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Conservapedia talk:Is the Bible Inerrant? (view source)
Revision as of 15:08, April 6, 2007
, 15:08, April 6, 2007→What's this article trying to achieve?
::You determine how something is meant to be understood by the language used (e.g., does it conform to the style of poetry, narrative, etc.?), and by the culture for whom it was written. If, for example, a sentence said "The rock landed on the marquee", would you understand it to mean that the rock landed on a large tent, or on a canopy projecting out over the entrance to a large building? The correct answer depends on whether the writer was writing for an Australian or British audience, or an American audience. You can also look at how others who would know how to read it understood it, if such records exist. For example, Jesus referred to various aspects of the Genesis narrative as though it was historical fact; He didn't understand it as allegorical myth. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:48, 6 April 2007 (EDT)
::You determine how something is meant to be understood by the language used (e.g., does it conform to the style of poetry, narrative, etc.?), and by the culture for whom it was written. If, for example, a sentence said "The rock landed on the marquee", would you understand it to mean that the rock landed on a large tent, or on a canopy projecting out over the entrance to a large building? The correct answer depends on whether the writer was writing for an Australian or British audience, or an American audience. You can also look at how others who would know how to read it understood it, if such records exist. For example, Jesus referred to various aspects of the Genesis narrative as though it was historical fact; He didn't understand it as allegorical myth. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:48, 6 April 2007 (EDT)
:::Precisely. The Genesis narrative was written for (and by) a people living nearly three thousand years ago, and Jesus lived two thousand years ago. That cultural context is the whole explanation of why the narrative doesn't say, 'The Earth was formed as a result of the agglomeration of cosmic dust some 4,500 million years ago', and why Jesus didn't understand it that way: none of the concepts involved was understood at the time. (Just as well that, as a healer, he had never heard of the symptomatology of schizophrenia!) --[[User:Petrus|Petrus]] 11:08, 6 April 2007 (EDT)
:Or so it's reported in the Gospels.
:Or so it's reported in the Gospels.