AS177: Tyler Vela on Interpreting the Bible

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 177. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, well, I've got a great discussion for you guys this week. Really excited about it. It was fascinating. I like when I get to talk to somebody who really disagrees with me. It's fun. But before that, I need to talk about a couple things. First, there was a, obviously, that there's the shooting. There's a lot of stuff that's been going on with that that I would love to talk about, but due to schedule, I'm not going to be able to until next week. I think next week I may end up doing some stuff. And don't worry, it's not going be the same old, same old. I have a lot of, there's a lot of stuff to talk about with current events.

0:01:16 Thomas: And I haven't done a current events kind of show in a while. So I think maybe we're due. And I like when I get to hear from you guys, your opinions on that and stuff. So, and then secondly, I need to say there's been a Patreon hack. I don't know. I think likely my patrons have gotten emailed about it. I know I got emailed by Patreon. Okay. So I want to say a few things about that. First off, back when this Ashley Madison thing happened, I was never one of these idiots who was saying like, well, I deserve it because they're doing it. No, I don't. We need to have a rule of law and we need to be able to conduct business in a way online that is protected from essentially thieves.

0:02:02 Thomas: It is thieves, not even essentially. We need to be able to conduct commerce, whatever it is, as long as it's legal. I understand you don't want to beable to conduct, I don't know, terrorism or arms trade or something. But assuming it's legal, which for now, anything, Patreon, adultery, it's all legal. We need to be able to practice that no matter if you disagree with what that is or not. If it's illegal, it needs to be protected by the law and it needs to be protective from thieves. And in this case, just awful, no good thieves. I can't tell you how mad I am about this hack because I think Patreon is a great website. They've been really cool. They're a great company. They've been very transparent. They've kept their promise of keeping their fee the same.

0:02:50 Thomas: People have suggested they could increase it, but they've kept it the same, there's a lot of good things about Patreon, and most importantly, it's a place where people like you can support something that you like, like maybe this show for some of you, which is awesome, and I just can't believe these hackers. I don't know what kind of people do this. I really don't. I mean, sorry, I hate hackers. I just have to say I freaking hate hackers. I don't mind, it's one thing if you're, I can hear it already if you are a white hat hacker and you are just trying to help people out, you are obviously amazing, I think that's like the polar opposite, that's really cool, if you hack a site like Patreon.com just to post the stuff, it seems like the people, whoever breaches the data, doesn't even do anything with it. They just post it online and then other people do stuff with it.

0:03:44 Thomas: I don't, I don't get, again, a site like Patreon, what do they do to anybody? It's a, it's a great place where people can go support work they like, and it's been hacked. Well, I want to tell you that I've talked to Bangs Naughty Bits, who's my resident IT expert. I know he'll, he'll probably blush at that, but I, I trust him on a lot of things. I've looked over the articles and stuff. It looks as though all your credit card information is totally safe. So don't worry about Patreon in terms of your credit cards being violated. I'll let you know the minute I hear differently. But from what I, you know, Bangs has looked at the data published, credit card numbers is not included. So that should be totally fine.

0:04:31 Thomas: Also, the data is what Patreon told me, and I'm guessing all of you who sign on to Patreon, that it was encrypted data. Well, I mean, that's, that might've been a little misleading or at least maybe Patreon was being, um, probably a little optimistic because I'm guessing they'll be able to crack whatever encryption that is. Uh, and also if you go to, there's a website called, um... Let me get the precise URL. It's haveibeenpwned.com, obviously P-W-N-E-D. And that actually, you can just put in your email and then it hacks you and steals all your money. So it's a good, no, you put in your email and it'll tell you if you've been involved in one of these hacks. And I put in mine and said, yes, you've been involved in the Patreon hack.

0:05:19 Thomas: So what I really need to recommend for all my lovely supporters, again, I feel so bad about this. Like, it's just such an awful thing. I don't, I don't get it. I don't get what the point of it is. But I recommend changing your passwords. I highly recommend changing your password. I'm actually going to go through and change all my passwords to everything just because I'm worried that I had so many emails because I have like, what, three, four different Patreon accounts and different emails and all that. I'm just going to change everything. I think also it might be the creators, if there's any creators out there on Patreon listening, I think our information was actually hacked worse because our information sits on the server, whereas the credit card information of the the patrons, that doesn't actually sit on the server.

0:06:05 Thomas: So we might actually have it worse. So I'm, I'm going to, but I'm not worried about that. I'm really, I'm really worried about you guys and your ability to pledge to something you like and want to support. Even if it's not me, if it is anybody, I just, it's, it is mind blowing. I don't know why anyone would want to take that away from people, but it's totally fine. Like it's seriously, I don't want anyone to overreact. It seems as though it's going to be okay. They say the breach is obviously... Oh, one more thing. The data starts on... It ends, rather, on September 25th or 26th. So, if anyone joined Patreon after that, you're actually totally fine. So the data was hacked a long time ago and then they... Well, not a long ago. Sorry, a week or two ago.

0:06:52 Thomas: And I know I've had some new patrons since then. So you're in luck. You're totally fine. Unless, of course, you're already on Patreon pledging someone else. But anyway, so that's all I want to say. Just I highly recommend changing your password. But I don't think it's more serious than that. Unless, like I say, you are a creator like I am and I'll see about it. But these days there's so much fraud protection on everything. I'm actually not worried.

Oftentimes I'll try to make a purchase and my own bank will deny it and like call me about it So, I mean, I'm not particularly worried, but again, I want to change my passwords as a precaution. So, there you have it. Sorry for that long message, but I, again, it just feels so bad about this, and it's so frustrating. But with that, I wanna bring you the content that my lovely Patreons at patreon.com/atheist pledge for, and that is, I think, a really good discussion between me and Tyler Vela, someone who is a Christian and disagrees with the way I interpret the Bible, and my other podcast, Thomas and the Bible. So I thought it was really fascinating. Let's get to part one of that discussion, and I hope you enjoy it.

0:08:10 Thomas: Joining me right now is Tyler Vela. Did I pronounce that right?

0:08:13 Tyler: You did.

0:08:14 Thomas: All right, perfect. Okay, well, I'm done. My work here is done. I'm out.

0:08:18 Tyler: That's it. Peace out.

0:08:19 Thomas: Yeah, and, well I don't know how to introduce this. I guess you, I mean, you're Christian, I assume, right?

0:08:26 Tyler: Yes, I am.

0:08:27 Thomas: Any specific denomination that we should know about?

0:08:32 Tyler: I mean, I belong to the PCA, which is the Presbyterian Church in America, but I'm just broadly reformed in my theology.

0:08:40 Thomas: Okay, you had some criticism about how I've been reading the Bible, or probably more broadly how a lot of people might read the Bible, I assume. And I am not, I'm not 100% sure the extent of your criticism. So I think I'm going to go ahead and let you go. I like that you, I think you listen to the show from time to time, right?

0:08:50 Tyler: Yeah, yeah, I do. I do, I listen to, and actually, I mean my comments were not that much of a criticism of this show, but your other one.

0:09:04 Thomas: Well, that's cool. Of course. Yeah. Right. Yeah, and I think everyone should know, but in case they don't, I have a podcast, Thomas and the Bible where I'm reading through the entire Bible, and it's eaten up five, six years of my life. One of my biggest regrets, but there you go. No, no.

0:09:23 Tyler: Yeah. Don't. You have one of those like through the Bible in a year, just follow one of those? Yeah.

0:09:28 Thomas: Well, that's what I was trying to do, actually. And then it just is so much, it's hard to do it every day. So I did it, I switched it to like a once a week, which of course makes it five years because, you know, five business days. But anyway, yeah, so why don't you go ahead? I really appreciate you coming on. I really like having having people who have different opinions on the show. I like that a lot. So I'm glad that you listen, despite being, you know, Christian. I'm happy to hear what you have to say.

0:09:40 Tyler: Yeah.

0:09:59 Tyler: I actually, um, in people, people have asked me because I've been, you know, saying I'm coming on the show, I'm going to talk about hermeneutics, uh, and they're like, oh, you're going on an atheist show, and I'm like, yeah, it's actually a really good show, you guys should listen to it, um, so, Yeah.

0:10:11 Thomas: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that.

0:10:13 Tyler: Yeah, I mean, I recommend show, you uh, you had uh my friend Elijah on a few a couple months ago, yeah.

0:10:17 Thomas: Oh, yeah. I love Elijah. Yeah. Do you guys know each other personally or just like online?

0:10:19 Tyler: Um, Online, we've, we've known each other for a couple years online, uh, we have the same birthday, which helps, so

0:10:27 Thomas: Yeah, that's always a good in. Just wondering. I wasn't sure if it was like a close personal physical friendship or an online one. Not to take away from it or anything. I was just wondering.

0:10:38 Tyler: Uh, It's A dear, dear friend, um, We go way back to September 13th when we were born, um, no, so yeah, I mean, so I, like I said, it's not a criticism for, for this show. Actually, this show, um, I, I recommend because you tend to, and not to overly really flatter you or anything, you tend to be pretty, pretty objective, um, I, I appreciate that you can kind of call out, uh, atheist, uh, the, the kind of some of the depths of the rhetoric that, that parts of the movement have gone to, and you, you're able to do that, and that's why I appreciate it. It's the other show, um, that I, that I have some of my criticisms, and it's not actually like you handed out, it's more just the way that a lot of people read the Bible, so, um, this is, this is not. This isn't even really a criticism just of atheists either, so a lot of this comes down to a lot of my criticisms for how some of my fellow Christians read it.

0:10:39 Thomas: Nice.

0:11:31 Tyler: So if you go to kind of your average Southern Baptist fundamentalist church, I'm going to have a lot of these exact same criticisms. And so I think part of the problem when you get into some of these interfaith dialogues or dialogues between Christians and atheists is that a lot of atheists just come out of those traditions, and so they don't know any better. And so they just kind of have that fundamentalist interpretive hangover when they become atheists.

