tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post117011938536944177..comments2023-12-01T18:05:24.875-05:00Comments on Debunking Christianity: HaberdasheryUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1170166295057677582007-01-30T09:11:00.000-05:002007-01-30T09:11:00.000-05:00DagoodS,I couldn't agree more. Both Christians and...DagoodS,<BR/><BR/>I couldn't agree more. Both Christians and those attempting to "debunk" Christianity often make the same error - failing to understand the differences between the ancient world and our own. Any attempt to impose a modern methodology on a pre-modern text, without first understanding the nature of the pre-modern text in its own terms, is bound to create some absurdities. This is but one of many examples.<BR/><BR/>The creation myths of ancient Israel weren't written as either history or science, and so understanding them as primarily historical and/or scientific claims leads to a great many misunderstandings, both on the part of those who accept the truth and authority of the texts and those who reject it. This is because those texts are not accepted or rejected on their own terms, but rather on modern terms which cannot be fairly applied to the texts as they entail claims that the texts themselves do not and cannot make.<BR/><BR/>The same is true of the Gospels, which were not written as either history or journalism as we understand either of those fields. They were not unbiased observations of events that could be observed by all, but rather a combination of remembered history and mythologized history. The texts often reflect theological understandings that arose long after the death of Jesus; understanding that are rooted in the post-Easter experience of Christians rather than in the intersubjectively observable events of the life of Jesus.<BR/><BR/>So long as we understand many of these claims as <EM>mythos</EM> rather than <EM>logos</EM>, to me this does not diminish the truth of the Gospel accounts. They reflect the way that Jesus came to be understood in the community of faith that built up around his memory. And, they testify to his enduring presense among those who still carry his name. But these claims would not survive in a modern court of law, and were not constructed to do so. In fact, they <EM>could not</EM> have been constructed to do so, because that would mean composing stories for a very different historical setting than the one they were composed in, rendering them meaningless for their own time. <BR/><BR/>Even assuming divine inspiration of the text (and I don't - at least not in the way that is usually meant) it would be unreasonable to expect pre-modern texts to account for modern standards, as, since such standards would be meaningless in the time of composition, it would be to expect the "Word of God" to be meaningful only at some point in the distant future, and meaningless both in the time of composition and in most subsequent times.<BR/><BR/>That both Christians and those that oppose Christianity seem to expect this indicates that most people simply don't think critically about their own expectations for the texts that they claim to study.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com