Dear Hearts,
here are my thought for Sunday.
Borg Chapter 6 – the bible can be true without being literally true.
Another fun chapter for me.
1. P.104 - Borg talks about the “naturalistic” explanations for Biblical stories. For him these were never persuasive. How about you?
2. We are accustomed to expect factual information. We think of historians as presenting the facts of what happened in the past. But Borg says the metaphorical, symbolic, or parabolic meanings are what count. Do we ever have trouble getting beyond the need for facts?
3. P. 106 - premodern literal interpretation of scripture saw factuality as only a beginning stage for reading a text. Modern biblical literalism emphasizes factuality. Borg says this is a problem because it
a. Creates conflicts between the Bible and modern knowledge.
b. Obscures the metaphorical meaning
c. Gets in the way of the Christian message
d. Changes the meaning of faith – does having faith require literalism??
e. Does not recognize metaphorical language.
f. Makes Christianity impossible for millions.
g. He brings in the evolution vs creation battle as a example
h. See pg. 109
4. P. 110 – literalism is impossible.
a. Borg uses Revelations to show how even literalists don’t apply it here.
b. Another problem is anthropomorphic representations of God.
5. Borg says the better way is the historical-metaphorical interpretation.
a. Historical – p. 113 the texts were not written for us. This statement really made me stop. Of course, the Bible was written for me, right??
b. Historical refers to what the texts meant in their ancient contexts. – again not factuality.
c. Metaphorical is about the surplus of meaning that language can carry (p. 115)
d. Borg uses parabolic as a synonym for metaphoric.
e. He uses the creation stories as examples. Let’s discuss his interpretations here.
f. Exodus – another example – God wants us to leave our Egypt and live a different kind of life.
g. Then he turns to the New Testament and talks about the birth and resuurection of Jesus. I found this section particularly meaningful. Did you?
I look forward to our discussion.
|
Professor Emerita
School of Nursing
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-4158
Cell: 619-987-1604
Email: Lsaarman@mail.sdsu.edu
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