Please, do not dare say you are sorry; though surely you can look at your answers (well, more like questions turned around & pointed back at me
) and see why I no longer view Jesus, or the whole of the Bible for that matter, the way I once did. Still, you took the time to acknowledge them which does mean a lot to me. Thank you.
I do agree that man's wisdom is foolish, which has a lot to do why I always questioned the Bible. In fact, when I was in high school, one of the questions that I asked a particularly fanatic Christian teacher was why it is that when the Bible admits that man's wisdom is foolish, we do not question the writings in it. I will *never* forget that day. I was thoroughly treated, well, as a dog would be treated by its master for asking what honestly was a valid question.
I can pretty much sum up the answer to all the questions you asked me by saying this; that I do not take the Tanakh as a literal account of events. I take what I see as allegories. One thing that people do not understand by my declaration as such, is why on earth I would subscribe to something when I do not believe the accounts that are written therein. That answer is simple. It is the brilliant way that it was written that only opens up what it is behind the words when one acknowledges that, indeed, man's knowledge/wisdom is foolish. The Tanakh is very much a door in which behind it lies very valuable treasures. Man is foolish to believe that the key to those valued treasures would be lying on the door mat in front of that door, no?
I do not believe that Moses literally stood on top of mountain and received the tablets of stone written by the literal finger of G.d. I know that this is represtentative a very deep Truth. I do not believe that Noah sent out a raven and a dove from the ark in the way that it is written and no, I do not believe in a literal universal flood as it is written. I know these are representing Truths about the creation process that is ongoing as it is said to be in Isaiah and which Jesus himself acknowledged.
So, the more I *hear* that voice that is so intimate and resting behind the words that we see, the more I start to understand the NT and the test in which it truly is. Once I showed myself willing to take this test despite the frightening aspects of it, before I had even realized it, not only had I been given the key, but had already opened the lock of the door that was not allowing me to see the DEPTH and the TRUTH that is in the Tanakh.
I do not have faith in the Word of G.d. I am faithful to G.d because I know His Word and His Word does in fact exist beyond the pages of the Bible. Jesus does not. Jesus had a beginning and Jesus had an end; the Word of the LORD is everlasting.. **IT** is the beginning and **IT** is the end. This is indeed acknowledged in John (which, in all honesty, had to have been written by a female, no?) and the Word indeed rests behind the words of Jesus (save a few places). But to believe a man is responsible and can be the Word of the LORD is to shut your eyes to Reason and to blindly believe what you yourself admit is foolish... the wisdom of man. :yes: