Wise words in the Bible

[Zzyzx]

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It is not uncommon to hear that the Bible contains ‘universal and timeless wisdom’ or words to that effect.

My response:

The Bible is said to contain almost a million words -- perhaps 850,000(?). How many of them constitute 'universal and timeless wisdom'? What percentage? One percent would be 8,500. Are there that many?

A tenth of one percent would be 850 . . . (which I would not contest)

What are examples of biblical wisdom – quoting verbatim without padding or fluff.

Can we list one hundred?

Here's a start -- three words: "Love one another" (said in various forms, here without padding)

Another eleven words: "Do not take revenge on others or continue to hate them" (truncated to eliminate unnecessary verbiage)

Another eleven: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Ethic of Reciprocity; common in many ideologies). Needs revision to be universal.

[SallyF]

[Replying to post 20 by Mithrae]

you would be making a circular argument that Christians ought to accept some dogma about the bible, because the bible says so.

Certainly not an argument I have presented.


My main point here is that Fundamentalists can be seen as fundamentally honest about their beliefs.


And Progressive/Liberal/Whatever Christians can be seen as quasi-atheists and fundamentally dishonest.

What makes the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and the message of AiG so powerful? And why are these two outreaches so inspiring to Christians and infuriating to atheists? Two words: biblical authority.

THE CORE MESSAGE OF AIG IS THAT ALL OF GOD’S WORD IS TRUE, FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION!
https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-o ... nfuriates/

It's the "Word of the capital G for God" …

And it's ALL true.

Unless there is stuff you don't like.

[kcplusdc@yahoo.com]

Proverbs has some wise stuff in there. Do we need to cut and paste it so yall can disect every verse, or can we agree on a number?

[Zzyzx]

.

Proverbs has some wise stuff in there. Do we need to cut and paste it so yall can disect every verse, or can we agree on a number?

The OP asks "What are examples of biblical wisdom – quoting verbatim without padding or fluff"

It presents 25 wise words. Can Apologists / Theists add more?

Kindly post EXAMPLES not excuses.

[1213]

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What do you think about this:

….the truth will make you free.
John 8:31-32

Free from WHAT?

For example, if I would admit that I don’t know something, I am free from making up explanations.

[bjs]

• I am the Lord. You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your animals breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials. ~ Leviticus 19:14-19

Is that a passage of clear and universal wisdom? For starters it's highly authoritarian; no appeals to empathy or enlightened self-interest, only 'do this because I am your deity.'

If there is a God, I am okay with His commands being highly authoritarian. An artist paints the pictures she wishes to paint, and we don’t complain she has been too authoritarian in what that picture looks like. Similarly, a God who has created all that is would rightly have the authority to express commands for right living.

The word empathy, a term which was created in the 1960’s, is not used in the passage. However, to “love your neighbor as yourself� seems to encapsulate the concept empathy even without using the word.

I do not think that enlightened self-interest is wise. I suppose that this depends on your philosophy of ethics, but I (taking a Christian standpoint) see problems with an ethical standard built on selfishness.

More importantly it's explicitly tribalist, referring only to how the listeners should treat their own kin, their own people, their own neighbours: The obscure rules about seeding, husbandry and garments perhaps intended (the best explanation I've ever heard/guessed at least) to symbolically emphasize even in their daily life the Israelites' separateness, the non-intermingling between them and other groups. Maybe that was important for them to preserve their own unique culture, both their separateness from out-groups and the intended intense cohesion within their group, but three thousand years later it obviously seems quite parochial.


Extracting half a line from the passage and contradicting its authors' intentions, Jesus (following others such as Hillel the Elder) used his story of the good Samaritan to promote the idea of universal love for our 'neighbours'. Besides the fact that he put 'love' for an invisible deity ahead of love for our fellow man - leaving room for rationalizing any number of atrocities against men in the name of God - I don't see any obvious problem with Jesus' reappropriation of a phrase from an ancient tribal instruction manual, but that can't really be credited as wisdom of the Tanakh itself.

