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Talk:Roman Catholicism (view source)
Revision as of 01:47, October 28, 2008
, 01:47, October 28, 2008→Catholics not as Christians?: Understanding the language.
:::::It's a bit harder for us than it was for the people back then as we're a bit more removed from the culture, but basically understanding comes through reading and study. Based on the manuscripts that we have and finding earlier copies to reference against, the uniformity of the Bible is what is striking so it is generally believed that while small sections may have come down incorrectly, such as possibly the last half of the last chapter of the book of Mark, the work as a whole is remarkably true to its original form. No human is ever going to get it completely right when reading the Bible, but that's ok, and there's a lot to learn. One of the differences between the Bible and other ancient works is just how much the people in it, even when writing about themselves, look bad, or at least flawed. You don't see much of the ego that accompanies other works. I have a friend who has been a Christian for 16 years. He first became a Christian while reading the book of Hebrews and each year rereads it on the date of his coming to Christ. And each time he reads it he sees something new that he didn't see before. As his place in life on his journey has changed, similar to a diamond, he looks at it from a different place and sees new facets. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 13:19, 27 October 2008 (EDT)
:::::It's a bit harder for us than it was for the people back then as we're a bit more removed from the culture, but basically understanding comes through reading and study. Based on the manuscripts that we have and finding earlier copies to reference against, the uniformity of the Bible is what is striking so it is generally believed that while small sections may have come down incorrectly, such as possibly the last half of the last chapter of the book of Mark, the work as a whole is remarkably true to its original form. No human is ever going to get it completely right when reading the Bible, but that's ok, and there's a lot to learn. One of the differences between the Bible and other ancient works is just how much the people in it, even when writing about themselves, look bad, or at least flawed. You don't see much of the ego that accompanies other works. I have a friend who has been a Christian for 16 years. He first became a Christian while reading the book of Hebrews and each year rereads it on the date of his coming to Christ. And each time he reads it he sees something new that he didn't see before. As his place in life on his journey has changed, similar to a diamond, he looks at it from a different place and sees new facets. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 13:19, 27 October 2008 (EDT)
::::: As Learn together touches on in his first sentence, it's "simply" a matter of understanding the language and culture. When you read something written in a modern publication, you know when metaphor is being used, and you know when people are being literal. If someone says that 'it's raining cats and dogs', you know that they are not being literal because you recognise that as a euphemism. The same applies to the Bible. Most of the time you can tell from the language and the context whether something is literal or non-literal. Some of the time it does help to be familiar with things such as ancient Hebraic euphemisms and the like. And sometimes the translators help us out anyway. For example, in the Old Testament somewhere, it literally says (from memory, and according to the Authorised Version translation) that Saul went into a cave and covered his feet. That was a common euphemism for urinating and/or defecating (I forget which), because their robes which normally came down to their ankles and left their feet exposed actually covered their feet because they crouched. I forget how the NIV translates that, but the Living Bible, at least in its first edition, paraphrased that with an American euphemism for the same thing ("Saul went into the cave and used the bathroom"), which to an Australian sounds weird, because we don't use that euphemism, and to us the phrase refers to a literal room, which you would not expect to find in a 10th century BC Palestine cave! [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 21:47, 27 October 2008 (EDT)
== Roman Catholicism ==
== Roman Catholicism ==