It's called "holy" before its impact (explosion) you see. I can't remember if it killed that rabbit, though.

It seems that most looked to philosophy for ethics. Epicureanism and Stoicism were quite popular among the elite during the Empire. — Ciceronianus

What about the ordinary folks?

It's called "holy" before its impact (explosion) you see. I can't remember if it killed that rabbit, though — Ciceronianus

True. Shakespeare is called profound whether it affects you or not.

If Shakespeare or some poet has an impact on you, are you a passive, blank slate which is blown to tiny bits by the words?

I don't know if I'd hang too much on the way people talk about holiness.

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."

It did kill the rabbit, the holy handgranade, after it had been lobbed on the count of three. Then the party gaily entered the caverns.

how could the authors of the ancient texts have taken the text literally — Hanover

Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents.

If you read an old Indian text and it says something like "permeat your thoughts with goodwill as you permeat soap with water", what do you imagine by that? Back then, they had bath powder, which, prior to use, had to be mixed with water and thoroughly kneaded, like dough, to get a dough-like substance with which then people washed themselves.
"I slipped on soap" would not be a coherent sentence to a person back then, nor is it for modern people who use only liquid soap.

Then, of course, translation issues. Things can get lost and added in translation. For example, in my native language, the word for "moth" is the same as one of the words for "witch". In my native language, just from a sentence that means "At night, we sat at the fire, and sometimes, [witches] would visit us", it's not clear whether the word refers to witches or moths. Context is needed.


If the reader doesn't have a broad knowledge of etymology and cultural history, they miss out on such things and instead look for alternative explanations (such as the literal-metaphorical distinction) which only lead them astray.

The written word back then and all the stories they told were doubtfully for the same reasons we use them today, which is to accurately document and archive information for the public record. These folks were trying to figure out how their world worked and they came up with all sorts of fantistical tales, none of which they really took literally. If they meant for them to be taken literally, they wouldn't have had multiple different stories describing the same events. — Hanover

Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers.

We can then work through which explanation is more likely in each case.

The problem is that the more one disregards them, or interprets them, or treat them as metaphorical, the less "holy" they seem to be.
— Ciceronianus

But what you say hasn't been borne out. What has happened is the opposite, which is that the more they've been interpreted, the more they've been venerated. Jewish interpretation of the Torah has been imaginative for thousands of years and it continues to define a culture. — Hanover

What Ciceronianus said has been borne out -- for those who don't already believe.

It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them.

This is my experience as well. If I read and try to understand a sacred text that I don't already believe in, the text becomes more and more trivial to me. I have seen that when people who already believe read their sacred texts, their faith increases, their sense of the sacredness of the text increases.

Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents. — baker

That's not why. The reason the text has inconsistent accounts of the same stories is because it was pieced together from various writings by a single editor. That's the prevailing theory among religious scholars and there's substantial support for that theory.

Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers. — baker

The creation story (story #1 dealing with the 7 days of creation). The creation story (story #2 dealing with the Garden of Eden). The ark story (story #1 dealing with 2 of each animal coming aboard). The ark story (story #2 dealing with 7 clean animals coming aboard and 2 unclean animals coming aboard).

That's four stories if you want to get started there. It's clearly etiological folklore.

It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them. — baker

I don't know what you mean by "profit from them." There are people with PhDs in religious scholarship who don't believe the texts are sacred. I don't think they would agree they've not profited from their efforts.

This is my experience as well. If I read and try to understand a sacred text that I don't already believe in, the text becomes more and more trivial to me. I have seen that when people who already believe read their sacred texts, their faith increases, their sense of the sacredness of the text increases. — baker

True. I've seen the same phenomenon with believers reading Mein Kampf.

I think it is an open question if when Maimonides denied the physicality of God and interpreted all physical aspects of the divine, whether this elevated the status of the "holy" or whether something primitive and fundamental was lost. — Fooloso4

Where do you date the theory of the incorporeality of God? Philo is 1,000 years before Maimonides, but it might be sooner. I point this out because I think it's a pretty ancient concept.

Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents.
— baker

That's not why. — Hanover

I was addressing your point about those old stories not being taken literally by their writers.

Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers.
— baker

The creation story (story #1 dealing with the 7 days of creation).

If they believed God is very powerful (and they apparently did), then I think it's likely it seemed entirely realistic to them that God would create the world and everything on it in seven solar days. I see no reason to think they didn't take the creation story literally.
Same with creation by God's word.

