Saturday, January 22, 2005
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Truth and Fact
Do you see a difference between truth and fact? For instance, can the story of Noah's ark be true without being a historical fact? Or maybe this one will be easier to swallow: any of the parables that Jesus told... do they have to be historical fact to be true?
You all know that I hate the divide between the pulpit and pews and yet they keep trying to indoctrinate me. By this I mean, they keep telling me stuff but stick on the end of it, "but don't preach this in the pulpit or you'll get fired." But you can't fire me and so i'm going to tell you what they talk about in the ivory tower.
Here's a little tidbit that might throw a couple of you Pietists for a loop: there were stories of a universal flood caused by the gods and a dude building a boat to escape it written down over 1000 years before the story of Noah. There was also the epic of Gilgamesh which was written down around 500 years before the story of Noah.
So if you're just guessing, you might assume that Noah's story could be ripped off or a borrowing of previous stories that were already in existance. Yet my question remains, "Is there a difference between truth and historical fact?"
Yet we can't assume that because a story precedes another, the last story is not historical fact. The Dionysis cult preceded Christianity and they had stories of a son of god that was born of a virgin and died and rose again. Yet no one ever claimed it to be a historical fact. Christianity came after this and we know of a historical Jesus. And many from that day have proclaimed a historical fact in the resurrection of Jesus. So in this instance we have a story that precedes an actual historical event.
I believe it was C.S. Lewis that argued that a lot of acts of God are preceded by stories because God put in the minds of the people images of what the work of God looks like. I'm not sure if I fully agree, but it's interesting.
So does the previous stories jack with your faith? Does it destroy your idea of how scripture was written? Can something be true without being a fact? Your thoughts and responses?
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Comments (10)
...preceding the flood and other biblical events.. are hundreds of histories and stories and religions. considerably so, christianity is the youngest of popular world religions.
my only thoughts...
-jake
The Biblical account of the flood is the correct one. The other accounts may have been of the same flood, but were distorted. "IF" they were written before, that does neccessitate that the Biblical account is not accurate.
a_theist,
You said, "considerably so, christianity is the youngest of popular world religions."
You assume that "christianity" came into being at the time when Jesus was here. That's a false assumption.
there's a reason the pagan borrowing theory died out in the 1800s
if the flood did happen, then the only records we have are from people who came from noah after the flood and are giving an imperfect account of it. But it's still the same event and the only thing that could possibly be said is that the Hebrews wrote their record a little later than some other groups. Interesting also is that hundreds (or thousands) of cultures have their own flood story, which is what you'd expect if all people alive today came from noah.
The Enuma Elish is dated to somewhere between 1125-1104 BCE. There were several short stories of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumeria before 2000 BCE.
"Pagan borrowing theory" didn't die out in the 1800's. It is the most widely held view amongst scholars today. I'm only aware of 4 different flood stories in 4 different cultures. What's interesting is that they don't originate at the same time (we're looking at a 1,000 years between stories), nor are they very similar other than the idea of a flood.
I think there is a distinction between "truth" and "fact" (not mutually exclusive). This is because I tend to regard a fact as something verifiable, whereas truth may not necessarily be so. However, depending on your internally held general definition of the words fact and truth this can get really ambiguous really quickly. "Historie" and "Geschichte" are terms that I think better illustrate the distinction in this situation.
I don't have a comment specifically about the flood stories and theories of their origin, since you didn't specifically ask for that but rather focused more on the truth/fact distinction or lack thereof (which is, I think, the more important question). Yet, if you would like such an opinion, I might tackle a more specific question.