@Mr.Bultitude Oh! You need an ad showing Baal from Stargate, saying meet the real Baal! I might make one.

@fredsbend If you're balancing work, wife, kids, and SE, then you are good at multitasking. ;-)

@fredsbend As with most cultural practices, it all depends on the integrity of the people involved.

Voted this morning. Tá ⁊ Tá.

@fredsbend Yeah, from an text-alone, exegetical standpoint, you're right. Proverbs is another book that comes to mind that doesn't seem to be about it, on the surface. Each individual biblical item isn't about that. I guess I see them all as pointing to the same thing: namely, God's gift of relationship with him through Jesus.

I suppose I look at the bible in two ways: the way the author wrote it and the way that God wrote it.

When looking at it through the author's perspective alone, I'd say you're right. I doubt the guys writing about all the dimensions of the temple were envisioning salvation.

OK FRED YOU GOT ME. It's an over-generalization to say that each biblical item has the same theme.

YOU WIN. 10 million internet points awarded to you. Along with a Stack Exchange iHighFive.

@fredsbend If eisegesis is what I think it is (adding your own interpretation to the text) then that is totally what I'm doing with that statement. And I'm fine with that. Just understand that I don't hold tightly to the things that I see as metaphor and alegory.

I see it the way (I think) Paul saw it Galatians 4:22-31

It is MY OWN opinion that Paul allegorized the heck-diddle out of the Old Testament. I bet he saw God's plan of salvation in everything. David killing Goliath and imputing the victory onto the israelites. Joseph being sold into slavery and becoming a kind. Jonah and hhhhwhale.

That's all eisegesis to the core. You're right. But whatevs man. That's how I think Paul interpreted it and that's how I think he wanted us to do as well.

@LeeWoofenden ANY THOUGHTS LEE MY MAN?

@LCIII Sounds good to me. It's clear that there is much in the Bible that comes from the human cultures in which it was written. I like to think of the Bible as a relationship between God and humanity. God speaks into human cultures, conditions, and ideas. To take the human side as divine truth is to misunderstand what is going on in the Bible.

@LCIII The attempt by various fundamentalist and evangelical churches and teachers to read the Bible in a rigorously literal way is so far from the Bible itself that it is totally non-Biblical. The Bible is full of metaphor, symbolism, and spiritual interpretations. The idea that it is all meant to be taken literally would be laughable if there weren't so many millions of Christians who actually believe that bilge.

But any more, and we'll have to go over to Polemics . . . .

@LCIII About the divine and human sides of the Bible: "How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads"

theconversation.com/…

@curiousdannii Would work on other sites, like movies, scifi, etc. I don't think it would work to well on C.SE. But I do like it.

@LeeWoofenden Let's say by "balancing" I actually meant "frantically running from place to place, both physically and mentally, to keep up with self-inflicted demands for more time, money, and effort."

@LCIII Maybe you mean that you read it in two ways: The way it's actually written and the way you hope it's written.

@LCIII So was Christianity instituted by Paul or Jesus?

Actually, everything you said is surprisingly honest, but it is exactly why many people did and do not buy what Paul says. It's reading things into the OT that aren't there.

@fredsbend Are you managing to do that successfully???

@fredsbend "Aren't there" depends on how you interpret it. Of course, by Jewish standards of interpretation, what Paul sees in the Hebrew Bible "isn't there." But by Christian standards, it is perfectly reasonably to consider that the Old Testament is speaking metaphorically, or spiritually, of the life and works of Christ.

"These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44). I don't think many Jews would agree that there is anything in those books about Jesus. But he strongly implies that it's all about him.

Jesus practically begs us to read the Scriptures, and understand his words, spiritually rather than literally. Take a look at John 6:22-65. If we read his words literally, he's talking about cannibalism, which is obviously not what he meant. But those who could only think materially and literally were "offended," and stopped following him.

He was using a verbal scalpel to separate those who could think spiritually from those who could think only materially.

That's why he said, "It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:63).

@LeeWoofenden Literalism like you're describing is exceedingly rare. I've never heard of a church that rejects metaphor entirely.