When Peter expressed his dismay when Jesus announced his coming death, Jesus said to him "Get thee behind me, Satan" -- a fine way to address his holiness, the first pope dont ya think? Matthew 16:23

Peter was advocating a path that did not include the cross. (The original story is in Mark, the first gospel to be written. Matthew follows Mark.) Peter has a vision of "messiahship" that does not include suffering, but only victory. That's why he gets called "Satan." (Incidentally, the portrait of Peter that emerges out of Mark and John is not flattering at all. Matthew and Luke are kinder.)

Jesus said: "In those days ... the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall." Of course this is nonsense. The billions of stars will never fall to earth and the moon does not produce its own light. Mark 13:24-25

This is fairly standard stuff for apocalyptic literature, of which Mark 13 is one example of that genre.

Would it be fair to say that the person who wrote this had a, shall we say... misunderstanding about astronomy?

It would be fair to say that the author didn't care a whit about passing on facts about astronomy. That was not his purpose.

Why do you believe this stuff?

I've been educated.

So which is it? Are the bible's stories just fables not meant to be taken seriously, or are they the word of God?

Nobody seems to know. It's just whatever's convenient for that day's agenda.

For those of us in mainline protestantism--Lutheran, in my case--the Bible is taken seriously, but not literalistically. It was never meant to be taken that way. The scriptures were written "symbolically" and they communicate truth, we believe, but not necessarily fact. (Truth is much bigger than fact.)

We understand that Christ is the Word of God. The Bible is also the Word, but only when it communicates Christ, which is the True Word. Moreover, whenever anything or anyone "communicates Christ" that thing or person is also, in a sense, the Word. When you acted as Christ would to a sister or brother, you were "bringing Christ," even though you may not be a Christian. Way to go! :)

From our perspective--OK, mine--the religious right is the worst thing that ever happened to Christianity in this country. It made it an object of derision. (Satan, on his best day, could never do the damage the religious right has done.

How do you know that? When was that decided? If they are "symbolic", what does that even mean? Maybe heaven is "symbolic" maybe Jesus was a "symbolic" character. Like a mish mash of people and prophets. Maybe god is "symbolic"....at what point does it just become literature, no different than Homer?

It IS literature, and one of the ways to study it is as literature. Real Biblical scholarship--not the ersatz, bogus variety you get from, say, baptists--studies the languages, the sources, the history of interpretation, the context of the times, etc. (Ditchkins apparently has no knowledge of this ongoing endeavor.)

One brief example: In John's gospel, chapter 20 says that "Jesus breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" The word for "breathed," in Greek, is emphusao--we get our word "emphysema" from it. This is its only use in John's gospel.

Now, consider that in Genesis 2:7 it says that God "breathed" into Adam the life-giving breath. That same "breathed" is emphusao in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint). John purposely used that same word. (John's gospel has many such connections with the book of Genesis. Heavens, they even start out the same way: "In the beginning...")

John's gospel is saying, therefore, that just as God breathed into Adam the life-giving breath, so Jesus breathes into the church the life-giving breath. That was John's point of view. He's teaching theology, not recounting a literal episode.

Thanks for asking. I kind of got wound up there.

First the easy one: We study Greek, tobbar, because that is the language in which the NT was originally written--same with Hebrew for the OT.

Second, somerandomguy wrote: To be frank I find it baffling that anyone who's studied the Bible enough to understand nuance of the Greek translations could fail to see it's an opportunistic magpie document plagiarizing from local believes and edited to suit the prevailing dogma of the day, but I suppose that childhood root makes it easier to post-rationalize than accept it's all nonsense.

I'd phrase this some differently, but yeah, you take all that into account. When you look closely, you can see most of those arguments right in the texts themselves.

I don't want to comment about the texts because that would be a long and complicated discussion. You are quite right, though, that you would want to study the beliefs and context of the times.

For example, I would consider that 2 Peter is written later, around AD 90 or so, and is to be understood in the context of that period. 1 Corinthians was written much earlier, around AD 50. Moreover, 1 Corinthians was genuinely written by Paul. We don't really know who wrote 2 Peter.

There are many, many interpretations about every passage and every issue. These things are widely debated, al beit among a relatively small group, generally graduates of mainline protestant and Roman Catholic seminaries. We know all the stuff you're saying, and we take it seriously.