This comment from Batair in the martyrdom thread...

"Or maybe not. I have no proof to know he rose from the dead except a questionable book which exaggerates many other things. Maybe it was just allegory to spice stuff up like some of the other harder to believe things."

...made me want to start a new thread.

Most modern Christians understand that it is important not to take the Bible literally, and reading some of its text as an allegory or in the flow of social context is necessary. Even though these stories aren't historically true, they illustrate theological truths.

Examples include the creation story, the book of Job, the exodus story, and so on. While it is clear that the book of Job is indeed a story, the creation and exodus stories don't explicitly say that they are stories to illustrate theological truths. This is left to theologians and scholars to interpret.

However, every Christian claims that certain stories are absolutely true - I'm thinking the Resurrection - and they have to be or the very foundation of Christianity would be shaken.

If the whole divinity of Jesus was just a story to illustrate theological truths, then Christianity would be something very different.

Yet still the foundation of Christianity relies on certain stories to be absolutely true, but cannot claim that all of it is literally true if it wants to be taken seriously.

So I'm wondering, how do "they" choose what stories are allegory and which stories are true?

This is something to think about.

If you're trying to form a set of beliefs based exclusively on what's written in the Bible, there is no right answer to this imo.

If you have some other beliefs in your set of beliefs, like beliefs about science, logic or morals or biblical context, then you'd interpret the Bible such that you maximize coherence with those beliefs.
The creation story for instance isn't consistent with what science tells us, so that's going to be something you won't want to take literally if you also believe the science.

edit: There's also a field, hermeneutics, which deals with interpretation theory. Check out the sep entry

Thread title fail, imo.

The difference lies in how the story is told. Genesis is a written account by Moses of the Jewish creation story, which up until then had been passed generation to generation by oratory. This in an of itself introduces the potential for many historical inaccuracies, but that's not the point of the book. Likewise with the book of Job, which is clearly a story lesson.

Books like Judges, I/II Kings, I/II Chronicles, etc, are books of history written by contemporary authors. Same for Exodus (Moses telling the story he lived).

The same goes for the Gospels. The authors are recounting either first or second information that was widely known to the early Christian/Jewish community in and around Jerusalem. Christ's crucifixion and resurrection are central, otherwise why even write the books?

By asking: "How did the author of this text expect a contemporary audience to interpret it?"

Compare it to what modern science says regarding the issue (if it does address it) then label accordingly.

I understand the concept of reading the stories in cultural, scientific, and logical context, and that's all well and good. Except as Christians we have to believe that certain stories, like the Resurrection, have to be historical and not just allegorical.

I also understand that the gospels are meant to be historical and factual, but first century historians, particularly in Palestine, told history in a quasi prose manner, very different from how journalists and historians document events today.

At what point are we saying, the Bible is true, except the parts that can be refuted by scientific discoveries, well we just read that as symbolic meant to illustrate historical truths?

On a side note, is there any type of Christianity that does think the Resurrection is symbolic and not literal?

The Gospels are faith documents rather than historical documents. They were written not when Jesus was alive but in some cases many years after his death (some 100 + years). They were written to convey a message that some people believed already, not as historical fact, there have even been Christian studies which only attribute less than 20% as historical fact.

Not really. Roman historians like Pliny tended to be fairly accurate and didn't include supernatural events in their recordings because they felt like it or didn't understand something. By contrast, the events linked together in the second chapter of Luke are completely nonsensical and out of sync. The nature of the census, the reign of Augustus, the governorship of Quirinius are not contemporary events.

Possibly Unitarians. But most other Christians don't really consider them Christian.

People get mad when i call them Christians but some of the Ebionites didn't believe in the physical resurrection.

Link

"The majority of Church Fathers agree that the Ebionites rejected many of the central Christian views of Jesus such as his pre-existence, divinity, virgin birth, atoning death, and physical resurrection.[5] The Ebionites are described as emphasizing the oneness of God and the humanity of Jesus as the biological son of both Mary and Joseph, who by virtue of his righteousness, was chosen by God to be the messianic "prophet like Moses" (foretold in Deuteronomy 18:14–22) when he was anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism.[4][53]"

If the conspiracy theorists are right and the Ebionites are related to the early Jerusalem Church it would make things interesting.

One of the things I grapple with (as someone who considers the Bible inspired and finds it both useful and relevant) is how to treat the bible and what sort of authority or reliability I should grant it. There are lots of sacred texts and I dont think most of them are true so declaring the bible true needs to be well founded. I think this relates to the problem you are referring to - given nearly everyone declares some things 'really true' and others allegorical and given there is a lot of dispute about that it seems safest to me to declare it all true or all allegorical.

Given it can't all be true, I go with all allegorical and include the resurrection in this. I don't maintain this must be correct, nor do I claim that none of it is actually true (in addition to being useful as a story). I feel this is the cautious approach (as in the one less likely to lead to untrue beliefs which would bother me). I don't personally see why such a view is incompatible with Christianity, but accept that Christians do - which is why I label myself a theist.

We never say that. Instead we ask how a contemporary audience would have interpreted the text in question. This is always consistent with what we confirm through observation.

+1

This is a common myth perpetuated by many atheists. Things like the old universe are commonly thought of as a reaction to modern cosmology, when in fact it existed at least as early as Augustine.

