The Bible for dummies...

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Seattle, May 7, 2019.

  1. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    I think it's a useful analogy and there is no need for offense unless the analogy is with "the flying spaghetti monster". Why take offense to any analogy? Those taking offense wouldn't be less offended by any other analogy. They think that nothing is a serious as what they belief in. Talk about arrogance.

    As I mentioned above somewhere, there was a quote attributed to Gandhi, "I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians. They are not like Christ".
     
  2. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    What did it say about light being created on day one in Genesis and the sun and stars on day 4?
     
  4. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    Still in Genesis what did it say about Lot offering up his daughters for the men of the town to do with them as you wish, in order to protect the Angels who were staying in his house (that were there to kill everyone in town)?
     
  6. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    They skip over the disturbing bits. The way your eye kind of de-registers a zit on your lover's nose? Like, nobody ever mentions that there are two different creation stories: in the first one, God makes lots of people, "male and female created he them"; then Chapter 2 turns around and has one guy, and his helpmate as an afterthought.
    But at least Genesis is fun - lots of good tales. What I don't understand is how anyone gets through Numbers or Kings. I do understand why nobody ever refers to Leviticus, where the laws are laid out in a lot more practical detail than Moses' tablets: It doesn't fit on a tractor hat or a bumper sticker.
     
  8. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    I can't get though even the chapter outlines available online where if you want to see the real thing you can click the link.

    To read something that poorly written (as a novel) you have to "believe" or have some underlying motivation. If you just want to "understand' Christianity you can read Genesis and some of the Gospels and then jump around from there. I don't have the kind of interest to read the whole thing as it's just not that interesting taken as a whole.

    The thing is, if you read only a few books, directly, you know more than most of the die hard believers. They are doing a lot of believing and not a lot of reading.

    In that regard they are a lot alike the most die hard political people. They know the least about the issues. If spoken to both kinds of people and once you get into their subject at all, most say "I don't really know a lot about that and I really should". But they are passionate about what they don't know.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    Last edited: May 8, 2019
  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    That it was a different light, perhaps on day one, and the sun stars etc were day 4. I've always wondered how they knew to write that. Why was it important to write that. Stuff like that goes through my mind when I've read the Bible.
     
  10. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    Like Asimov's Guide to the Bible? That is the only one I've found at all useful. All other "helper" books I've seen were Guides telling you why what's on the page isn't what's really meant.
    I had one semi-productive encounter with JW's. The one with the speaking part read bible verses at me from a book abloom with yellow highlighting.
    I said, "Wait a minute. What come before and after that verse?" "Oh, I'm not advanced enough to understand that."
    We didn't get far, because they were mostly quoting from ******** Paul's letters to all his congregations, and I have little use for that guy. I settled for denouncing him a misogynist oppressor and sowing a little suspicion between the male and female witness.
     
  11. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    I don't know why they try to make mistakes not mistakes. Forget about it being the litteral word of God. What does that even mean. If you tell me you spoke to God last night and I write it down everyday and when we've got enough for a book, some of it doesn't make sense, I'd do a rewrite to make it make sense.

    There were plants on the third day, before the sun was created. The Firmament was created on one of the days. It's silly to still be taking about a literal Bible. That world that was created in 6 days was a world with heavens, filled with ether, a glass like lid over Earth with the stars laying on top.

    The Universe revolved around Earth. The Earth was flooded with water in the time of Noah but there is no place for that much water to drain off too. The seas would flood the Earth.

    The Santa story doesn't sound silly by way of comparison.

    The New Testament is the only part of the Bible that has some useful ideas. There is no way to argue that God knows all, can do all, and still is worthy of being worshiped.
     
  12. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    Bible scholars describe this story as an etiological myth: that is, it explains the origin of something—in this case of the Moabites and Ammonites, two of Israel’s neighbors. There are many examples of such accounts in the Hebrew Bible. As Israel had a long history of hostile relations with the Moabites and Ammonites, it is not surprising that some of the biblical authors would have wanted to take a jab at them by recounting their origins as incestuous.

    The Bible isn't a text book, so it's hard to say if some of these stories actually happened, but why would someone make up a story of daughters getting their father to impregnate them?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    The OT is filled with a lot of bizarre stories, that make for unpleasant reading.
     
