Jonathan wrote: >A. Jesus knew it wasn't a geographical place but also knew his listeners did >not have the science to understand that, so looked up for their benefit and the >writer noted this.
The view expressed in A above has a long history and was widespread in the 17th century. Once the treatment of Old Testament writings as allegories fell into disrepute and the historical origins of the writings were emphasised, readers were faced with the apparent discrepancy between what the ancients wrote and what the new science (of the 17th century) was revealing. Augustine had declared that all scripture was to do with faith and morals, and that which had to do with neither should be taken figuratively. However, this was no longer acceptable by the 17th century. The Scriptures were no longer seen as timeless foundations for ever new allegories, but works which had their origins at the hands of particular people within history. Nevertheless, Augustine had maintained that the creation narratives were "adapted to the sense of the unlearned". Calvin took up this notion of adaptation in explaining the Biblical account of the two great lights - the Sun and the Moon. Calvin suggested that Moses "adapts his discourse to the unlearned". This principle was known as that of "accommodation" and surprise, surprise, the most ardent defender of it was none other than Galileo Galilei in his "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina concerning the Use of Biblical Quotations in Matters of Science." While Galileo's statement that, "The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes"1, is frequently quoted, he would nevertheless maintain that the propositions in the Bible contrary to the new science "were set down by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned."2 The principle of accommodation was allied with the belief that the perfect knowledge of Adam in the Garden of Eden had been mainly lost in the Fall, but that certain amounts of such knowledge had been passed down through the ages to Moses and a number of the Greek philosophers. For this reason, empirical theory in the 17th century did not turn so much to experiment as to the ancient books so that they might recover the lost learning of the ancients. The above principle led to Galileo's downfall. For when it came to a cosmology of the Solar System, Galileo found himself promoting the mysticism of Pythagoras for whom the fire of the Sun must naturally take its rightful place in the centre of the heavenly perfection of the circle. This Pythagorean "harmony of the spheres" just did not tally with the empirical science of Kepler, who had shown that the Solar System was barycentric, not heliocentric, and that the planets orbit in ellipses. Galileo could not prove Copernicus' heliocentric theory and he rejected Kepler's barycentric one, mainly because of his belief that the ancients really were acquainted with scientific truth, but had accommodated it to the ignorance of their audience. One would have thought that the idea the ancients were somehow privy to secret scientific truths had died with Galileo. However, the thrust of some arguments on the list might suggest the view that the moral and theological stance of the Biblical authors should also be seen as an aspect of the ignorance of their times. This is certainly a break from Augustine and from most of those who have come before. - Greg 1. Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, in Discoveries and Opinions. P.186 Galileo attributes the remark to Cardinal Baronius 2. Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, in Discoveries ands Opinions p.181 ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
