[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
(This bit is for Sandwich, mostly) One of the symbols used in Revelation is the kingdom of a thousand years, when Jesus Christ will rule over the earth, and we with him.  Some people understand this literally (see below for my opinions about that), while some understand "a thousand years" (correctly, in my opinion) according to the symbolic nature of the kind of literature that Revelation is written in.  By this view, saying "for a thousand years" in that context is much like saying "for, like, ever" in our common speech today.  If we wanted to be boring and accurate, we'd say "for a long time," but by using on of these other symbolic expressions we make things more interesting and meaningful.

Just a clarification here - these thousand years do not represent a literal "forever", as it does talk about the events that will occur immediately after the 1,000 years are over.

Also, Sesq, concerning literal meaning in the Bible, did you run across that whole thread a few months back about the literal 6 days of creation?

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Sandwich


Just a clarification here - these thousand years do not represent a literal "forever", as it does talk about the events that will occur immediately after the 1,000 years are over.

Yes.  

I was equating the metaphoric function, not the two particular metaphors themselves (or rather, metaphor on the one hand and simile on the other).

Also, Sesq, concerning literal meaning in the Bible, did you run across that whole thread a few months back about the literal 6 days of creation?

Nope, don't recall it.  

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Yes.  

I was equating the metaphoric function, not the two metaphors themselves.

Nope, don't recall it.  

Basically, there's a scientific way of looking at the 6 literal days of Creation as ~16 billion years, and vice-versa. Think the theory of relativity, connected with velocity and the Big Bang.

[phreak]

silly author, drugs are for cool people

[Carl]

you got it in your invox?

[Grey Wolf]

[Random Pointless Phylosophical Interlude Vaguely Having to Do with Sandwich's Last Post] Have you ever realized that the whole Creationism vs. Evolution thing is pointless? From my POV, Genesis is essentially symbolic in nature, and Evolution is a far more likely explanation.  However, I believe God (or insert one of the random other names from the Bible such as Yahweh, Jehovah, etc.) would be guiding the process. Not precisely, but vaguely. [/Random Pointless Phylosophical Interlude Vaguely Having to Do with Sandwich's Last Post]

But anyway, the person who wrote the Left Behind books is a complete and total nutcase.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Sandwich


Basically, there's a scientific way of looking at the 6 literal days of Creation as ~16 billion years, and vice-versa. Think the theory of relativity, connected with velocity and the Big Bang.

Mmm.  That was not in the mind of the author, so I have little use for it, really.  Since I don't think the original Hebrew audience took this as a literal tale, I see no reason to make it into one now.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
[Random Pointless Phylosophical Interlude Vaguely Having to Do with Sandwich's Last Post] Have you ever realized that the whole Creationism vs. Evolution thing is pointless? From my POV, Genesis is essentially symbolic in nature, and Evolution is a far more likely explanation.  However, I believe God (or insert one of the random other names from the Bible such as Yahweh, Jehovah, etc.) would be guiding the process. Not precisely, but vaguely. [/Random Pointless Phylosophical Interlude Vaguely Having to Do with Sandwich's Last Post]

Well, it used to be that Christians (probably still is, for the most part) couldn't concieve of how God could have created an ecological system that has evolved in some ways. Mainly their disbelief stemmed from the fact that, according to a literal view of the Bible, the universe is no more than ~6000-7000 years old, which certainly does not leave room for evolution to take place.

But with this new discovery, by a scientist named Gerald Schroder (he has a few books out, if anyone's interested), those 6 original and literal days of Creation, with every stage defined clearly (on the fourth day God created the sun and moon - our solar system, essentially) can be mapped with frightening accuracy to the scientific ~16-odd billion years the universe has been in existance. And it isn't a linear "one day = 2.6 billion years" correlation, either. It follow how time would have been percieved here on "Earth" (at the Earth's future locale, rather) from the moment of the Big Bang. The Law of Relativity states that as one moves faster, or the heavier a gravity well one is present in, the slower time passes from that POV.

