Don has been asked repeatedly by Ark to ‘explain how to tell the difference between real and metaphor in a biblical context’.
Don has so far evaded the answer, gifting us instead his lectures about how we don’t really understand figurative language (I didn’t publish the latest), or telling us it all depends on whether the event described somehow feels real.
Let’s see if we can’t pin him down to a direct, unequivocal answer. Please tell us clearly, Don, whether the following account, from Acts 1:9-11, is real or metaphorical and how you know.
Now when (Jesus) had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven.”
No prevarication now, Don. None of your ‘it could be both’ bluff, nor your ‘it’s stylized history that isn’t really history’ evasiveness. No answering by turning the question back on us or suggesting we’re all too dumb to understand.
Is it real or is it metaphor, and how do you know?
rejectingjesus, 
Real or Metaphor?
I’m thinking we have the making of a new quiz show!
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“Metaphor” is the ultimate get out of jail free card. Jesus said he would return in the lifetime of his generation. “But what he meant was. . . ” (makeup whatever you want here – usually the generation of the person explaining what Jesus really meant.)
If something can mean anything, it actually has no meaning at all. That’s why reality doesn’t deal in metaphor.
Imagine your bank account being that flexible. Got a million dollars in the bank? Sorry, your $100 grocery buy has been declined on your debit card for lack of funds. Got $0.42 in the bank? You can buy this McMansion in Snootsville free and clear and have money left over!
Metaphor is great in poetry or literature where you want to leave the reader free to feel and interpret the text however they want.
But if you are explaining anything other than your own feelings by way of metaphor, you’re admitting you’re just making it up.
The death of the author is a thing. It’s why science isn’t done in poetry or prose. It’s given in facts and best described in math.
The instant that Jesus died (or fluttered off to Heaven or Valhalla or wherever), it was up to whoever was left to interpret what he’d said. That’s why religions, even Christianity, evolve so quickly. Christianity today isn’t the same as when I was a kid and varies even more from 100 years ago.
Sorry, Don. If you’re explaining your god to me via metaphor, or interpreting your holy text as metaphor, I’ve got no reason to believe you. You’re just making it up.
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Don:
“Many are found in types of literature that typically employ poetic or figurative language. Others are introduced by the author or speaker as figurative (parables, for example.) Others are recognized by those who hear them as figurative. Actual events are presented in simple, clear language like we would use in reporting an events.”
Is this simple, clear language?
“Now when (Jesus) had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight.”
So it must have been an actual event according to Don, even though we know that people CAN’T ascend into the sky, and would quickly die. Besides, where did he go?
Don and most modern xtians believe god exists OUTSIDE of time and space.
(That’s a new interpretation…when I was younger, no one said, “outside of time and space”)
Don’s methods don’t work!
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Kos:
“Christianity today isn’t the same as when I was a kid and varies even more from 100 years ago.“
Boy, that’s the truth! I was raised in a southern Baptist church…we took EVERYTHING in the Bible as literal truth, and if you denied any of it, you weren’t a xtian!
Heaven was a real place in the sky, and god and jesus lived there!
The Methodists across the street were mistaken, and the Lutherans and church of Christ were WRONG!
Don’t even get me started on the Catholics!
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And all that you mentioned is, IMO, indications (proof?) that NONE of it is real/correct/undeniable. It’s ALL based on personal viewpoints that have been formulated over the years to satisfy this part or that part of the “Holy Book” and its stories.
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Kos: “If something can mean anything, it actually has no meaning at all.”
Something doesn’t mean anything. That is the whole point of grammatical and literary analysis. In this case the general grammatical rule is that a pronoun usually refers to the closest referent.
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I really don’t think you’re in any position to lecture anybody about grammar and literary analysis when you can’t tell us if the ascension story is fact, metaphor or some other damn thing. What little credibility you might’ve had has completely evaporated.
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Don’t you realize that you and Kos have gone off the tracks (metaphor)? What you are saying is that something, some clear statement of fact, can mean anything. That is so contrary to logic and to our use of language that it amazes me.
Even a metaphor cannot mean just anything, and a fact certainly cannot mean just anything. When I say it is raining this morning, that cannot mean just anything. When we use metaphors, as I did above, it does not mean just anything you want to make it mean. And btw, it does not mean that you have literally gone off some railroad track. It means you and Kos are talking craziness.
