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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: 6 Literal Days?:Parables vs Science Re to Rick Frey
Message-ID: <340@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 10:27:30 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.340
Posted: Tue Oct 29 10:27:30 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 09:04:14 EST
References: <627@dicomed.UUCP> <45@noscvax.UUCP> <732@whuxl.UUCP> <739@whuxl.UUCP> <138@sdcc7.UUCP>
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I am not sure of Rick Frey's point about problems with taking words
in the Bible literally.  
 
> In article <739@whuxl.UUCP>, orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) writes:
> > All this proves is yet another contradiction in the Bible
> > if it is  *taken literally*.  My "New Oxford Annotated Bible" points
> > out that the discrepecancy between the Genesis 1 and the Genesis 2
> > accounts of creation are evidence that the two accounts come from
> > different traditions and authors. This is  merely another way in which
> > those two accounts *taken literally* blatantly contradict each other.
> >
> I'm trying to understand what you think constitutes a contradiction.  Any
> time someone uses 'literal words' whose 'literal meaning' (does such a 
> creature really exist the way you think it does?) goes against other
> 'literal words', that's a contradiction.
> 
> Some examples.  (Christ speaking)  "I am the bread of life."  "I am the
> ressurrection and the life."  Obviously a contradiction, a person can't be
> two things at once.  Or at least not the bread of life and THE life.
> 
> "But I say to you that Elijah already came ..."  "Then the disciples
> understood thay He had spoken to them about John the Baptist."  Jesus said
> the literal name Elijah, yet He was talking about someone else.  You can't
> have one thing refer to or mean another.  All analogies, symbols and
> parables are contradictions.
> 
> "A sower went out to sow."  Did a literal sower go literally out to sow?  Did
> seed actually fall by the wayside and get snatched up?  Did thorns grow
> amidst some of the seed and strangle it?  It most likely didn't literally
> happen, so not only is the Bible full of contradictions, it's also full of
> lies.
> 
> One last one just so you get the point of what I'm literally saying and a
> good example of the error you made.  "Everyone who drinks of this water
> (speaking to the woman at the well) shall thirst again, but whoever drinks
> of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."  What a lie.  He's
> saying I'll never be thirsty again because words can only have their literal
> meanings and that's what He literally said.
> 				Rick Frey

Rick, I hope that people who say they believe in the "literal truth of
every word in the Bible" will answer your question.  The argument in my
original article was that it is ludicrous to take the Bible as literal
scientific truth, that its value lies in its wisdom not its literal truth.
Specifically I was pointing out that belief in the "literal truth" of Genesis 1
leads to the refusal to believe that the Earth moves around the Sun.
Moreover that the accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other
in the order of events as they recount them for creation.
   tim sevener whuxn!orb