LogFAQs > #927599125

JCvgluvr posted...

@ParanoidObsessive, what are you trying to say, here? That Jews don't believe the world was created in 6 days?

Just for reference, I never see @ mentions. I have them deliberately turned off, and I refused to respond to them or ATTN topics even when those were a thing.

But as for your actual question, many don't. They're fully capable of understanding that phrasing can be used to refer to things figuratively. Some would argue that "days" in that context are just metaphorical stand-ins for unmeasured periods of time, others would argue that they refer to days from the perception of God, who can count a day lasting however the hell long he wants one to. Keeping in mind those stories evolved during a time when everything was oral and there was no writing, so precise reckoning was never going to be much of a concern. Especially when they lacked the technology to measure the exact age of the universe or the world anyway.

It's similar to how, in many modern languages, phrases like "ten thousand" don't literally mean 10,000, but just "lots and lots". Or how I can say "I'll be there in a minute" or "I need a couple things", and not literally mean I'll be there in exactly 60 seconds or that I need precisely two things.

There's also an implication that when the Old Testament said that "So-and-so lived for 900 years", that most Jews didn't take that literally either, and interpreted it as a deliberate poetic way of saying "Things used to be better in the old days, when Man was still closer to God before we faded." It wasn't really until the Christians came along, started taking things super-literally, and used that stuff to calculate that the world was created in 4004 BC that the literalist view sort of became the accepted one. And even then, the Jews themselves were still a bit like "lol silly Christians".

But yes, I'm sure there were Jews who took everything literally as well back in the day. But ancient people and cultures were way more capable of understanding subtlety and metaphor than we usually give them credit for, because we like to ethnocentrically think we're way better than them.



Miroku_of_Nite1 posted...

Siege of Baghdad (1258), also Hulagu Khan wasn't a Muslim.

Yeah, like I said, I was having trouble remembering the exact context. I knew it happened, and I remembered the quote (more or less), but I forgot exactly who said it, where, and when. I just threw the Siege of Baghdad out as a possibility because it came to mind as a famous book destruction.

It MIGHT have been the library of Alexandria instead.

...actually, checking Wikipedia now that I thought of it, it definitely was:

"If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them." --- Caliph Omar
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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