to control had been brought before the council for censure. These lecturers would go before the council and were given a choice between removal to the colonies or censure of their nonconformist teachings.
It was difficult for the church to do all of this on its own as its power had been diminishing with the reformation and the continued defiance of the Separatists. The people whom the archbishop wanted to impact would not
Be affected by idle threats or arguments. As a result of the inclusion of civil law, there was an increasing desire for the upper-class to leave the country and seek refuge abroad. This naturally affected churches and towns in a negative way. Towns were depopulated; churches abandoned services and fell into a state of disrepair. The congregations that did remain were consolidated and forced to join other parishes.
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
One of those people that did make the journey to North America, Thomas Shepard, was banned from preaching by the Archbishop. Shepard felt unable to conform to the church’s demands, and having felt that his liberty was threatened, and seeing no reason for preaching in England left for New England. Many left in the previously separatist towns wrote to Governor Winthrop in New England affirming their fears for the future with so many ministers and Christians leaving for the colonies. Then a man by the name of Cotton Mather preached to a great many Puritans saying, “It was now also a time when some hundreds of those good people which had the nickname of Puritans put on them, transported themselves, with their whole families and interests into the deserts of America, that they might here peaceably erect Congregational Churches.”
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CalebInFloroda
I actually wrote that "the satan" is in reference to someone Jesus believed was very real. The term, I stated, was borrowed from Old Testament mythology. The New Testament treats the Devil as a very real being, but it isn't the same being again as that used in parables like the protoevangelium or Job.
The term "haSatan" in Hebrew does not describe an evil being. It simply means "the adversary." In Job "the satan" (haSatan) is someone who has access to heaven, asks God for permission to act, and even obeys God in following through. This is clearly not the same hell-bound, anti-God creature Jesus teaches about or is found in New Testament literature.
The character is connected, however, and is often used of other people. For instance, Peter is called by the same term when he suggests that Jesus' passion prediction is untrue. (Matthew 16:23) Peter is clearly not the same as Satan the Devi or possessed, but he is being adversarial. The word for anyone who is acting in the position of adversary is "satan" in Hebrew and Greek. The word has three meanings, not limited to a so-called spirit being that lives in the comical multi-level world devised by Dante Alighieri.
The Christians who wrote the New Testament books believe the Devil was a real person, but they didn't believe that all "satans" in the Old Testament or people who acted adversarial where one and the same.
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CalebInFloroda
And I write these things in total respect of those who hold separate views from me, DJS.
I have many companions who hold various beliefs, theist, non-theist, etc. None of them would I disrespect by name calling or teasing for just adding their own view or opinion to a discussion.
I don't not believe that the information I added is necessarily correct or the one and only view, just additional information to the discussion. I wasn't aware that such was unwelcomed or automatically circular reasoning or a reason to make odd "But Caleb, it is sweet that you came to the rescue of Ms. Caleb. I like that." comments.
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Simon
Which parts are we to believe and which to ignore as fantasy?
Exactly. The trouble with trying to reason with the religious is that they will lead you down a winding path where they admit that things aren't to be taken as literal accounts and that things are just examples but when you get to the end they claim it's all real, all needs to be believed and all followed.
They simply can't grasp that if you strip away many of these foundational assumption stories the whole edifice collapses in on itself. The entire story makes no sense. If the snake and the tree weren't real then what was the sacrifice for? What was Jesus for? What is any of the book for?
You can dismantle the bible one crappy myth story at a time but they still cling to the flotsam as though it will save them from the storm.