>Again, we have covered this ground. You seem to disregard everything I've written. I actually don't know why the conversation is continuing. Again, as written by Walton and Sandy (The Lost World of Scripture, pp. 42-43): "Accommodation on the part of the divine communicator resides primarily in the locution [Locutions are words, sentences, rhetorical structures, genres, etc.], in which genre and rhetorical devices are included. These involve the form of the communication. Yet our conviction is that even though God accommodates the communicator and his audience in the trappings and framework of locution, he will not accommodate an erroneous illocution [An illocution is the intention to do something with the locutions: bless, promise, instruct, assert, etc.] on the part of the human communicator. God may well accommodate the human communicator’s view that the earth is the center of the cosmos [or, as you say, that the earth is flat]. But if God’s intention is not to communicate truth about cosmic geography, that accommodation is simply part of the shape of the locution—it is incidental, not part of God’s illocution. In contrast, God will not accommodate a communicator’s belief that there was an exodus from Egypt and speak of it as a reality if it never happened. God will accommodate limited understanding for the sake of communication—that is simply part of accommodation in the locution. But he would maintain that he will not communicate about how he worked in events (e.g., the exodus) or through people (e.g., Abraham) if those events never took place and those people never existed. Such accommodation would falsify his illocution and invalidate its reliability. Authority is linked to the illocution. Consequently there is a higher incidence of accommodation in the locutions; indeed that is entirely normal and expected. Authority is not vested independently in the locutions, and communication could not take place without such accommodation. In contrast, that which comes with authority (illocution) may involve accommodation to language and culture, but will not affirm that which is patently false."

I have read what you've said. I understand your hypothesis, but there are problems with it.
1) The Bible contradicts your claims. It says it's true in it's entirety. PERIOD. It contradicts your whole concept of interpretation because it says it is completely correct in it's entirety. PERIOD.

2) Your method of interpretation allows one to ignore ANY scientific inaccuracy. It's so ridiculous that if it said the earth is flat, you could say "Well, that's what they thought at the time and god wanted to speak in terms of what they thought was true so it's still the word of god." I'm sorry, but your method of interpretation means that no matter what the Bible says, it can't be shown to be false just so long as the authors thought it was true. I'm sorry, but your interpreation doesn't allow the Bible to be tested against objective reality. That means that your Bible's authority can't be confirmed. Therefore, the claim that it has authority should be rejected.

Try interpreting the Qua'ran in the same way that you interpret the Bible. Prove that it's wrong. I don't think that you can. You could point out that the idea that Mohamed riding to the moon on a winged horse is absurd and that's not how ANYTHING works, but I can just tell you that god wanted to speak to people in those terms.

What objective standard of actual fact does your Bible have to live up to under your interpreation? What could the Bible possibly contain that would allow one to say it's not right under your method of interpretation? I understand your logic for your interpretation. You could be right, you could be wrong. We can't test the Bible against objective facts and reality under your method of interpretation and therefore the Bible should not be accepted because all that you can possibly ever have to support the Bible is personal experience, not objective reality because science, history and regular processes is all that we CAN measure against objective reality. Your problem is that your method of interpretation does not allow the Bible to be shown to be wrong pretty much no matter what it says. I think you are reading what I'm writing, but not understanding it, or not really considering it.

I get your method of interpretation. I understand your argument for it. It doesn't allow the Bible to be testable against objective reality and therefore the claim of the Bible's authority should not be accepted.

> Reading Harry Potter is completely different from reading the Bible.

Of course I agree with this. I only made the analogy to say that every experience of reading involves interpretation, that's all. Again, you missed my point.

> Would that count against the Bible? According to your method of interpretation, it wouldn't.

