Official Bible Interpretation Thread

I'm not judging you, my friend. Perhaps seeing 'I'm not a Christian' in your answer to a post just kinda confused me. Prompted my query, that's for certain.

The purported words and actions in the short ministry of the Christ are contained pretty much entirely in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. For Christians, these are at least the primer for understanding His way (and in my opinion the entirety of Christianity - they're all that's truly relevant; but hey - that's me - a whole bunch of people are aghast at this assertion)

Like I said, you're welcome etc etc

 

When you focus on the sayings of Jesus, a different picture emerges from the one we normally associate with christianity. There is a mountain of doctrine derived from the commentary of others, which really is quite removed from the teachings of Christ.

 

It's all good. I personally feel that religion is applicable to myself in this regard. My only real motive is to know the truth.

"What is truth?" - Pontius Pilate

I think it's safe to assume that none of us currently know the whole truth. I also think it's safe to assume that anyone who thinks they know the whole truth is presumptuous. My objective is not to understand christianity. Christianity is man made (just my opinion) through the assumed understanding of the books you mentioned. My objective is to understand Jesus Christ. Only because I believe that Jesus knew the truth. Jesus "knew" god. God is love. Part of the only real means (by way of religion) of getting closer to the truth and having a greater understanding of the nature of love is through understanding Jesus. At least what he was all about. Not to be rude, but I don't bother concerning myself with doctrines and dogmas with roots that stem from anything outside of truth and love. In my opinion if it doesn't fall into one of those rings then it's just static. Unfortunately we sometimes have to listen over the static in order to hear those voices.

So. I can start my own thread about the nature of Jesus. That could prove to be semantic. I'd also be risking opening the floodgates of pointed fingers and "thou shall not(s)"

It's a difficult position to be in. How many non-christians want to sit around discussing Jesus? How many christians are open to the idea that Jesus may not be who they think he was?

So for now it seems this thread is the most convenient place to be.

 

Well, I thought I'd lost my last post to my clumsy fingers and then hastily retyped it, so anxious was I to explain apologetically to you lunaverse, and ended with a double post. Maybe I should take a break from my keyboard for awhile.

 

After saying this he then says to the Jews:

'I find no crime in him' (John 18:38)

Seems like he knew what was right but he didn't follow through, otherwise, why would he say he found no fault in him?

He probably had the best education that one could receive in those days and must have delighted in intellectualism. Even with all this, however, he still knew he was sending an innocent man to death.

 

Because he was torn. His intellect knew better than to believe what people were saying Jesus was, but his conscience wouldn't let him accuse Jesus because he was probably either afraid of the reprocussions (if Jesus was who he said he was) or he found nothing really wrong with what Jesus was promoting (peace and love).

 

There's nothing to apologize for. You've done nothing.

 

But can you see what I mean by the context of the gospels? I believe that it's trying to make a point that while we know what is right and wrong, we don't follow through with it. That he feared the people rather than God, or maybe you would call it conscience. He choose the people and the repercussion instead of his conscience.

The other point that his intellect blinded him of the truth and this is partly what it is illustrating.

Pontius Pilate knew that he was promoting peace and love, so how can an intellectual such as him rationalize what peace and love is? Many would say that it is a bunch of hooey and many will have different interpretations of what love is. Philosophers and others are still debating this today. How can he be so sure of himself? I agree with you partly, the part where you said he was torn. He was torn. He was torn between what he thought and was taught to be true and what he knew in his heart was true and was torn in respects to who he should fear more? God or man.

This is a reoccurring theme throughout the Bible. "The beginning to wisdom is the fear of the lord", and I think it makes sense that this theme would follow into the Gospels and would use situations such as this to illustrate the fullness of the point.

Frankly, I think his questioning was his way to be coy with Jesus. A way to dodge the truth.

 

I feel the most salient part of this story is the crowds choice when offered the choice between innocence and guilt. It is a picture of how god's children "crucify" each other through accusation. Pilate found no guilt in him, yet the people, his brethren condemned him. It is an allegory of mans relationship to god. It is not god that condemns us but brothers that condemn each other and themselves because we create in the manner that our creator creates. God created man and saw that it was good, very good. This is god's judgment of man. Yet if I tell some they are innocent they will absolutely insist that they are guilty.

