Quotes About Interpretation

Both the secular and the religious setting in which we live today is almost irresistibly biased toward an interpretation of these passages that condones a life more like that of decent people around us than like the life of Paul and his Lord. We talk about leading a different kind of life, but we also have ready explanations for not being really different. And with those explanations we have talked our way out of the very practices that alone would enable us to be citizens of another world.

I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that's where belief lies and art as well.

To sum up: 1) There is no external historical confirmation for the Jesus story outside of the New Testament. 2) The New Testament accounts are internally contradictory. 3) There are many other plausible explanations for the origin of the myth that do not require us to distort or destroy the natural worldview. 4) The miracle reports make the story highly suspect.

The Christ in Paul's writings is a different character from the Jesus of the Gospels.

Perhaps Matthew was right, or perhaps Luke was right, but both could not have been right. (See Chapter 13 for the exact citations.)

orthodox claim of scriptural inerrancy and reliability.

This is evidence that goodness and wickedness in the bible have nothing to do with morality.

the bible is not a reliable source of truth.

evangelical translators are simply trying to paper over a discrepancy.

T]he translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the bible as God's Word in written form.

Nothing in Christianity is original.

Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.

The Last Supper is supposed to be thirteen men. Who is this woman? Everyone misses it, our preconceived notions of this scene are so powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes.

Because most Christians want it both ways. They want to be able to proudly declare they are believers in the Bible and yet simply ignore those parts they find too difficult or too inconvenient to believe.

Napoleon once said, What is history, but a fable agreed upon? He smiled. By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.

There is your truth and there is my truth...as for the universal truth it does not exist.

When a computer creates art, who is the artist—the computer or the programmer? At MIT, a recent exhibit of highly accomplished algorithmic art had put an awkward spin on the Harvard humanities course: Is Art What Makes Us Human?

One great work of art inspired by another.

Who better than a bunch of celibate male octogenarians to tell the world how to have sex? - Robert Langdon

A reader's desire to guess what I've hidden is always more exciting than anything I can show.

Penjelasan paling sederhana biasanya adalah penjelasan yang paling sulit dipahami

Symbols carry different meanings in different settings. - Robert Langdon

The blind see what they want to see.

science and religion are often attempting to tell the same story in two different languages.