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Understanding the holy scriptures is impossible unless God gives you the interpretation

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
You seek knowledge and ignore the truth? That is some boast! :sweatsmile:
He didn't say that he ignores the truth. I think he means that absolute truth isn't available to us, just relative truth, which feels like an oxymoron like relatively certain. If so, I agree.

Knowledge is possible, whereas absolute (or objective or ultimate) truth is unavailable to us. Fortunately, it's also not necessary. Knowledge is enough, and by that I mean the collection of demonstrably correct beliefs, which includes all useful ideas - ideas that can be used to reliably predict outcomes.
 

Sgt. Pepper

All you need is love.
Hey, god can't be wrong!

I think the irony of what I said is that Christians claim to have "spiritual discernment from the Holy Spirit" in order for them to properly understand the Bible, yet some Christian doctrines and interpretations of the Bible vastly differ from one another. I've seen this claim of spiritual discernment repeated on this forum, but I've also seen some Christians arguing back and forth about what they believe the Bible says. Ironically, they all believe they are right, and those who disagree with them are wrong and don't understand the Bible. And speaking of God being wrong, I have an opinion about that (read it here).
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
You seek knowledge and ignore the truth? That is some boast! :sweatsmile:
No, not a boast at all, just being touch with the reality of the evolving knowledge of science and history. Not the illusions of delusions of egocentric human desire for truth results in thousands of conflicting claims of those that claim the truth.

I believe as well as dodging the substance of my posts you need to answer the following question:

Do you believe the Pentateuch is literal history as the Hebrew authors, NT authors and the Church Fathers believed?
 

2ndpillar

Well-Known Member
Do you believe the Pentateuch is literal history as the Hebrew authors, NT authors and the Church Fathers believed?
The church fathers of the nations/Gentiles, are in the future to be referred to as arbiters of "falsehoods" after the "day of distress" (Jeremiah 16:19). And the NT authorship, seems to be based on best guesses, or simply fraudulent. As for the Pentateuch, that would be in the realm of parables, which is for those with insight, which would exclude the "wicked" (Daniel 12:10).
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The church fathers of the nations/Gentiles, are in the future to be referred to as arbiters of "falsehoods" after the "day of distress" (Jeremiah 16:19). And the NT authorship, seems to be based on best guesses, or simply fraudulent. As for the Pentateuch, that would be in the realm of parables, which is for those with insight, which would exclude the "wicked" (Daniel 12:10).
A rather confusing response. The Pentateuch was written in the perspective of history of the ancient world. Parables are sayings tht occur throughout the Bible and in Hebrew traditions.

Yes, the Church Fathers are overwhelmingly Hellenist Roman, but it is unlikely that Christianity will change their view of the NT and the Church Fathers any different than they do now and in history.
 

2ndpillar

Well-Known Member
A rather confusing response. The Pentateuch was written in the perspective of history of the ancient world. Parables are sayings tht occur throughout the Bible and in Hebrew traditions.

Yes, the Church Fathers are overwhelmingly Hellenist Roman, but it is unlikely that Christianity will change their view of the NT and the Church Fathers any different than they do now and in history.
Well, according to Yeshua's parable with respect to the "kingdom of heaven", those "who commit lawlessness", the followers of the false gospel of grace (Mt 13:13-41), will be gathered out "first", and thrown into the furnace of fire (Mt 13:30 & 42). According to Jeremiah 16:19, the survivors of the Gentiles/"nations" will plead that "our fathers (church fathers) have inherited nothing but falsehood". As for your "confusion", that dates back to Babel, and the church of Babylon, and the worship of the sun god Bel (Sol Invictus), which has been adopted by the "Christian" church by way of the false prophet Paul, played out by the church keeping Constantine's god, Sol Invictus's day (Sunday) holy, per the decree of Constantine in 321 A.D. .. Paul is all things to all men, and men can choose what thing they choose to believe. Previous to 367 A.D. there was no accepted canon, and the letter of Athanasius does not make the generally accepted canon holy. It only fulfills the prediction that the "enemy"/"devil" will plant his message next to the "message of the son of man" (Mt 13:13-49).

Jeremiah 16:19

King James Bible
O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.

Matthew 13:30 New American Standard Bible
Allow both (wicked and righteous) to grow together until the harvest; and at the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers (angels), “First gather up the weeds (wicked/lawless) and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat (righteous) into my barn.”’”
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Well, according to Yeshua's parable with respect to the "kingdom of heaven", those "who commit lawlessness", the followers of the false gospel of grace (Mt 13:13-41), will be gathered out "first", and thrown into the furnace of fire (Mt 13:30 & 42). According to Jeremiah 16:19, the survivors of the Gentiles/"nations" will plead that "our fathers (church fathers) have inherited nothing but falsehood". As for your "confusion", that dates back to Babel, and the church of Babylon, and the worship of the sun god Bel (Sol Invictus), which has been adopted by the "Christian" church by way of the false prophet Paul, played out by the church keeping Constantine's god, Sol Invictus's day (Sunday) holy, per the decree of Constantine in 321 A.D. .. Paul is all things to all men, and men can choose what thing they choose to believe. Previous to 367 A.D. there was no accepted canon, and the letter of Athanasius does not make the generally accepted canon holy. It only fulfills the prediction that the "enemy"/"devil" will plant his message next to the "message of the son of man" (Mt 13:13-49).

