I’ve been arguing that everything in Mark’s gospel is metaphor (because he says so) but there are some pronouncements credited to Jesus in the synoptic that do seem to read as if they’re not. These look as if they are meant to be taken at face value:
Mark 9:1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
Mark 10:21. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
Matthew 5:39. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
Matthew 5:40. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.
Matthew 5: 43-44. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
Matthew 6:24. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Matthew 6.25. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Matthew 7:6. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Luke 6:30. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
Luke 14:26 If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.
Perversely, these are the very commands that most Christians insist are intended metaphorically. This includes those who oppose the idea that, Jesus’ parables excepted, the gospels are in any way symbolic. I know from experience that they have any number of unconvincing arguments of why Jesus doesn’t really mean what he is made to say. For example: ‘these pronouncements are too severe and impractical to be taken literally’; ‘the verses are being taken out of context’, and ‘they have a deeper spiritual meaning’ (oops – that’d be metaphor, wouldn’t it?). Ask these same folk if the statements are therefore metaphorical and you can expect to be met with barrage of abuse.
If they’re not metaphorical, why do we not find Christians striving to live according to them: renouncing wealth, giving to all who ask, selling all they have, resisting no-one, judging no-one, hating family, becoming a slave and having no care for their own welfare for the sake of the kingdom that Jesus promised was imminent.
Because they don’t believe him. Easier to disregard his words about the kingdom arriving within his disciples’ lifetime and the instructions for living in the short time until then. The hard stuff is treated as metaphorical when it makes demands on Christians themselves.
Possibly they’re right. I’d suggest that the pronouncements like those above were not Jesus’s at all. They’re cult-speak; the extreme demands of cult leaders seeking to control their acolytes. In case this sounds like an about face on my part, let me assure you it isn’t; I’ve long argued that among the metaphor and the reworking of Jewish scripture, the gospels include copious amounts of early cult rules.
Whether they’re metaphor or extreme demands once imposed on cult members, no-one today takes much notice of Jesus’ commands. What does this tell us about their worth? What does it tell us about Christians from the earliest days until now? What does it say about their willingness to crucify themselves (definitely a metaphor) in order to follow him?
rejectingjesus, 
As Sam Harris once said “The problem with religion, because it’s been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation”.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yet religion is virtually universal in isolation or en masse in an organized religion and has been through human history. Are you implying that only a very few in all human history, among whom you apparently count yourself are NOT idiots? You’ll pardon me, but that seems pretty arrogant.
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ark: I wonder why this is?
Choice.
LikeLike
One of us based their ‘choice’ on the evidence science provided, rationality and probability, there being no evidence of the supernatural outside the human imagination. He recognised he had been generating God in his own head
The other didn’t.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The very few that you claim – throughout history have been the very few few because they had no other choice! Surely you know of the pogroms, burnings at the stake and tortures induced by those holy early Christian fathers. Now the very few are the very many. Yes, I am an idiot at times I’m just not delusional Don.
Aaron
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
Neil, it has never been about science. I accept the findings of science, as you do. It has always been about why? Unless you are willing to accept that the chances of things being the way they are impossibly small, then God is the only answer. So, I make the logical choice of God over chance.
LikeLike
This is nothing but a bunch of assertions:
‘It has never been about science’: Who says so? Science has got you where you are today. Before science the likelihood is you’d have been dead 40 years ago.
‘It has always been about why‘: Has it? Who says? Even if it has been, science and rational thought explain why more than adequately. That you don’t like the answers they provide doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
‘The chances of the way things are is impossibly small’: Yet here we are. So not so ‘impossibly small’ after all.
‘God is the only answer’: Who says? Primitive people who had no other way of explaining life, the universe and everything. To paraphrase you, the chances that God is the cause of it all is vanishingly, infintesimally, improbably small. The chance this God is that of the Bible is smaller still. Yet this is the option you go for. There’s nothing logical about it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Who said the universe could not come to be without God?
How about these guys?
LikeLike
As he says at the beginning, we can ‘infer’ God made the universe. Inference is not proof.
Looking back, we discussed this at length many universes ago. Let’s not do it again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Don.
Turek, really?
You might as well have posted a video from Ken Ham.
These clowns are fundamental evangelical apologists.
Nothing but a bunch of indoctrinated science denying wankers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And you, Ark? Aren’t you just as much an indoctrinated God denying apologist for atheism?