Again, we have covered this ground. You seem to disregard everything I've written. I actually don't know why the conversation is continuing. Again, as written by Walton and Sandy (The Lost World of Scripture, pp. 42-43): "Accommodation on the part of the divine communicator resides primarily in the locution [Locutions are words, sentences, rhetorical structures, genres, etc.], in which genre and rhetorical devices are included. These involve the form of the communication. Yet our conviction is that even though God accommodates the communicator and his audience in the trappings and framework of locution, he will not accommodate an erroneous illocution [An illocution is the intention to do something with the locutions: bless, promise, instruct, assert, etc.] on the part of the human communicator. God may well accommodate the human communicator’s view that the earth is the center of the cosmos [or, as you say, that the earth is flat]. But if God’s intention is not to communicate truth about cosmic geography, that accommodation is simply part of the shape of the locution—it is incidental, not part of God’s illocution. In contrast, God will not accommodate a communicator’s belief that there was an exodus from Egypt and speak of it as a reality if it never happened. God will accommodate limited understanding for the sake of communication—that is simply part of accommodation in the locution. But he would maintain that he will not communicate about how he worked in events (e.g., the exodus) or through people (e.g., Abraham) if those events never took place and those people never existed. Such accommodation would falsify his illocution and invalidate its reliability. Authority is linked to the illocution. Consequently there is a higher incidence of accommodation in the locutions; indeed that is entirely normal and expected. Authority is not vested independently in the locutions, and communication could not take place without such accommodation. In contrast, that which comes with authority (illocution) may involve accommodation to language and culture, but will not affirm that which is patently false."

>Any reading, whether Harry Potter, William Shakespeare, or War and Peace, has an interpretive framework and is constantly being interpreted by the reader. This is unavoidable, no matter the source or quality of the work of literature. We as readers are the "final" interpreters of the text. As such, we can interpret correctly or misconstrue at our heart's content what we read. I had a discussion a few year's ago about Les Miserables. The other person was contending that Jean Valjean represented atheists, and Javert represented Christianity. I disagreed and asserted the Valjean represented true Christianity and Javert false religion. Without an interpretive framework, we were each free to draw our own conclusions. We obviously couldn't both be right—we are not free to interpret willy-nilly to fit our preconceived notions.

Reading Harry Potter is completely different from reading the Bible. It would be like trying to read a physics book the way you would read Harry Potter. Harry Potter doesn't claim to be the truth. J. K. Rowling does NOT claim that Harry Potter exists or that Hogwarts is a real school. It is and is presented as being mythological. If you claim that your book is non-fiction, it needs to be read completely differently than a fiction book. It needs to be read much more like how you would read a physics book. After all, the Bible claims to be true in it's entirety. As in ALL of it. Every last bit of it. On top of this, the people who were around at the time would have interpreted it this way. They wouldn't have separated out the physics parts of it and say that those were less the claim of the Bible, and certainly the Bible claims that EVERYTHING in the Bible is truth. The way you'd interpret books of fiction is not relevant.

>but which one (if either) were the proper interpretation? That's where we need to determine legitimate and responsible rules to govern interpretation.

A truly staggering amount of time, effort and energy have been invested in interpreting the Bible. Billions of dollars and man hours has been spent on this task. More resources have been devoted to this task than has been devoted to all of science. Yet, we aren't any closer to having a consensus on what it means than we were when it was first written. Quite the opposite really. At the time it was written, there was far more agreement. The more time passes and the more effort and energy is poured into interpreting it, the more people disagree on what it means. It's not just people who's only read a little of it who disagree about what it says. The people who've spent the most time on it disagree about virtually everything about it. There is little consensus on any form of interpretation of it even among the people who spend their entire life studying it. Do you really think you have the one true method of interpretation? One could argue about this kind of stuff their entire life, and plenty of people do.

