How I understand bible craziness in scripture

[jennifer_bloom]

To me the things in the bible that sound like nonsense are allegories and symbols and examples of greater truths

They are not to be taken literally

As an example - When Jacob says the eyes of Judah are darker than wine - It means his vision is more restrictive than worship

When Moses says you shall not boil a goat in its mother’s milk - it means don’t bait people with situations you know they will be too biased to handle

When Jesus said do not give dogs what is sacred, it means do not share spiritual opportunities with desolate hearts who will oppose and mock what you have to say

When David said break the arm of the wicked - it means destroy the abilities of the greedy

When Solomon said water from a distant land is refreshing it means your compassion and understanding can be extremely useful to somebody who has never experienced what you have

When Isaiah says instead of wood I will bring you bronze It means you will do soul work and not emotional or physical work

The bible is allegorical

[hahahmm]

There are many meanings to every passage. The people who claim to understand it all have read it the least.


Checkout J Vernon McGee’s through the bible stuff sometime.

[Jjpayne]

I totally agree! That's the way I've been taught to view it myself

[Jjpayne]

Thank you for the mho 😊

[Altree]

Pastoral studies major here. There are allegorical sections to the Bible but much of the Bible is also literal. For instance the songs of Solomon is a book of poetry, wome of the poems are about things actually happening to him, there is also poetry that is very metaphorical as well. The book of proverbs is proverbial. However most of Genesis is literal. This doesn't mean that there aren't aome metaphirs in it as well. The boiling a calf in its mothers milk was literal. However when you read romans it becomes clear that on this side of the cross that rule doesn't exactly matter anymore. While the law as in what is sin, still matters, it matters in a different way. Its a lot to study and understand though. Noah's flood is definitely literal as there is plenty of scientific data to show a global flood has occurred. Mathew, Luke, Mark and John are all literal however Jesus speaks in parables within these books. The parables are metaphors. Its also really important to understand the historical context of verses as well. For instance in most of the Bible God is against divorce however at one point in the Old testament God commands it under certain circumstances. The reason being that Jesus wasn't born yet and needed to be born in Bethlehem in a Jewish culture, however Jewish culture was dieing because the Jews were married overwhelming to pagans. So in this context it became necessary. There are also many things in the Old testament God says not to do that seems weird to us, but back then people would do those things as a way of worshipping pagan gods. However on this side of the cross we have Christian liberty, which we are told not to abuse. Basically it is now up to us to figure out what will lead us into sin. Rather than relying on jewish custom to keep us away from sin. This is also why some things are sins for some people and not others and other things are sins for everyone. For instance if drunkenness is a temptation of your drinking at all can be a sin for you, however if you have a firm grip on controlling your liquor intake, then having alcohol isn't a sin, only drunkeness is. My point is different books have different literary styles. Luke was a historian so take his accounts as such. Luke also wrote the book of Acts by the way.

[Yaaten]

There's NO scientific evidence to show there was a global flood. It's allegory, it didn't actually happen. That much is obvious.

[Altree]

There is a lot of scientific evidence for it actually. Especially when you consider the possibility of millions of years being a fallacy. You see Mt. St. Helens has shown us that over a really short period of time a small version of the grand canyon was able to form with many layers of rock in just a few hours from a natural disaster, (which many would have occurred in the event of a global flood) not to mention pyroclastic flows and regular mud slides function very similarly, later snowpacks melted carving through the rock over a very quick period of time. Meaning if there was a global flood it could easily explain the creation of the grand canyon without millions of years. Mt. St. Helens also disproves carbon dating to an extent since we know when it errupted but the newly formed rock is when tested shows to be 350,000 years old when we know they are from 1980. Furthermore there are hundreds of of global flood stories, from different cultures who hadn't had contact with eachother according to many of out preconceptions of course if they were all descended from noah, this would more easily explain this than each culture coming up with one on its own. Also, fossils have been shown to only come about with quick immediate burial, as anything buried slowly overtime gets eaten and eroded. A global flood would have been enough to kill enough animals rapidly to give us our fossil records as they are today comprised of mostly marine life and very few other animals by comparison which would make sence of a rapid water burial. With carbon dating out of the way there is literally no reason to think such fossils are millions of years old, especially when even evolutionary scientists admit that it gets less accurate the further back you go. This is a rather unreliable dating technique. So while technically its not proven there is a lot of evidence for it which I have only given a small sample of here. There is a lot more. The Bible is not allegorical as a whole.

[Belgie]

The bible is only taken literally by a small subsect of christians in the protestant branches. Catholics for example, teach that the bible is not inerrant. It is in fact one of the main differences between the catholics and the many many many protestant subsects.

[pajamasam]

She lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

- Ezekiel 23:20

As much as i understand that lots of the bible is not meant to be taken at 100% face value, and can be much more useful as metaphors and allegory, there are parts of it that are complete nonsense that isn't useful to anyone.

[jennifer_bloom]

The genitals symbolize vulnerabilities and donkeys symbolize pacifists and emissions symbolize purpose and horses symbolize productiveness

[pajamasam]

Thats a very interesting take but im of the belief that the Bible is simply talking about a woman who was horny.

