Do you read?

[mjmooney]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

[leviramsey]

"I just found it in a dusty old book in the library it's called the Bible."

Going to read it for the first time since my deconversion soon. The entire thing from front to cover.

Good luck. Some very good bits in there, which have made a massive contribution to the canon of English (actually, western generally) literature. And long passages that are very heavy going unless you're a serious student of the era and the culture.

Which version are you reading? King James?

Not sure yet but I've decided I'm going to read it like a history student, I'm actually a pretty enthusiastic student of history.

My father is crazy we have multiple copies of the bible at home, including NIV, KJV as well as Chinese translations.

Edit: Of course I know a lot of it is boring and heavy-going and I know the historical context I've been reading the book for years as a Christian, though I never completed it. I think as a non-Christian now though I will be able to spot many more contradictions, nuances etc in the bible than I ever did. Which ironically will probably make the book much more enjoyable than I ever found it to be reading it from a devotional POV.

Can modern men and women continue to pretend that timeless, eternal, and unchanging truth has been captured in the words of a book that [largely --LR] achieved its final written form midway into the second century of this common era? Would not such a claim be dismissed as ludicrous in any other branch of human knowledge? Is it less ludicrous because we have surrounded it with a religious aura? Have we embraced the meaning of the subjective quality of a particular language, the truth lost at worst and distorted at best in the translations?

Christians have almost no words that Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the tongue he employed. The exceptions are "Talitha Cumi" (Mark 5:41); "Ephphatha" in the story of the deaf mute (Mark 7:34); and the best known, the cry from the cross, "Eloi Eloi lama sabathani." This cry is, of course, a quotation from Psalm 22 and may or may not have been uttered by the dying Jesus of Nazareth. But before we can confront the Jesus of history, we have to move from English to Greek (the language in which the New Testament was written) to Aramaic. To move into Aramaic is to move into a world of oral tradition. Did Jesus say, for instance, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"? It is a strange analogy, a mixing of metaphors. Camels do not go through eyes of needles, even tiny camels. But when camel is translated into Aramaic, one sees that it is almost identical to the word for rope. Was the original word of Jesus "It is easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven"? It would be an appropriate metaphor, still possessing the power of the impossible but not violating the imagination of the hearers. If this saying was garbled in translation, are there others? How substantial are they to the understanding of the essential elements of Christian tradition?

When I became aware that neither the word virgin nor the concept of virginity appears in the Hebrew text of Isaiah that Matthew quoted to undergird his account of Jesus' virgin birth, I became newly aware of the fragile nature of Biblical fundamentalism. The understanding of "virgin" is only present in the Greek word parthenos, used to translate the Hebrew almah. The Hebrew for virgin is betulah. Almah never means virgin in Hebrew.

[Jesus] seems to have accepted the Davidic authorship of the Psalms (Mark 12:36, Luke 20:42), an attitude and concept quickly dismissed in modern Biblical scholarship. Jesus also seems to have accepted the theory of Mosaic authorship of the Torah (Mark 7:10; 10:3; Luke 5:14).

Yet in the Torah there are two creation stories that vary in detail and contradict each other (Genesis 1:1-24 and Genesis 2:5ff). These stories cannot be harmonized. Poor Moses contradicted himself radically in the first two chapters of the Torah. He also seemed not to know the nationality of the people to whom Joseph's brothers sold Joseph, who took him down to Egypt. In one account it was the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:25) and in another it was the Midianites (Genesis 37:28). They are not the same. Moses, as a single author, seems to have been rather confused.

If that's not enough, there are three separate and distinct versions of the Ten Commandments in the Torah that cannot be reconciled (Exodus 20, Exodus 34, and Deuteronomy 5). God was portrayed, if one seeks to maintain a literalism about Holy Scripture, as terribly inept. He couldn't the essence of his divine law clear! In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God was portrayed as not knowing what was going on in those two cities, so he had to send divine messengers to bring him a report. That's hardly a picture of divine omniscience.