Hypothetically, suppose the Bible claimed that the earth is flat. Suppose there was a verse in the Bible that read as follows: "The earth is flat". Would that count against the Bible? According to your method of interpretation, it wouldn't. Once your method of interpretation allows you to explain away the sentence "the earth is flat" and still claim the Bible is the word of god, your method of interpretation must be deemed so lax as to be ridiculous. On top of that, your method of interpretation can't claim there to be any evidence for the Bible no matter what it says because if it being wrong on something isn't evidence against it, it being right about something isn't evidence for it either. I'm sorry, but once your method of interpretation is as such that your book can say that the earth is flat and that doesn't count against it, your method of interpretation has gone WAY too far. If the Bible being wrong about something isn't evidence against it, then things being right in it don't count as evidence for it either. The Bible says it's true in it's entirety. This flies in the face of this idea that god filled the Bible with scientific inaccuracies in order to talk in terms the reader would understand.

Any reading, whether Harry Potter, William Shakespeare, or War and Peace, has an interpretive framework and is constantly being interpreted by the reader. This is unavoidable, no matter the source or quality of the work of literature. We as readers are the "final" interpreters of the text. As such, we can interpret correctly or misconstrue at our heart's content what we read. I had a discussion a few year's ago about Les Miserables. The other person was contending that Jean Valjean represented atheists, and Javert represented Christianity. I disagreed and asserted the Valjean represented true Christianity and Javert false religion. Without an interpretive framework, we were each free to draw our own conclusions. We obviously couldn't both be right—we are not free to interpret willy-nilly to fit our preconceived notions.

It's not a matter of comparing it to objective reality. While that's true, it's not an interpretive framework, as is evident in my Les Mis example. Both interpretations could conform to objective reality, but which one (if either) were the proper interpretation? That's where we need to determine legitimate and responsible rules to govern interpretation. Scientists, historians and literature professors do the same thing. We must agree on an approach that will be scrupulous and hold us accountable to inhibit false interpretations. Hence a set of rules.

> If the Bible interprets itself, there would be consistency in interpretation. There isn't. No one agrees on what it says.

(1) This is inconsistency in interpretation because people don't stick to this rule. Some people just ignore this obvious principle. (2) The breadth of the Bible does occasionally create a situation where there are various ways we can cross-reference to arrive at an interpretation. In this case, which does happen, we bring the other rules to bear on the interpretation. This rule doesn't stand by itself.

> Can I use a verse in a completely different book of the Bible to interpret the one I'm reading?

Yes, that's the point. Despite being 66 books, we regard the Bible as a unified whole, and a verse in a completely different book is a valid reference point to interpret the one you're reading.

> People do that to interpret what the 7 days of creation means.

Absolutely. Yes they do. So we need to bring other rules to bear to take us further. The "day and night" means a 24-hour day. But does it mean a 24-hour day of material creation or a 24-hour day of temple dedication? Additional interpretive principles need to be applied.

> Personal experience isn't evidence.

I beg to differ. I consider my personal experiences to be valid and a worthy interpretation of objective reality. If not, science ceases to exist, reason is worthless, and this conversation is absurd. But our experiences need to be tempered by reality and are often confirmed by the personal experiences of others.

> "Biblical examples are authoritative only when supported by a command." Where does the Bible say that?

It doesn't. It illustrates it. We follow the way the Bible interprets itself. Therefore this rule doesn't break rule #1, it endorses it.

> "Interpret the Bible the way it was meant to be interpreted." Isn't this just the Nike principle?

I see what you're saying, but the point is that we are not free to interpret the Bible however we choose. This rule, like the others, doesn't stand on its own. We must observe how the Bible interprets itself, guiding us to how God meant it to be interpreted. The main force of the rule is that "Scripture has only one meaning." It's our duty, and responsible interpretation, to find that, not to create that as we wish.

> "Interpret words in harmony with their meaning in the times of the author." This allows us to excuse any inaccuracy as long as people thought it was true at the time.

Not true. You're missing the point. "Conversation" in the 1500s meant "way of life." Nowadays it means "the exchange of ideas by means of spoken words." In the 1890s gay meant happy and carefree (the gay 90s). Now it means homosexual. It's anachronistic to assume what they (in the Bible) meant by a term is what we mean by it. Language is continually evolving, so we have to get back to the author's use and the way his culture understood a word. That's only responsible.

