King David–a literary fiction?
If I had to single out one thing that has done more harm to our civilization than any other, that thing would be postmodernism–the addled doctrine that there are no facts, there is no truth, there are only “constructs.” And whoever can make his construct stick, by any means, gets to define reality.
Hatched in our colleges and looniversities, this has been turned loose on our politics and, worse, our entire culture. It’s the fountainhead of all this “we are whatever we say we are” business.
An outstanding example of this is the movement called “Biblical minimalism,” which claims that there never was a Kingdom of Israel, the writers of the Bible just made it up. The titles of the books, by academic nincompoops, tell you what you need to know. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History by Keith Whitelam (1996), who alleges that the ancient kingdom of Israel was “invented by scholars.” The Mythic Past: Biblical Archeology and the Myth of Israel by Thomas Thompson (1999), who declares that “The entire notion of ‘Israel’ and its history is a literary fiction.”
What bunk. Were Sargon II and Sennacherib, kings of Assyria, aiding and abetting a modern anti-Palestinian conspiracy when they recorded their treaties and wars with Israel and Judah? How did they get roped in?
Postmodernists say we can never truly “know” anything, we only have whatever we can make up. It’s amazing that they get away with this. If nobody knows anything, then why should we listen to you–when you don’t know, either? As the toddler in a famous youtube video says, “It’s poop!”
So now your “gender” is whatever you say it is, on any given day, there is no objective right or wrong, there surely is no God, and blah-blah-blah. It’s poop.
We are Christians, some of us are Jews, and our God is not a man, that He should lie. We believe that there are not only material facts, but moral facts. We believe in truth, and much of what we know as truth, we know from the Bible, God’s Word.
In this we must persevere with all the strength that God can give us.
We don’t want to be found doing otherwise when Christ returns.
We need the full armor of God – especially in the deceptive times in which we find ourselves. There’s a terrifying place in the futures of some, and I’m not referring to Hell, although that thought is certainly terrifying. I’m referring to The Throne of The Most High God. He will have somewhat to say about this whole mess.
The denial of Jewish history is part old-fashioned anti-Semitism, and part the PLO invention of “Palestinian” history to justify their destruction of the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. “Palestine” itself never existed as an entity until the Romans gave the area that name to humiliate the conquered Jewish nation by calling their land by the name of the Israelites’ ancient enemy, the Philistines. The Muslim “caretakers” of the Temple Mount are doing the same thing physically by destroying all the physical evidence of the Temple and then claiming there never was a Temple there.
I still don’t see how they get around the Assyrian and Babylonian documents that deal with Israel, naming several kings of Israel and Judah by name.
They don’t have to get around it. For them, “truth” is, as you say, a “construct,” or a “narrative.” People who can look at parts of a Temple and actually make themselves believe the “narrative” they’re writing about there being no Temple have a whole different approach to reality than we inheritors of Athens and Jerusalem do. Postmodernists are just reviving a form of paganism that somehow the Greco-Roman pagans seem to have escaped. When the Romans lied, they knew they were lying. They could make the distinction between fact and fiction. Other cultures — including the postmodern culture, the culture of death — don’t recognize the distinction. Think of the abortionists and pro-aborts who look straight at a fully formed aborted baby and say it isn’t a baby.
Mark Steyn has commented on all the Muslims he’s met who simultaneously believe that (a) the Jews and/or Americans were responsible for 9/11, and (b) 9/11 was a great and victorious Muslim feat.
There is great evil and very much madness afoot in this age: delusion keeps running up the score. Greeks and Romans were pagans, but at least they were rational. You could have a coherent conversation with Plutarch or Tacitus. They might disagree with you, strongly, on this or that: but at least they weren’t flaming crazy.
Postmodernism is a good recipe for insanity or schizophrenia.
It’s also a ticket to a nifty pension.
In my collige Hebrew Bible class we were taught there is no archaeological evidence that King David ever existed, and only some sentence on a wall refers to a Solomon. What a crock. The Christian kids in the class started bringing their Bibles to class and refused to participate in the blasphemy. Oh yeah, the woman PhD professor was also a pastor.
There’s the Tel Dan Inscription, which mentions the “House of David” as ruling Judah. You’d think that would count.
Try getting a job as a college professor of any subject whilst being open about your social conservative beliefs and you will see why all these people are the same sort of atheist-agnostic social liberals.
What a shameful position for a “Christian” pastor. PhD– fooey!
Christian on the outside, something else on the inside. It is very common now.