And so, they read it that way, and then you kind of get this – and I don't know if this is your case or anything like that, but you kind to get this feedback loop where that's their initial hermeneutic, but then because they don't believe it, or they think it's false, or they think it's nonsense, or whatever, then it causes them to study it even less, which then kind of reinforces that, that kind of ignorance, or that type of hyper literal interpretation, which makes it come across as even more stupid, which makes them think it's even more nonsense, and just kind of down and down it goes, kind of in that, in that downward feedback loop, um, that was, that was kind of one of my, my criticisms, criticisms, um, for you. I don't know how much, you how much you want me to hijack your show to talk

0:12:41 Tyler: About it, so

0:12:41 Thomas: No, I want to definitely let you talk as much as you want. Why don't you go ahead and just to square one it here. Can you explain to, well, to me, what do you mean by hermeneutics? I think I know, but just to make sure everybody's on the same page.

0:12:42 Tyler: Yeah.

0:12:58 Tyler: Yeah, so, well, that's a good question, because not everyone's on the same page Is, is What I found, because a lot of times when you're going in, especially coming out of these fundamentalist churches, is that hermeneutics just means they use it much more like harmonization, um, where hermeneutics is, well, we need to read it to make it true, true, so for a lot of times hermeneutics for, for these fundamentalist Christians is actually a way of doing theology, um, and so when an atheist, that's all they know of the term, when they hear hermeneutics, that's what they think, but now for them it has a negative connotation when really hermeneutics is just, without going, I mean hermeneutics, in kind of the, the literary sense, not in the, you know, kind of crazy, uh, continental philosophical, you know, hermeneutics type of sense, uh, but hermeneutics is just, how do you, how do you read and interpret any piece of literature, right? It's not just the Bible.

0:13:02 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:13:51 Thomas: So it's kind of a, and that's something I did learn. I can't remember when, but I know what you mean. I think you have a valid point that atheists hear it and think like, oh, that's just some BS theology thing. But I suppose it, I think it's more of a neutral term. It's just weird that you don't come across it much except for when reading the Bible. And I don't know what that means. I know I've gone through my whole life. I've gone through college. I'm pretty well educated. Had never heard the term. I mean, I wasn't a literature major or anything like that, an English lit major or anything, but it's interesting that it seems to be pretty exclusively for the Bible in common parlance, but

0:13:52 Tyler: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:36 Tyler: I think that just has to do with, um, there's so much more literature, and there's such a lot of literature, and there's so much intentionality on, um, the Bible, uh, for just interpretive pedagogy, um, you know, we don't, don't have long extended debates and read thousands of books and, and such on, you know, how to read and interpret. I don't know any other, you know, the The Human English We

0:14:57 Thomas: Yeah, I know, and I have my theories as to why that is, but I'm sure we would disagree.

0:15:03 Tyler: We might, uh, but, but I mean, ultimately hermeneutics is, is really just, um, reading, reading a text well. I mean, it's like the same way, um, if you're really only going to hear the terms exegesis and eisegesis when you're talking about biblical studies, but really exegesis is just the proper translation of one language into another language, right, within a text. So even though that the term exegesus is almost exclusively used to talk about translation of biblical languages, really what's meant by it is just, you know, are you exegeting? Are you drawing out the text from the text itself? Or are you imposing kind of our late modern Western views onto it, which would be eisegesis? So hermeneutics is a lot like that, where it just, it gets a lot of play because it's really important in biblical studies, whereas in other studies, you just kind of do it.

0:15:55 Tyler: You don't have a lot of attention given to it. It's just, you just do it, we oftentimes just talk about reading comprehension or something like that. But really, good reading comprehension just is good hermeneutics, right?

0:16:03 Thomas: Right, right. Okay, So let me, I guess, not really respond, but kind of address some of the things you've said. I don't come from a fundamentalist background. I, I know, and I know you weren't directing that at me, you're kind of talking in general, and that's, that's totally fine, but just to let you know, that's not my situation. I came from a pretty, a pretty lax Christianity. Just my mom made me go to church for, until I was in high school, and then she didn't want to make me do it anymore. So, I so definitely, I think there are more people than we tend to give credit to who believe in certain, and more Christians that is, who believe in certain parts of the Bible very literally, and I think that sometimes people in your position or people I hear who have the same critiques that you have are critiquing as though no one, as though atheists read the Bible literally and not many Christians do, but I think there's a lot of Christians who, I would say most Christians believe in a literal Adam and Eve.

0:17:08 Thomas: Most of them believe in a Noah's Ark story, which is insane. Like, I know that when you talk to the smartest Christians, they tend to say, well, yeah, it's probably, you know, just what? It's probably metaphor. It didn't really happen. But I don't know. Most Christians I've talked to and the ones I was raised with believe that that literally happened. So, it's an interesting thing to talk about when you're talking about literal interpretation versus not. But anyway, I didn't grow up, I grew up not really reading the Bible at all. I mean, I kind of read, I had a little bit of New Testament taught to me, but I would say in terms of the influences on my hermeneutic, as you might say, there's not much there. My whole goal goal, in reading the Bible, and maybe you'll object to this even just as a goal, but my kind of approach was that I was going to take it as someone who just, I live in the time that I live in.

0:18:08 Thomas: I am a reasonably well-educated person. I'm a reasonably smart person. I'm going to just read the Bible that apparently everyone thinks is the greatest book of all time, and I'm just going to read it. Like, I'm going to see what it says. And I get that there's definitely, I will give that there is room, that there has definitely room for, you know, maybe this translation is bad and you need to know that, or maybe you would need to research to find some different historical context for certain stuff. But for the most part, why can't I trust that God's perfect book would be written at least in a form where I could read it and just accept the message? Like, you might disagree, agree, but I'm not trying to misinterpret anything. I'm just reading the book.