My perspective isn't being governed by a pastor or parent. It's coming from reading the Bible and comparing what it says to objective reality 100% of the time. This is necessary because otherwise you could compare it to the common belief at the time when it's wrong and say it's fine because god wanted to speak in terms of what people at the time believed and compare it to objective reality when it's right and say that backs up the authority of the Bible. Everything must be compared to objective reality or nothing and simply say it's what people thought at the time.

1) If the Bible interprets it's self, there would be consistency in interpretation. There isn't. No one agrees on what it says. This is also vague. Can I use a verse in a completely different book of the Bible to interpret the one I'm reading? People do that to interpret what the 7 days of creation means. Of course in doing so they aren't interpreting it the way people at the time would have. Which law of interpretation trumps which? Even with just these two laws can we get a consistent interpretation from reader to reader? Adding the others just makes consistency in interpretation even harder.

2). Personal experience isn't evidence. It's not evidence for the Qua'ran that it's followers have experience the truth of their book in their life. It's not evidence for yours either.

3). Where in the Bible does it say that? The Bible says it's true in its entirety. Seems you're breaking rule 1.

4). Interpret it the way it was meant to be interpreted? Are you sure this isn't the Nike principle? (Just do it)

5). This allows us to excuse any inaccuracy as long as people thought it was true at the time. This is the real crux of the problem with your method of interpretation.

There's a lot of stuff in your list. Let me see if I can find a more simple way to point out the flaws in your interpretation method. Suppose the Bible said the earth is flat. By your method of interpretation I could still say the Bible is the word of god and that it is concordant with science. If your book saying the earth is flat wouldn't be a mark against its authority then there's problems with your method of interpretation and judgement of authority.

> all I hear you doing is trying to twist the Bible to say that it doesn't say what it clearly says.

Then you have missed most of what I have written. What I have clearly said is that we have to interpret the Bible according to the intent of the author in the context of the audience to which it is written, which to me is the only responsible way to read and interpret and ancient document. I haven't twisted anything.

> If your principle of interpretation allows you to throw out whatever is wrong...

All I'm throwing out is the wrong ways many modern pastors and other readers of the text false construe the Bible. It's obvious that your perspectives and interpretations are being governed by what you have been taught—that's what I'm throwing out. There are much more accurate ways to interpret the Scripture guided by the evidence from scientists, archaeologists, and historians. That's where I get my interpretations.

It's hard to delve into my entire hermeneutic in a forum like this.

1. The Bible interprets itself; Scripture best explains Scripture.
2. Interpret personal experience in the light of Scripture, not Scripture in the light of our personal experience.
3. Biblical examples are authoritative only when supported by a command.
4. Scripture has only one meaning and should be taken the way it was meant to be taken.
5. Interpret words in harmony with their meaning in the times of the author.
6. Interpret a word in relation to its sentence and context.
7. Interpret a passage in harmony with its context.
8. When an inanimate object is used to describe a living being, we can understand that to be figurative, not literal.
9. When an expression is out of character with the thing described, the statement may be considered to be figurative.
10. The principal parts and figures of a parable represent certain realities. Consider only these principal parts and figures when drawing conclusions.
11. Interpret the words of the prophets in their usual, literal and historical sense, unless the context or manner in which they are fulfilled clearly indicates they have a symbolic meaning. Their fulfillment may be in installments, each fulfillment being a pledge of something more to follow.
12. Since Scripture originated in a historical context, it can be understood only in the light of Biblical history.
13. Even though God’s revelation in the Scriptures is progressive, both the Old and New Testaments are essential parts of this revelation and form a unit.
14. Historical facts or events become symbols of spiritual truths only if the Scriptures so designate them.
15. You must understand the Bible grammatically before you can understand it theologically.
16. A doctrine cannot be considered biblical unless it sums up and includes all that the Scriptures say about it.

That's a primer, but it at least gives you an idea.