There are extremists in both camps. Ken Ham is in my mind an extremist. But there are actually more who are well educated and reasonable and intelligent proponents of faith in God. Some whom Turek quoted in the video I linked.
I won’t remark on those among the atheist apologists I think extremists. But there are some I like because they are reasonable.
LikeLike
Don:
“God is the only answer.”
Buddha is the only answer. Allah is the only answer. Ganesh is the only answer. Chac the corn god is the only answer.
LikeLike
Would it help if I just said intelligence is the only answer?
Chance cannot be the answer.
LikeLike
But the thing is, Don, even the existence of a god is based on chance,
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don:
“So, I make the logical choice of God over chance.”
As you’ve already shown, your knowledge of “logic” is wanting. You can’t construct a logical syllogism that shows your flimsy statement is valid!
Stop using vocabulary that you don’t understand…you may as well say,”on the quantum level”…
I’m so sick of people using vocabulary that they’ve heard, trying to sound like they know what they’re talking about, and showing their ignorance while they do it.
LikeLike
Okay, Don. Here’s your chance. Tell us the why. Why are we here? Science says it’s so we can procreate and perpetuate our genes. I thought you said you’d read The Selfish Gene?
Maybe that’s not a very grand raison d’etre but it is what biology has determined for us. So much for science not being able to tell us why.
Of course with the evolution of our intelligence we have managed to do more than merely reproduce, but like it or not, this is just a rather fortuitous by-product of our development.
As you’re not satisfied with this answer, do enlighten us as to the real reason we’re here. (I’ll play a hunch and put a $100 on it being to do with an unproven deity.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Neil: Why are we here?
Purpose. Biblically we’d say, by God’s determining.
Neil: Maybe that’s [procreation and the survival of our genes] not a very grand raison d’etre but it is what biology has determined for us.
No, it is not a very grand reason.
Biology determines? Who gave biology that ability? Chance or intelligence?
However, the question of why we are here goes back beyond biology. Why is any of this here?
That is where intelligence and purpose rather than chance is the answer.
Next question, if you dare ask, is what is the purpose?
Answer: love.
LikeLike
Doesn’t answer the question. As usual.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What you mean is that it is not the answer you want.
The question was why are we here?
The answer God chose to create you for the purpose of enjoying a relationship of friend with friend. And he broke down every barrier to accomplish that purpose, including forgiving the sin that kept you apart from him. There only remains the barrier of your will. He will not break that down because a friend cannot be a friend by coercion.
LikeLike
By God’s determing was what you said. It didn’t explain anything, which is why you’re now having another shot.
I claim my $100. Anyone wanting a relationship entirely on their terms is no friend. No coercion? Just the threat of eternal punishment.
What drivel.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Typical, Neil. You want to be the boss. I guess that is why you are an atheist. Let me know how that goes.
LikeLike
It’s going exceptionally well, thanks.
I thought the relationship with God you were touting was about being friends. Now it’s about allowing God to be ‘boss’ and you being, as Jesus puts it, a slave. As I said, it’s all very one-sided, not a relationship at all.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You haven’t read the Bible if you really believe that is what is described. Jesus said that his disciples were friends. John 15:14, 15. Paul says that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We are encouraged by Jesus to call God Father and to consider ourselves sons.
There are, of course, other analogies. We are also described as God’s servants/slaves. But that cannot be taken as definitive except as it is seen in parallel with the other verses.
LikeLike
Of course, I’ve read the bible. What I don’t do is cherry pick from it like you do.
Jesus refers to those who follow him as doulos – ‘slaves’ – in the synoptic gospels. It’s his favourite analogy. He does not use ‘servants’, which is a softening of the term disingenuously introduced by translators. We discussed this at length a few months ago: https://rejectingjesus.com/2023/09/29/a-reply-to-a-slave/#comments
We’re not doing so again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
He also talks of them as philous (friends).
13 No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father. (John 15:13-15)
LikeLike
Your problem is your reliance on John. Jesus’ long monologues there are reported by no-one else (how did the other ‘eye-witnesses’ miss them?) and it is genereally recognised they are the product of a developed christology, not historical.
However, ‘You are my friends if you do what I command you’ isn’t friendship. It’s master over slave, ‘boss’ over subservient, bully over victim. How long would you remain ‘friends” with a person in your life who dictated your relationship in this way? You’d be mad if you went along with it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
If that person had my best at heart and was in a position to know without doubt what the best was, I would be a fool not to obey him.
