THIS IS WAR! END IS NEAR! EPISCOPAL CHURCH APPROVES SAME SEX MARRIAGES

[RachelBibleStudent]

A very great deal of scripture is not clear and evident and in fact some scripture read in this way destroys the intended meanings. Some advise to 'read in context' but even reading several verses before and after is not sufficient. A full context would include an understanding of Jewish history and culture, of their religious beliefs and traditions and also of the Jewish literary traditions. An understanding of all of this can lead us into drawing quite different conclusions from some stories than most people are used to.

The idea that the bible was to be read literally actually entered Christian thought sometime early in the second century when the church underwent a transition from its early Jewish roots into a Gentile largely Greek speaking church. With this transition they lost the bility to read scripture "with Jewish eyes" and became literalists. We could call this the Gentile Heresy. This heresy is still alive and well in parts of the church.

this is so completely backwards that it would be funny if it wasn't so disappointing...

the old testament scriptures and virtually all other ancient narrative literature were written and interpreted literally until around the second century BC...at that time some jewish philosophers in alexandria began to interpret the torah using the allegorical methods developed by alexandrian greeks a century earlier in order to find the tenets of greek philosophy in the epics of homer and others...likewise these alexandrian jewish philosophers such as philo wanted to show that the jews had a 'book of wisdom' too...from which philosophical truths could be similarly derived...

outside of alexandria this approach never really took root in the larger jewish community...in fact in judea there was something of a backlash against this abandoning of traditional literal interpretation...likewise the early christians were nearly all literalists for all practical purposes...with traces of the allegorical approach being only hinted at even in the strongly alexandrian influenced epistle to the hebrews...

contrary to what has been claimed...it is the non literal allegorical approach that entered christian thought in the second century AD...when the church underwent the transition from being a jewish community at its core to becoming a largely gentile dominated community...at this time the previously marginal alexandrian christian school took on more importance...and the allegorical methods of alexandrian christians like clement and origen became increasingly prominent...

so the historical fact is the exact opposite of what is being claimed here...in reality the 'jewish eyes' of the early church were literalist...and the latecomer 'gentile heresy' would be non literal allegorism...