0:18:52 Tyler: So, uh, and I'm, and I think as we go through this, I, I have some, I have some examples, uh, that I'll give I, I think I'm going to throw a, or at least I'm gonna try to throw kind of a big monkey wrench into that. Um, because I think there's a couple of assumptions in there, and, and I, and yeah, I mean, I wasn't targeting it as you, I mean, obviously I wouldn't recommend this podcast if I thought you were, you were a fundamentalist, uh, I've been pretty critical of kind of atheistic fundamentalism, just like, like, and anyone who knows me knows I'm pretty critical of Christian fundamentalism as well.

0:18:57 Thomas: Sure, that'd be great. Yeah. All right.

0:19:23 Tyler: So, and, but I think a of things you said kind of stood out and what I wanted to address is you said, like, you just want to know what it, you know, you're not trying to misrepresent what it means, right? You're just trying to read it and understand what it mean. Well, that's kind of the problem is when we understand what a text means, well, I should I should bracket off and say, for now, in order to kind of charitably follow what I'm trying to say, we have to kind of just assume something like deconstructionalism is false. We,

0:19:23 Thomas: Fair enough.

0:19:56 Tyler: We, yeah, we have to, kind of, assume that there, there is a meaning to a text, that it's not just all reader response, that, that that we can't, We can discover authorial intent, yeah.

0:19:56 Thomas: Can you explain that? I don't know. Oh, sure. Hey, you are in good company here because I think that we, for the most part, can discover author's intent. I do. So I won't, I'm going to try to throw that at you.

0:20:13 Tyler: Yeah, okay. Yeah. I get into some conversations and that comes up and it's just it's

0:20:19 Thomas: I know it's frustrating. I I'm totally with you. I think we very much can. I think what people, sorry, I got to go off on a slight tangent because a long time ago, I did an episode on "The Road Less Traveled," which was a weird thing, but it just was something I learned that the poem is completely different than what people mean or what people think it means. And I had someone send me like this essay from, I don't know, you might even know it. It was apparently, it was like the groundbreaking essay that made people stop looking for the author's intent. And when I read it, what I discovered was they were actually saying you can't judge, like if you're trying to judge a poem or judge a work on like how good it is, they're saying you canít take what the author intended and see like did they meet what they were trying to do because you might not have access to that information.

0:20:21 Tyler: Yeah, right.

0:21:09 Thomas: And that's a very different thing than saying can I, figure out what I think the author intended in the meaning of what they're writing. And I think that actually is a very different thing. And I, I don't, I haven't done much more research into it, but I'd be curious to see if that distinction is accounted for somewhere in the, you know, because I know that's a very popular, that might be the predominant view in, in, you know, literature and liberal studies or something, liberal arts. And it's frustrating. I don't think it's true. I think, I think we can very, I mean, we're all humans.

And we, when you, I I think the thing, and again, sorry to just branch off on this, I think the thing people don't get is when humans write something, it's not just some random, there might be some art form where they just write random words that come to their mind, but it's not. I mean, in order to even write something you have to have an intention and you have a line of thought that you are exploring and maybe it's not 100% clear, but I really think we can we can try to get close, you know, reasonably

0:21:16 Tyler: That's fine. Yeah, Oh,

0:22:07 Thomas: Close. So, but anyway, I'll I'll let you go on.

0:22:10 Tyler: Yeah, so I was gonna say, I mean, I, I think there's a certain point where we have to say, well, you know, uh, what if we just come to, come to a text, especially when we get to ancient texts in different languages, um, and we try to just understand, you know, the clear and plain meaning, there's a certain level where we're going to say, well, there, there is kind of plain and clear meanings that we can understand, but there's going to be a lot of things that we misunderstand. And I'll get into some examples here in a bit. Um, so you see that as you go. So, okay. The, the other thing, um, that I think is, is, um. Kind of broadly, broadly misunderstood is that there's this false dichotomy and you kind of, you, you mentioned it. I don't know if you hold it as such a strong false dichotomy, cause I haven't asked you, but it tends to be a pretty strong view that it's something is either literal, or it's allegory, or, or its metaphor, right, that it's either or one of those things.

0:23:04 Tyler: And I think that that's kind of, that's also really misleading. And that's not the way that language works, especially on an everyday on an everyday way, yeah.

0:23:11 Thomas: Well, what do you, when you say something, I think it really depends on how far you're breaking it down. I mean, are you talking about a given sentence? Are you talking about a given clause? Are you talking about a given work? Because obviously a given, well, I don't know. I mean a given you can going back to being able to evaluate someone's meaning. I mean when when I read and just getting into hypothetical examples when I Read someone someone says, well, I'm not a very, by the way, I am more a math person, so I may have trouble coming up with a good language example. But when I read something that says, I threw that rock like it was an asteroid going into outer space or something.

0:23:17 Tyler: Either any Yes. Yeah, Yeah. Correct.

0:23:52 Thomas: Yeah, I understand that they don't literally mean they threw an asteroid, but they literally meant they threw a rock. There is a literal meaning in it. Like, they're trying to say something. They're using a metaphor or simile. I can never remember the difference. I think simile is as, right?

