2024:Accept Genesis as allegorical! Why not?

[Masterblaster]

Hello
This is the footstool of the Bible.
"God made man in his own image and likeness."
What does that even mean?
Let's get all this behind us going forward.
Opinions welcome.

"Allegorical means containing a moral or hidden meaning. Allegorical stories and plays use concrete ideas as symbols for deeper or layered meanings. Folk tales and fables are often allegorical."

[Data]

The creation story only takes the first 3 chapters, and the first chapter is a liturgical prologue.

Could you elaborate on what exactly a liturgical prologue is? A prologue to the liturgical amounts to what? In ancient Greece a liturgy was a public office or duty performed voluntarily by a rich Athenian. Contemporaneously it means public religious worship, ministerial ceremony it sounds to me like. Being a prologue to what? And why?

[Masterblaster]

[Replying to bjs1 in post #9]

Hello bjs1

A good question when does allegorical myth morph into the quasi-historical, and finally into factual account. I have been down this leafy lane many times.
When people struggle to nail down the lives of the Apostles, my advice would be to understand the written account within the context of when it was written. In 2024 do not beat around the bush
-God didn't make the world in 7 days
- God didn't talk to Adam
-God didn't...
-God didn't send his Son to earth
-God didn't.......

Only in the text narrative of the Bible did God do these things in this way.

[TRANSPONDER]

The passage quoted, the events of Creation, Eden, Flood and the rest of the origin story and in fact the whole thing can be interpreted to fit with what science says happened (insofar as it has any real idea - the matter of Cosmic Origins is right up in the air right now ) or science can be denied depending on how silly one if prepared to look (Flood and Ark, sure; a 6 day creation..maybe, a flat earth with a crystal dome of trundling planets ..of course that isn't what it says).

So 'made in man's image'...I mean man made in God's image. Well, the Gods in those days all looked like humans, even with the same costume and taste in facial hair. Seems clear to me that God was as solid body as the resurrected Jesus of the gospels. Can see what's going on from his LED throne atop the sky - dome, but if you hid in the undergrowth, he'd not have a heatseeking drone to find where you were, but he'd have to walk through Eden shouting for you to come out.

This was an earlier iteration of the Big Invisible Human, never mind the one that knows all, at once, past and future, and God is constantly making it up as he goes along and trying to Fix Damage in a pretty clumsy way. And he wasn't even invisible. If no man had seen God, it wasn't because he was invisible, but he was somewhere we couldn't see him, Which is why He had had to retreat beyond where humans can see, which is why of course He has had to be made pure (invisible) spirit. He can't any longer be made in mans' image in the sense of Made in an Image, but in the metaphorical way of having Mans' bad temper, incompetence, nasty character and violence, but not, it seems, the ability to move on to better knowledge and even moral sense. Man at his best is better but not, at humanity's worst, as bad. Not even in the historical revisionism that excuses acts of evil.

The image of God that it was first made in has become frankly, childishly out of date. And rather than try to add patches or rebrand that same old product that no longer does the job, let us put aside childish things, friends, and realise, it is Our problem to fix, not for any kind of big invisible human, never mind a visible one.

[1213]

Accept Genesis as allegorical! Why not?

Because not good reason to do so. If it would be allegorical, I think Bible would show it to be so.

[The Nice Centurion]

If Genesis gets seen as allegorical, then how does the Blood magic of Jesus fit in that was performed to absolve mankind of the original sin commited by Adam and Eve

Or does it follow that than Jesus should also be seen as an allegory

[Masterblaster]

Hello the Nice Centurion

Everyone has an opinion.This is mine.
Only christianity ran with the original Sin of Adam allegory. Judaism didn't.
That makes the Saviour of our sins, Christ to be also allegorically contrived.
Jesus the 1st Century teacher and his message stayed within the reality that was Judaism. In my opinion.
What do you think?

[Data]

Jesus the 1st Century teacher and his message stayed within the reality that was Judaism. In my opinion.

Correct, but more precisely Judaism formed upon the abandonment of those teachings for political reasons as did Christianity itself later.

[Mae von H]

[Replying to Masterblaster in post #6]

So Jesus wasn‘t talking about a real man named Adam? Is that your position? Where did sin come from if there was no Adam and no rebellion? If there was no Adam and Eve God created establishing God‘s plan for marriage, I guess there is no real plan in your position, right? A lot of (eventually all) of the teachings of the Bible fall apart if Genesis is not discussing real people making real choices with real consequences it seems.

[Masterblaster]

Hello Mae von H

Jesus had a Jewish outlook on these matters.
Did he ever say the word Adam, maybe so, maybe not. The New Testament ruling on marriage and divorce is just dogma making. There is little difference in attitudes to marriage and monogamy in the major religions or indeed in non-religous regimes either. If a quote says that God made male and female as a start,it is hardly ground breaking. Imagine if he had started with an egg. Imagine the debates. I talked about sin on another thread.

[TRANSPONDER]

Hello the Nice Centurion

Everyone has an opinion.This is mine.
Only christianity ran with the original Sin of Adam allegory. Judaism didn't.
That makes the Saviour of our sins, Christ to be also allegorically contrived.
Jesus the 1st Century teacher and his message stayed within the reality that was Judaism. In my opinion.
What do you think?

I was first going to say you were wrong, but I think you are likely right. Christianity sorta does see Adam as a real thing or person who created, so to speak, man's sin. Now I have read (not much more than that) that Jewish Authorities tend to regard Eden as allegorical - never actually happened. And I think many Christians may think so, too. 'Sin' is just the condition of man and His, Hers and Their nature.

Aside Biological evolution explains that 'sinful nature', Religion gets into a problem if sin nature isn't down to original man's disobedience to God's command. Sin is how we were created, not something that God never wanted or intended. It has to be or, never mind Jews not being obliged to offer sacrifices for sin (aside for just thanks or ongoing respect), there is no sin death that man brought upon himself for which God has to sacrifice himself for save man, but is the way God made man and it's God's choice and responsibility that sin was made in the first place - if Eden and Adam wasn't real.

Allegorical or liturgical, to use another term, that does mean that Original sin as Mans' fault makes no sense.

It's for this or that person to decide, but the whole Eden - story looks an infantile origin - legend about what is a contrived stitch - up to make man a sinner. It was a contrived trap. I don't believe a word of it and thus atoning for sin by a blood sacrifice to God of a created man with His Spirit in just for a day or so in the tomb makes no sense.

Time to put away childish things. This whole Jesus atoning for Adam's sin, though it was an ingenious contrivance by Paul, really doesn't make any sense, especially if Eden, Adam and Original Sin is liturgical/Allegorical and therefore not true.

Time for the bamboozled masses, hornswoggled by decades of being told that religion is needed or society will collapse, told the Churches 'This whole Jesus atonement and the doctrine of Original sin makes no sense. If you know it makes no sense, why do you pretend it does? If you believe what makes no sense and refuse to see or admit it, why are we listening to you?'

We can vote with our wallets (as Media is finding out ) and not give these charlatans and peddlers of fairy tales our money. For now. And in time, can vote in people who will make these wealthy businesses pay tax like any other businesses. And if they can't call on millions of supporters willing to lay down their lives for the Faith, there is nothing they can do about it.

I look to the day.