Jeremiah 16:19
King James Bible
O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.

Matthew 13:30 New American Standard Bible
Allow both (wicked and righteous) to grow together until the harvest; and at the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers (angels), “First gather up the weeds (wicked/lawless) and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat (righteous) into my barn.”’”
I agreed there are parables in the Bible and in Hebrew tradition, but the Pentateuch was written as a literal history and not as parables, The authors of the NT also believed it was a literal history.

As far as parables go you can google the internet and find a list of the parables with their roots in the Torah and Hebrew traditions.
 

Ajax

Active Member
In my opinion, the title of the thread is totally false.
The logical gap is that if, we need divine "interpretive keys" for the conquest of the content of the Bible, then all ordinary people of the time before the various apologists undertook to find them, were automatically deprived of this conquest, and the first Christians were excluded from understanding the scriptures. So this is one of the presumptions that interpretive keys should not be needed because Scripture is addressed to everyone equally and not to some people. A second presumption is that nowhere did the authors of the Scriptures, whether divine or not, claimed the necessity for later interpretation.

In the same way, Porphyry exposed the logical gap that if Jesus and faith in him is man's requirement for salvation as the Christological narrative claims, then thousands of generations of mankind who lived before Jesus were excluded from salvation without being given the choice, because they never heard about Him.

Divine interpretation also removes the perennial justification of Christians that the words of Jesus are supposedly simple and full of parables in order to be understood by simple illiterate, uneducated people, the poor, fishermen, slaves, etc. of his time, since its conquest needs interpretive keys from the spirited clergy, or the Spirit itself.
Another big logical contradiction is that apologists preferentially remember whom Jesus was addressing: Whenever the convenient, literal interpretation suit them, then the words of Jesus are so because they were addressed to uneducated fishermen, while whenever it does not suit them, the words of Jesus need interpretation, which apparently were not accessible to the uneducated masses.

The "interpretive keys" are only necessary as each reader increases his education, his knowledge and his evolution. The average uneducated person of Jesus' time needed no interpretative key tor the Scriptures, did not analyze, did not find contradictions, most likely did not even know how to read. He simply obeyed unquestioningly the reading of others. The thousands of believers who converted to Christianity centuries later, did not need any interpretive key, quite simply because they became Christians without any awareness of Christian content.

Interpretation was/is needed ONLY against the learned reader to disentangle the logical contradictions and violations of logic he finds in the reading, in order to "help" him to reconcile the acceptance of what is logically unacceptable, which, this logically unacceptable at that time created dangerous sects, i.e. it created splits, not only theological but also of power and wealth, in an edifice whose goal was the concentration of wealth and power and not its dispersion.

All the more today the interpretive keys are increasingly necessary, as the average reader has much more education, judgment, knowledge and readily available information than the readers of the time of Jesus, and therefore finds contradictions and absurdities much more striking.

In short, the respective divine interpretive keys are nothing other than the price of the evolution of the human intellect from the time of Jesus onwards, especially when the latter chose to remain invisible and not to solve every contradiction himself.
If the world remained like the fisherman of the time of Jesus, there would be no need for divine interpretation for the Scriptures.

So for example from the 20th century onwards, when slavery on the planet was eliminated, you obviously need the interpretive keys of the Spirit to "interpret" things like this: "Slaves obey your masters in the flesh with fear and terror ..."... On the contrary, 1000 years ago, you would not need any interpretation at all. Divine interpretation is therefore nothing more than a propaganda tool whose purpose is to make a convenient interpretation that will lead to acceptance, and replace the inconvenient true interpretation that would lead to rejection.
 
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jimb

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I agreed there are parables in the Bible and in Hebrew tradition, but the Pentateuch was written as a literal history and not as parables, The authors of the NT also believed it was a literal history.

As far as parables go you can google the internet and find a list of the parables with their roots in the Torah and Hebrew traditions.
You think that Leviticus and Deuteronomy are literal history?
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Which basically means only the Messiah can truly reveal the scriptures (Isaiah 29:18).

And he has. The New Testament in the blood of Messiah is the means for revealing the scriptures that came prior to the blood-letting that lets us look into the scriptures that came first chronologically, but which are actually secondary theo-logically. So that now, the natural man who's born again through the blood, the red-letters, rather than the black, is able to perceive the New Testament spiritually, and thereby use that revelation (of the New Testament, which is basically a revelation of the Testament that's chronologically first) to gain spiritual perception concerning the so-called "old" Testament (Isaiah 29:18).



