From: Debbie Mann (deborahjmann@insightbb.com)
Date: Tue Jun 03 2003 - 12:31:13 EDT
I have to little books by Bishop Pillai that discuss cultural habits of the
time which change the meaning of certain texts considerably. I would like
confirmation on some of his claims, as I find them challenging. One of them
is that 'heaping coals on the heads of one's enemies' actually referred to a
habit of carrying hot coals in a pot on one's head which was 'warming'. So
rather than being a statement of damnation, it was a statement that one
would warm up one's chilly enemies.
Anotehr was about the woman who lost her coin and swept the whole house
until she found it. He claims that this was a wedding coing and that losing
it would be grounds for divorce. The wedding coins were a special gift from
the husband's family and were worn in the hair on special occasions.
Has anybody done research into this kind of cultural interpretation of the
Bible?
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Jan de Koning
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 9:59 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: Grounds for disbelief
At 06:04 PM 02/06/2003 -0400, RFaussette@aol.com wrote:
By Aviva Lori
Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and his colleagues are stirring controversy
with contentions that many biblical stories never happened, but were written
by what he calls `a creative copywriter' to advance an ideological agenda.
link:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=291264&contrassID=2&su
bContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
rich
Finally, I cannot resist the temptation to say something in a debate that I
have been involved in for many years, probably for fifty years or more.
"Never happened" and "advance an ideological agenda" are expressions which
have a certain "ideological" background. Expressions like that do not help.
All of us are Christians, the ASA is after all an organization of
Christians, according to its statutes. That means that all of us accept the
Bible. If anyone not the death and resurrection has no meaning for that
person, and such a person has no right to call himself a Chrisrian. That
non-Christians disagree with me, us, is nothing new. Nor is it new that
outsiders don't accept the Bible.
My remarks here do not mean, that therefor our differences have no meaning.
From my own experience I would say, that the greatest difficulty is, that
many have not had a basic Christian schooling, and accept Christianity only
for part of their life, which means that when they study, they do not try to
fit their daily studies into their Christian acceptance of the Bible.
I have to add here right away, that accepting the Bible does not mean, that
therefor you have to read it as a science-text, nor do you have to put it
aside as something irrelevant for your daily studies. But, as you go out of
your way in your "scientific" studies, you should go "out of your way" in
your biblical studies. Both are founded on the works of the same God who
will not fool you in either place. That means that you should be doing a
lot more than just saying "Science" says, or the "Bible"says. It is just
laziness (sorry, for saying it that way, but I don't know another way) to
say, "the Bible says", or "Science" says, without giving any thorough reply
to the difficulties raised. Thus far I missed that. I do not want to get
involved again. Thus far I have not seen any thorough discussion of the
Bible, which takes into account the studies of orthodox Christian
theologians, who reject the way some try to get out of the difficulties by
saying you have to read the Bible as a beginner in the 21st century will
read it. Readers on this forum should not be beginners, either in Bible
reading, nor in science.
From the side of the "literal" readers of the Bible, I miss very much a
discussion of the language, human history, philosophies etc. of the peoples
in biblical times. Their story telling is different. An example which most
of us accept is Jesus' telling of stories. We call them parables. Another
place where we see it in modern history telling. As my name indicates, I am
originally a Dutch Calvinist. The way I read about the Dutch-English wars
in the seventeenth century is very different in Dutch books than it is in
English books. That is only a few centuries ago. As long as we do not talk
about the history AND philosophies of the Bible-writers we are not getting
anywhere. The arguments are often not replied to, nor even heard, which
makes this discussion utterly uselees and frustrating.
Jan de Koning
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue Jun 03 2003 - 12:29:24 EDT