hy·per·bo·le
Obvious and intentional exaggeration.
An extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”.
Revelation 6
12And when I saw the Lamb open the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth of goat hair, and the whole moon turned blood red, 13and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, like unripe figs dropping from a tree shaken by a great wind.14The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place.
One would be quite enough
Revelation 9
15So the four angels who had been prepared for this hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. 16And the number of mounted troops was two hundred million; I heard their number. 17Now the horses and riders in my vision looked like this: The riders had breastplates the colors of fire, sapphire, and brimstone. The heads of the horses were like heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.…
Daniel 7:27 + Matthew 24:31 + Mark 13:27
[27] And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVEN, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. [31] And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, FROM ONE END OF HEAVEN TO THE OTHER. [27] And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the UTTER-MOST PART OF THE EARTH TO THE UTTER-MOST PART OF HEAVEN.
That's quite a streeeeeeetch!
The untrained ministry of the Splits, Splinters and Slivers needs to grasp the word Hyperbole if they are ever to teach the Bible as it was written and meant as a Book for it's time but not for these times. Dave Pack's sermons would be ever so much shorter if he'd not struggle with trying to make his views both Old and New Testaments literally true. He'd not try to illogically connect a long thin Mt. Zion with his long and thin compound spewing out footage by length and width as if it mattered. It doesn't. He'd not bend and twist his mind and thus his sermons around every imagined detail that somehow has to be literally true and "figured out."
If they ever understood the word, Hyperbole they'd all stop weaving tall tales on how it all will be. No one would end up worrying about Petra and what to do with the dog or unconverted children and they'd cease making absolute fools out of themselves boring or scaring their members half to death.
The untrained ministry of the Splits, Splinters and Slivers needs to grasp the word Hyperbole if they are ever to teach the Bible as it was written and meant as a Book for it's time but not for these times. Dave Pack's sermons would be ever so much shorter if he'd not struggle with trying to make his views both Old and New Testaments literally true. He'd not try to illogically connect a long thin Mt. Zion with his long and thin compound spewing out footage by length and width as if it mattered. It doesn't. He'd not bend and twist his mind and thus his sermons around every imagined detail that somehow has to be literally true and "figured out."
If they ever understood the word, Hyperbole they'd all stop weaving tall tales on how it all will be. No one would end up worrying about Petra and what to do with the dog or unconverted children and they'd cease making absolute fools out of themselves boring or scaring their members half to death.
The Hyper Bowl. Isn't that what a New Years football game would be called if it were held up in Arroyo Grande?
ReplyDeleteBB
I think you are confusing it with the Brain Bucket Bowl. The Craniums are playing the Frontal Lobotomies
ReplyDeleteBut I guess we could have a bottle in front of me rather than a frontal lobotomy?
ReplyDeleteOne evening I walked to Bible study with a fellow Ambassador College Freshman. She showed me a card with a question she planned to submit to the minister leading the study, about Matthew 24:17: "Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house." She wondered whether that rule was meant literally or not.
ReplyDeleteI was an avid reader who had good literature and rhetoric teachers in high school. I knew the trick of hyperbole very well. Besides, from my eighteen years of listening to banter among adults and engaging in it with friends and relations, I recognized the tactic. It was a hyperbolic way to say. "Don't let your guard down. Live so virtuously at all times that you are continuously ready to answer the call. When the time comes, it will be too late to atone for your wrongs and correct your shortcomings."
As I recall, it was Garner Ted who ran the Bible study that night. He read her question aloud and declared the verse was completely literal. Everybody who heard the call would have to drop whatever they were doing and answer it immediately. Drop absolutely anything they were doing and join the Armageddon Exodus without delay.
I was too intimidated to ask the followup question that came to mind: "But what if I'm in the shower? Can I at least grab a towel to wrap around my waist and cover my privates?"
An SDA who sat next to me at school casually mentioned "the sky has darkened and the stars have fallen". The SDAs believed the stars falling to Earth referred to a Leonid meteor shower some time in the eighteenth century.
ReplyDeleteNot a literal interpretation, but a minor event, and out of context.
Someone on another blog did an interesting analysis of all the sayings of Jesus recorded in all four gospels.
ReplyDeleteObviously, the synoptic gospels have a lot of redundancy between them, since the authors of Matthew and Luke each plagiarized almost all of Mark, including everything they didn't disagree with. John, of course, was written much later, for a different generation of christians, and for a very different purpose. He knew about Mark, but didn't use much of it.
I was brought up reading the bible as the whole thing was written by a single (supernatural) author, and therefore, as though not just the four canonical gospels, but the entire bible are all trying to say exactly the same thing. As Bart Ehrman points out however, to create "harmonies" like this where we smooth out the contradictions and discrepancies between the gospels is not to read any of them, but instead to invent your own fifth gospel. That's exactly the same thing that the authors of Matthew and Mark did, the only difference is we usually don't write ours down.
When you stop reading the synoptic gospels into John and vice-versa, the Jesus of John stands out as a very different preacher than any of the synoptic Jesuses, and they teach very different things.
The synoptic gospels agree that Jesus was a radically apocalyptic, legalistic, and ascetic preacher. He recommends giving away all possessions to charity and leading an ascetic life—preferrably as a eunuch (Matthew 19:12)! John's Jesus has almost no ethical teachings at all and hardly mentions the law or the poor. The one thing he does say repeatedly, is that all you really need to do is "believe in me" and "love one another." By the time the second century rolled around and nearly 70 years had passed, it was clear the lord had, in fact, delayed his coming. And without the apocalypse, the apocalyptic teachings didn't make quite so much sense anymore, much as they don't today either.
One could argue that every harsh and unworldly teaching of Jesus in the synoptic gospels is just hyperbole. And that would be very convenient. It certainly would make you look less unhinged. However, it isn't the only way to make sense out the synoptic Jesuses and since they're earlier, the "metaphor" route might not be the most rational way either. There's a very sensible rationale behind the synoptic teachings, if you posit that Jesus believed this world was just about to pass away, and either heaven or else hell were prematurely just around the corner for practically everyone then alive at.
I had always assumed "stars falling from the sky" was a reference to a meteor shower. Not that I give a damn either way.
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