Setting aside any debate about that author’s intentions, do wise words have to encompass all wisdom? Let us assume that the author of Leviticus had only the Israelites in mind. Does that make his advice unwise? Even if we say that there is more wisdom than just what is mentioned here, verses 14-18 still seem like they are close to being universally wise words.

It may be that some among the ancient Hebrews - like some among the ancient Greeks or Indians or probably every other civilization - left a shaky but serviceable foundation, a necessary start for later generations to build on. But the very fact that later generations of Jews, Hindus and so on have written and said better and wiser things than anything in their earlier texts clearly shows that the earlier stuff is not really timeless, any more than it is universal. I'm certainly an advocate of respecting whatever earlier generations accomplished with the resources at their disposal, and learning a few things both about them and perhaps therefore about ourselves if we'd been born in a different era or ever find ourselves deprived of our sophisticated societies and technology: So yes, there's certainly some good stuff in the New Testament and even in the Tanakh; I'm just not sure there's anything which hasn't been significantly improved on in the millennia since or, particularly from the Tanakh, any passages which aren't clearly marked by the authors' circumstances and shortcomings even when their basic intention was promising.

This gets back to what I am more interested in. With all our advancements and sophistication and generations of learning to build on, have we made any significant improvements in the past few millennia? Are there any words which are genuinely universal and wise? Or, if we apply the same stringent criteria that this thread applies to the Bible, should say that no words (save the occasional tautology) can ever be truly universal and wise?

[Mithrae]

• I am the Lord. You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your animals breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials. ~ Leviticus 19:14-19

Is that a passage of clear and universal wisdom? For starters it's highly authoritarian; no appeals to empathy or enlightened self-interest, only 'do this because I am your deity.'

If there is a God, I am okay with His commands being highly authoritarian. An artist paints the pictures she wishes to paint, and we don’t complain she has been too authoritarian in what that picture looks like. Similarly, a God who has created all that is would rightly have the authority to express commands for right living.

Assuming that these are the words of God in order to justify what would in any other case be the vice of authoritarianism isn't really a good argument for their universal and timeless wisdom. By that standard, "kill your son" would be good and wise advice, supposedly. And while many critics seemingly agree with you that it would be good for a God to hand down absolute unquestionable truths and laws on plates of gold, I would argue on the contrary that such stifling of human inquiry, error and diversity would rob us of any opportunity to grow up as societies and as a species: Judging by the change in tone between the old and new testaments it seems that from his dubious earlier dealings with our species Yahweh eventually reached a similar conclusion.

The word empathy, a term which was created in the 1960’s, is not used in the passage. However, to “love your neighbor as yourself� seems to encapsulate the concept empathy even without using the word.

I do not think that enlightened self-interest is wise. I suppose that this depends on your philosophy of ethics, but I (taking a Christian standpoint) see problems with an ethical standard built on selfishness.

Self-interest is one of the rational underpinnings for moral behaviour, in secular ethics ('enlightened' self-interest) and rather more selfishly in Christianity (the carrot and stick of heaven and hell). Empathy is another, in both cases. I'll admit that you could argue that both are indirectly implied in the Torah and even in this passage specifically, but pretty well eclipsed by the authoritarianism.

More importantly it's explicitly tribalist, referring only to how the listeners should treat their own kin, their own people, their own neighbours: The obscure rules about seeding, husbandry and garments perhaps intended (the best explanation I've ever heard/guessed at least) to symbolically emphasize even in their daily life the Israelites' separateness, the non-intermingling between them and other groups. Maybe that was important for them to preserve their own unique culture, both their separateness from out-groups and the intended intense cohesion within their group, but three thousand years later it obviously seems quite parochial.


