When you read a document as history, you absolutely should not have the mindset that everything in the document is true. If you read the historical documents that were used to convict Albert Dreyfus, you should bear in mind the possibility that they were forged… because they were. But they’re still historical.
There are over 2 billion Christians in the world who believe the Bible to be more-or-less historical. It is unlikely most of them believe in the literal truth of all of it, but that’s still essentially how they read it. The OP shouldn’t have asked the question if they didn’t want to hear an honest answer.
If you think that because I answered “as history” to the question “how else would you read the Bible” that I must believe in its historical truth (either in the normal manner of a Christian, or in the insane manner that everything in it must be completely true) you’d be wrong. I just answered the question.
If I’m understanding your position, I think a better way to word your answer may have been “as an historic text to provide context for religious beliefs”. “History” comes with the implication that it is truthful to events in the past, not that it was just “written before right now, even if it’s fiction”.
That would have been reasonable but I wanted to also encompass the way in which a Christian would read the bible, because asking such a question needs to have that pointed out. I have close friends and relatives who are religious, and don’t want to people to essentially deny that they exist.
That may be a righteous conviction, but it doesn’t make the document “history” by virtue of no one knowing the events of prehistoric times of, say, Genesis. For instance, would you consider the Iliad or the Odyssey to be history? They have vast historical and cultural importance, but the stories as read do not provide a factual history of events as we understand them.
I’m just trying to convey why people people disagree with you and what position you are hopefully trying to take is they contain historic importance but do not themselves contain a “history” any more than other religious texts or even an X-men comic may.
I think people disagree because they disagree with the very idea of religion, and don’t like it being pointed out that religious people exist and do things differently. Saying that people read the Bible “as history” was deliberately vague to encompass multiple ways in which it is read, but one irrefutable one is that Christians read it as history in exactly the way you’re saying it isn’t.
The fact that people may be interpreting what I said not to mean “Christians read the Bible as historical fact” but “The Bible is historical fact” is for them.
If you think that because I answered “as history” to the question “how else would you read the Bible” that I must believe in its historical truth (either in the normal manner of a Christian, or in the insane manner that everything in it must be completely true) you’d be wrong. I just answered the question.
If I’m understanding your position, I think a better way to word your answer may have been “as an historic text to provide context for religious beliefs”. “History” comes with the implication that it is truthful to events in the past, not that it was just “written before right now, even if it’s fiction”.
That would have been reasonable but I wanted to also encompass the way in which a Christian would read the bible, because asking such a question needs to have that pointed out. I have close friends and relatives who are religious, and don’t want to people to essentially deny that they exist.
That may be a righteous conviction, but it doesn’t make the document “history” by virtue of no one knowing the events of prehistoric times of, say, Genesis. For instance, would you consider the Iliad or the Odyssey to be history? They have vast historical and cultural importance, but the stories as read do not provide a factual history of events as we understand them.
I’m just trying to convey why people people disagree with you and what position you are hopefully trying to take is they contain historic importance but do not themselves contain a “history” any more than other religious texts or even an X-men comic may.
I think people disagree because they disagree with the very idea of religion, and don’t like it being pointed out that religious people exist and do things differently. Saying that people read the Bible “as history” was deliberately vague to encompass multiple ways in which it is read, but one irrefutable one is that Christians read it as history in exactly the way you’re saying it isn’t.
The fact that people may be interpreting what I said not to mean “Christians read the Bible as historical fact” but “The Bible is historical fact” is for them.