Bible a collection of stories?

[Anonymous]

I must agree with your assumption. I have found the Bible to be an extremely awesome book in developing a personal philosophy, but developing a philosophy is different than looking for divine truth. Different people have different philosophies, regardless of how often they will try to tell you that their personal philosophy is 'divinely inspired.' Not only have I been reading the Bible a lot for personal development, I have also been reading Buddhist philosophies, which are quite a bit older than the Bible and, if people want to use the age of their philosophy as a justification for it, then Buddhist philosophy probably inspired many of the Bible's writers. There is nothing wrong with that.

"Truth" is a difficult word to define because it is different for all people with regards to philosophy. Even Christians argue amongst themselves despite living under the same moral code...what does that mean? It means that within the Bible, people will only look for passages that relate to their specific philosophy. In that aspect, any religion can find solstice through any other religion. (I reccommend the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It's an awesome book about a boy looking for a personal philosophy, and he gets it from three different religions as well as personal experiences. It's quite an interesting/ humorous story, and I've used it for my own personal enlightenment...I probably would have never attempted to read the Bible if it hadn't been for that book.)

Hopefully, this does not answer your question, but instead opens your mind to the multitude of possibilities. I prefer the infinite over the selections from the infinite, and you might find that delving into other books and philosophies might narrow your personal philosophy down to about a trillion possibilities instead of an infinite amount...wow, I confuse myself quite a bit.

[Jac3510]

Even Christians argue amongst themselves despite living under the same moral code...what does that mean? It means that within the Bible, people will only look for passages that relate to their specific philosophy. In that aspect, any religion can find solstice through any other religion.

Couldn't it just mean that Christians, being human and fallible and wanting to justify their own beliefs, use the Bible to justify their ideas rather than using it to form their ideas?

Certainly, our preconceptions are going to have an impact on the way we read things. But, I'm sure you can agree that the Bible does teach some things pretty clearly. I'm sure you can agree that solid and honest scholarship can rule out some "popular" interpretations.

Eisegesis (reading into the text) is a common problem. But, how many people take the time to go through a process of exegesis and analysis before coming to hermeneutics (that is, interpretation)?

So, in general, your statement here is true, but I don't think it applies to all Christians. There are some, like myself, who believe what the Bible teaches, and if the Bible contradicts our thinking, we change our beliefs. How do you know if it does? You study it systematically. Therefore, for people like me, it is a false statement that "any religion can find solstice through any other religion." Agreed?

But, if that's true, what does that say about our presuppositions going into Bible study? As I see it, it says that you can't use that line of thinking as any sort of argument against the inspiration and utter truthfulness of the Bible.