Posted: Aug 16, 2011 1:57 pm
He's both wrong and right, but when he's right, he's only trivially so, in my opinion. 
He's of course right that the Bible wasn't planned and penned by either one person or a few people living at the same time, but rather is put together from many texts written by many authors over several centuries and many different locations. Anyone should know this.
But so what? One of the problems with the biblical books, is that you don't have first one text that is all metaphors and miracles, then another text that is all facts and figures. In general it's a mishmash within each book. So you get places and people and occurrences that you can find reliable info about through archeology and other peoples' written histories, but then parallel or even intertwined with that you get stories that are either supernatural and fantastical, or non-verifiable even if plausible enough.
Of course, you can't (or at least shouldn't) look at one clearly metaphorical or supernatural story, and then judge the rest of the Bible on that story alone, as being all fiction.
But he seems to be dodging the intent of the question he's answering. The question was: "If the Bible is not to be read as a literal account of the truth, then how do we know which parts really are true, and which parts are fiction or metaphor?"
To this he says the Bible is not a book, but a library. Well duh. What does that mean in relation to the question? Does he mean that we can separate the stories that are 'true' (as in actually, historically happened) from those stories that are not 'true' (did not happen as described; are metaphors or the like), by looking at the historical evidence and see which stories come out on top in that regard? It seems that way, since he uses the examples of a fixed, centered earth, and Adam & Eve.
The question is though, would we have viewed them as only metaphorical or poetic if science had confirmed them through the years? If the earth really did turn out to be fixed and at the center?
Another thing is that many of the stories that must be seen as purely metaphorical or allegorical if one discounts miracles, can be seen as literal history if one allows for miracles. And so one believer may view a biblical story as metaphor, while another believer thinks it must have happened that miraculous way. If you remove all the miracle-, supernatural, unevidenced, and implausible stories from the Bible, you won't be left with much. And you'll be left with texts where God hasn't done anything historically; at best God will then be described through poetic prose. Not that 'sophisticated theologians' will have a problem with that, but I think many 'mainstream' believers would.
I agree though that one needs to read the stories in the proper contexts; language, history, literary tradition of the time, and so on. This is true for any literary work. Perhaps some of the stories were never meant to be taken literally. I do believe this.
But the question was, how do we tell them apart? Often, miracles are mixed into the otherwise plausible and perhaps even evidenced stories in a matter-of-factly manner in the Bible. In such cases we have history, and miracles. In the same story. What good is it to say "The Bible is not a book, but a library" then?
Do we simply filter out the miracle- and implausible stories, as with a sieve, and say they were meant as metaphors?
Perhaps so. Many believing Christians should in that case think about what that does to the backbone of their beliefs, IMO.
He's of course right that the Bible wasn't planned and penned by either one person or a few people living at the same time, but rather is put together from many texts written by many authors over several centuries and many different locations. Anyone should know this.
But so what? One of the problems with the biblical books, is that you don't have first one text that is all metaphors and miracles, then another text that is all facts and figures. In general it's a mishmash within each book. So you get places and people and occurrences that you can find reliable info about through archeology and other peoples' written histories, but then parallel or even intertwined with that you get stories that are either supernatural and fantastical, or non-verifiable even if plausible enough.
Of course, you can't (or at least shouldn't) look at one clearly metaphorical or supernatural story, and then judge the rest of the Bible on that story alone, as being all fiction.
But he seems to be dodging the intent of the question he's answering. The question was: "If the Bible is not to be read as a literal account of the truth, then how do we know which parts really are true, and which parts are fiction or metaphor?"
To this he says the Bible is not a book, but a library. Well duh. What does that mean in relation to the question? Does he mean that we can separate the stories that are 'true' (as in actually, historically happened) from those stories that are not 'true' (did not happen as described; are metaphors or the like), by looking at the historical evidence and see which stories come out on top in that regard? It seems that way, since he uses the examples of a fixed, centered earth, and Adam & Eve.
The question is though, would we have viewed them as only metaphorical or poetic if science had confirmed them through the years? If the earth really did turn out to be fixed and at the center?
Another thing is that many of the stories that must be seen as purely metaphorical or allegorical if one discounts miracles, can be seen as literal history if one allows for miracles. And so one believer may view a biblical story as metaphor, while another believer thinks it must have happened that miraculous way. If you remove all the miracle-, supernatural, unevidenced, and implausible stories from the Bible, you won't be left with much. And you'll be left with texts where God hasn't done anything historically; at best God will then be described through poetic prose. Not that 'sophisticated theologians' will have a problem with that, but I think many 'mainstream' believers would.
I agree though that one needs to read the stories in the proper contexts; language, history, literary tradition of the time, and so on. This is true for any literary work. Perhaps some of the stories were never meant to be taken literally. I do believe this.
But the question was, how do we tell them apart? Often, miracles are mixed into the otherwise plausible and perhaps even evidenced stories in a matter-of-factly manner in the Bible. In such cases we have history, and miracles. In the same story. What good is it to say "The Bible is not a book, but a library" then?
Do we simply filter out the miracle- and implausible stories, as with a sieve, and say they were meant as metaphors?
Perhaps so. Many believing Christians should in that case think about what that does to the backbone of their beliefs, IMO.