• Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Hyperbole used by God?

Status
Not open for further replies.

RighteousnessTemperance&

Well-Known Member
So, you consider sometimes it is good to lie just because it isn't "to be taken literally" and therefore is excused.

So, let's put this "figure of speech" thinking to a test in your own life experience.

Do you actually trust folks who are known to exaggerate, be outlandish, use overstatements?

How do you view folks known for exaggeration, overstatement, outlandish claims? Folks such as used car salesman, preachers, evangelists, missionaries, politicians, funeral directors, ... who are known to "stretch the truth," make outlandish claims, overstate results, exaggerate effects, use puffery to schmooze, ...

Do you view them as liars? Christ did. See John 8:44

What do you call such as use hyperbole? Liars, or do you trust their statements completely without any reservation and give all you possess into their keeping?

If Christ regularly, occasionally or even rarely used hyperbole, would that present His character as credible and reliable?

Just because it is written down (literature) doesn't make the use any less a lie, except that by adopting the worldly standard of what is right believers then can make excuse for their own exuberant expressiveness.

This thread sought to find whether God and Christ used overstatement, exaggeration, outlandish statements, puffery, ... but so far it seems that more folks are wanting to argue with me over what constitutes a lie.

Is it not true, that the enemy of believers is the Father of all lies and liars? What place has such in the mouth and witness of believers? That some actually excuse as if it were some literary contrivance mocks the very decalogue.

Yet, perhaps God and Christ do.

That was what this thread hoped to discover.

I took a strong specific stand.

It seems to have offended.

Wow, at first I was taken back, now I puzzle, why folks have such standard.
Boy, you really went on a wild rampage there, didn’t you? Like I said, some people can have a harder time than others with certain rhetorical devices. You obviously fall into that category here, and it appears to lead you into inappropriate judgment and criticism. Realizing this, it’s hard to feel offended by your comments, and I expressed no offense.

Like I said, I can agree that God doesn’t use “agedman hyperbole.” And I also don’t endorse it. That you can’t discern the difference between it and the legitimate use of rhetorical hyperbole is something all around you will just have to live with. I s’pose we could switch t’ talkin’ ‘bout the weather, but sure as shootin’ someone ‘d say it’s raining cats and dogs and purty soon we’d all be a fightin’ like ‘em. :Wink
 

agedman

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
No, my student did not show that John 21:25 was "a matter that could have been accomplished. He showed that it was hyperbole, humanly impossible, because that is exactly what he and I were talking about. If it would take 5 quadrillion books to only make one layer, and the world could not contain the books that were written, and Jesus only lived 33 years on the earth, then to write down every single second of His human life would not begin to fill the earth.

Again, it is opinion that it could not have been done, which is exactly the statement of John. But that does not make the statement hyperbole. But does indeed make the statement truthful.

That you take it as hyperbole (exaggeration, outlandish, overstatement...) as I showed more than once before is incorrect.

From your own definition, the statement would have to include what was obviously a lie. Because it did not because of the qualifier, "I suppose" it then cannot be hyperbole. Add this to what has been posted on this verse before.


Dad stayed pretty sweet, and never forgot his faith in Jesus or his call to preach. In his final hospitalization, when Mom checked him in and asked what she should put down for religion, he said, "I don't have a religion, I have a Savior!" Then, he led singing for some old folk, which they liked, then tried to preach to them. When some started to walk out he said to my Mom, "Don't let them leave, I want to preach to them!"

My that I go out in such a manner that folks either are drawn to Christ or walk away in rejection.

This is one of the most misquoted verses in the Bible. "False witness" is not the same as simply lying. False witness can destroy your neighbor's entire life, putting him in jail until he dies or wrecking his reputation, but lying, wrong though it is, is not the same. False witness is the most serious kind of lying.

Certainly. I totally agree. But from where do false witnesses gather their leadership? From the enemy of he gospel that Father of all liars.

Even taking your statement, there is not the excuse, or get out of results granted. The little lie, though innocently presented is not of God.

All wisdom from God is FIRST pure, then peaceable... it has not the smallest "hyperbole" which is why I started the thread?

My mother used hyperbole all the time: "If I told you once I told you a 1000 times...." She was not lying and she was not a liar. Once again, hyperbole is not lying. I'm tired of saying that--are you going to call my mother a liar because she had not actually told me something 1000 times? You're view that hyperbole is lying is calling a lot of good godly people "liar."


Perhaps I offended you. That is truly not my intent.

You said, "You're (Your) view that hyperbole is lying is calling a lot of good godly people "liar."

I take it that you know Hebrew. It is possibly the most expressive language known. It is filled with figures of speech more than the number accounted for in English, and that many miss simply because of the confines of English.

In the English, as conservative fundamental literal readers, the faithful are more often conflicted over this matter of "hyperbole" not being a lie, because in their thinking a lie is a lie.

Then when they are schooled by society and education, that, "No, not all lies are lies," there is a problem generated.

Therefore, You claim the teaching that hyperbole is not lying and for the purposes of this thread I question how it is not. Is hyperbole presenting the truth?

But what you see as excusable whether it be in dramatics, fine arts, political, familial, literature, educational, ... the question really is: Does God actually excuse and more to the purpose of this thread, does God use and excuse the use of exaggeration, outlandish statements, overstatements, puffery,... which ultimately taken at face value are lies?

OR, more to the point of the thread, are what we call "hyperbole" not at all hyperbole (over casting, as a fisherman throws beyond the target), but some other even unnamed figure speech.

Good choice
 

agedman

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Boy, you really went on a wild rampage there, didn’t you? Like I said, some people can have a harder time than others with certain rhetorical devices. You obviously fall into that category here, and it appears to lead you into inappropriate judgment and criticism. Realizing this, it’s hard to feel offended by your comments, and I expressed no offense.

Like I said, I can agree that God doesn’t use “agedman hyperbole.” And I also don’t endorse it. That you can’t discern the difference between it and the legitimate use of rhetorical hyperbole is something all around you will just have to live with. I s’pose we could switch t’ talkin’ ‘bout the weather, but sure as shootin’ someone ‘d say it’s raining cats and dogs and purty soon we’d all be a fightin’ like ‘em. :Wink
I wonder if the Egyptians thought Moses was speaking in hyperbole terms before the plagues.
I wonder if the world thought Noah was speaking in hyperbole before the flood took them.

I wonder how it is that the prophets are not taken factually on the BB because it is considered hyperbole.
 

John of Japan

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
OR, more to the point of the thread, are what we call "hyperbole" not at all hyperbole (over casting, as a fisherman throws beyond the target), but some other even unnamed figure speech.
By your position:

All the idioms in the Bible are lies, because an idiom is not meant to be taken literally and is therefore a false statement (it never literally rains cats and dogs).

Christ lied when He said, "I am the light of the world," because He did not literally light up every corner of the globe.

John the Baptist lied about Christ when he called Him "the Lamb of God," because Christ is a man, not a lamb.

John lied when he called Satan a red dragon in Revelation, because Satan is in form a beautiful angel, not a dragon.

I lied over and over when I played "Squire Trelawney" in our VBS daily skit a couple of weeks ago, because that is not my name, and my lines were not literal truth but play-acting. But all of the kids knew it wasn't a lie, it was a play, the events of which never actually happened (there is no "Banana Man" in the jungle), and indeed were based on a novel called Treasure Island which, because it is fiction, is a pack of lies. :)

Frankly, your position is unsustainable, if not absurd. No offense.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top