{"id":34055,"date":"2016-04-02T06:16:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-02T10:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=34055"},"modified":"2016-07-22T11:08:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:08:37","slug":"biblical-docetism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/04\/biblical-docetism.html","title":{"rendered":"Biblical Docetism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Samantha Field coined this very apt phrase for fundamentalism\u2019s view of the Bible in a recent blog post<\/a>. Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n

To biblical docetists, cultural contexts don\u2019t have to have any bearing on the text\u2013 it\u2019s not really an ancient library of texts gathered together over time and with a lot of arguing. It is divine, it is holy, it is preserved. God intended every word exactly as it was recorded to reach our ears today. They knew that we would be reading it, and mythically they imbued it with the power to make perfect, clear sense to ancient readers, and modern readers, and people reading it thousands of years in the future. It is not really a book. You can\u2019t treat it like any old book, or expect it to follow the common sensical rules of other ancient texts. Everything we understand about how ancient near-eastern cultures viewed history or biography doesn\u2019t ultimately matter. It\u2019s the Bible.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Bible is so magical that you can rip sentences\u2013 halves of sentences, even!\u2013 out of their paragraphs and force it down other people\u2019s throats as God\u2019s divinely ordained word for that specific moment. We can all read every letter and stand sure in the knowledge that every word was ultimately meant for our ears, not necessarily for the church to which it was written. Genre\u2013 whether it\u2019s oral tradition, poetry, myth, parable\u2013 should be erased, for it\u2019s not just any book. It\u2019s not predicated on ideas of style or voicing or purpose or audience. Everything in it is literally true, literally factual, and literally meant for us today\u2026<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists have already been treading the path through biblical docetism for almost two decades now, and it\u2019s had disastrous consequences. If evangelicals don\u2019t experience some sort of course correction in their view of the Bible, then it\u2019s going to lead them to places the rest of us don\u2019t want to go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click through<\/a> to read the rest.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samantha Field coined this very apt phrase for fundamentalism\u2019s view of the Bible in a recent blog post. Here is an excerpt: To biblical docetists, cultural contexts don\u2019t have to have any bearing on the text\u2013 it\u2019s not really an ancient library of texts gathered together over time and with a lot of arguing. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":37311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,139,43],"tags":[3203,3678,5154,9854,10719],"class_list":["post-34055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicals","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-inerrancy","tag-evangelicals","tag-fundamentalists","tag-inerrancy","tag-quote","tag-samantha-field"],"yoast_head":"\nBiblical Docetism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Samantha Field coined this very apt phrase for fundamentalism's view of the Bible in a recent blog post. 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