0:24:05 Tyler: Yeah. Simile has lycra, as metaphor is statement that something is something, yeah.

0:24:11 Thomas: Yeah, okay. Oh, okay, so then it would be a simile, I guess. So, they are using the simile to paint the picture a little bit, and I understand that, but I would say, without a doubt, of course, a given work, a given book, or, you know, you can't say that is literal or is figurative because that's just way too broad. I mean, you could have vast stretches of either. But I do think that when you break it down to the kind of the narrative that you're following, you can say, well, this part is literal and this part is metaphor. And you can do your best. Maybe you'll be wrong some of the time, but I do think you can do your best to determine that.

0:24:17 Tyler: Yeah. Right.

0:24:53 Tyler: Well, I, and I think part of the problem, so I, I gave the example of if I went to a concert and I told you the whole town was there, right, and you, if you're gonna be like, Tyler's a damned liar, like not the whole town wasn't there, I wasn't there and I live in town, right, there's... there's a certain, there's a certain point where we say, well, you know, I'm not, but I'm not giving a metaphor, I'm not trying to teach some moral metaphorical truth, I'm saying as a concert, it's really crowded, yeah.

0:25:13 Thomas: No, you're painting a picture, though. Yeah. You're emphasizing your point by exaggerating.

0:25:17 Tyler: So right. And and so I think a lot of that, a lot of that happens, uh, in in literature, and when, when I talk with a lot of, um, fundamentalists, you know, atheists or Christian, this point is lost on a lot, lot of them. I mean, I went, so I went to Moody Bible, right? Moody, the name you can trust, right? I, uh, went to Moody Bible and Moody Bible. And I was, I'm always the odd kind of duck out because I'm not a fundamentalist. I'm not, uh, you know, uh, Moody is Moody dispensational

0:25:43 Thomas: I've heard the name Moody Bible, Bible, but I don't really know what that means when you say you went there. Is that a school or something?

0:25:50 Tyler: Moody. Bible. Yeah. It's a, it's a Bible Institute in Chicago. Um, it.

0:25:53 Thomas: Oh, okay. Is it typically fundamentalist or not? All

0:25:57 Tyler: Um it's, it, it pretty, pretty it's it's pretty conservative, uh, verges on the fundamentalist, you're gonna have some, some people there that are fundamentalists than there are, um, it's very dispensational. I'm very reformed, if you know the difference between those two things. I was the odd man out on campus on a lot of things yeah, anyone listening, uh, they'll know that that that I was that odd duck out, um, and for I'm

0:26:02 Thomas: Right. Okay. I don t. Feel free to explain. I d n t know that anyone will know that. Why don't you go ahead and explain the difference between dispensational and reformation?

0:26:26 Tyler: Not sure we have the time. It's

0:26:27 Thomas: Okay. You can't give a brief...

0:26:28 Tyler: Um, Reformed theology tends to be Calvinistic, tends to View the covenants as one unified thing throughout the Bible. Dispensationalism is, think of Left Behind, and that's dispensationalist.

0:26:33 Thomas: You, yeah, okay.

0:26:43 Thomas: Okay.

0:26:43 Tyler: It's reading prophecy a lot of times as exclusively about end times, things that you're reading in a newspaper, the locusts or helicopters, literal hermeneutic, right, when you're readin' those types of things. I'm not that at all. And so I had a lot of these conversations at Moody at Well as well. And so there's, you know, comes up a lot when you're talking about the differences between young Earth creationism and old Earth creationism. So how do you read Genesis 1?

0:26:56 Thomas: Well,

0:27:14 Tyler: You know, and I think a lot times it's cast as, well, it's either literal history, and by that they mean young Earth Creationism, or it's, you know allegory, it symbolism, all this kind of stuff. And I, and I think that there's lots of, lots of positions in between where you don't have this really hard dichotomy between the two.

0:27:34 Thomas: Okay, we talked a lot about intention. I would just like to ask you, because I've gone back and forth on this, um, i- it may surprise you to hear i've- I've had times where I've thought, well, the people who are writing this must have believed it was real, I mean, in in their intention, and then other times I thought, I don't know, I mean, I've seen quotes about a certain early church, uh, I wouldn't be able to name them because it's- I'm not very good at that, but certain early church writers, early church leaders who wrote, like, "well, it's obviously a metaphor," very early on. So, I don't know.

0:27:35 Tyler: Yeah, yeah.

0:28:05 Tyler: Augustine, Augustine is one of the most common examples given, uh, that he, he read it as, as entirely metaphorical.

0:28:09 Thomas: Yeah. So I go back and I really could be persuaded either way, but I want to ask you, in your opinion, let's take the example of Genesis 1, and by that, are we confining it to the first version of the story? Does it matter? There's, like, two different versions in there for some reason.

0:28:26 Tyler: Yeah, I would disagree that it's two versions. But yeah, I mean, so

0:28:28 Thomas: Oh, okay. Well, Why are there differences and and how they describe it? I mean, like contradictions, as it were.

