Sometime awhile back and somewhere in blog comments at Planet Preterist, I noted the observation of how scripture has a Rorschach quality (which no one that I am aware of responded to).
From my current reading I have, interestingly, ran across an essay by an atheist that tackles the moral argument and mentions:
Far from being a truly independent guide to moral conduct, the Bible is more like a Rorschach test: which passages people choose to emphasize reflects as much as it shapes their moral character and interests.
– Elizabeth Anderson (from If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?) Quote taken from Book Review: The Portable Atheist
Now notice a couple striking parallels from scripture:
1. 1 Corinthians 13:12
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.“
2. James 1:23
“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.“
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And on TV Sunday, November 15, 2009 –
All the homes are built with nothing but reeds. “Without reeds, you can’t have this way of life. Reeds are the skeleton of these people’s lives,” Alwash said.The house of reeds is called a “mudhif.” Alwash wanted one as a meeting hall for his project, and we were there to watch the construction. It is made of nothing but reeds bound by reeds.
The arches are planted in the ground and pulled into shape. Then woven mats cover the top. Alwash’s mudhif is 15 feet tall and 70 feet long. It is where we did our interview and where one of the village elders came to entertain us, singing traditional songs.
Looking at 5,000-year-old carvings, it is easy to see close similarities of the structures then and the mudhifs of today.
Near the marshes, the Sumerians erected a temple at the city of Ur, known as a ziggurat. The Sumerians thought the marshes were so important they wrote a story about them.
The story goes that the gods grew angry at man, so they sent a deluge to cover the Earth. One of the gods thought that was a terrible idea, so he warned one man to build a boat and save all the animals.
The people of this region came up with that story hundreds of years before the Old Testament gave us Noah. (emphasis added)
(page 3 of transcript for the segment — Iraq’s Marshlands: Resurrecting Eden – 60 Minutes – CBS )
An intriguing footnote in a remarkable story of revival after severe devastation by tyranny