[WhiteGlaze]

Pretty sure its a horny woman. Thats accurate

[WhiteGlaze]

It literally talks of discharge as in semen. In modern times its like her eyes are prowlin at that dick swinging, a fierce and speedy gusher.

[nachosaresexy]

The Bible is pretty interesting. One random example...

David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king's son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.

How metal is that?

[genericname85]

very easy. it were people that were ignorant about most things, cause the technological status quo was just not there to know any of the stuff, so they would make stuff up to explain what they didn't get. that was very normal back then.

today we don't normally do that. specially not, when we have ways of actually knowing.

[Yaaten]

No, that's not it.

[genericname85]

@Yaaten what is it then?

[Yaaten]

Well, first off, you need to take into consideration the considerable differences in language, outlook and the overall psychology of the people who lived over an approx. 1500 year timescale. For a modern-day reader to interpret the Bible literally simply reveals their lack of understanding of both it and it's development. You simply cannot expect the people of, say the fifth century B. C., to be anything at all like us, and such differences will be reflected in the literature they produced in their time.

[Yaaten]

In other words, your "explanation" is hopelessly simplistic and naive.

[genericname85]

@Yaaten i do agree with what you said in the longer answer. in fact i think it would support what i said. i however do not understand how what you said leads to the conclusion that my explanation was hopelessly simplistic and naive.

[Yaaten]

"They would make up stuff to explain what they didn't get" - What makes you say that? How do you know? Why would anyone just make up stories, knowing full well that they were not actually true? Where did you get this bizarre idea from?
And what does "the technological status quo" have to do with anything?

[genericname85]

@Yaaten dude what do you think all those different gods in older religions come from? gods of fertility, gods of war, gods of "the weather"... there was a god for pretty much everything, cause that's what people did. they made up explanations, cause they didn't know better. the "one omnipotent god" concept emerged from all the particular specialized god ideas.

it's ideas that evolve (not sure if you "believe" in evolution but even ideas are subject to it)

sothere are a lot of examples for where you clearly see that people just made stuff up cause they didn't know better.

the example i like most is the idea of a "soul". people did not understand how the air around us interacts with our bodies. they did not understand, that metabolic processes happen in our body, that metabolize o2 and emit co2 as a process. it is litterally the "exhaust gas" of the human body, if you see the body as a machine...

back then people did not know that. they figured everyone that breathes is alive and people that don't breathe either die or are dead. so they believed whatever makes us alive is some mystical power that enters us with the first breath (soul) and leaves us with the last breath (ghost).

[genericname85]

even today people tend not to know, that we litterally need air much the same like a mashine does. to alow the "burning" of our fuel.

did you know that if you diet to lose weight, all the "mass" that you lose leaves your body through "air" that you breahte out? the stuff you shit and piss out of your body are just "trash that was not used by your metabolism".

[purplepoppy]

So basically just interpret it in whatever way suits your cause.

[DJB72]

Definitely not. Scripture needs to be understood in the context of the whole Bible, as well as the nuances of the original languages it was written in and the understanding of the writers.

Even the English translations need to be understood in the context of the time they were produced. The translation done for the old Authorised King James translation is 400 years old now, and was based on Latin translations of the Aramaic and Greek made by the Catholic monks over the previous 1500 years.

Interpretation is a very complicated process. And yes, there are people (like Trump's supporters) who try to twist scriptures to support their prejudice. The Confederates tried to twist it to support enslaving everyone whose skin was darker than theirs, to allow them to beat, maim and kill other humans for daring to try and refuse sexual demands from someone they weren't (or even sometimes were) married to. For 2000 years mankind has tried to justify man's inhumanity to man by twisting the Bible and trying to make it say what they want. That's why it needs to be taken in context of the entire scripture

[WhiteGlaze]

Sure, because that changes it so much. Look once I see the world actually falling apart and actually coming to an end then I'll take what I've been foced to learn about seriously.

[Yaaten]

@DJB72 And who on this Earth can do all of that? If the Bible really is so complicated, then it's also completely useless, because no one can even begin to understand it.

[DJB72]

@Yaaten I've been a Christian 35 of my 48 years on this planet. My understanding is deeper now than it was, but I've been able to begin to understand what the Bible says and that understanding deepens all the time.

St Paul actually says in 1 Corinthians 13 that in this world we only see puzzling reflections in a mirror, meaning that while we're on this earth we can't fully understand God because our sin prevents it.

[WhiteGlaze]

Yes seems full of glue sticking you to it reaffirming your faith after all the chaos in the scripture that would otherwise sound insane. I see how it lines up but honsestly could say it's the book that brought us to this point if you look at it by that perspective

[velocicraptor]

Yeah. I refuse to believe a single thing in that book. Not knocking on ya or anything but I'm living how I want and no all powerful being or old scripture will prevent me from doing so.

[Anonymous]

Why, they just don't write what they actually mean?

Why you need dictionary for it?

I'm not religious...

[Yaaten]

Yes, why doesn't EVERYONE just say what they mean and mean what they say? The world wouldn't be so confusing if everyone were just straightforward and honest, and there were no 'hints', 'double meanings' and all of the other absolute CRAP we have to put up with!

[Kiss_Me]

Good observations. Thanks for the post.

[rp52077]

hi the bible is gods word

[Pete671]

perfectly said,