Extracting half a line from the passage and contradicting its authors' intentions, Jesus (following others such as Hillel the Elder) used his story of the good Samaritan to promote the idea of universal love for our 'neighbours'. Besides the fact that he put 'love' for an invisible deity ahead of love for our fellow man - leaving room for rationalizing any number of atrocities against men in the name of God - I don't see any obvious problem with Jesus' reappropriation of a phrase from an ancient tribal instruction manual, but that can't really be credited as wisdom of the Tanakh itself.

Setting aside any debate about that author’s intentions, do wise words have to encompass all wisdom? Let us assume that the author of Leviticus had only the Israelites in mind. Does that make his advice unwise? Even if we say that there is more wisdom than just what is mentioned here, verses 14-18 still seem like they are close to being universally wise words.

They're certainly a good foundation, when isolated from much of the rest of the content in Leviticus; the very next verse for example goes on to discuss how to deal with a man who violates a slave promised to another (he has to kill a sheep to make it okay). But again, they are explicitly about intra-national dealings with no similar justice or respect accorded foreign nations; it's hard to see how that could be considered universal.

It may be that some among the ancient Hebrews - like some among the ancient Greeks or Indians or probably every other civilization - left a shaky but serviceable foundation, a necessary start for later generations to build on. But the very fact that later generations of Jews, Hindus and so on have written and said better and wiser things than anything in their earlier texts clearly shows that the earlier stuff is not really timeless, any more than it is universal. I'm certainly an advocate of respecting whatever earlier generations accomplished with the resources at their disposal, and learning a few things both about them and perhaps therefore about ourselves if we'd been born in a different era or ever find ourselves deprived of our sophisticated societies and technology: So yes, there's certainly some good stuff in the New Testament and even in the Tanakh; I'm just not sure there's anything which hasn't been significantly improved on in the millennia since or, particularly from the Tanakh, any passages which aren't clearly marked by the authors' circumstances and shortcomings even when their basic intention was promising.

This gets back to what I am more interested in. With all our advancements and sophistication and generations of learning to build on, have we made any significant improvements in the past few millennia? Are there any words which are genuinely universal and wise? Or, if we apply the same stringent criteria that this thread applies to the Bible, should say that no words (save the occasional tautology) can ever be truly universal and wise?

I'm not sure that anyone here has said of other words even that they are universal and timeless wisdom? Let alone that they derive from God himself! In any case, if it were true that even the best of more recent wisdom doesn't measure up as being truly universal, what does that say about a considerably less impressive patchwork of primitive laws, myths and liturgy with occasional insights and occasional outright barbarity?

Applying the same criteria across the board, I'm pretty sure that the Tanakh and probably the bible as a whole has no social theory even as enlightened as the US Declaration of Independence; no discussion of origins as comprehensive or accurate as Origin of Species; no myths or fables as eloquent or relevant to us as Star Trek; no prognostications even as reliable as those of modern economists and political scientists; no prophets of social conscience as inspiring or humane as Martin Luther King; and though I'm pretty clueless on the subject and translation makes for an unfair comparison, probably no poetry as good as the stuff written by that guy. Sure there's value and maybe enjoyment in reading or objectively studying it for those so inclined, same as any ancient writings, but is it actually unique or exceptional in any way? Not so far as I've yet discovered.

[bjs]

Assuming that these are the words of God in order to justify what would in any other case be the vice of authoritarianism isn't really a good argument for their universal and timeless wisdom. By that standard, "kill your son" would be good and wise advice, supposedly. And while many critics seemingly agree with you that it would be good for a God to hand down absolute unquestionable truths and laws on plates of gold, I would argue on the contrary that such stifling of human inquiry, error and diversity would rob us of any opportunity to grow up as societies and as a species: Judging by the change in tone between the old and new testaments it seems that from his dubious earlier dealings with our species Yahweh eventually reached a similar conclusion.

