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JustJess · 04-06-2005, 03:32 AM

I could never understand how people take the Bible so literally... If you're going with the supposition of God's existence in the first place, there are all kinds of things that people believe based on (what seem to me, anyway) rather broad and imaginative interpretations of these words.
I do think that Genesis must be more about the development of the world, and how humans came to be more than animals. I don't think there's a chance we would ever have stayed that ignorant, blissful or no, and the God from this Bible would not likely have planned us to be that ignorant always. And I do believe that the Eden story was written the way it was so that it could easily be interpreted as Eve's fault, her sin, so that it would support the patriarchy at the time.
The part that gets me about the Bible... IT WAS WRITTEN BY HUMANS!!! Even if you take as fact that they were writing the words of God, given the words of God, etc., they were still just humans. No matter how good a person you are (saintly or otherwise), you have a filter, and everyone hears things differently - even back then. I definitely believe that there were a lot of other influences over what got into the Bible, how it was written, the inflection, if you will, other than just God. There were politics and personal world-views and fears and all that stuff put in there too. Not to mention bastardizing the original writings when they got translated a few gazillion times. It's like saying the CliffNotes version of Macbeth is the same as Macbeth - although that might be closer to the real version!!
The point being... I find it difficult to conceive of using interpretations of this book, Genesis in particular since no one else was alive then to corroborate it, as an indication of God's will.. Not that I won't take my own version of the story from it, but it's still a little crazy.
I just wish, like WillyPete, I was more of a scholar to know more about the origins.

04-06-2005, 03:32 AM	#26 (permalink)
JustJess Unencapsulated Location: Kittyville	I could never understand how people take the Bible so literally... If you're going with the supposition of God's existence in the first place, there are all kinds of things that people believe based on (what seem to me, anyway) rather broad and imaginative interpretations of these words. I do think that Genesis must be more about the development of the world, and how humans came to be more than animals. I don't think there's a chance we would ever have stayed that ignorant, blissful or no, and the God from this Bible would not likely have planned us to be that ignorant always. And I do believe that the Eden story was written the way it was so that it could easily be interpreted as Eve's fault, her sin, so that it would support the patriarchy at the time. The part that gets me about the Bible... IT WAS WRITTEN BY HUMANS!!! Even if you take as fact that they were writing the words of God, given the words of God, etc., they were still just humans. No matter how good a person you are (saintly or otherwise), you have a filter, and everyone hears things differently - even back then. I definitely believe that there were a lot of other influences over what got into the Bible, how it was written, the inflection, if you will, other than just God. There were politics and personal world-views and fears and all that stuff put in there too. Not to mention bastardizing the original writings when they got translated a few gazillion times. It's like saying the CliffNotes version of Macbeth is the same as Macbeth - although that might be closer to the real version!! The point being... I find it difficult to conceive of using interpretations of this book, Genesis in particular since no one else was alive then to corroborate it, as an indication of God's will.. Not that I won't take my own version of the story from it, but it's still a little crazy. I just wish, like WillyPete, I was more of a scholar to know more about the origins. __________________ My heart knows me better than I know myself, so I'm gonna let it do all the talkin'.