0:28:33 Tyler: This actually is a hermeneutical issue. So when you're reading through Hebrew literature from the time, Hebrew literature was very stylized in some ways and very not stylized and other ways. And one of the things that it did is it worked under couplets. So, you know, when you read Proverbs and it says like one thing and then it reiterates the exact same thing in a different way, that's a couplet. It doesn't just do it in these little, these little couplet of verses, it actually, there's narrative couplets where it'll retell the story, uh, from like a different, from a different angle, for a different theme, or for a difference, you know, it, it happens kind of throughout, um, throughout different, throughout different passages. And I think that's kind of what you have going on in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. When I read Genesis one, I'm inclined to agree with, um, scholars like Meredith Klein, who see it as it's a really stylized literary framework. Um, anyone who's ever read Meredith Klein has a

0:28:37 Thomas: Okay. I

0:29:26 Tyler: Book called The Kingdom Prologue, where he develops this out, but you can, you can see kind of the literary framework that happens. So it's not necessarily that the authors are trying to give us, um, they're not trying to answer our modern scientific questions about cosmology. John Walton has a lecture called Reading Genesis Through Ancient Eyes, which I recommend to every single person. If you have an hour, if you're interested at all in these topics, listen through his lecture. He shows that under the ancient worldview, the type of questions we ask would almost be impossible for the ancient world to even even conceptualize. They just didn't have a lot of the same kind of cognitive hooks that we have to hang concepts on. They asked different questions. They thought about ontology different than we think.

0:30:14 Tyler: So when we think of ontology, if I talk about, for example, the formation of the solar system, right? If you and I were talking about, yeah, you and you and I are going to think about how it actually comes into existence physically, right, they're going to thing about about everything functionally, so whether it existed before or not is irrelevant to them, it comes into being when it has a function for humanity, so that, that's just that, that their worldview, that's how they thought about things

0:30:23 Thomas: I know this example already, yeah, well, not only that back in the day, people used to say they, they wouldn't, they didn't have the equipment to question like why or how, they would just question like, well, why are there nine planets? Whose idea was that, and what were they thinking, you know, like they're they thought there was some explanation for it, like if you, if you, you know, put a bunch of shapes into one another in a certain way, then you'd understand why there were nine planets. And I do grant that definitely they thought of things a lot differently. So go on, sorry to interrupt.

0:30:42 Tyler: Right, yeah, and and, and so I think, I think that when you're, when you're reading through these passages, you know, reading and understanding the literature of it, now this is where it gets tricky, are they accurate descriptions of history, right, this is, this is where it gets tricky, so, uh, in in well, it kind of is, so because in the ancient world you could tell things in a different way for theological, theological reasons, so you could, you could change the order of events, you could changed who was speaking in events, and it was all, the problem is, is that we're trying to understand it from a modern historiographical perspective because

0:31:22 Thomas: It's pretty not tricky. It's just not accurate.

0:31:43 Thomas: Well, that's convenient that they're able to do that. I wonder why do they get to get away with that?

0:31:48 Tyler: They were pre-Enlightenment, I mean, they just, they didn't have the benefit of living post-Enlightenment where we start talking about objectivity and we start making sure that things are chronological.

0:31:59 Thomas: At what point, if you're giving them all these licenses, at what point will it become indecipherable? I mean, I don't know. I mean if If you're going to say at a certain point they could have meant anything, anyone could have said this, anyone could have done that, it doesn't mean necessarily. At a certain point it will lose all meaning, despite what you were saying before.

0:32:17 Tyler: It's not that there's no form. Remember, Hebrew literature is very stylized. It's not that there is no form, it's not that there are no structures, it is not that there has no meaning. It's just that they didn't have ours. I'm not actually giving them leeway or license. Since it's just historically, that's how they did it. So, uh, I, you know, I'm not looking back and saying, oh, you Know, it's okay because you know that I'll just, I'll allow it. It's just, we just understand how they, did how they do history back then, how they literature back then. I mean that, so you asked me about Genesis one, so that's, that, you a really broad, pretty unsatisfactory answer, I am sure, but, but there's some resources you can look into.

0:32:49 Thomas: Well, let me ask you more. No, I got to ask you some more detail. So we've been talking about the fact that we think we can gather an author's intention. You've said that you think a work or even a sentence in some cases can be both, or meaning can be be both literal and figurative. So, let's talk about Genesis 1. I could be persuaded that it's figurative language, but I want to know what you think the author thought. First off, was the author talking to God? Did God tell them to write this? Secondly, what did the author have in mind? What was their intention?

I mean, because I can, I think if you wanted to say that it is literal, it's very easy I think you can very easily say well their intention was they believed for whatever reason that this was the history of the world they've maybe through their culture through I don't who knows how many generations somehow this story evolved and that's what they believe that's not unheard of, I mean there's lots of stories for how the earth came to be, so for me that was always my approach, it's always uh, this is pretty easy, these people thought this, they wrote it down, and uh, conveniently enough for an atheist that makes it very easy to say well they were wrong, so therefore they weren't talking to God and the Bible is not biblically inspired.

And I think that maybe Augustine or other early church leaders, their reaction of this is not literal could have less to do with what the actual authors of Genesis intended and more to do with being able to maintain the authenticity of the Bible.

