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I've seen enough biblical discussions to know that people get the understanding out of the bible, that they're looking for.
Exactly. There is no objectively correct interpretation of any particular scripture, and no objectively correct interpretational SYSTEM, of which there are many, even within fundamentalism. The Bible means whatever each believer claims is means, no more and no less.
Everyone comes to holy books with their personal taste / bias and decides what it means to them. If they convince enough other people of their dogma, they form a denomination or perhaps a local congregation that holds to that doctrinal statement.
Inerrantist / literalist dogma doesn't even have to have a basis in scripture. For example there's not a whisper in scripture to support the "age of accountability". And if you had consulted evangelical thought leaders of the 1960s you'd not find any of them teaching that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder; in fact, quite the opposite. Going back further: 1920s fundamentalists would opine things like it's wicked to listen to the radio or go to moving picture shows or date unchaperoned or for a girl to wear a skirt shorter than ankle length. None of these things had any support in scripture and none of them are espoused by modern fundamentalists, either. Now they just spout different made-up notions, and "wrest the scriptures" to "prove" them.
It is all subjective, cherry-picked, and even mutable. They just will never admit it.
To the question "can unbelievers understand the Bible", I can only say, it's a question that would make sense if there weren't such a thing as apostates / deconverts. I attended a Bible Institute, was an informal minister of music, communications director, sunday school teacher, daily prayer and Bible studier, fully accepted by my fellow Christians and completely committed to the cause. What would the question be for me ... can believers suddenly not understand what they previously understood and passed extensive exams on?
In truth, my beliefs had to be adjusted to conform to experienced reality and substantiated facts. Nothing more nor less. But believers will always prefer to pretend that doesn't ever happen, that deconverts were Never One Of Us (there's even a verse for that!!) and so forth. Gaslighting of the first order is what they will resort to, in the face of inconvenient truth.
Exactly. There is no objectively correct interpretation of any particular scripture, and no objectively correct interpretational SYSTEM, of which there are many, even within fundamentalism. The Bible means whatever each believer claims is means, no more and no less.
Everyone comes to holy books with their personal taste / bias and decides what it means to them. If they convince enough other people of their dogma, they form a denomination or perhaps a local congregation that holds to that doctrinal statement.
Inerrantist / literalist dogma doesn't even have to have a basis in scripture. For example there's not a whisper in scripture to support the "age of accountability". And if you had consulted evangelical thought leaders of the 1960s you'd not find any of them teaching that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder; in fact, quite the opposite. Going back further: 1920s fundamentalists would opine things like it's wicked to listen to the radio or go to moving picture shows or date unchaperoned or for a girl to wear a skirt shorter than ankle length. None of these things had any support in scripture and none of them are espoused by modern fundamentalists, either. Now they just spout different made-up notions, and "wrest the scriptures" to "prove" them.
It is all subjective, cherry-picked, and even mutable. They just will never admit it.
To the question "can unbelievers understand the Bible", I can only say, it's a question that would make sense if there weren't such a thing as apostates / deconverts. I attended a Bible Institute, was an informal minister of music, communications director, sunday school teacher, daily prayer and Bible studier, fully accepted by my fellow Christians and completely committed to the cause. What would the question be for me ... can believers suddenly not understand what they previously understood and passed extensive exams on?
In truth, my beliefs had to be adjusted to conform to experienced reality and substantiated facts. Nothing more nor less. But believers will always prefer to pretend that doesn't ever happen, that deconverts were Never One Of Us (there's even a verse for that!!) and so forth. Gaslighting of the first order is what they will resort to, in the face of inconvenient truth.
Blasphemer! How dare you tell it how it is! ............ lol.
Don't you just love it when they say 'Well you clearly couldn't possibly have been a proper Christian in the first place!' ? Ugh.
It could be worse though ..... 'There but for the grace of God, there go I' & all that.
BIG G is the holy GOD and SMALL "g" is the devil.........everybody read these verses now that you know the small "g" is the devil and see the difference.....
QUESTION: Were any of the original scriptures written with capital letters?
“So the Bible itself doesn't capitalize divine pronouns, though some translations do. This itself creates a problem, though. What if a passage is ambiguous about whether it's referring to God or a mere human being? This isn't common, but the lack of capitalization in the original creates this possibility, and it does occur. More common in when a passage about kingship in the Old Testament refers first of all to a human king (or other type of Christ) or ideal kingship and then in an extended sense to the Messiah….”
1 Corin 2:13-16 The simple answer is that the unbeliever cannot understand or believe the Bible because they are spiritually blind, dead and enemies of God. God has to
bring them to faith for them to read and understand.
RESPONSE: What is your evidence? If an "unbeliever" doesn't agree with your interpretation, does that make their interpretation wrong, or is that just what you are comfortable believing?
Perhaps the unbeliever has just followed St. Paul's advice to "test everything" and "hold fast to that which is true. " Also "to put aside childish things."
The first thing that needs to be realized is that during the period when the New Testament was written, ordinary writing was done on pressed sheets of papyrus fibers. This plant was commonly used in Egypt and around the Mediterranean Sea for writing purposes...and it was inexpensive. Most literature from the period was collected into scrolls which could be rolled up into a bundle and would be unrolled when the time came to read them. OT manuscripts, written on leather parchment, were bundled this way. However, for reasons still unknown to us, the New Testament writings are not found in the scroll format, but in codex or book form. That is, sheets of papyrus would be arranged into a book, which was sewed together similar to the way modern books are made. It may be that blank codices were easy to come by.
By the fourth century, parchments made from animal hide came into widespread use. Parchement was far more durable than papyrus but had some obvious drawbacks: to transcribe the entire NT onto parchment would require the killing of a good sized flock of sheep or goats! Therefore, parchment manuscripts could only be commissioned by those who were very wealthy. In later centuries (IX on), paper came into use, eliminating the need to slaughter animals for parchment.
All of the Greek New Testament originals were written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS with no spaces and probably no punctuation, and all of the earlier manuscripts are in this style, whether on parchment or papyrus. This is because the Greek alphabet did not have punctuation until at least the II century, and there were no minscule (lower case) letters until much later. The surviving manuscripts on papyrus are classed by themselves: papyri. The parchment manuscripts written in all capitals are called uncials, and those written later (IX century on) using upper and lower case letters are called miniscules. Various commonly written words were often abbreviated. This are mistakenly called nomina sacra, "sacred names," but it is not only special names and titled which were abbreviated this way. More
His sheep Know his voice and his word and can follow both .. everyone isn't his sheep, they are just sheep..
So, EVERYONE are just sheep...Including yourself?...
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"Unbelievers" don't understand scripture?