A friend who knew what the be3st was and knew that I was headed in a direction that would destroy me would be no friend if he did not warn me.
Dancing around the issue of the authenticity of John is just one of then cute but tiring evasive tactics atheists are known for. It amounts to Bart Ehrman telling us there are thousands of errors in the NT – for the purpose of casting doubt upon the reliability of the NT – when the fact is those errors are, except in about three instances, meaningless.
LikeLike
As a one-off, maybe. As the basis of the relationship, surely not. You’re fudging again.
So, if all the scholars have it wrong and Don Camp has it right, just where are the long monologues in the synoptics, at least one of which you claim was written by a disciple who would surely have heard them straight from Jesus’ mouth? You delude only yourself, Don.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Neil: So, if all the scholars have it wrong and Don Camp has it right, just where are the long monologues in the synoptics, at least one of which you claim was written by a disciples
The monologue in Matthew 24, Luke 21 and Mark 13 is one. The monologue of Matthew 5-7 is another.
Neil, it may satisfy you to cast me as an outlier, but it is far from the truth. I have learned from many who have gone far deeper into these issues than I have.
The sad fact is that you grew up or were strongly influenced by a brand of Christianity that departed from the common sense of nature and evidence of science years ago to defend a position of inerrancy and infallibility that was neither biblically based nor defensible. They felt they were standing up to the liberalism of the 1800s, but they created a flawed epistemology in which the Bible is the only source of truth.
Many, many Christian theologians and scholars have spent the last three quarters of a century or more nudging our brothers back to a what was a two-source epistemology in which the Bible and nature are the sources of knowledge about what is true. But you continue to live in the dark ages and are beating a dead horse.
LikeLike
Believe me, I’m well aware I’m beating a dead horse. A little self awareness wouldn’t go amiss, Don.
The monologues in the synoptics bear no relation to those in John. You’re comparing apples with oranges and coming up with grapefruit.
There are millions of Christians today, many in your own country, who view the Bible as inerrant and infallible. You come across as one such every time you comment, despite your pseudo-intellectual terminology: a two source epistemology my a**.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Neil: “The monologues in the synoptics bear no relation to those in John. ”
Why should they? They are given on a different occasion and the author had a different purpose in including them. (Understanding the authors’ purpose is a key to understanding the form and content of the piece, whether the Gospel of John or of Matthew.)
But actually, you exaggerate the difference. Jesus still uses metaphors such as the water and the bread to describe himself. He still speaks somewhat cryptically. He still speaks with authority. The only difference is style.
In John we see something of the author’s style as far as language goes. He is paraphrasing, if you will. (Every translation is something of a paraphrase after all.) In the synoptics the authors adhere more closely to the style of Jesus.
Neil: “inerrant and infallible.”
I hope I don’t come across as a believer in “inerrancy and infallibility.” I hope I come across as one who believes in the truth of the Word of God. That may seem like belief in inerrancy to you, but an error in a minor detail or a metaphor rather than a literal description does not compromise truth. Nor does a less than a perfect translation of the scripture. It is truth that I am interested in. It is truth that is powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword and able to uncover the thoughts and intents of the heart. And it is truth, it seems to me, you are running from and using “failed inerrancy” to hide behind.
LikeLike
@Don
As the gospels are acknowledged to be anonymous and have suffered from known interpolation and forgery on what basis can one trust the “monologues” to be accurate recordings of actual speech and thus free from any sort of tampering?
LikeLike
Ark: “As the gospels are acknowledged to be anonymous and have suffered from known interpolation and forgery ”
Acknowledged by whom? I don’t think the Gospels are anonymous. The authors identify themselves, though indirectly. They were known by the first recipients. How is that anonymous? Oh, they are not known by modern critics. That’s it. Big deal. It is what they said not who said it that is important.
And interpolation? Textual criticism pretty much roots out interpolation (comments by the copyist that get written into succeeding copies).
And forgery? Not in the identity of the author. You’ve already said the author does not identify himself. How can there be forgery then? Or do you mean plagiarism?
Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s work and claiming it as your own. It is not using a word phrase or even a larger chuck that is in the public domain.
LikeLike
Every critical scholar will tell you the gospels are anonymous. Even the church acknowledged the authors are unknown.