0:32:52 Tyler: To Yeah. Um, Probably not, because remember, um, just historically, uh, Augustine wasn't trying to handle objections based on evolution, right? I mean, it just, that That would be entirely anachronistic, so he's not, he's trying to reconcile it to, to kind of a scientific view of, of the world. No,

0:34:36 Thomas: Well, that's a good point. That's, do you not think that he could have, so you don't think he was at all, yeah, that's a good point. So you don't think he was all, at all worried that that account was false, but then, so then why did he, uh, all

0:34:53 Tyler: I, no, I think when he read through it, he read it as a piece of Hebrew literature and he understood that it was literature. And it was kind of, remember, Augustine is also pre-Enlightenment. So he had no problem reading it and seeing, well, you know, they might not have meant this in an entirely material way.

0:34:57 Thomas: Right, what was the author's intention and what in the world are we to get out of this, this, sure, all

0:35:13 Tyler: Yeah. So let me back up. So I'm going to answer your question, but it's going to be kind of a long way to get there. Okay. So, so let's imagine that we, that we found found a piece of World War I literature, do you think that the first important thing we can find out is what type of literature is it? Like, what genre is it that we're talking about? Is it, you know, is it a letter? Is it a poem? Is a reporter writing down the historic, like, the order of events, right, Right. So. So, yeah.

0:35:19 Thomas: Right, that'S fair, I'M with you, that sounds very important, yeah.

0:35:45 Tyler: So genre is is one of the first things we do. So if you if you picked up a piece of paper and it said, you know, dear Thomas, what are you reading?

0:35:54 Thomas: Well, I don't know, I mean, you could, you'd need more than that, but I could assume you're reading a letter. I don't know. Is that the point of this quiz?

0:35:58 Tyler: A letter. Right. So if if you pick it up and it says once upon a time, what do you probably reading?

0:36:04 Thomas: The dictionary? No. Uh, yeah, I don't know. A story, whatever.

0:36:07 Tyler: Some some type of fairy tale. Right? Once upon a Time. Right, we have we have these structures in place that we instantly pick up as different types of genres. Ancient literature had the same thing. So you have similar structures where a certain genre has certain characteristics. And the type of genre that an author chooses to use is going to be telling of what their intent is. So when Paul writes his, Paul wasn't writing a gospel, he was writing epistles, right? Because he had different intentions than if he was trying to write a gospel. Reading through a poem, as opposed to a narrative, you're going going to use different idioms, right?

Poems are, tend to be more, uh, have much more illustrations, much more imagery, right. Uh, they tend to, um, they intend to say something that could be said very briefly in prose. They say it very, in very long ways. Um, so the genre is going to determine how you tell something too. And then who's writing it.

So if you have, you know, in this, in this World War I literature, it's going to make a difference if it's, say, a soldier who's riding in a trench during the height of trench warfare during World War I, as opposed to, say, a general who's four miles back,

0:36:09 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Understood. I

0:37:16 Tyler: Right, who has a more 360 view, who's trying to still do some of the politics of the time, it's also going to be very different if it's going to be, maybe not even a general, maybe it's the supply lines, right? So you have a supply clerk, and we're reading through his records of what shipments were going where, and that can kind of tell us how the war was going on different fronts. So not only the genre of the types of literature that we're reading, but who's writing it, at what point in the war. So it's going to be important to know, you know, is this trench warfare, you know, in 1910, or is this French warfare in 1915, right? Those are going to be major differences for us. So understanding a lot of that literary and historical context is is going to be important. But then also understanding, well, it's probably, let's say this wasn't an American soldier.

0:38:05 Tyler: This is a German soldier. So we have the other problem of now we're dealing with the text that's in German, right? And all the trappings of that, right.

0:38:11 Thomas: Think we can, I think we can say your point is made. I understand all this for the sake of time.

0:38:16 Tyler: So, well I'm laying on thick for kind of a reason. I mean, there's, I am, I'm writing a poem. I'm laying it out.

0:38:20 Thomas: Because you're writing a poem, so you're taking forever to, you're taken forever to say something that you could have said in prose. No, go ahead. Uh,

0:38:29 Tyler: So a lot of times, so just saying, I can't just pick up this piece of literature, or maybe an anthology, maybe it's a collection of all of these, and say, well, I'm just going to read it just to get the meaning, right? I mean, even if I'm fluent in German, I, I can't say, Well, I've just going to ignore the history. I'm, I just going to pick it up and read it. Right? Do you kind of see how that would that would become problematic? We'll

0:38:51 Thomas: Sure. Now, I'm really curious. So, what do I do with Genesis? What is the point of it?

0:38:58 Tyler: Get there. We'll get there. So, so when, so, when we're, when we're reading a text, we have to understand all these background points, right? And then we also would want to understand, sure, yeah,

0:38:59 Thomas: Okay.

0:39:08 Thomas: Hold on. I want to throw one slight caveat that when we're reading something that's supposedly the inspired word of God that should direct us and should tell us what to do, I would assume that God would have made it a little easier for us. That would be one assumption I would make. We're not picking up, yeah, it is. It's an assumption that I would make under the bigger assumption that God is real and this is his book. Of course, If he's not real and it's not his book, I 100% agree with you. If it's just humans writing crap, then sure. But I think that might be part of it that I'm putting into it that maybe I didn't say before. I'm assuming, I think I said it, I mean, I'm assuming this was written by the smartest artist being in the world with the intent that I'm going to be able to read it and receive his message.

