Caught quite a doozy at the meeting Thursday night... (page 2)

sacrebleu

Actually I heard the story of a man who survived inside a whale more recently.

When he got out his skin was bleached white (from stomach acid) and his eyes were light blue.

That would have made people sit up and notice him, huh?

Can't prove it. I should do some research I guess. Too full of Thanksgiving.

But if the Bible says it I believe it. If the JWs say it, it is BS unless they (rarely) agree.

sacrebleu

What a lame reason to believe something. What if God is lying again? What if God was lying when He said that it was impossible for Himself to lie? Totally lame. I think that is second only to the wondering why the meeting attendance was pxxx poor the night after the NBC report on the pedophile problem.

BluesBrother

Actually I heard the story of a man who survived inside a whale more recently.

Sacrebleur (Sp?).... The older versions of the 'All Scripture Is Inspired ' book (page 154) carried the story of a man in the nineteenth century who survived being swallowed by a whale. However the story has been debunked in modern times and it has been omitted from later versions of the "Inspired book"

I believe the story concerned a man named Bartleby or Bartlet or something similar ...but it is no longer considered authentic.

I have seen a display of the jawbones of a sperm whale..That one could certainly have swallowed a man. But survival? Only by the power of God, I suppose .................................

Leolaia

According to the man that gave this talk, we don't need to worry about whether it was possible for the Jonah story to be true (surviving in the stomach of a sea-going animal for three days without dying), it was true because God said it, and that's what proves it to be true.

So does that mean that there REALLY was a prodigal son, or a beggar named Lazarus who was taken up to the Bosom of Abraham, or that there really was a a real-life guy who was helped by a Samaritan? Or a mustard grain that really became the world's largest tree? Jesus said it, so it must be true!

This quote evidences a naiveté about literature....that a story must be historical in order to express truth. Admitting that a story is fictional, that there is fiction in the Bible, is somehow verbotten. But why? Everyone recognizes the parables of Jesus as fictional, as stories made up to illustrate moral points. That is no problem. But there is a strange reluctance to view Jonah (or other legendary stories in the Bible) in the same way.

In ancient times, there was no clear-cut division between fiction and non-fiction (as the Library of Congress, for example, maintains today). Even historiography contained passages freely written by the author (such as speeches) which represent what the author wants to attribute to the figure, or represent the point of view of the figure as conceived by the author.

bluebell

This quote evidences a naiveté about literature....that a story must be historical in order to express truth. Admitting that a story is fictional, that there is fiction in the Bible, is somehow verbotten. But why? Everyone recognizes the parables of Jesus as fictional, as stories made up to illustrate moral points. That is no problem. But there is a strange reluctance to view Jonah (or other legendary stories in the Bible) in the same way.

I never thought about it that way. I wonder why people are happy to accept some as fiction but say that others must be fact.

drew sagan

Along the lines of what Leolaia is saying I would add that IMO much of this comes out of the needs of western protestantism and 'sola scriptura'. Not that all protestants take such a literal view on everything, but it seems that from this atmosphere comes these rigid forms of Biblical literalism (i.e. genesis not a myth, story of johna is a historical account, ect.)

The JWs follow in this tradition of stating that if an account is found to be a myth, it is of no value and all is lost. Very black and white thinking. They are not the only group doing this today.