You and Kos are confusing application a truth with the meaning of the passage. There can be only one meaning in any statement (double entendre excepted), but there may be many applications in any statement.
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Nobody is saying what you say we are. You’ve created a strawman.
As you yourself have pointed out, the gospels are replete with metaphor. ‘Like all literature is,’ you said; Kos and I qualified this, explaining to you that it is primarily fiction that employs metaphor. We’re not talking about a conversation in which somebody remarks ‘it is raining’ or swans being only white. This is twaddle you’ve introduced.
All we are asking, which you have failed repeatedly to answer, is whether the Ascension story – a god-man being beamed up into the clouds Star Trek style – is a fact or a metaphor (call it symbolic if you like, but then, a symbol of what?) and how you know this.
It’s not difficult, Don, so stop evading, obfuscating and hectoring and answer the *!%#*! question!
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Well, why didn’t you say so?
I think the ascension is literal.
How do I know this? Because it is in a passage that is literal and there does not seem to be a break between literal and symbolic.
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As if you didn’t know…
Your response tells us all we need to know too. Jesus literally flew into the clouds (wonder what he did when he got there?) I guess it’s the same as Muhammad going there on a flying horse: just as believable and equally literal. Thanks for enlightening us.
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@Don.
If you consider the ascension literal how do you interpret the Noachian global flood?
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I consider the flood a real event that was remembered by many Middle Eastern people. I do not think it was world-wide. But it was catastrophic in the region, and they saw it as an act of God, as I do.
They also saw it as a statement of God’s judgment of the corrupt culture, as I do.
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There is evidence of serious localized flooding but certainly nothing global.
Noah’s tale is copied and adapted from the Gilgamesh tale, you are aware of this I presume?
To assert an event such as this was your god, Yahweh’s judgement is simply an illustration of your Indoctrination and refusal to acknowledge that throughout earth’s history what you would call catastrophes are all part and parcel of the history of the planet.
Or are you also going to assert that the asteroid which hit earth 6 million years ago wiping out the dinosaurs was Yahweh’s way of of punishing T-Rex and his friends for being “corrupt”?
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Ark: Noah’s tale is copied and adapted from the Gilgamesh tale, you are aware of this I presume?
More likely a common source or sources. There may be two earlier accounts edited together in the biblical account.
I don’t think any “catastrophe” or otherwise is outside God’s purpose or plan. But that does not mean anything like judgement. It is process.
Imagine a world without coal or oil. Those two things are essential for civilization. Both took many millions of years to accumulate. That is process. But if you were in God’s mind, it is likely that they were necessary.
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Oh Ark, doncha’ know? Gawd is always behind everything! **Sigh**
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As you acknowledge the Noachian flood tale was adapted from at least one earlier source …there are three known, then the <em>biblical tale</em> is obviously not recording a real historical event.
This brings us back to how do you discern between a metaphor and a real event?
In fact, one could assert with little fear of contradiction the entire bible is nothing but historical fiction.
Therefore, is it plausible the jesus narrative is simply a form of metaphor embedded within the context of historical fiction?
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That’s precisely what the bible is,
frequently with a great deal more fiction than history.
It’s not only plausible that the Jesus narrative is metaphor embedded in historical fiction but highly probable.
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Ark: Then the <em>biblical tale</em> is obviously not recording a real historical event.
How do you come to that conclusion? It sounds to me that you deny the historicity of the flood not on the basis of science or history but on the basis of genre. It doesn’t sound like it was written by a science guy, so it can’t be true. The fact is that many legends from the past including many of American Indian origin have their source in then actual experience of their ancestors.
The Jesus story is different. It is first of all not from the distant past before writing. In fact, it was written down in multiple accounts by people who either lived through the events themselves or reported the eyewitness reports of those who did. The multiple and different sources we detect in the Gospels are actually evidence of earlier sources (the Gospel Q for example or orally transmitted reports).
That is not fiction. It is how any event is remembered when there are multiple witnesses.
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@Don
Please don’t be a pedant.
Every scrap of scientific evidence refutes the notion of the Noachian global flood tale.
If you are truly punting this as an historical event then you should go apply for a job with Ken Ham
There are no eyewitnesses to the life of the character Jesus of Nazareth.
the gospels are anonymous texts replete with error including forgery and interpolation.
They are not regarded as reliable historical sources.
There is no evidence of oral transmission.
