The Bible is a Myth? | Doug Wilson

this reaction today is a reaction to joe rogan interviewing david mamet they're talking about the bible as myth the jurgen experience yes i mean it also goes back to the um to the enlightenment to the idea that god doesn't exist and the idea that the human being is the is the measure of all things well if the human being is the measure of all things what does that mean our reason and our reason is completely flawed all of us do things every day which are unreasonable sinful wrong and absurd right let's wait for joe rogan say amen and the reasonable person says wait a second why did i do that what do i have to refer to in my confusion and my self-loathing well the bible was a pretty good bet you know for the hebrew bible for six thousand years right the christian bible for two thousands pretty good bets say wait a second let's talk about human nature you really aren't that smart you really aren't in charge of the world you really aren't although you think you are you think that because you're human but god's in charge of the world and there's a certain way things are and if you'd like to get out of your wretched self-consciousness and self-delusion you better get your ass into church but don't you think that you know when atheists talk about religion and they criticize uh organized religion and criticize the bible they they talk about things that are in the bible that seem preposterous right they talk about people rising from the dead and walking on water particularly the old testament right like to use that as a guidebook for life you have to kind of ignore some of the stuff that doesn't make sense so um he's uh he's alluding to something that david mamet needs to be pressed on and that is if human reason is fallible and sinful and self-absorbed and absurd then why do we trust it to let to let it loose in the scriptures to come back with the hidden esoteric meaning that the bible carries in order for the bible to function authoritatively over us it has to be perspicuous it has to be clear and if you're treating it as a quarry from which we get the deep meaning of myth the deep meaning of myth then the chances are pretty good that you send 50 interpreters into the bible to get those that deeper meaning you're going to come back with 53 different uh deeper meanings and that that's a problem and i don't think david mamet has a solution for that well don't you think the bible's a myth okay the bible especially the heb the christian bible comes out of the the jewish bible it's a it's a retelling of the story in a different way but the jewish bible is a myth and the myth is the myth of creation and the myth of human experience so what it does is chapter by chapter story by story it challenges us with disturbing and bizarre images and which says why don't you try to understand this see if you can understand this what does it really mean to escape from egypt does it mean escaping from your inner pharaoh what does it really mean to part the red sea so these these stories are told any myth is a dramatic retelling of an underlying reality that can't be expressed rationally so what he's doing here is something very similar to what philo did uh in the first century bc first century a.d philo's life straddled um the turning of the bcad eras the the greeks had grown embarrassed by the behavior of the homeric gods zeus chase and all the skirts and everything and so the greeks had developed the allegorical method of interpretation because they were embarrassed by the literal meaning of their sacred stories philo was in a similar way embarrassed by some of the crudities of the old testament and he did something very similar to what david mamet is doing here uh but the people who produced the bible that philo interprets this way and that mammoth interprets this way didn't interpret it that same way if they did they wouldn't have produced it right so the atheists say everything can be expressed rationally for example you know that the earth is burning up you can tell that because sometimes things get warmer and sometimes things get colder you can also tell that when things get colder that's obviously because the earth is burning up because the sun is melting the glaciers and the glaciers are raising the temperature you can also tell of course that to be fair to everyone children change sex you know that don't you and you can tell that men can compete as women and women compete as men this is all human confusion because we trust our senses and we trust our mind and the mind just it doesn't work real good but why would our minds that could confuse something as plain and obvious as the difference between boys and girls if human reason can screw that up why can't we screw up an inscrutable myth the bible the the the way he's approaching the bible what is the deeper inner meaning of the crossing of the red sea or what is it to leave egypt to get away from your inner pharaoh that esoteric meaning is a lot less obvious than girls or girls and boys or boys so if human reason can screw one up then why are you trusting human reason to interpret the deep mysteries we're very cunning but we aren't very smart human beings and that's the message of the bible and so if you look at moses sorry moses moses was they tried the egyptians tried to kill him all of his life the egyptians tried to kill he didn't have any trouble with the egyptians because god was on his side he had trouble with the jews because the jews were always saying who the hell do you think you are so that's that all the old testament is the story of atheists really saying who the hell do you think you are so when when you're talking about the bible right what i mean in the lessons in the bible isn't part of the problem is that your people translated it from ancient hebrew to latin to greek and all these other languages and eventually to english like a lot's lost along the way right now this is a common mistake translations of the bible of the old testament come straight from the hebrew from hebrew to english not hebrew through greek and latin but hebrew to english and the new testament from greek to english or from if it's a foreign language translation from greek to spanish or from hebrew to spanish and a lot is open to interpretation like a lot of what we're talking about in these myths