I don’t want to take us too far down the rabbit hole of ethical philosophy, but most forms of theism call God the foundation of ethics. That is, God could no more say that “Murder is good,� than He could say “Pie is exactly 3.� It would either defy His eternal nature or rewrite the nature of our reality (depending on which side of a famous Dilemma we come down on).

Self-interest is one of the rational underpinnings for moral behaviour, in secular ethics ('enlightened' self-interest) and rather more selfishly in Christianity (the carrot and stick of heaven and hell). Empathy is another, in both cases. I'll admit that you could argue that both are indirectly implied in the Torah and even in this passage specifically, but pretty well eclipsed by the authoritarianism.

Again, I don’t want to pull us too far off topic, but every form of orthodox Christianity I know rejects the “carrot and stick� view of ethics. Heaven is viewed as gift of grace, not an earned reward. Debating the merits of enlightened self-interest would require its own thread. For this thread I will only say that adding it to this passage would take away from the wisdom of the words, not add to it.

They're certainly a good foundation, when isolated from much of the rest of the content in Leviticus; the very next verse for example goes on to discuss how to deal with a man who violates a slave promised to another (he has to kill a sheep to make it okay). But again, they are explicitly about intra-national dealings with no similar justice or respect accorded foreign nations; it's hard to see how that could be considered universal.

There is an interesting debate about the overall ethic of the Torah, but that’s not the topic of this thread. Even if there are problems with other passages, that doesn’t stop this passage from being wise.

Addressing intra-national dealings seems very wise. All people should start by showing love to their own community. This doesn’t detract from showing love to the wider world. However, it is much easier to love someone on the other side of the globe, since I don’t have to do much to show that love. It is mostly a love of words and perhaps a small amount of financial support. Loving a grumpy neighbor, a disruptive family down the street, or the person sitting next to me on a bus is not so easy.

I'm not sure that anyone here has said of other words even that they are universal and timeless wisdom? Let alone that they derive from God himself! In any case, if it were true that even the best of more recent wisdom doesn't measure up as being truly universal, what does that say about a considerably less impressive patchwork of primitive laws, myths and liturgy with occasional insights and occasional outright barbarity?

It says to me that the words of the Bible are not less impressive. If we can find no words that meet the standard then problem is likely not with the words (including the words in the Bible), but rather the problem is with the standard. We are using a standard designed to find failure, and there are no conceivable words which could ever measure up.

All wisdom requires caveats. There are no absolutely universal wise words. Rather, underlying principles of love, justice, kindness, faith, hope, joy, self-control and the like must be reinterpreted and applied to the individual circumstances of life.

If we take this more reasonable, less stringent standard then I would cite virtually the whole of the New Testament as wise words.

[Tcg]

If we take this more reasonable, less stringent standard then I would cite virtually the whole of the New Testament as wise words.

We could also remove all hurdles at a track and field event and replace them with painted pink lines. If we did so, we could site virtually the whole adult population as expert jumpers. Of course if we hope to find truly expert jumpers, this won't help our search.


If we lower our standard for truly wise words, we could site virtually all written text as wise words. If we are truly in search of wisdom, this won't help our search.



Tcg

[bjs]

[Replying to Tcg]

Okay, so once again I ask: give many any example of wise word from any source, or make up your own, that are universally wise without any caveats.

That’s not hurdles at a track. That is asking people to jump over oceans.

[Zzyzx]

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If we take this more reasonable, less stringent standard then I would cite virtually the whole of the New Testament as wise words.

If we lower our standard for truly wise words, we could site virtually all written text as wise words. If we are truly in search of wisdom, this won't help our search.

Exactly.

If there actually was an abundance of 'wise words' in the Bible (or even just in the NT), it would seem as though Apologists would proudly cite a large number of them and would adhere to a HIGH standard of what constitutes wise words.

It should not be necessary to use evasive tactics rather than simply demonstrating the wisdom by quoting wise words.

How about it Apologists. Can you present a list of wise words from the Bible? Let's look at them -- not just claim that such things exist then change the subject when asked to quote them.