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I remember going to a talk once by the Bishop of Columbus about the Gospels. Someone asked him what he thought the hardest passage of the Bible to interpret wa

I remember going to a talk once by the Bishop of Columbus about the Gospels. Someone asked him what he thought the hardest passage of the Bible to interpret was and he responded with this one.

spoonjim 5y ago
No surprise... I can’t think of a more profoundly un-chill reaction to a fig tree not being in season. Wonder why anyone trying to make Jesus look good would even write it down.
- antognini 5y ago
  This is related to the "Principle of Embarrassment" in hermeneutics. The idea is that "embarrassing" or inconvenient stories are more likely to have been true because there is no reason for someone to have made them up since they seem to conflict with the broader narrative, or at least complicate it. Another example is the discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene and possibly some other women. At the time women were considered to be more untrustworthy, so the argument was that if the story was fabricated, surely the author would have decided to make the empty tomb discovered by a group of men since it would have been viewed by contemporary readers that this (already implausible) story was coming from a more trustworthy source. Of course, the most prominent example is the crucifixion itself, since crucifixion was reserved for traitors and the lowest criminals. If you're trying to argue that this man was the Son of God, why write a story in which at the climax he is executed as a despised criminal? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    So Jesus fucking over a fig tree is more likely to be true than positive things like turning water into wine?
- j-a-m-gandhi 5y ago
  Two things: (1) Fig trees bear a type of pre-fruit. If that pre-fruit isn't there in the earlier season, then you know it won't bear any fruit in the final season. (2) It's super obvious from the context that the fig is a metaphor for Israel. The temple system hasn't been bearing fruit because the Pharisees/scribes running it have so misinterpreted God that they will end up killing his Son. This is a foreshadowing of the destruction of the temple sacrificial system (begun in ~32 AD when Jesus died, finalized with the temple's destruction around 70 AD, never to be rebuilt again because the Muslims have built dome of the rock there now).

I remember going to a talk once by the Bishop of Columbus about the Gospels. Someone asked him what he thought the hardest passage of the Bible to interpret was and he responded with this one.

spoonjim 5y ago

No surprise... I can’t think of a more profoundly un-chill reaction to a fig tree not being in season. Wonder why anyone trying to make Jesus look good would even write it down.

antognini 5y ago
This is related to the "Principle of Embarrassment" in hermeneutics. The idea is that "embarrassing" or inconvenient stories are more likely to have been true because there is no reason for someone to have made them up since they seem to conflict with the broader narrative, or at least complicate it. Another example is the discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene and possibly some other women. At the time women were considered to be more untrustworthy, so the argument was that if the story was fabricated, surely the author would have decided to make the empty tomb discovered by a group of men since it would have been viewed by contemporary readers that this (already implausible) story was coming from a more trustworthy source. Of course, the most prominent example is the crucifixion itself, since crucifixion was reserved for traitors and the lowest criminals. If you're trying to argue that this man was the Son of God, why write a story in which at the climax he is executed as a despised criminal? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment
- spoonjim 5y ago
  So Jesus fucking over a fig tree is more likely to be true than positive things like turning water into wine?
j-a-m-gandhi 5y ago
Two things: (1) Fig trees bear a type of pre-fruit. If that pre-fruit isn't there in the earlier season, then you know it won't bear any fruit in the final season. (2) It's super obvious from the context that the fig is a metaphor for Israel. The temple system hasn't been bearing fruit because the Pharisees/scribes running it have so misinterpreted God that they will end up killing his Son. This is a foreshadowing of the destruction of the temple sacrificial system (begun in ~32 AD when Jesus died, finalized with the temple's destruction around 70 AD, never to be rebuilt again because the Muslims have built dome of the rock there now).