 

I don't believe that those that wished Jesus' crucifixion were God's children because there were others that were not accusing Jesus of all sorts of things.

I see it as a crying out to God. They rebelled against God because they do not wish to be a part of God and are asking to be removed. So God, being unconditionally loving, will give them their requests. What we want for ourselves is based upon what we give out.

 

Yes. But this asks a bigger question then. Did this really happen or is it a scene with characters from a great and fantastic book all about the nature of man and morality?

I agree. But I can also see how it may be a situation where the doubter is being made an imbecile of.


In the beginning adam and eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Consider this...

Genesis 3
1Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.


Adam was an example of the most basic human nature, as you said, a recurring theme in the bible; temptation. (It was eve initially but I'm going to discuss adam for the sake of this argument)

Adam gave into temptation and ate from the tree. Temptation is the most basic human nature. "I am hungry, I will eat", "I should be getting some work done, but I'd rather be reading" etc. Sexual temptation is within every single man, no matter how "good" he is. So Adam was the example used to illustrate this human nature. Temptation. Temptation is found throughout the bible.

Then in the new testament Jesus comes along. He is without sin. After being baptized and going into the desert he does not give into temptation. Thus proving (for the sake of the story) his perfection. He has ignored the most basic and strongest human nature. He went right where Adam went wrong. Thus breaking the cycle and becoming a holy, perfect human. God incarnate.

You see, you can't have good without bad, love without hate, holiness without evil. Jesus is used to contrast the imperfect human (Adam, a.k.a all of mankind) This is what makes Jesus stand out. He does not give in to human desires. Thus he is seen as better than human. Godlike.

If the story of Adam had never gone the way it did, would Jesus be as great? Compared to what would he be great? If Adam and Eve had never eaten from the tree, Jesus wouldn't be necessary.

Jesus (good) was used to contrast Adam (bad). The story had to be complete. It's needed resolution.


It said "ye shall be as gods" if they ate from the tree. The only thing that made them less than god is that they didn't know what god knew. Until they ate from the tree. Then they became godless because they didn't need him as they knew everything at that point and could fend for themselves. (The idea behind the saying "God is dead"; one should become one's own god by living by their own morals.)

So they were kicked out of the garden as they didn't need god anymore. They possessed all the knowledge he did since they ate from the tree. God wanted to be needed. If one doesn't need god, for what do they owe him?

Jesus was considered (only one of the reasons) god incarnate because he gave people a reason to need god again. Love. The world was greatly without love and primative. Love is the one thing man needs from god that man cannot give himself.

Man can give himself lust, sex, desire, and want, but he cannot give himself love. Hence "god is love". You cannot give yourself god. Just as you cannot decide to love yourself. You respect yourself, but you cannot love yourself the way you love another. You accept god, you accept love. We were given love and now we experience it. Why? Because Jesus died, saved us all from sin (thanks to adam and eve) and so now we can live and love.

One can see how the smaller stories within the book necessitate one another. Thus it only ever comes to stand on its own. Coming into question at the same time.

 

"Forgive them, they know not what they do." Jesus used the most extreme examples to demonstrate the truth of what was happening in the world. You see how even in this discussion we convict, "I don't believe that those that wished Jesus' crucifixion were god's children". Why do we convict, so that we can uphold our traditions.

 

I believe that it's both a book describing the nature of man and a depiction of events that happened, but told in the perspective of Gods penmen. The manuscripts that we have for the Gospels and the rest of the Bible greatly surpasses the reliability of all other manuscripts in human history. What we have to make up the Bible is more reliable then the secondary sources for the existence of Socrates, but all historians agree that contemporary sources are not crucial to prove reliability. Since we can believe Socrates existed with good reasons to believe so, then there is even more reason to believe that the Bible that we have today is also accurate and reliable. Aside from eyewitness testimony, we have extra biblical evidences to show the reliability of the accounts described in the Gospels. There is much more to this and I am not as knowledgeable on this subject but those are the fundamentals.

Thank you for giving me your point of view. It's interesting.

