Wednesday, January 29, 2020

What do you mean by that?

We cannot start by asking of the Bible our scientific questions. The Bible is not revealing science, and the biblical authors and audience would be neither aware of nor concerned with our scientific way of thinking. Our questions would not resonate in their minds, and neither would they even have meaning to them. Likewise, we cannot start by seeing how or where the Bible corresponds to scientific thinking that we have today if we have not yet understood the text in its original context. We need to penetrate the ancient text and the ancient world to understand their insider communication and their cognitive environment.—The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 25

<idle musing>
I think John starts out all his books this way, but it needs to be repeated. Our scientifically based questions would make absolutely no sense to people in the ancient world. And, more often than not, their questions make no sense to us without knowing their culture, what John calls their cognitive environment.
</idle musing>

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