The decisive factor here is that they believed that God is very powerful.

The creation story (story #2 dealing with the Garden of Eden).

Which part do you mean? About Eve being made out of Adam's rib, or Adam and Eve being the parents of humanity?

As for the rib story, on account of their belief that God is very powerful, I, again, see no problem with taking it literally.
Also, if "rib" had a special meaning that is now lost to us, this adds another possible explanation for literal reading.

As for the second one, if Adam is taken to mean 'male ancestors of humanity' and Eve 'female ancestors of humanity', as we can gather from the context, there's no problem. The word "Adam" can be a personal name, or it can be a general noun meaning 'man' or 'human'. "Eve" cal alsobe a personal name, but the word literally means 'living being'. There are a few unspoken steps in this story (esp. the one about how incest was avoided). I can imagine they can be filled in if we would have more knowledge about origin narratives in those times (e.g. it seems most illustrative to explain the origin of a species by focusing on one couple).

The ark story (story #1 dealing with 2 of each animal coming aboard). The ark story (story #2 dealing with 7 clean animals coming aboard and 2 unclean animals coming aboard).

You need to be more specific. Are you talking about the size of the ark and how to build it; the actual number of animals; logistic problems with having so many different animals in one place; ...?

It's clearly etiological folklore.

And beavers used to be considered fish and thus suitable to be eaten on Fridays in the Catholic Church. Nowadays, we call it "etiological folklore", back then, it was science or common knowledge (and something else was considered "etiological folklore", although they probably didn't have this term for it).

Given the kind of knowledge of the world they probably had back then, it seems entirely plausible to me that the biblical stories were entirely realistic to them (!) and that they didn't take them metaphorically.

It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them.
— baker

I don't know what you mean by "profit from them."

Profit spiritually, in terms of being closer to God, having a better understanding for God, having a better reverence for God.

There are people with PhDs in religious scholarship who don't believe the texts are sacred. I don't think they would agree they've not profited from their efforts.

How do you think those people have profited from their efforts? In the sense of having a theme for their academic research and obtaining tenure?

But is their effect on us, or some of us, what makes them "holy"?
— Ciceronianus

What else? — Janus

No, it's their source that is holy, and because of their source, they are holy in and of themselves.

However, whether a particular person can recognize them as holy or not depends on this person's purity "of heart" or lack thereof.

What about the ordinary folks? — baker

I don't know. As far as I'm aware, the records we have relate only to persons of status, wealth and power when it comes to such things.

It did kill the rabbit, the holy handgranade, after it had been lobbed on the count of three. Then the party gaily entered the caverns. — god must be atheist

Thank you. That was a pretty nasty rabbit.

Where do you date the theory of the incorporeality of God? Philo is 1,000 years before Maimonides, but it might be sooner. I point this out because I think it's a pretty ancient concept. — Hanover

Sometime between the Babylonian exile and the Second Temple. But Maimonides thought it necessary to make such ideas clear.

The decisive factor here is that they believed that God is very powerful. — baker

That's deriving a theme from the story, but it doesn't show the historicity of the events. The point I've made is that there are inconsistent accounts in the Bible that render historical accuracy impossible, so unless you're willing to posit the ancients were incapable of identifying those inconsistencies, you have to conclude the purpose of the stories was not to convey factual accuracy, but it was to convey a particular theme, exactly as you've noted.

Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event.

Sometime between the Babylonian exile and the Second Temple. But Maimonides thought it necessary to make such ideas clear. — Fooloso4

The temple housed God, so the incorporeality question wasn't fully resolved, but obviously the tension had begun regarding that issue.

So a holy book would be holy even if human beings ceased to exist then?

I think that's right. We might say (granting for the sake of argument that they stem from a holy source but being books, via a human author and hence via the human author's sense of holiness) that they are intrinsically holy, but would they be holy if human beings were extincted?

Rather than saying then, that they are contingently holy, we could say that, since the human contribution, both in virtue of creation and reception, is essential to holiness, that they are potentially holy. This ties in with the idea that God needs us as much as we need God.

As an aside on a somewhat different but related tangent, have you seen the Amazon Prime series American Gods? The premise there is that gods are created by the human imagination and that they have a real existence and life as long as there remain those who worship them.

Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event. — Hanover

Sounds like the infinite regress of Marvel superhero origin stories.

