Calling Out TNHarley: Should the 1st Eleven Chapters be Read Literally or Allegorically

[emilynghiem]

I have argued its intellectually dishonest to call something an allegory just because it is illogical.
If you have to make shit up to believe in something, why believe in it at all?

If my interpretation is illogical then you should be able to show how it is illogical, right?

Your interpretation isnt illogical, its dishonest. You are interpreting it differently BECAUSE the bible is illogical.

If it is dishonest then you should be able to show how it is dishonest.

Already did. Your illiteracy isnt my problem

Dear ding TNHarley
Can you two give an example of a Genesis excerpt where you either agree or disagree it is allegorical?

How do you interpret things like
1. Days versus Ages
Since literal days to us means the Earth rotating and revolving around the Sun, if LIGHT was in the process of being added, how could this process in stages be measured in "earth days"?
Do you agree or disagree with the figurative or allegorical interpretation of Days to mean Ages or Epochs of Time, such as 1000 years to man being 1 Day or Age to God?

2. Do Adam and Eve represent the beginning of Self Aware human conscience and lineage with ability to pass knowledge or memory spiritually down to future generations?
Could we agree this can be looked at as both literal and figurative/allegorical.

As long as we align on the meaning of how this process works, does it matter if one person sees it literally and another figuratively?

NOTE: I've had discussions with Nontheist friends, where some could reconcile by understanding Jesus as representing Universal Justice REGARDLESS if he ever existed or not as a historical man and whether he did go through a spiritual process or it was dramatized by adding mythical mysticism. As long as we agreed the meaning involved humanity's process of receiving Justice and achieving Peace, the process we go through is the same of seeking to discern Truth to set us free from error and problems caused by conflicts that lead to suffering, death destruction and war if we fail to forgive and correct these problems to heal our relations and work together to improve society for sake of universal love of humanity, and establishing truth justice and peace for all.

I agree it becomes pointless to argue over literal vs figurative when there are both types of thinkers in the world who will see and read the Bible either way, sometimes exclusively, and sometimes both at once. We can have parallel truths and narratives going on, and still harmonize anyway.

I wish I could see which passages in Genesis you are talking about.

But even if we disagree, the point is to agree how best to proceed to apply what we know to improve our relations and help others to do the same. Through Christ Jesus who unites us in seeking God's truth and love in the Kingdom of God. Amen.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Maimonides read it literally, and realized by doing that, that there are more than 4 dimensions. He lived in the 1100's.
Hawking figured out the same thing scientifically in the 2000's.

 

[Mindful]

For that, biblical Hebrew has other words. Reshit implies the most significant element, the part that stands for the whole, the foundation, the principle. Genesis is Judaism’s foundational work, a philosophy of the human condition under the sovereignty of God.
This is a difficult point to understand, because there is no other book quite like it. It is not myth.(2) It is not his-tory in the conventional sense, a mere recording of events.(3)

Nor is it theology: Genesis is less about God than about human beings and their relationship with God. The theology is almost always implicit rather than explicit. What Genesis is, in fact, is philosophy written in a delib-erately non-philosophical way.

It deals with all the central questions of philosophy: what exists (ontology), what can we know (epistemology), are we free (philosophical psychology), and how we should behave (ethics). But it does so in a way quite unlike the philosophical classics from Plato to Wittgenstein. To put it at its simplest: philosophy is truth as system.

Genesis is truth as story. It is a unique work, philosophy in the narrative mode.

https://www.thejc.com/judaism/books/the-chief-rabbi-on-genesis-1.12309

I do so miss Rabbi Lord Saks.