Some Views on Bible and Faith

What is the Bible? It is not a KORAN and cannot be interpreted as a KORAN
Bond Robin · added 3:rd Nov. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOL_-kittI

[commenting on one word in an otherwise good review of the Bible, which is quoted at length, but is not by the author of the video, unless he hid his identity:]

4:18 Do Modern Arabs think they come from Ishmael and therefore Hagar?

For tribes in Mid-Arabia, this is actually true, if we allow for the mixture of them with Midianites.

South Arabia comes from Joktan, a great-great uncle of Abraham. Jordan comes from Edom, Moab and Ammon (OK Sinai Peninsula is Edom too). Holy Land - yes, its Arabs, the Palestinians - come from Christians of both Judah (Acts 2) and Ephraim (Acts 8).

A lot of problems can be avoided if we realise that in Palestine, the Ishmaelites are not all the Palestinian people, especially not all the Christian part, but an immigrant part which imposed Islam on some of the others.

[And on end words of review:]

The other work by the same author would be the Parusia.

[commenting on description of video:]

"Outside the Christian Faith, in fact outside of the Orthodox Christian Faith, it has NO MEANING and CONTEXT."

Hyperbolic.

No correct context. No clear and fixed meaning.

There are Hindoos who will give the Gospel stories the same kind of context they gave to the story of a pre-Flood certainly hero, possibly (if not guilty of Bhagavadgita) saint whose name means, like Kush, "the swarty".

Note well, when I say Krishna is pre-Flood, I am saying Hindoos are less culpable for distorting his story which the first of them knew as family history since the wife of Cham. They are less culpable than they woud have been if it had been more recent or he could be if he deluded Arjuna in the way described in the Bhagavadgita, which could be the case if Mahabharata matters were post-Flood.

In other words, I am relying on Flood being 2957 BC, as the Roman Martyrology says (you can dispute on whether liturgy is "another work by the same author" or a good work of a disciple, Father Cekada holds the first and says Novus Ordo is simply invalid as "work of human hands"), and Flood therefore coming after beginning of Hindoo era Kali Yuga, since death of Krishna, rather than Flood being 3366 BC and coming before Kali Yuga, which would make Krishna more recent (perhaps identic to Kush, if not worse).

So while rejecting the Hindoo context, there are two different Christian contexts which can be given to Hindoo matters, like Mahabharata. By being Roman Catholic and preferring Roman Martyrology, I am giving them the nicer version.

But both Genesis and Mahabharata are historic documents, which can be read for historic truth, even without the direct reference to one revealed doctrine, whether the revelation be a true one or a false one. So are Acts and Iliad.

The Church forbade the reading of Bible to laymen who were not receiving instruction from priests, after Albigensian crusade and in some territories. The Church also made a clear exception for Biblical history. Petrus Comestor was translated into rhymed poetry, the then standard format for entertainment narrative, including both fictitious and documentary.

So, the opening paragraphs of the video are wrong. Even a heretic can figure out what Mark 10:6 implies for length of the days of creation. Even a blasphemer can figure out that if so, the world has an age sth along the lines of Ussher or Syncellus or, between them, St Jerome. Not the kind of age where Darwinian evolution of very diverse species from same original ones (like common ancestry of cat and dog or of dove and eagle or of bird and mammal) is remotely possible. Not the kind of age which concurs with the evolutionist view on how Grand Canyon was formed.

Pretending that the Bible has no meaning whatsoever outside the faith can in two ways be a plea for the wrong solution to this matter:

• a) if you pretend that Creationists, as Protestant heretics, are complete outsiders who cannot understand the Bible, and then go on to fake a "Church decision" in favour of Evolution;
• b) if you pretend that history as such is outside the object of the faith, and then you can claim the obvious historic meaning is not a meaning, since it is not the primary object of the faith.

Both of these are spurious pleas. Even a heretic can understand some of the Bible (that is why Catholic Apologetics often takes "the witness of the heretics" into account, correcting a live heresy by the words of a dead one, or some words of it). Biblical history is the easy part. And, while the object of the faith is God and the truths God has revealed, He has set some of them in history, and getting the history hopelessly wrong (as you do if you consider Adam descended from pre-Adamites) will rather hinder than help getting the divine message right.

[Commenting on title:]

As to the title, it is the Koran which is neither good as a legal document nor as religious instruction, it is so to speak reducing the Biblical formats to poetry, wisdom and prophecy, and when rivalling the chapters relevant for OT law ("God spoke to Moses and said") clearly inferior to the parts of Exodus and Leviticus in coherence. It is so allusive, THAT is a place where you can't figure out whether the words about a split moon being "denigrated" as magic refer to a purported miracle in the lifetime of Mohammed or to some more apocalyptic thing.

While the Bible is not correctly interpreted outside the Church, the Muslims could say same thing for the Ummah, that is not the difference, and furthermore saying the Bible has no meaning contradicts :

II Tim 3 : [15] And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. [16] All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, [17] That the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.

Note a clear difference between what I say and how Protestants twist this. The holy scriptures instruct some people to their salvation through the faith in Christ Jesus, which is the faith of the Church. Jettison the Church, the tradition and dogmatic decisions and fathers, you are making your salvation and understanding your way to it very shaky or you are losing it.

This does not mean that to such a man there will be no instruction at all.