The temple housed God, so the incorporeality question wasn't fully resolved, but obviously the tension had begun regarding that issue. — Hanover

I don't think such questions are ever really resolved though. While it may be that most today will understand this figuratively, the idea of God's presence is still common. When pressed some may deny that it is a physical presence and appeal to something like energy, which they think is non-physical.

Some disputes that come up on the forums from time to time: divine personalism, divine simplicity, whether God is the supreme being or not a being but the ground of being.

And to turn this back to the topic: whether God and Jesus are one and the same ousia.

Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event. — Hanover

You heard of Homer's works. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer, but by a different guy with the same name.

The ancient world was vast. Stretched out. If Saul met one particular David who played the harp, he could possibly want to meet all the Davids that played a harp. There were not too many types of instruments, and Davids were a-plenty much like today. So.... this is an explanation to negate the amnesia-theory.

I admit I just admitted my ignorance by reducing the character of David to Harp playing, first name and geographical location. There must have been other attributes to David there, which most likely made him unique in the context.

So a holy book would be holy even if human beings ceased to exist then? — Janus

Yes.

OK, noted, that's your opinion; I don't concur, so...

That's deriving a theme from the story, but it doesn't show the historicity of the events — Hanover

What do you mean by "showing the historicity of the events"? Showing that Eve was created out of Adam's rib?

The point I've made is that there are inconsistent accounts in the Bible that render historical accuracy impossible, so unless you're willing to posit the ancients were incapable of identifying those inconsistencies, you have to conclude the purpose of the stories was not to convey factual accuracy, but it was to convey a particular theme, exactly as you've noted.

Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event.

And you take things like that as evidence that the writers of the Bible "didn't really take those things literally"?

The issues you describe are issues concerning the transition from oral culture to written culture. These issues aren't specific to the Bible.

It's perverse to suggest the ancients weren't interested in factual accuracy. If anything, the fact that they kept multiple less or more diverging accounts (witness testimonies) of the same event that indicates that factual accuracy is what they cared about.
Witness testimonies usually differ one from another to some extent, such is the nature of witness testimony. In matters that depend on witness testimony, the most one can do is record whatever witness testimony is available, and leave it at that.

Why don't you concur?

One doesn't have to be religious in order to understand how at least some of the religious concepts work. (Nor does such understanding make one religious.)

You objection only holds as long as we take for granted that god does not exist (so there's no source of holiness).

No, even if God exists holiness is a human concept reliable on the responses, on the feelings. of humans. Something is holy only insofar as it evokes feelings of holiness. In any case, we can only look at it from what we know; we know humans enjoy feelings of holiness, and we don't know whether God exists.

The more I engage with you the more I get the impression that you are a contrarian; someone who just likes to argue for the sake of it.

No, even if God exists holiness is a human concept reliable on the responses, on the feelings. of humans. Something is holy only insofar as it evokes feelings of holiness. In any case, we can only look at it from what we know; we know humans enjoy feelings of holiness, and we don't know whether God exists. — Janus

No, that's _you_ don't know whether God exists. Doesn't mean everyone else is the same as you.

The more I engage with you the more I get the impression that you are a contrarian; someone who just likes to argue for the sake of it.

Oh, for crying out loud.

You keep taking for granted your own stance, your own experience, and you hold it up as the arbiter of reality _for_ _everyone. You elevate your own "I don't know whether God exists" to "We don't know whether God exists". What on earth makes you think you can speak on behalf of other people like that?!

No, that's _you_ don't know whether God exists. Doesn't mean everyone else is the same as you. — baker

How could anyone know that God exists (as opposed to feeling or believing deeply that he does)? Do you know that God exists? If not then how do you know that others know, or even could know, that God exists? If you want to claim that you or others know, or could know God, then it is on you to explain how that could be possible.

Remember, knowledge is generally defined as being capable of demonstration to others. Even if it were possible to "know" that God exists (in the sense of being absolutely convinced of it) how could the "knower" demonstrate her knowledge to others?

Apart from that there, are simply no claims made by the major Western religions that it is possible to know God; it is acknowledged to be a matter of faith in view of human limitation. To claim that God can be known is considered to be a gnostic heresy. And the Eastern conceptions of God are totally different such that it is thought that knowing the essence of the self just is to know God.

In any case, when I tell you I don't believe it is possible to know God and why I think that, I am telling you my opinion; you don't have to agree, you can go on believing that you know God or that others do, or that it is possible that others do; or whatever, so all this talk of me imposing my opinion is childish and tantrum-like; I am not imposing anything on you, I'm just telling you what I think and why.