I don't think I've been explaining myself well enough. Your method of interpretation, that says that god spoke in terms of what the people at the time knew/thought allows you to throw out any inaccuracies in the Bible. Once you start interpreting things this way, you'll conclude they are correct no matter what it is. If your principle of interpretation allows you to throw out whatever is wrong and say it's not evidence against your book because the people who wrote it thought it was true and god wanted to speak in terms they would understand, then you can't count it as evidence for your religion when it gets it right. This means that there can't be evidence for or against the book. In order to judge the book in any real sense, you have to interpret it in a way that doesn't allow you to just throw out what is incorrect simply because they thought it was right at the time. Your principle of interpretation is flawed not just because it assumes what you're trying to show, but also because it allows you to throw a claim out if it's wrong simply because the writer likely thought it was the common belief at the time and god wanted to write what they believed at the time so they'd understand it. This is why you MUST measure EVERYTHING against objective reality unless it is abundantly clear that it is not meant literally. Try using your rules of interpretation and show that the Qua'ran or any other holy book is false. It can't be done because your principles of interpretation will allow you to throw out any and all flaws and then say the book is without error and point at any cases where it's right and say it's the one true word of god.

I find it difficult keeping up with what you do/don't believe the bible does/doesn't say. I'm listening to you, and all I hear you doing is trying to twist the Bible to say that it doesn't say what it clearly says. Trying to say that we should accept claims without sufficient evidence. You aren't measuring the claims of the Bible against actual fact. You are measuring what you think maybe the people who wrote the Bible meant against what they thought at the time. If that's the way we read holy books, they are all true, but you can't use such a reading to say that the book is accurate to reality. If you say the book is an authority, if you say the book is the word of god, it must be measured against actual reality, not what the people at the time thought. Evidence must be demanded.

> A talking Donkey?

Oddly enough, Balaam doesn't seem phased that the donkey was speaking to him, which tells us it wasn't the donkey, really, at all, but the message of an angel coming to Balaam. He recognized the voice of a "God," so to speak, coming from the direction of the donkey (ventriloquism, if you wish). If it were the donkey actually speaking, Balaam would likely have died of a heart attack! Instead, he recognized the voice of the Lord.

> A talking snake?

We have already covered this. Do you not read anything I write?? And if you don't believe anything I say, why are you interested in continuing the conversation?

> A tree that has fruit that bestows knowledge on those that eat it?

The fruit wasn't magical, but representative.

> A person coming back from the dead?

We have already covered this. Do you not read anything I write?? And if you don't believe anything I say, why are you interested in continuing the conversation?

>Only if you have an a priori negative bias that God doesn't exist. If we accept, on the virtue of evidences and logic, that God exists, the "ridiculous stuff" is actually within reason.
A talking Donkey? A talking snake? A tree that has fruit that bestows knowledge on those that eat it? A person coming back from the dead? I'm sorry, but that's no less insane than Mohamed riding a winged horse to the moon. I don't see how one is less ridiculous than the other.

>First of all, I never claimed that it's true just because it's in the Bible.


>Secondly, there's more than just "some stuff in the Bible" that's true. There's an immense amount of material that is corroborated.
None of that can be considered as evidence that it's true because you're not comparing all of it's claims against actual reality. You can't pick and chose. You can't compare some of it's claims against just what the people at the time thought and then others to actual reality. The writers would have considered every bit of it true. Sure, it's possible that god wrote it and decided to just be accurate to what people at the time thought, but do you have any actual evidence to show that this would be the case? You can't say that it doesn't matter when it's claim isn't accurate because god was talking to them in the terms of what they thought was true at the time and then say that the parts that are actually true mean something. If inaccuracy doesn't mean anything, neither does accuracy. The writers didn't mean Genesis as just an allegory. Sure, it was accurate to what they thought but it wasn't accurate to reality. You can't just compare certain claims to actual reality and then say others are fine because they were what the writers thought was true. You can't have it both ways.