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In reply to the discussion: 'Jesus's Wife' papyrus fragment not a forgery, scientists say [View all]markpkessinger
(8,529 posts). . . I've had a number of recent discussions online with atheists who make an argument along the lines of, "fundamentalists deserve more credit than moderate Christians because at least they take their faith seriously, rather than picking and choosing." Some of them will even will even try to prooftext their argument by pointing to verses such as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ("All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" .
But then I point out to them that nowhere in the collection of religious writings we call the "Bible" is there a reference to itself. And even that New Testament passage from 2 Timothy cannot be said to be referring to the "Bible," per se, but at best to the Hebrew Scriptures. indeed, at the time 2 Timothy was written, much of the New Testament had not even been written yet).
Further, I point out that the Bible is a collection of religious texts written over many centuries. Those text span a variety of literary forms, including allegory, poetry, history (with the caveat that 'history' would have been understood rather differently from our modern notion of it as a more or less objective chronological record of events), among many others, and thus the notion that a single standard of literal interpretation should be applied to every part of it is simply absurd. Ironically, the approaches of both biblical literalists and of atheists who try to denigrate non-literal approaches to the bible by insisting only the literalist approach constitutes "taking the bible seriously" are rooted in the very same, post 18th Century rationalist hermeneutic. And many of these atheists don't even realize how much they are buying into literalists' framing of the debate.