I am not any sort of Biblical fundamentalist. I accept that Hebrews wrote the Bible according to their own observations and interests, and that as you say, some of it is myth probably passed down from oral tradition over a long period of time, and other parts document historical occurrences, seen by one or perhaps more than one individual. I fail to see how anyone can simultaneously believe that the Bible is entirely true with no allegory, symbolism or metaphor because much of it is stated by the text to be this. Was there a real Good Samaritan? Was the bit about the oil for the lamps and the virgins an actual occurrence? Or were these stories told to illustrate a point, as Buddha told?
I just don't consider the Bible to be more than a book written by people who felt they were godly.
If the actual mission of Jesus was to bring the word of God to Mankind, then it stands to reason that there should be a Book of Jesus, written by Jesus. After all, he was a rabbi of a religion that by the time he came along, revered the written word over the spoken word.
But there isn't. I am not sure what to make of this. I am thinking that the Coca-Cola company has been more successful at spreading the values (such as they are) of their expensive sugar water in the past 130 years or so than the followers of Jesus have been at spreading the word of Jesus, since more people recognize the name and symbol of Coca-Cola than those of Jesus. If Jesus were perfect, one would expect better results: nothing can beat perfection, can it? Does this mean that Jesus was less than perfect at his strategy of proselitizing that the Coca Cola Co.? Or does it simply indicate that (a) Jesus was not perfect, ot (b) not capable of a perfect advertising campaign?
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Perhaps there are two Jesuses (is the Latin plural 'Jesi'?) the real one, and the one that appears in the New Testament, written a good generation or four after the assumed date of the real Jesus, and a crucial period in history during the course of which there were two expulsions of the Romans by the Jews, one that ended in the Fall of Masada in 75 CE and another by Shimon Bar Kochba, who claimed to be a Messiah, that ended in 135. It was after the latter (with its obvious message that Bar Kochba, the military messiah, was unsuccessful, while the Yeshua ben Yacob (ie Jesus) movement was perhaps successful, since Jewish Christians stayed out of that rebellion and were not dispersed as were the Jewish rebels. These days, maybe the descendants of these same people are known as "Arab Christians" to the Zionists, who dislike the term Palestinians.
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Oh dear, many years ago, I taught in Washington State with a large bossy woman named June Rawlings. It seems that she has been confused in my mind with J.K. Rowling. So you are right about that, sorry. Someday, perhaps I will read her books, I imagine. At the moment, I am quite fond of Annie Proulx, who writes books that have little to do with magic of the Harry Potter sort. I read the Tolkein books way back when, all of them during a break between the end of the HS academic years and the beginning of summer school at Cheney State. I had three Herb Alpert records on the stereo and played them continuously. Even today, I hear Herb's trumpet in an elevator, and I cannot help but conjure up Legolas and Gandalf.
If the Bible does not say that pi=3, what DOES it say about pi? I do not recall it says 3.1459... I think it simply can be interpreted to mean that Jews, not being at that moment, really good with circular objects, had to call in outside help, and were less than effective eavesdroppers when they listened in on their Gentile architects.
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What it says is that the writers of the Bible were not interested in mathematical precision. They didn't need to be. Few normal people obsess over the subject. I never hear a football announcer say "that play netted 7.68934 yards."
I hardly think that being precise involves being obsessive. I bet that if your young son asks you how much pi is, you will NOT say three. If you say 3.14159 or even 3.14, I hardly think you would consider that obsessive behavior. The word of God should at least approach perfection, simply because it claims to be the word of God.
And also, if you build a building is built on the assumption that pi=3, there is a pretty good chance that it will collapse on you. I agree that 5 decimals in a football score are of little or no consequence, because sports scores are all of no consequence after a year has passed. A miscount in sports is never fatal, is it?
I am betting that each and every architect that has ever built or ever will build a Mormon temple could tell you the value of pi to a useful decimal point, despite the fact that Mormons are less fond of circular devices (domes and arches) that others, such as Catholics. I am thinking "incompetent patriarchs" when I see this. I agree that it is of little importance, but hey, if you want to be taken seriously, you just have to be serious about matters of common knowledge.
Can you deny that it is impossible for a person to brainwash themselves to believe an untruth? Can you deny that it has been done? After all, there are many, many religions on this planet and most of them depend on faith, do they not?
There are only two possibilities: either one is correct and all the rest are not, or they are all incorrect.
I have heard people say that all religions are the same, but the fact is that any serious study will reveal that they are not, and that even sects of the same religions contradict one another.
But they all rely on faith. So you are saying that your faith in Jesus is a true faith, while Dagdish in Uttar Pradish's belief in Lord Ganesh, in which Dagdish has much faith, is a false faith. Lucky for you to have been born where you were and not in Uttar Pradesh, hunh?
What about poor Dagdish? Does not the same faith that compels you to believe also compel Dagdish to send Mormon and Jehovah's Witnesseses and Muslim proselitizers away from his door?