The Q source is purely hypothetical; there is not a scrap of evidence it ever existed.
You are merely parroting the apologetic line.
So we return to the question asked so long ago….
How do <em>you </em> determine between metaphor and a real event?
Or, put another way…what evidence can you bring to the table to demonstrate the veracity of any claim you may make regarding the historicity of any particular bible tale?
example. The first miracle at Cana.
Real or metaphor?
Metaphor. What does it mean
Real event. Evidence being … ( You fill in the rest)
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It is too bad we can’t sit down together and work through your questions. But too little space here.
Ark: Miracle at Cana, real or metaphor?
Real, and it was a simple example of Jesus’ power. No evidence is necessary.
Ark: “Q”
I agreee that “Q” if you mean a prior written saying gospel is unlikely.
Ark: Oral transmission.
There is evidence everywhere in the Gospels and strongly implied in Paul’s experience. See Luke 1:1-2.
Ark: Noah’s flood.
There was no worldwide flood. But there certainly was a flood that was the basis of the story. It is unlikely that there would be a story either in the Bible or in Babylonian myth if there was not. The biblical story is a oral legend written down along with theological implications. There were no penguins or polar bears on the ark. If I were to guess a time, I would say at the Boling Allerod about 14,000 years ago. It was a time of rapid global warming at the end of the ice age and created many extreme weather events and floods around the world, including huge floods here in the Pacific Northwest where I live.
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As ready noted there is evidence that there could well have been a localised flood.
This is a very good article
https://ncse.ngo/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth
Therefore we can conclude the bible tale is a work of fiction/myth possibly based on an historical event.
Cana.
Yes, Don, I am afraid evidence is necessary. If we were to deem evidence unnecessary evidence then I could simply claim my derrière produces cotton candy, pigs can fly and Mohammed truly did fly to heab n in a winged beast.
🤦
We can, therefore scratch off the instant viticulture at Cana as a real event.
All you have is a biblical claim.
Next
There is absolutely no evidence of any oral transmission. It has already been established by critical scholarship the gospels are anonymous and not historical accounts and they are certainly not eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. ( So far)
You have not produced a single piece of evidence and still have not outlined how you differentiate between metaphor and real ( event).
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Yes. It is a good Article. I appreciate the geological research that went into the article. I saw only one date, however. 2900 B.C. I personally doubt that this date satisfies the other info in the biblical flood story. I think the date was earlier. though the geological description would work with an earlier date. See my observations The Flood | Biblical Musing
Notice my comments on the legends that developed after the Spokane and Missoula floods. One of the legends coming from the Kalapuya includes the information that they made a huge canoe to enable them to survive future floods. Geologically we know that there were multiple floods at about 50 year intervals for several hundred years. That would mean few if any Indians survived one to then experience and other, but they had the tales of the earlier floods and so knew to expect another.
The canoe described seems extreme for 12,000 years ago. Was the legend embellished over time? Possibly. But is the legend fiction? I would not say so. It is based on a real event and is adequately detailed to be accepted as true.
That is how I view the biblical flood. It was a true story of an epic flood, and it has adequate details to support its historicity. But it weas told and retold many, many times over the centuries and embellished as most legends are. Does that make it fiction? I don’t think so. It makes it a legend.
But it is also clearly theological, meaning it interprets the event from a theological point of view. But so does the Epic of Gilgamesh.
RE: Cana. It needs no evidence because it was not intended to prove anything to you. It was understood by the people who witnessed it to be supernatural. You were not in their minds. It was a miracle for them.
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So we are agreed, the Noachian flood tale is a work of fiction adapted from similar earlier tales that are embellishments of a ( possible ) actual large scale <em>local </em> flood.
It is presented in the bible in the form of a theological lesson ( for want of a better word(
Re: Cana.
Again with no evidence to support the story it is nothing but an unsubstantiated claim.
I am still waiting for you to explain how you differentiate between a metaphor and an actual event.
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Ark: the Flood
Well, you are making progress. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.
Ark: Metaphor vs actual event.
An actual event actually happened. That seems pretty simple. A metaphor is a literary device in story (typically) that pictures something else. You can tell the difference between them in a story or book of history or weather report, for that matter, when the description is unrealistic.
The problem Neil has is that he assumes the Bible is not a report of actual events. Therefore, everything is a metaphor. Some literalists assume the opposite that the Bible is totally a report of real events. So, for them God holding us in his hand means God has hands.