  13. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    The jumping around might cause some confusion. Also, I consider it important to draw a line between OT and NT - very different perspectives, cultural matrices and attitudes. The Christians are basing their religion on post-Jesus era writing Paul and onward; Roman, not Mesopotamian; they dip into the OT for validation, but don't want to understand anything about living there.
    Of course, the whole thing is messed up - including the quality of literature - by the Nicean editors.
     
  14. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    Some Bible scholars have interpreted it as the Big Bang.
     
  15. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    It's because it isn't the word of God.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    It's the style of story telling in those days and can only really be read in that context. Some stories were passed along for different reasons. A person of the day would recognize each stylized form of story telling.

    It's like if someone told a story of the Great Dragon and the people of the village already understand that to be the wind. Maidens coming down in springtime might already to understood to mean this is the fertile time of the year.

    Reading it now and making it literal is nonsense.
     
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    I don't think there are any (very few) legitimate "Biblical scholars". Almost all of them have ties to church money. The tying the Big Bang to the Bible is like tying the Big Bang to Tom Sawyer.
     
  17. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    There wasn't any "different light". That's the kind of nonsense commentators add in the margin to reconcile discrepancy. And nobody knew a damn thing about Big Bang - hell, they were a thousand years away from the first suggestion of non-earth-centered universe!

    It's not a mystery. Nobody wrote it down for the first 3000 years that story was told from generation to generation, from one language to another, around campfires and marketplaces. The Jews inherited it from the Sumerians, possibly through two intervening cultures. They garbled it, like word-of-mouth garbles any story. By the time it came to the modern bible, it had gone through two more translations; the editor/compiler may have been strong in Latin and Greek, but shaky on Aramaic.
     
  18. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    Well, they'd tell you that scientists are the ones doin' the tying.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    On that note, good night. lol Stay tuned tomorrow, when we discuss if Lucifer was really an angel? That's an interesting story.
     
    Seattle likes this.
  19. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    I think it took approximately 1500 years, but yea. So, do you believe that it was ''corrupted'' as they say? (from original writings) Or entirely made up?
     
  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    I know that Casper was a friendly ghost but I'm looking forward to the Lucifer discussion.
     
    wegs likes this.
  21. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    Different cultures and times have different mores and tastes. (I wonder whether the Moabites would find The Bachelor or The Blacklist bizarre and unpleasant -- I know I do. )
    As for Lot's daughters, they thought they were the only people left in the world. Their mother was a pillar of salt, not much use to keep the bloodline going. Anyway, they seemed to be okay with the father having offered them to the mob the night before, so these were some loyal girls. They did what they believed to be their duty. (I like Asimov's take of this in Galapagos)
    Of course, too, some of these stories are allegories, where a single character stands in for a nation or a way of life, like Cain and Abel or Jacob and Easau (I suspect that's really the same story, just as Abraham passing his wife off as his sister is told in two different settings. ) Sometimes, people just liked telling a tall tale. The compilers of the Bible had little understanding of the peoples who perpetuated these stories - what their cultural significance was; which were sacred and which were just so stories.
     
    wegs likes this.
  22. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    That, too. The Council of Nicaea went through an enormous pile of old, older and ancient writings. They tossed out a lot of junk (Have you read the apocrypha ?) and maybe some good stuff. They kept what they believed was useful to their purpose, edited, translated and formatted it. If some of it had to be restructured, and some missing material commissioned to order... well, it was all in a good cause, right?
     
  23. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    There are 10 explanations for every story. The Lot girls were offered to guys who didn't like girls so the Father knew that wasn't a real offer. It was really just sarcasm. It was OK that Lot and his wife were "damaged" because although he was the best man in that region, it was a bad region that God wiped out.

    All those kinds of explanations are just ridiculous attempts to make the Bible make the kind of sense that the writer wants them to make.

    The only real way to handle the Bible is to look at it as a compilation of writings (not the literal word of God) and to look at it in the context of the way other stories of the time were written. If all the scholars were just looking at this as another manuscript of the times and compared it to others of the time there wouldn't be such controversy.
     

Share This Page