I would like to see if anyone can show 1 thing from the bible that is a clear reaction to scientific discovery and was not believed by Christians previously.

Christians believed (with everyone) that species were created 'in one go' prior to Darwin's theory, no? The account of the creation of species surely underwent a revision (at least in some christians' minds).

This is definitely an interesting point. But can we say that this was a "christian" view? As in, was it doctrine that God created beings 'in one go'. And the creation days was not necessarily 24hrs, but was said could be a very long time. So was it actually viewed that everything was made as if it was 'popping' into existence?

Honestly, I have not really heard much on this in early christian history.

Strictly speaking, evolution is a very old idea, tracing back at least to Anaximander of Miletus. Certainly some ancient Greeks, a subset of medieval Muslims, and a few other groups/people (some of whom were labeled as heretics) believed in evolution and mutation/mutability of species. However, it wasn't until Darwin that anyone ever gave an account of a mechanism by which evolution occurs, ie natural selection.

Actually first century Christian leaders assumed that the genesis narrative was allegory.

But let me return to the focus by asking a direct question.

If we, as Christians, have to accept the Resurrection story as being a real event based on what is written in the Bible, how do we know it wasn't meant to be allegorical if we say that other stories and other passages are clearly works of poetry and storytelling?

Saying, Concerto, we have to interpret it based on how the contemporaries would have received it is all well and good, but it's to vague. What I'm looking for are specifics.

No it wasnt a christian view, it was widely held. Nonetheless, if you asked christians in the 13th century whether the species were created fully formed or whether they evolved over time, what do you think they would have said?

My suspicion based on the way the theory of evolution was received by the church (not that I'm any kind of expert on ancient christian thinking) is that there isnt any literature spelling out that it was literal because there wasnt any need to interpret the creation account. It didnt conflict with anything so why bother spelling out that the creation account was 'in one go'? I think the only way to argue it wasnt interpreted literally is if there's some evidence to that effect pre-Darwin.

Evolution as we understand it? I hadn't heard that. Although interesting, I still dont think it could be called 'the christian view' though, which was all I meant.

What did they think was the message? Was this the mainstream view or a subset (as turn prophet seemed to suggest).
Why does the resurrection story have to be a real event? I don't understand what difference it makes if Jesus's sacrifice and triumph over death is referring to an actual, physical body as opposed to some other interpretation.

Surely those responsible for the domestication of plants and animals during the Neolithic Revolution used artificial selection to produce substantial micro-evolution (which evolutionists never tire of equating with macro-evolution), so evidently such concepts go back at least that far.

Yeah me too. It takes a certain amount of study.

there are some who have said that the entire Bible, including the Jesus Myth, was constructed over archetypes that people at the time would recognize and were not taken as fact by the original followers. The belief that it was historical came later.

Since modern Christians base their faith on the idea that the Jesus story is literal, I suspect none will consider this a possibility.

Afaik at least some of the Church Fathers thought everything popped into existence all at once.

link

"To a large extent, the early Christian Church Fathers read creation history as an allegory, and followed Philo's ideas of time beginning with an instantaneous creation, with days not meant literally. Christian orthodoxy rejected the second century Gnostic belief that Genesis was purely allegorical, but without taking a purely literal view of the texts. Thus Origen believed that the physical world is ‘literally’ a creation of God, but did not take the chronology or the days as ‘literal’. Similarly, Saint Basil in the fourth century while literal in many ways, described creation as instantaneous and timeless, being immeasurable and indivisible.[24]"

It was mainstream for early Christian leaders, I believe. Literal interpretations of the Bible became emphasized at the Reformation as a general reaction to the Catholic Church's corruption at that time.

As for the second part, not sure if there is another interpretation, but I would be very interested to hear an alternative.

Early Christianity was a mess. We know from the existence of non-canonical gospels that there were lots of people running around telling different and inconsistent stories about Jesus' teachings, many of which made no claim that he was the son of God, had supernatural powers, or was resurrected. We can therefore assume that these teachings had followers and believers. (By the way, the existence of so many different stories about Jesus is one reason I don't buy the Jesus Myth Hypothesis-- for someone who supposedly didn't exist at all, he sure seemed to have a big impact; to be crass about it, he was at the very least a "brand name" which was used to convince people to listen to religious teachings, which suggests that he was an influential person during his life.)

The standardized set of beliefs that became the canon and traditions of Christianity as we now know them were settled by a bunch of ecumenical councils that occurred centuries after Jesus lived and which co-aligned with the centralization of power by the Roman authorities. They took control and they decided what the story was.

So yeah, in early Christianity there were probably plenty of people who considered themselves followers of Jesus (I don't really know when the term "Christ" was popularized, so I don't know if they called themselves Christians) who did not believe in a resurrection. They read texts like the Gospel of Thomas and believed Jesus to be a moral exemplar and teacher, or a prophet.

I think one of the fascinating things about Christianity is the extent to which most Protestants have no idea the extent to which they are really believing that a bunch of Roman politicians in the 3rd and 4th Centuries who were trying to centralize their own power got the story right. (Catholics probably are aware of this but the doctrine of Petrine primacy resolves the issue for them; the problem for Catholics is that there's no evidence that Peter ever actually made it to Rome to become the first Pope.)

Not really. Rather, it was being messed with, as predicted.

Matthew 24:3-5 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many."