No one who comes to the Bible as a piece of ancient literature with any training in literature should have great difficulty in determining reality from metaphor, however. The key is to expect a description to be literal and real until it can’t be. But expect there to be metaphors, as well.
RE” Cana. Following that guide, the miracle at Cana is presented as a real event, even though it includes a miracle. I read it that way.
If there is no proof of its being an actual event, so what? We experience actual events every day that are not attended with proofs of their being real. If they are remarkable, we just invite them to come and see. That is what Phillip told Nathaniel when he received a skeptical reply. He said simply, “Come and see.” (John 1:46)
That is my invitation to you. Come and see.
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If I might interject… I don’t assume the gospels aren’t reports of actual events. I refer to scholars (which you then say I’m in thrall of), read the bible for myself, assess it as both literature and history (it was you who decided it wasn’t history, remember?) and demonstrate how the events the gospels depict, buckling under the weight of metaphor/symbolism, are unlikely to be real events. If that’s what you take to be assumption, I can only conclude that you don’t actually read my posts.
As for the noachian flood not being a legend (your conclusion), you really think a 120 year old man built a huge boat single-handedly, collected breeding sets of animals from around the globe, kept them apart and alive for 40 days, fed and watered them from supplies also taken on board (including meat or other creatures on which the carnivores could feed) and cleared their huge amounts of waste before letting them go onto a localised landscape on which most plant life had died isn’t a legend? My God, man, you’re more gullible and credulous than I thought. I know young children who recognise this as legend.
And still you don’t explain how a discerning reader of ‘ancient literature’ can distinguish real event from metaphor. Your snide and oft-repeated “anyone with any ‘training in literature’ can do it” is all you offer, which is a bit rich when you yourself patently can’t: “a real event is one that obviously happened”? Come on, you take us for fools.
Ark is right: how do I put up with you.
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I do think the details are legendary. Youn probably have bot read my longer post on the subject, so I include a quotr here.
“These are the product of a real event described as how they appeared to them at the time and then turned into legend by later interpreters. (We continue to do that today as we paint pictures of the ark or the flood that go beyond the biblical description. We, with little justification from the text or archaeology, make the ark look like a modern boat. It was not. The ark recreated at the Ark Encounter in Kentucky is an example.)
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And you don’t think this is what happened to the rest of the Bible’s stories?
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It seems like you and Ark are wanting to disprove something that is not in the Bible and something that I don’t believe, the doctrine of inerrancy. And you can’t believe me when I say I don’t think it is biblical or necessary.
What the Bible says about itself and what I believe and what is demonstrated many, many times is that the Word of God is true. It speaks truly of the important and inner things of our lives. It speaks truly of God.
I think that is the case even when there are minor imperfections in the text or the accretion of legendary elements (as in the flood story) or even minor additions to the text. Those don’t corrupt the message. It is certainly true when there are variations in the “accuracy” of translations – as there are bound to be.
None of these destroy the truth of God’s Word.
I also believe that the Word of God is powerful to discern the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Even when it is not in the original language, even when there are accretions and minor errors.
And that has been demonstrated over and over again over the ages as well as in my life.
So, if you wish to refute the Bible, work on the things the Bible actually says about itself rather than what people say about it.
RE: the flood story. The message is quite clear even if there are legendary elements added over the millennia, some of which we and Hollywood have added ourselves.
Message: SIN HAS CONSEQUENCES. It corrupts and destroys people and cultures, and God will judge sin for that reason. But God will save those who trust him and obey him from the consequences of sin. He did with Noah. He does now as much as then.
The story is not about a boat or how widespread the flood was. But it is about whether you are in the boat or refusing to believe God when he said it will rain.
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The above comment has been deemed to be proselytising and is therefore a danger to mental health. It only just got past the censors (me).
Until you mentioned it, Don, I hadn’t realised that what I was trying to do was disprove inerrancy. Perhaps that’s because I’m not. What I have been attempting these past 12 or 13 years is demonstrating how the bible isn’t true in any of its aspects.
Interesting that you don’t believe the bible is inerrant, yet nevertheless think its underlying message is. Cognitive dissonance writ large.
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“Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?
The dumbest question in history…. ”well, we just saw a person go up in the sky!”
Duh!!!