0:39:22 Tyler: So that's an, that's assumption, you said it right, you said it, right, it's an assumption, yeah. And it's not, it, yeah right.

0:39:58 Tyler: So that's an assumption you and I wouldn't share. That's an assumption that actually the the modern church wouldn't share with most of the historical church, um, when we're talking about inspiration, inspiration has never been viewed as God just dictating scripture, um, it's never been, you know, while we talk about God's word, it's always been through human authors for for for purposes, and and while the church has always affirmed what's called the perspicuity or the clarity of scripture, uh, the the clarity of scripture is the over, so when you're reading through the Bible, right? Even, even in yours, I mean, do you, do you have a hard time picking out, um, say what, what the, uh, what the historical trajectory of the narrative is, right? Do you, I mean, do you have hard time telling what the story, what the, what, the, the flow, the plot of the narrative is?

0:40:42 Thomas: Sometimes, I don't know, it's pretty... sometimes it's clear, sometimes it would not

0:40:43 Tyler: Well, sometimes if you don't know the history, Maybe, but, but overall the, the story itself of the Bible is not that hard to figure out, right? Uh, God, God is creator. Uh, humanity is in covenant it with God, we fell, we sinned, God, uh, is now in the process of redeeming us, uh, and and in the end it'll all work out right. I mean, I mean that's very broad brushes, but the the story itself, the narrative itself is not hard to to understand well

0:41:11 Thomas: Become clear until about 77% through reading it, by the way, though. None of that is clear in the Old Testament, which is most of the Bible. So, it is a little weird that you have to read all this this stuff that has seemingly not really much purpose, and then all of a sudden in the New Testament, someone's telling you that he's, you know, the storyline you just mentioned. So, that part's a little weird, but I guess, I

0:41:17 Tyler: Uh, Well, That well, that would be like saying that that, uh, it's a problem for a novel because you don't know how it's going to end until you get to the end.

0:41:41 Thomas: Don't think so, because the Old Testament has a lot of teaching and stuff that you should be following, like, and the New, I mean, Jews just follow the Old Testament. As far as they're concerned, that's the storyline. So it's a Little Weird, I I mean, I guess I would just have to assume that Christianity is true in order to say, yes, you need to read the whole thing and that it has to be consistent through the whole thing. But I guess that's an assumption you can make if you're assuming that Jesus is real and that's, you know, part of it. But I don't know that that's necessarily an assumption we would share.

0:41:57 Tyler: Right. I think we would if I pushed you a little bit further.

0:42:21 Thomas: I would assume that Christianity is real. I don't, that'll never happen.

0:42:23 Tyler: No, and I don't think that I'm actually assuming that Christianity is true to know the basic plot line.

0:42:28 Thomas: Well, but it would change. I mean, if you if you're saying the basic plot line under Judaism, it's totally different, despite the fact that most of the book is the Old Testament.

0:42:38 Tyler: I actually don't Think it is. So, I mean, right now I'm in the process of teaching through the Old Testament to my adult Sunday school class. So I'm teaching through the entire Old Testament. You could come come to the class if you want to.

0:42:40 Thomas: OK, I don't want to ever read it. The Old Testament is the worst thing I've ever read in my life, so I would rather not have to read it again. Granted, I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey or the vampire books that everyone's read. So it could be, you know, is

0:42:52 Tyler: Yeah. Well. Yeah. And and that, see, that to me is kind of indicative. So if if you if you've read something that, uh, you know, atheists and Christians alike have considered one of the the best masterpieces of literature, if you read it and you say that's the worst thing you know something, yeah, 50 Shades of Grey, uh, something, somewhere, somewhere the track is probably derailed.

0:43:15 Thomas: This FiftyShadesOfGrey we're talking about? Matters. I don't think that, I think that that's a meme that atheists, some atheists have attached onto because they haven't actually read the Bible and they like to give that as kind of an olive branch to Christians sometimes. They like to say, well, look, we can all acknowledge it's a great piece of art and all that. And it really just isn't. I mean, it's my opinion, of course, but I read through the whole thing. I'm not, even if I thought it was true, like even if it was a a Christian, it's horribly written. It's just awful. I could say the Pentateuch, maybe. No, not even that. Genesis, some of Genesis is okay. The part where I'm reading instructions on how to build an ark for hours of my life. It is meaningless.

0:43:22 Tyler: Right?

0:44:09 Thomas: I am reading the most repetitive thing. It repeats the same stupid messages over and over. The entire Old Testament is, Jews don't do this, oh, we did that, I'm punishing you, never do it again, over and over and over, and it's not even done interestingly. Yeah.

0:44:25 Tyler: Yeah, and see, this is why my criticism of your show is here. Because I think everything you just said is due to a lack of good hermeneutics.

0:44:47 Thomas: Alright, well, you're going to have to tune in Thursday to find out whether or not what Tyler just said is true, and there's lots more to come. So thank you so much for joining me, I want to thank especially patrons for sticking with it through that horrible ordeal, and I want say I'm looking forward to Thursday for part two with Tyler Vela, so I will see you guys then. 10.