That you refuse to acknowledge this puts you on the fringe or in the fundamentalist/evangelical camp, a la Mike Licona and his pathetic apologist cronies, and flushes your already feeble credibility right down the toilet.
Yes, Don, forgery and interpolation.The long ending of gMark, the Woman caught in adultery pericope in John, are two very well know examples.
And we can add at least half of the Pauline corpus.
It baffles me why Neil puts up with you.
It’s like trying to discuss with a YEC or a flat earther.
But you and I are done.
“Answer not a fool by his folly…”
LikeLiked by 1 person
You limited your complaints to the Gospels, as I recall.
Ark: ending of Mark. Everyone knows this was added. It is altogether likely that it always was. What it amounts to is a summary or addendum of what happened after.
The John eight story wasn’t in the original, but it has every mark of a piece that records an actual event and fits Jesus perfectly. It became part of the Gospel as an addition and probably originated with John himself since Papias tells the story and he knew John.
Here from a recent commentary:
Most scholars agree that this section does not belong at this point in John. Most early mss either omit it or mark it with asterisks to indicate doubt. A few mss place it at the end of the gospel, and a few others after Lk. 21:38. At the same time it has ancient attestation, and there is no reason to suppose that it does not represent genuine tradition.
Your complaints amount to grasping at straws. But…
Sorry to see you leave.
LikeLike
The video linked here is not a direct answer to your problems but it certainly addresses the solution to the problem. https://youtu.be/Zx4ZPSsXMbE?si=XqH_xKkHDzduJOIh
LikeLike
i couldn’t resist.
Wallace? Seriously? The evangelical hero of papyrus 137!
🤣
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did you actually listen to his discussion of the so called errors, corruptions, etc. ?
LikeLike
I had to do some research to find out what you are talking about. So, here’s my take.
In the academy whether this issue or any of many others, there are differences of opinion among scholars. Those opinions are debated, revised discarded or affirmed. That is the way it works. It is silly to criticize a scholar for doing that. If you disagree present your argument.
LikeLike
@Don
“I had to do some research to find out what you were talking about”
Of course you did!
You see the words Christian scholar and think…This’ll show ’em!
However, like so many “I know better than you” evangelical fundamental leaning Christians who think they are the bees- knees when it comes to their religion, the average non-believer who has any interest in this stuff is generally far more clued-up than those who readily accept all the religious dumbfuckwittery they love to regurgitate.
Wallace should have known better.
If I were to be a little charitable?He is a Christian after all, so perhaps, like you he succumbed to the indoctrination he was infected with and let his excitement run away with him.
LikeLike
Classic God of the gaps Don. I feel sorry that you are wasting your short life talking to an imaginary being on a daily basis.
I can only assume that you are one of two things. Afraid of death and the possibility of eternal hell fire or have been indoctrinated into this cult at birth and suffer the affects of psychological imprint.
Let me guess, you love pretending to drink other people’s blood and eating their flesh. You also kneel – hoping for miracles and magic at the bottom of a torture device….you loath Halloween yeah?
BTW you are going to hell because of your thought crimes…yes we all know you have wicked thoughts (don’t lie).
Aaron
LikeLiked by 3 people
A God of the gaps argument goes this way: There is a gap in our knowledge of how thing came to be, so it must be God.
I am not making that argument. I am saying that chance cannot be the answer for the universe and you as they are. But an intelligent act actor can. We see that everywhere. So, the gap is filled by the most reasonable possibility.
Anonymous: I can only assume that you are one of two things.
You are wrong in both cases. I chose to believe and trust God because he made more sense than anything else. I did not even have a knowledge of hell at the time; it could not have been a motivation. And I was not born into a religious family. I knew nothing about God until I was a teen.
Yes. I have wicked thoughts. But I am not going to hell because of that. Neither are you. No one goes to hell except by refusing forgiveness.
But I have gained some insight into the wicked thoughts thing. Wicked thoughts almost invariably lead to wicked action – even if restrained by society. And wicked actions destroy everything in time, including the one with the thoughts. Look around and see if that is not so.
LikeLike
**SIGH** You’re hopeless, Don. To say things like “Yes, I have wicked thoughts” and then talk about avoiding “hell” because of asking for forgiveness? Sheesh! What a way to live one’s life.
LikeLiked by 2 people