(07-01-2022, 11:44 PM)jimhabegger Wrote: No matter how much people think they know from the Bible, they mostly don't know, or care to know, what is actually written in any published Bible. That doesn't mean that what is written in those Bibles has never had any influence on what people do. Would you agree that writings that most people have never read can have a dramatic impact on what they do? If not, then why does it matter if anything in the Bible stories is historical or not?
Most people who are influenced by the Bible are influenced by what "preachers" and others who tell them what the Bible says and how it must be interpreted. They are not interested in spending their own time learning about ancient literature. They assume if you "believe in the Bible", you believe it's historical. Bultmann was wrong about a few things, but not about "mythology" ("Jesus Christ and Mythology"), being how humans transmitted "truth". Today the word "mythology" de-authenticates a work of literature. Today people want "cold, hard, facts".
Quote:(later) I was forgetting. Even if it makes a difference what people *think* the Bible says, what is written in published Bibles doesn't have much direct influence on what people think it says, so the debate is not about what is written in published Bibles. It's about what people think they know from the Bible.
.... which is what I said above, and it matters who's doing the preaching.
Quote:(sigh) It's complicated. What is written in published Bibles doesn't have much direct influence on people's beliefs about the past, and never has. Maybe it doesn't even have any direct influence at all. By "direct influence" I mean influence from people actually reading them. That still doesn't mean that it hasn't had an indirect but consequential influence on how society and societies have evolved.
Disagree. People assume if it's written, it must be literally true ... even if the meanings of the authors were metaphorical or had alternate meanings in their own cultures.
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