So take an absolute position of rest relative to the point of the Big Bang: from that point, until now, ~16 billion years have passed. But here on Earth, because of the velocity from the Big Bang explosion, those ~16 billion years have passed as ~6-7000 years, with the majority of that time passing in the first 6 days.

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Mmm.  That was not in the mind of the author, so I have little use for it, really.  Since I don't think the original Hebrew audience took this as a literal tale, I see no reason to make it into one now.

The problem with that point of view is that if you stop taking various things in the Bible literally, there's no definition of where to stop. Did David literally slay Goliath with a mere stone from a slingshot, or was it an exaggerated battle story? Did God part the waters of the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to walk across on dry land or not? Did Satan appear as a physical snake to Eve, tempting her with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or not?

Did Jesus rise from the dead or not?

You see, there is great danger in dictating when you take the literal basis of your faith literally and when you don't. Look at the Jewish Rabbis of today. "...do not boil a kid {baby goat} in its mother's milk." They refuse to realize the simple direcness of that command, which was to prevent the Israelites from offering up sacrifices to foreign gods (which is, historically, just what that practice was, BTW). Instead, they have amplified it somehow into "Do not mix milk and meat." And living here, I see the pure bondage (quiet, Shrike! ) they are in because of that one thing.

Personally, I'd rather not be faced in heaven with God asking me just why I didn't take the 6 days to be literal... "That's what I told Moses to write, isn't it?"

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Sandwich

The problem with that point of view is that if we stop taking various things in the Bible literally, there's no definition of where to stop. Did David literally slay Goliath with a mere stone from a slingshot, or was it an exaggerated battle story? Did God part the waters of the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to walk across on dry land or not? Did Satan appear as a physical snake to Eve, tempting his with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or not?

Did Jesus rise from the dead or not?

Ah, but you misunderstand my reasons.  I make such decisions 1) tentatively and 2) based on genre.  I do not make my decisions based on whether I think such and such is possible, or fits well with modern Western culture's worldview, or anything of the sort.  I do not judge the text; it judges me.  And because I take that very, very seriously, I want to pay very careful attention to what it is, does, and says, and assume nothing beforehand.  

Where the text presents itself as historical narrative, I take it as historical narrative.  Where it presents itself as poetic prophecy, I take it as poetic prophecy.  And where it presents itself as songs of prayer and worship, I take it as songs of prayer and worship.  Do not think I am throwing away what I find "inconvenient."  On the contrary, I am letting the text dictate its own terms, and going from there.

The whole project of trying to see how Genesis 1 is "really" a veiled scientific description of the Big Bang and subsequent events 1) is an unwitting capitulation to the notion that collapses truth into nothing more than mere empirical fact, and 2) completely ignores the text's own genre, instead imposing modern Western categories and mindset onto it because we don't appreciate what the author is doing and the forms he is using.  In effect, this kind of project is allowing the current worldview to judge God's Word, instead of God's Word to judge the worldview.

I don't have a problem saying that Genesis 1 isn't literal, because I don't buy the tacit assumption of Western culture that the only things with truth value are those one can put on a scale.  Western culture is just plain wrong on that.  Looking at the kind of literature Genesis 1 is, the author pretty clearly never meant to write a "scientific discourse" on the creation procedure, and intended to do something else entirely with the text.  

In short, God inspired this text in order to reveal his truth to us, so we have to take this text seriously and on its own terms.  If it contains some inspired mythology (that isn't a bad word), that means that God can inspire mythology, too, and moreover had some truth to convey to us that is best and most perfectly conveyed to us in just that way. The Bible is my norm and no other, so I want to know what it says, how it says it, not what 21st century Western culture thinks it should say or the way it thinks it should say it.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian

*snip*
 

Gotcha - I just thought it cool that the modern scientific theory on the begnning of the universe actually correlates with a literal take on the Biblical account of creation, in complete contrast to the previous norm of "science contradicts Bible contradicts science..."