Interpreting the Bible "literally"

What is the proper way to interpret the Bible? People often refer to interpreting it "literally" as the only way to properly believe it. But many things can be true but not literal (e.g. simile, analogy, hyperbole). The proper way to interpret something is not literal, but rather, the way the author intended it. To know that, you must look at context. You must know the intended audience. It also helps to know what you can about the author.

Reading Between the Fossil Lines (scroll down on the page, there are many articles)
By Gleason L. Archer

But a true and proper belief in the inerrancy of Scripture involves neither a literal nor a figurative rule of interpretation. What it does require is a belief in whatever the biblical author (human and divine) actually meant by the words he used.

An absolute literalism would, for example, commit us to the proposition that in Matthew 19:24 (and parallel passages) Christ actually meant to teach that a camel could go through the eye of a needle. But it is abundantly clear that Christ was simply using the familiar rhetorical figure of hyperbole in order to emphasize how difficult it is spiritually for a rich man (because of his pride in his material wealth) to come to repentance and saving faith in God. To construe that passage literally would amount to blatant heresy, or at least a perversity that has nothing to do with orthodoxy. Or again, when Jesus said to the multitude that challenged Him to work some miracle, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), they grievously erred when they interpreted His remarks literally. John 2:21 goes on to explain that Jesus did not mean this prediction literally but spiritually: “But He was speaking about the temple of His body. Therefore when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this, and they believed the Scripture.” In this case, then, literal interpretation was dead wrong because that was not what Jesus meant by the language He used; He was actually referring to the far greater miracle of His bodily resurrection.

An accurate interpretation of scripture means reading as the author intended, getting into the mind of the author as much as possible. Since God is the author, we must approach it with great humility and a teachable attitude, seeking to truly understand what He is saying, not bringing to it our own agenda.

Finding Noah's Ark

I just caught a few minutes of a show on the History Channel called "The Search for Noah's Ark". I didn't even see enough of it to know what the claim may have been. Dozens of people have searched for the Ark over the years. Although there have been a lot of claims, speculations, and of course a conspiracy theory or two, there is as yet no ark.

So the question remains, can/will we ever find Noah's Ark?

No way. And here is why.
1. Most people look for it on Mount Ararat and haven't found it. In fact, the Bible says that the ark came to rest on "the mountains of Ararat" (Gen 8:4), referring to the entire range, which is a huge area.
2. The mountain range is covered with snow and glaciers which move constantly. Anything that was there would have been torn to pieces by glacial movement a long time ago.
3. The most compelling reason for not finding it is from Hugh Ross's "The Genesis Question" (1). After the flood, everthing was destroyed, so they needed to rebuild. The ark would have been a ready supply of high-quality wood, already cut and ready to use. It is almost inconceivable that they would not have torn it apart to start building houses, barns, fences, and everthing else they needed to get civilization going again.

Of course, God could have preserved the ark and they could find the it tommorow, proving me completely wrong. To which I would say, He is God and I am not.

Reference 1 "The Genesis Question", Dr. Hugh Ross, Chapter 19, "The Search for Noah's Ark", pp 165-166

I've Got Some Good News and it's Bad News

With all the good economic news, what is a liberal newspaper to do?

Simple, phrase the good news in such a way that it sounds bad. Thus, this article from today's AP:

The story is about more people having and keeping jobs, but they make it sound like just the reverse.

U.S. Jobless Claims Tumble to 328,000
By JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press Writer

May I humbly suggest some alternatives, which the writer must have accidentally overlooked:

More People Working

People Have Jobs

Job Growth is Picking Up

Bush is Not Evil After All

Military Draft and Diversity in the Military

Democrat Charles Rangle has been making a lot of noise this year about instituting a military draft. One of his main points is that the military is made up mostly of low income and minorities. Rangle advocates a draft because he wants to send "rich kids" and specifically, the sons and daughters of his fellow Senators and Congressmen, to the front line.

It turns out that the military is a fairly good representative cross-section of the country both economically and racially.

There is, however, one major way in which the military does not represent a cross-section of America: political party. The vast majority of those who voluntarily serve in the military are Republicans.

So, it turns out Charles Rangle may be right, with one small modification: Draft Democrats!

Cell Phone Silliness

I'd never be a member of a club that would have me as a member.
- Groucho Marx

There are millions of phones in the Verizon "In" network. All of them can call my phone number for free any time of day. Mine is not one of them. I cannot call my own number to check my voicemail without being charged for airtime.

I can check my voicemail free from millions of Verizon phones. I can check my voicemail free from millions of landline phones. My wife and I can use each others phones to check our own voicemail. Checking from my own phone costs me airtime. That is silly.

It's doubly silly when you realize that to chat with another Verizon customer, there are two of us using cell phone channels. For me to check my voicemail would take half the resources.

I am a member of a club with millions of others, but not myself.

More on 3/5 of a Person

There is a great article on the founders and slavery which you can find on David Barton's Wallbuilders site here. There are a lot of other great articles on his site too, check it out.

Here is an excerpt:
The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery provision to limit the political power of slavery’s proponents. By including only three-fifths of the total number of slaves in the congressional calculations, Southern States were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress. Based on the clear records of the Constitutional Convention, two prominent professors explain the meaning of the three-fifths clause:

[T]he Constitution allowed Southern States to count three-fifths of their slaves toward the population that would determine numbers of representatives in the federal legislature. This clause is often singled out today as a sign of black dehumanization: they are only three-fifths human. But the provision applied to slaves, not blacks. That meant that free blacks–and there were many, North as well as South–counted the same as whites. More important, the fact that slaves were counted at all was a concession to slave owners. Southerners would have been glad to count their slaves as whole persons. It was the Northerners who did not want them counted, for why should the South be rewarded with more representatives, the more slaves they held? ³⁵ THOMAS WEST

It was slavery’s opponents who succeeded in restricting the political power of the South by allowing them to count only three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of congressional representatives. The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the North or South. ³⁶ WALTER WILLIAMS (emphasis added)

Why do revisionists so often abuse and misportray the three-fifths clause? Professor Walter Williams (himself an African-American) suggested:
Politicians, news media, college professors and leftists of other stripes are selling us lies and propaganda. To lay the groundwork for their increasingly successful attack on our Constitution, they must demean and criticize its authors. As Senator Joe Biden demonstrated during the Clarence Thomas hearings, the framers’ ideas about natural law must be trivialized or they must be seen as racists.