But I have to say that my interpretation of Genesis is very different from yours. I agree with you that God gives us temptation but he always gives us a way out of our temptation as giving us the freedom to choose, because love gives choices.

The tree to me represents the knowledge of Good and Bad. This is something that God owned and asked his creation not to pick of its fruit. To me, this is another way of saying that the fruit was Gods morality; What is means to be moral and what is right and wrong. God owns this understanding.

Then the serpent shows up and tempts Eve. The temptation that he gives to Eve is that she can be as God and CHOOSE what is right and wrong for herself instead of what is right and wrong based on Gods say-so. Once she was tempted she had it in her heart the desire to choose for herself what is right and wrong (Something God owns and decides for us and we follow out of faithful obedience). Once she had this desire in her heart she then began to see the fruit as desireable, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise". This was not a desire that God had given her, but a desire that Satan had successfully won her over on, but it was still her choice to refuse.

The fruit itself was not magical, but the intent behind A&E's actions was seen by God as a choice that they did not want the morality God had offered them. When they chose these things, God had set a curse on the serpent and he had set a curse (to me God's curses are blessings in disguise) on man. He foresaw what their choices would lead to so one of the things that he does is that he puts fear of man in the wild beasts (probably to protect them from sinful man).

When man had chosen this, it lead to both a death of their spirituality and eventually their bodies, because with sin comes death. When Eve bore a child, her first child was named cain and his name in Hebrew is called "possession" because man had literally brought 'possession' into the world by possessing for themselves their own morality.

Ever since then, God has been trying to bring man back to what he originally planned for us. One of those things was to create the nation of the Jews and to discipline them in the ways of God. If he had not done this, then it would have created a wormhole of sin and the entire earth would fall back into sin and destruction. So God had to do what was necessary, so as to create a habital place for the messiah to be born and raised in. They would tutor him and the rest of the nations as to the things of God. Now that God had successfully disciplined a people of His choosing (stopping all obstacles the prevented Israels success) he then set out to spread the knowledge of God to "strangers" as well, which are the gentiles so that this 'discipline' and knowledge can be spread out to ALL nations and not just to Israel. With this, the movements are in place to bring man back to what was once lost and we are in those moments and Jesus replaces Adam as our father because originally Adam was our father, but only if God adopts us and only if we choose to be adopted.

Another thing to add about possession, is that Jesus asks us to give up our possessions. To me, this means that we should hand over the possessions of morality that we had been given by A&E and hand it over to God and accept Gods morality so that we may possess that instead.

 

Do you not see that as biased though? Or can you at least see how others may? It's like saying that there is religious text that can prove other religious text. It's like defining a word using the word itself.

Magic - That which is magical by nature and not pertaining to science or religion.

Do you get what I'm trying to say?

That's actually quite logical from a religious stand-point. I can see how that would make sense to people.

But again, how do you know (how can you tell) which parts are metaphor and which are history? How is it one can justify this mincing?

I didn't know that about Cain. That's very interesting to note. Thank you for sharing.

 

I get what you are trying to say, and I can see how using a text to prove a text to be biased. But it's not just about the circular reasoning, I was also mentioning how non-religious text shows the reliability of the manuscripts so that we can be confident enough to say that what people read thousands of years ago is the same that we are reading today. The wording may have changed, but the overall message remained. For example, we can write out a poem in two different ways while maintaining the same meaning behind it. The Bible has been shown to prove that the meaning has not shifted despite the many harsh conditions that it went through.

There is also the detailed proofs within the text itself. If one deeply studied scriptures, then it can be shown that the same vision has remained throughout the Bible and this can be proven to the reader in time. If the candor and vision remains the same, despite it being written by many different people which many never met each other, then its logical to conclude that despite it being written by many people over a span of time, it is still written by one mind.


A book by God to man would possess these qualities imo.

Also, while many have tried to prove over and over that the history that the Bible describes is not accurate, it has been proven to be just the opposite. Recently we found a pottery shard describing "The house of david". Although this does not prove the house of david existed, it does prove that the Hebrew language is hundreds of years older than previously thought, and that has important implications.

