Misunderstandings

[Gregory Matthews]

The following article by Richard Coffen presents five passages in the Bible that have bee misunderstood.  They are interesting.

https://atoday.org/six-famous-bible-misinterpretations/

 

[Kevin H]

There are many misunderstood verses. There are two approaches to Paul, the so called "Old View" which ends up reading into Paul's words the ideas that come from places over church history, especially the church-synagogue split of 135 AD, the ideas of Augustine and the reformers, especially Luther. Now, there is a "New" view of Paul who try to read his words into what we understand of his culture and point in history. 

Genesis 3:16, the "He" is often understood as "he the husband." Dr. Doukhan points out that according to Hebrew poetry, the "HE" of Genesis 3:16 is the exact same "HE" of Genesis 3:15, the promised seed. The pain in child birth we tend to limit to the physical birth pains. What is implied is that after carrying the baby for about 9 months, the woman tends to have a special connection that few if anyone else can have. She will feel the child's joys and pains deeper than others. And living in a sinful world the pain will be more than the joys. Well, she can avoid the pain by not getting into a family. But despite the pain, her desire will be for her husband, she would have a tendency to want this family connection despite it's faults and pain and shortcomings. The only hope for this dysfunctional family was to turn to the promised seed and have "HE" rule over the children, woman and her husband. -- It also tells us that the promised seed is not some day far in the future... hopefully...But right there as Adam and Eve were facing God for their sin, HE IS already there!!!

[JoeErwin]

These examples seem to me to highlight how easily humans can be misled. Further, it seems to me that "understanding" is overrated with regard to "salvation." It seems obvious to me that for the story of salvation to make sense, that is, to have internal validity, the message must be so basic that it can be grasped by any human. How smart or wise or well-informed one is must not matter. Salvation must be accessible to all. The closest I have been able to come to rationalizing all this is that the fundamental message of Jesus was to cast doubt on religious tradition--to say that "what you have been taught is not actually true." In fact, wasn't his message that we are all the progeny of an all-powerful and benevolent creator who loves us. You were not created as something bad. You are not inherently evil. You are not lost, and you never were. Now that is good news worth spreading around.

[Joe Knapp]

On 8/5/2025 at 12:02 PM, Kevin H said:

What is implied is that after carrying the baby for about 9 months, the woman tends to have a special connection that few if anyone else can have.

Just for reference, the woman carries the baby 10 months. They count 9 months from the first missed period.