"Intelligent Falling"

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
The Onion is always good for a laugh.

The Onion is a parody site, so is always to be taken lightly. But as with any good humor, it works best when there is some element of truth in it.

In this case, the "truth" is the anti-scientific perception of Christians. It is unfortunate and inaccurate for Christians to be labeled as anti-science. It is interesting to note that the science The Onion chose to parody, gravitation, was developed by Sir Isaac Newton... a devout Christian.

Many of the best scientists in history were Christians. The scientific method itself grew out of a Christian understanding that the universe is rational and behaves in predictable ways, in opposition to the pagan view of seeing gods everywhere controlling the world at their whim.

Of course, there are always Luddites and flat-earther's, but they can be found in all corners, and they certainly don't define the sum of Christian thinking.

For a good dose of science from an informed Christian thinker, check out Hugh Ross at Reasons to Believe.

3/5 of a Person

People often misunderstand the thinking behind the way slaves were to be counted as 3/5 of a person (from Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution).

It is used to show that the founders saw blacks as inferior. In reality, it was a PRO-freedom position.

There were many in this country that wanted to abolish slavery at the time the Constitution was written. In fact, over 80% of the founding fathers were active abolishonists. Representation in the House of Representatives is determined by population. The greater the population, the greater the influence in the Congress. By counting slaves as just 3/5 of a person for census purposes, the slave states would have less influence and slavery might be abolished.

It was not meant to say that slaves were worth less than a full person in human terms. It was not about treating blacks as 3/5 of a person, just counting them that way to help work toward their freedom.

Israel's withdrawal

Apparently the trouble with the middle east is that Muslims have only 99.9% of the land in the region. Israel capitulates again, offering land for peace that will never come. Hammas today declared that they had driven Israel out of Gaza. Playing into the hands of terrorists will not bring peace. It is a sad day. Israeli's are being "ethnically cleansed" from their own land, the only kind of ethnic cleansing that will be tolerated in this backward world.

The irony is that non-Israeli's have always been welcome in Israel, and have profitted greatly along with Israeli's under the most free government in the area. On the other hand, according to Palistinian leaders, not a single Israeli will be welcome in Gaza. Does that sound like people who wish to live in peace?

Anti-Christian "Science"

Is anyone else annoyed by these shows? I love Discovery, TLC, and National Geographic channel, but it seems they feel a constant responsibility to disconnect people from any remaining faith they may have by offering a constant stream of shows about "the science of" this or that Bible story. You know the ones, "Who is the Real Jesus?", "The True Story of Noah's Flood", "Why the Bible Sucks and Evolution Rules".

Here is the general formula: lay out the story (more or less) the way the Bible says it. Then begin picking apart the story. Don't be actually hostile toward the Bible, make it more along the lines of "we can't really be sure since it was so long ago and many people differ on the interpretation of the text". With the Bible sufficiently discredited, the next step is to start to spin a yarn about what really happened. There will be elements similar to the Bible story, but the message is clear: the scientific story is the real one and the Bible was embelishing. When done, it is clear that the Bible text which has endured thousands of years is a vague interpretation of the true story, which you have just seen, with fancy computer graphics and a deep-voiced, intellectual commentator who's meer mention of a fact ensures its authenticity.

One example was a show about "What did Jesus Really Look Like". It showed, of course, the blond-haired blue eyed Jesus famous from so many pictures. Everyone knows that Jews don't look like that, and the Bible certainly doesn't describe Him in that way, so it was a bit of a straw man. Nevertheless, it was at the very least a dig at white Christians, the opportunity for which is never to be missed. While the story is unfolding, they show a skull that was dug up and apparently dated to around the time of Jesus. Periodically, we get a glimpse at the face being reconstructed in clay by a forensic artist. At the end of the show, they reveal his face with the deep-voiced narrator (I think it sounded like Avery Brooks, Captain Sisko from ST:DS9) leaves us with the leading question "Is this what Jesus Looked Like?"

So basically, if you dig up an old skull of some unknown guy and slap some clay on it, you can show people "What Jesus Really Looked Like" in distinction to the laughable Bible, which apparently says he was Norwegian.

Is anyone else tired of this sort of thing being passed of as "science"?

Great book deal

www.BookCloseOuts.com has some great deals on books. They have a very large political section, from which I just made a purchase. It will provide me with more reading than I can get to for some time. Here are some of the deals I picked up:
Treason by Ann Coulter, hardcover for $6.99
The Death of the West by Pat Buchanan for $1.49
Fighting Terrorism by Benjamin Netanyahu for $4.99
Ten Things You Can't Say in America by Larry Elder, hardcover for $3.99 (softcover available for $2).
Showdown by Larry Elder, hardcover for $3.00
Slouching Towards Gamorrah by Robert Bork for $4.99
The Politics of Bad Faith by David Horowitz for $3.49

For about $30 (nearly the cover price of Treason alone) I have enough material to make me mad at liberals for years to come!

Kickoff

Ok. I'm publishing. Now we will see if I have anything useful to say.