I take the position, that just because we can't prove many of the things in the Bible as historically accurate, we will prove it eventually because the track record gives me enough credibility to give me a faith that it will continue this trend.

Thank you.

That is a very loaded question and it does get extremely detailed, but I have come to understand that it is really pretty basic when we get down to it. Let me give you an example how some things can be understood as metaphor while others are not. Throughout the Gospels Jesus lets the reader and his disciples know when he is speaking metaphor and when he is speaking plainly. In fact, he even mentions when he will speak plainly and when he will speak in parables.

Also, if the story in genesis is just a parable describing human nature or whatnot, then why would Jesus die? When we read the Gospels it seems clear that Jesus believed in a literal genesis. And if we don't trust Jesus' word on the matter (Jesus is supposed to be the messiah and know the bible in and out as he is the official interpretor and owner of it), we can just reason whether or not genesis is true, and there are other reasons to believe so. Another reason to believe so are the decisions that God makes throughout the Bible and reasoning as to his motives. What is he trying to do here? Why is he creating a nation? Why did he flood the earth and save some?

In my experience, if we assume that these are parables and nothing more (I believe a parable can also be something that actually happened) then we can run into many contradictions and confusions as to God's motives.

Such as, "God does not lie". So if God does not lie, then why would it say something happened in the Bible if it didn't? Was God talking to himself in the Garden? Etc. But if we see God as helping mankind to get back to what was once lost, then Jesus' actions and the actions of God throughout the Bible begin to make sense. Usually many Christians and non-christians love to pick and choose what the Bible says. But I believe that seeing the book as the whole helps in painting a picture of who God is, where mankind is heading towards, and what is the end goal.

In the end, I believe that it is important to play the Devil's advocate in what the Bible is claiming. It's claim is that it's been written by one mind and that mind was God's. So why not treat this book as any other and try to examine it in that way?

No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.

There are many such interesting notes like that in the Bible. Like in the Book of Ruth. One is named "Bitter" and the other "Sweetness".

Sorry if I rambled on a bit.

 

I will see your question. I don't think there is any corroborating evidence that there was such a roman tradition of releasing jewish prisoners.
Jesus was about restoring the Holy condition of the children of god, and the Holy condition of the extant world. "Whatever is loosed on earth is also loosed in heaven", another example that "heaven and earth" are diverging perspectives of the same phenomena.

 

I will give you an example of, where in the absence of privileged information, translators substituted words because they had no knowledgable reference in their own language, (new wine)


In the lords prayer there is the word supersubstansalis that was translated as daily bread. The translators could not comprehend the meaning of "super substance". So as a result we have an anomaly in premise, why would Jesus tell us to pray for "daily bread", when he says your father knows you need these things, clothing and food, but instead pray like this: Our father who art in heaven.....

 

This has been my experience as well and it causes great confusion to an "outsider" such as myself. Many christians I've met, and the different churches I went to growing up have said different things, said this is more or less important than this or that. I have a few cousins (my entire family is very religious, my brother and I excluded) who believe very much in the word of the bible, except for creation. This distortion in unity represents a confusion within the community of christians, which gives reason to doubt much of their logic, beliefs, and writings.

To quote my beloved Nietzsche on the matter-

"When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands."

This I think becomes difficult for the literal/rationalist mind. At least in my case.

Not at all. Despite varying beliefs we are all here for the same reason. Good conversation and the pursuit of truth. Write as much as you'd like.

 

In my opinion it is amazing that the truth is preserved despite the many attempts to obscure it.

What singular vision is that?

If one practices the sayings of Christ then that practice will demonstrate to you that the words of Christ are true.

There are things about the bible that everyone can agree on.
The bible is a book. The books of the bible were scribed by many hands over time. The current collection of writings known as the holy bible was canonized over three hundred years after the corporal life of Christ.

If we can agree on those things, then perhaps we can move on to "official interpretation" of content.

 

I understand. Somewhat congruent with the idea of the story of adam and eve and Jesus coming along to restore the damage done and choose the right path when tempted whereas adam chose the wrong path.

The world after adam and eve was supposedly imperfect and what not because of their down fall. Jesus restored things by coming and promoting love. However, we still don't know for a fact that he was a real person.