OK Glenn, I'll bit....
> While people have generally dismissed my quest for a historical (sort of)
> Genesis, can they dismiss problems with the historical Jesus so easily? Can
> it possibly be true to claim (as many would of Genesis) that like Genesis,
> the Gospels don't have to conform to historical reality? How much of the
> Bible can be non-historical and still have Christianity survive?
>
> I will sit back ans see the comments and responses.
>
>
Ultimately, accepting the bible does involve faith,
so it partly depends on ones level of tolerance for
the questionable parts.
The most extreme is requiring every single statement
of scripture to match the observed data.
If you subscribe to that crowd, then you either
reject scripture for the most trivial of reasons,
or you reject all information contrary to what
you want to believe. The former seems typical of
arm chair atheists and the latter of many YEC folk.
The other extreme is to have already accepted
that there is a God, and that all spiritual
agents are accountable to the same moral laws
regardless of where they are or what culture they
came from and that these moral laws were here long
before any such spiritual beings came into the world,
and will be here long any such are gone.
If you subscribe to that crowd, then it would seem
to me that the bible would be essentially "supplementary"
to ones faith. Perhaps Quakers fall into some
approximation of this.
At any rate, most of us come into this carrying a mixed
bag of these extremes. For example, believing in
God has always been with me since as far back as I can
remember. So coming to accept the God of the Bible was
merely a matter of finding _some_ attributes that also
agreed with my notions of what God is. At the same time, I
do feel that people like Abraham, Moses and Jesus _must_
be historical figures. If they are mere "stories", I
would have to reject the bible even given that I believe
in God. Of course having the sun stand still and watching
a floating ax head challenge my credulity too, but to me
they are peripheral and not worth getting heated up over.
If true, fine, and if not, fine also.
Accepting Christ is obviously more problematical.
Keep in mind that even if we could be assured of the
historical accuracy of the events, I'm not sure that
would necessarily persuade a person to repent and
believe. Somewhere a small grain of faith has to be
there or somehow slip in or it just doesn't happen.
by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
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