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Why? Because you have never seen it happen? All swans are white until you see a back one.
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This is a really dumb comment. (Sorry.)
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Nevertheless, it is true. Once you experience a miracle, miracles become possible in your mind. Until you do, they seem impossible.
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‘Miracles become possible in your mind.‘ Says it all!
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❗❗❗
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Really, Neil, miracles are IMPOSSIBLE in your mind in much the same way and for the same reason they are POSSIBLE in my mind.
It is a matter of our worldview. If God is God, miracles are possible, If not, they are not.
Isn’t that why you make such a big deal of them? Is seems like you are whistling in the graveyard.
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I’m hearing ‘belief’, ‘worldview’, ‘conviction’, ‘in my mind’, ‘possibilities’. What I’m not seeing is evidence.
What makes you think that repeating the same point ad nauseam makes it any more persuasive?
It’s you who’s whistling in the graveyard, Don, labouring under the illusion you will one day rise from it.
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Neil: What I’m not seeing is evidence.
Don: Nor I for your beliefs or worldview.
So you say. Despite science providing an abundance. There are none so blind etc.
Neil: “What makes you think that repeating the same point ad nauseam makes it any more persuasive?”
Don; Et tu.
Then don’t come here, promoting Jesus and other wackiness. Pick a fight on other atheistic sites – the ones you haven’t been banned from that is.
Don; Beliefs are kind of like that. They are. Though how this applies to atheism I’m not sure. You do know what atheism is, don’t you?
Don: But evidence for God? My goodness! How many times have I given you evidence.
My goodness, how this made me laugh! You’ve provided none and the guff you thought was (‘Israel’!) was so very easily refuted by other commenters.
Don: used to hunt in the fall. Started as a pre-teen. I learned to look for deer tracks. Pretty much every hunter knows that where there are tracks there are deer.
I think you can take it from there.
Got it. So where there’s a trail of bullshit, there is…
I think you can take it from there.
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@Don:
So you regard it as a metaphor. In other words, not a real event.
Maybe we are making progress?
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Great point! Strange Don hasn’t responded to it.
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Out of interest, Neil, before you began to have doubts about Christianity and,I presume, started research/ investigation, was there truly much about the bible you accepted as real/ historical fact?
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If you’d asked me when I was most fervent about Christianity, in my late teens and twenties, I’d probably have said I accepted it all as factual, unquestioningly. The people I respected – the leader of the evangelical YMCA I went to, the ministers at the churches I attended (at home and at college) and the speakers and evangelists I listened to all seemed to believe everything in the bible was factually true.
Small, insignificant doubts began to creep in later when someone pointed out Jesus’ promise that he (or the Son of Man or whoever) would be coming to the Earth while his disciples were still alive. I could live with the discrepancy though; God had things in hand. After all, a day to him was as a thousand years and vice versa.
Jump forward a few years and, while still a Christian, I became better read. I couldn’t square Adam and Eve with evolution, so convinced myself the story was a myth designed to explain human rebelliousness. I recognised the Noah story was a legend based on an older legend and was, as Don admits, a metaphor for salvation. And so on.
I worked hard then to see the protagonists of OT stories as types, usually for Jesus, and the legends/myths themselves as prophetic. I held onto the idea that, as C. S. Lewis argued, the Bible was a great coming into focus, from the myths and legends of the early OT to the quasi-historical of the later material to the real, undisputed history that was the gospels and the rest of the NT. I didn’t see then that he was completely wrong.
Until my great revelation, not that long ago, that the Bible was evidently written backwards (as I liked to put it.) The older material was not prophetic, its characters were not types of Jesus, there was no gradual divine revelation. The new stuff was merely a rewrite of the old. Paul and the gospel writers (you’re right, the chronology is crucial) forced the older stories into service to validate the visions a few folk had had of a Messianic figure who may or may not have existed.
For me, this was and is the only conclusion to make sense of the Bible and everything it includes. Once I saw it, like an optical illusion, I could not unsee it.
Sorry. This is long-winded and more than you asked for!
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No apology necessary, Neil. Always nice to read how former believers saw the light as it were.
It suggests there is a glimmer of hope even for someone such as Don.
You never know, right?
All the best.
🙂
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The tentacles of Christianity are long and strong and, as you indicated, it can take a VERY long time to untangle yourself from them. What is so very sad is the number of folks who remain trapped in their hold and may never break free.
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