John
 

2ndpillar

Well-Known Member
I agreed there are parables in the Bible and in Hebrew tradition, but the Pentateuch was written as a literal history and not as parables, The authors of the NT also believed it was a literal history.

As far as parables go you can google the internet and find a list of the parables with their roots in the Torah and Hebrew traditions.
Well, Yeshua (Mt 13:13-14) referred to Isaiah 6:9 with respect to which people will understand and which will not, and that is with respect also to Daniel, per Daniel 12:10. Daniel is full of parables, with the same situations described in a myriad of ways, and it parallels Revelation. One of the reason people can't understand Revelations, besides its use of parables, is because it is a witness against the daughters of Babylon, which entails the "Christian" churches.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Well, Yeshua (Mt 13:13-14) referred to Isaiah 6:9 with respect to which people will understand and which will not, and that is with respect also to Daniel, per Daniel 12:10. Daniel is full of parables, with the same situations described in a myriad of ways, and it parallels Revelation. One of the reason people can't understand Revelations, besides its use of parables, is because it is a witness against the daughters of Babylon, which entails the "Christian" churches.
I agreed there are parables in the Bible and in Hebrew tradition, but the Pentateuch was written as a literal history and not as parables, The authors of the NT also believed it was a literal history.

As far as parables go you can google the internet and find a list of the parables with their roots in the Torah and Hebrew traditions.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
You think that Leviticus and Deuteronomy are literal history?
It is not my interpretation that I am concerned with, but the fact that you doge answering the questions concerning what you believe concerning the Pentateuch as per the subject of the thread:
Understanding the holy scriptures is impossible unless God gives you the interpretation

Of course, the authors of the Pentateuch, believed them to be accurate history and Hebrew Law and ritual including Leviticus and Deuteronomy. There is no reason I can come up with that the authors believed otherwise. The authors made no reference to the writings being symbolic or anecdotal or subject to personal interpretation. I do not consider my interpretation and understanding does the absolute and does not negate the possibility of other interpretation

My interpretation is that the Pentateuch is the beliefs, and the knowledge of the authors in ~600 BCE, and recorded what they believed at the time and culture, I do not believe the history described in the Pentateuch is not historically accurate, even though it may be based dome events in history before it was compiled after 600 BCE. I believe the dating of the compilation of the Pentateuch is based on extensive evidence.
 

jimb

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
It is not my interpretation that I am concerned with, but the fact that you doge answering the questions concerning what you believe concerning the Pentateuch as per the subject of the thread:
Understanding the holy scriptures is impossible unless God gives you the interpretation

Of course, the authors of the Pentateuch, believed them to be accurate history and Hebrew Law and ritual including Leviticus and Deuteronomy. There is no reason I can come up with that the authors believed otherwise. The authors made no reference to the writings being symbolic or anecdotal or subject to personal interpretation. I do not consider my interpretation and understanding does the absolute and does not negate the possibility of other interpretation

My interpretation is that the Pentateuch is the beliefs, and the knowledge of the authors in ~600 BCE, and recorded what they believed at the time and culture, I do not believe the history described in the Pentateuch is not historically accurate, even though it may be based dome events in history before it was compiled after 600 BCE. I believe the dating of the compilation of the Pentateuch is based on extensive evidence.
Clearly you do not understand the Bible. (Frankly, I am not surprised.)

It is not a textbook! The Bible teaches SPIRITUAL TRUTHS. Those of us who understand that are blessed by God.

Looking for scientific facts and/or literal history clearly shows that you have no idea what the Bible is about. An example: You wrote, 1) "Of course, the authors of the Pentateuch, believed them to be accurate history" and 2) "There is no reason I can come up with that the authors believed otherwise. The authors made no reference to 3) the writings being symbolic or anecdotal or subject to personal interpretation." So, your own words have proven my point! YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Clearly you do not understand the Bible. (Frankly, I am not surprised.)

It is not a textbook! The Bible teaches SPIRITUAL TRUTHS. Those of us who understand that are blessed by God.

Looking for scientific facts and/or literal history clearly shows that you have no idea what the Bible is about. An example: You wrote, 1) "Of course, the authors of the Pentateuch, believed them to be accurate history" and 2) "There is no reason I can come up with that the authors believed otherwise. The authors made no reference to 3) the writings being symbolic or anecdotal or subject to personal interpretation." So, your own words have proven my point! YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE.
Failure to respond to my posts, I never said the Bible was a textbook. Yes, you believe the Bible teaches spiritual truths, history as you understand what they believed by the authors and their laws, and history

The only reason you say I do not understand the Bible is because you claim I do not believe as you do. subjective belief does not translate to the ONLY understanding of scripture. It is not hard to understand different interpretations of the scripture without believing in other interpretations
 
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