On 12/21/2011 02:02 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
In
<capd5f5qckjjmp_gthv5isttfrkeovnnwkmjgqkadlfbpqpu...@mail.gmail.com>,
on 12/20/2011
at 09:46 PM, John Gilmore<johnwgilmore0...@gmail.com> said:
Others are observing this sky too, and no cleric wishes to be made
a figure of fun by denying what is obvious to many others.
Shirley biblical literalism is an exception to that. I can't speak to
the Christian scriptures, but the Tanakh is absolutely laden with
obvious metaphor.
And since the 2/3's of the Christian scripture that is the Old Testament
is essentially the Tanakh, the same is true of it. That doesn't seem to
stop a majority of fundamentalist Christians from taking some of the
obvious metaphors, like the multiple, conflicting creation stories in
Genesis, literally. In the Christian New Testament the parables of
Jesus are also obvious metaphors and essentially the entire book of
Revelations as well, which again doesn't keep many fundamentalist
Christians from trying to apply the later literally to our times rather
than the Roman context in which it was written -- with the result that
several times a decade in this country some religious nut will use his
"inspired" interpretation of Revelations to confidently predict the
exact date of the end of the world, attract a small following, and then
vanish into richly-deserved obscurity when the date passes without incident.
--
Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org
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