and stories that people take as factual occurrences they probably were some sort of uh there's some sort of a lesson in the myth some sort of allegory there's there's there's things about these stories that probably have hints of truth but isn't it hard to kind of decipher it all although if you can't speak the mother language that's a very good question so i want to first of all let me ask you okay i'm going to tell you a story okay okay these two octopuses walk into a a laundromat okay see that's what a myth is i said two octopuses walk into a laundromat and you didn't say wait a second octopuses can't walk and they wouldn't be in a long time i thought about it but i'm being polite so what you said is yeah tell me more okay i'm hoping there's a good joke okay well i'll get to that but it's the same thing with the the bible is really two octopuses walk into a laundromat so i'm going to tell you a story i want you to suspend your disbelief because there's something of this story you might get a kick out of the problem with this analogy here is that if you're telling a joke about the two octopuses walking into a bar at some point you get to the punch line and when you get to the punch line it the the point is clear and obvious uh if you have any kind of sense of humor at all you're being beat over the head with the obviousness of it but if you just had um two octopuses walking down to i said bar two octopuses walk into a laundromat if you do that and then you said and then three klingons walk into a bar and then you said and then three uh argentinians walk walked into times square and you just went from one to another and the whole thing was one absurdity under you'd never get to the punch line and that's what he's saying uh the the bible is a chain of absurd jokes with no punch lines uh and so you have to rely on the wisdom your own shrewd cunning wisdom that he's already rejected you might and you might there might be some wisdom in it there might yes and might no but if you listen as you would to a story which the bible is it's a myth rather than to a factual retelling you might get a kick out of it now as far as a translation goes i can read the bible in hebrew i learned i started learning when i was 40 it's easy language and there are a lot of mistranslations but the the main point is not the mistranslations because there are some pretty good english translations too but the main point is thing that doesn't make sense that doesn't make sense so what do you think the bible is do you think the bible is a bunch of very wise people got together and they form these stories to sort of illustrate the folly of mankind and how one needs to have like a moral compass and guiding principles that are set in stone and that you have these rules to live your life in a moral and just way and that'll make for a better society the bible was not written in order to illustrate the folly of mankind but to demonstrate the folly of mankind and to show and declare uh and make manifest the depravity of mankind and to show the only way out like where do you think the bible actually is well a friend of mine a rabbi was a reformed rabbi was applying to get into an orthodox uh yeshiva an orthodox college and he's a reformed rabbi so the guy says he says you have very good credentials and you're very well learned do you think the bible is literally the work of god yes we do the rabbi says no so the guy says well is it possible robert says yes guy says okay you're in right so this dennis prager you know who um i'm crazy about said the other day he said you know i don't believe in the torah the jewish bible because of god he said i believe in god because of the torah so if you read the torah the jewish bible and the christian bible is just an extension of that you say my god this is incredible wisdom this goes back to the beginning of time people who have tried to figure out everything and they didn't have the language that we have but they had the language that they had and this was thousands of years of experience progressed and compressed into a myth so we know that this is true because like liberals have always been in love with the myths especially jews with the myths of other cultures right we say how beautiful it is that this culture has that myth that the hayden indians say the world was formed by a large beaver and when the beaver slapped his tail like that it made the oceans and when the blah blah blaze that's gorgeous myth nobody says of that myth wait a second you can't have a beaver that big right that's what i would say yeah okay i'd step in and go hey man so the bottom line here is as uh as tolkien explained to louis the night that lewis was converted the fact that something is mythic the fact that the bible contains myth which actually it does does not mean that it's not factually historically true jesus died on the cross and was buried and he rose again from the dead in history the empty tomb is a historical fact that doesn't mean that it is excluded from being a transcendental myth the creation account and adam and eve in the garden i have no problem accepting that as mythic it's a it's a wonderful myth um but we have to be careful using words like that because in modern english parlance mythical means imaginary or you're daydreaming or you're making stuff up no we we accept the bible as literally foundationally absolutely true and some of the elements are mythical but just because it's mythical doesn't mean it didn't actually happen adam and eve literal adam and eve mythical adam and eve christ died and rose again from the dead that is as lewis would put it myth become fact if you are enjoying these videos and would like to support this channel and the work of canon press join up at canon plus just click the link create an account and have a look around if you use the restrooms leave a dime on the counter

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 53,854

Keywords: canon press, christian response, christianity, conservative christian, advice for christians, blog, christian reaction, blog & mablog, christian politics, biblical worldview, conservative, biblical, preacher, christians, bible, myth, joe rogan, rogan, mythical, david mamet, true myth, joe rogan experience, jre, joe

Id: iB-HHAgDdM8

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022