DOU has smarts and faith. I'm not talking just about Jesus but a large collection of many different genre of ancient literature. Proverbs goes back to ancient Egyptian inscriptions. Esther is a fairy tale told to Jewish youth in exile. Many biblical books have multiple authors spanning centuries, or are redactions of generations of verbal history.noddy wrote:take facts away from the story and you are left with therapeutics ?
i remember DOU arguing such a few years back, that if you turn the story into moral fables and metaphors then the jesus sacrifice is meaningless.
Sometimes the Bible is so factual it is scary. Goliath was thought to be a legend until it was found the biblical description perfectly matched with the Phoenician charioteer in recently discovered manuscripts.
The simple fact is fewer people respect scripture today because they think it is just an old book when it is an anthology of ancient books with centuries of different interpretations that has defined righteousness for millinea. The study in question used the term Scripture, and in NT theology that means OT as the NT didn't gain that panache until well after the authors were martyred. When a NT author wrote "Scripture" it meant the Septuagent.
To quote Billing's hymn "Creation":
When I with pleasing wonder stand
And all my frame survey
Lord, 'tis thy work, I own thy hand
Thus built my humble clay
Our life contains a thousand springs,
And dies if one be gone.
Strange that a harp of thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long.
The Sacred Harp has guided civilization for a long time. Some generations played well; others poorly or not at all but it is still in tune for those willing to put in the practice time.