>From: "Robert Schneider" <rjschn39@bellsouth.net>
>To: <asa@calvin.edu>
>Subject: BIBLE Stories
>Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 20:22:29 -0500
>
>Hello, all,
>
> I have been away from my computer for a week, able to monitor the
>voluminous listserv messages on a webmail site but unable to respond. The
>following topic has been dealt with by several, but I want to add another
>angle.
>
> Someone wrote: "If you believe Genesis 1 is just a story, you have
>weak faith."
>
> Whenever my students used to express a similar comment, usually
>something like, "I don't want the Bible to be considered just stories," I
>would ask them to remove the "just" from the sentence (the "weak" in the
>present sentence has already been challenged, rightly). No story is "just
>a story," and it is sad that the word "story" has been so denigrated,
>mainly, I regret to say, by literalists who claim to be defending the Bible
>from such a charge and imput this notion to those who disagree with them.
>We who recognize and value the power of stories need to defend "story" from
>this dismissive view.
>
> A Bible scholar (I believe it was Joseph Fitzmeyer) said that the
>biblical writers used story to teach theology. And for good reason. Every
>story makes a truth claim, and this is certainly true of sacred stories,
>whether they be historical accounts, myths, folktales, parables, or
>whatever. There seems to be an assumption among some believers that
>stories are fiction, hence not true, and therefore any narrative in the
>Bible has to be a historical account in order for it to be true. But
>surely it impoverishes the concept of "truth" to limit it to the
>historical, when the most important and profound truths, in the Bible or in
>any other writings, sacred or otherwise, are theological, moral, and
>philosophical. "Fiction" is not "falsehood" and the opposite of fiction is
>history, not truth. How strange it is to assume that God could not use
>inspired fiction (e.g., the Book of Jonah, which an ancient Hebrew would be
>likely, rightly, to recognize as a mashal (parable)), to teach profound
>truths (as this book does), when we human beings use fiction in this way
>all the time! (And even historical narratives are interpretations, not
>descriptions of what actually happened, as indeed are the historical
>narratives in Scripture.)
>
> Elie Wiesel once said that "God made man because he loves stories." I
>love the ambiguity in that statement: Does "he" refer to God or man?
>Both, I think.
>
>Bob Schneider
>rjschn39@bellsouth.net
>
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