If one doesn't read the Bible constantly, these issues can be ignored -- lost in ignorance. But if one does read the Bible regularly and seriously, these issues are unavoidable. They call into question so many of the attitudes upon which Christianity is built. When these attitudes, based on a literal view of Scripture, begin to shake, our faith also shakes, and we either refuse to look again at the Bible and continue the game of "let's pretend" or we walk away from this resource for the faith of our fathers and mothers and conclude that religion as we know it is dead. If we fall into the former camp, the voices of the televangelists who traffic in certainty, who claim biblical authority in the hope that no one will challenge them, might compel our attention and response. But it will not last. Religious hysteria always burns itself out in emptiness. If we are in the latter camp, we live in a world of dreadful transcendent emptiness....

A literal Bible presents me with far more problems than assets. It offers me a God I cannot respect, much less worship; a Deity whose needs and prejudices are at least as large as my own. I meet in the literal understanding of Scripture a God who is simply not viable, and what the mind cannot believe the heart can finally never adore.

...Those who seek to preserve these biblical understandings [of the pre-scientific world] have to become anti-intellectual or must close off vast portions of their thought processes or twist their brains into some kind of first-century pretzel in order to maintain their faith system. It is no wonder that they are afraid of knowledge. Their faith security system is built on sand. It cannot and will not survive, and they have no sense that there is any alternative save despair, death, and meaninglessness. This is enough to cause fear to erupt in anger.

I can more or less live with his re-working of a few of the old-school creeds (I made some minor changes in places, as I suppose should ever be the case)

[rjw63]

Well hello Mr quote A Lot :-)

[legov]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

Lol No as in for example if the holy book said that Santa Claus was born on the 24th Dec on one page, and then the 25th on another. Impossible to reconcile.

Jesus said in the Bible that he came to judge, yet he did not. So which one is it Jeebus? :shock:

I'm turning this into another religious thread :lol:

[leviramsey]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

Lol No as in for example if the holy book said that Santa Claus was born on the 24th Dec on one page, and then the 25th on another. Impossible to reconcile.

Jesus said in the Bible that he came to judge, yet he did not. So which one is it Jeebus? :shock:

It's only a problem if you view the Bible as being one work by one author as opposed to a collection of works by different authors at various points in time interpreting the experience of something (we do not necessarily know what) through their own subjectivities/prejudices/etc.

[legov]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

Lol No as in for example if the holy book said that Santa Claus was born on the 24th Dec on one page, and then the 25th on another. Impossible to reconcile.

Jesus said in the Bible that he came to judge, yet he did not. So which one is it Jeebus? :shock:

It's only a problem if you view the Bible as being one work by one author as opposed to a collection of works by different authors at various points in time interpreting the experience of something (we do not necessarily know what) through their own subjectivities/prejudices/etc.

Precisely.

[leviramsey]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

Lol No as in for example if the holy book said that Santa Claus was born on the 24th Dec on one page, and then the 25th on another. Impossible to reconcile.

Jesus said in the Bible that he came to judge, yet he did not. So which one is it Jeebus? :shock:

It's only a problem if you view the Bible as being one work by one author as opposed to a collection of works by different authors at various points in time interpreting the experience of something (we do not necessarily know what) through their own subjectivities/prejudices/etc.

Precisely.

And it's possible to be a Christian and to not view the Bible as one work by one author etc.

So why the :?:

[legov]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

Lol No as in for example if the holy book said that Santa Claus was born on the 24th Dec on one page, and then the 25th on another. Impossible to reconcile.

Jesus said in the Bible that he came to judge, yet he did not. So which one is it Jeebus? :shock:

It's only a problem if you view the Bible as being one work by one author as opposed to a collection of works by different authors at various points in time interpreting the experience of something (we do not necessarily know what) through their own subjectivities/prejudices/etc.

Precisely.

And it's possible to be a Christian and to not view the Bible as one work by one author etc.

So why the :?:

It is? :shock:

[leviramsey]

There are BOUND to be inconsistencies, because it's not one book, it's a collection of many books, written over a very long timescale

A bit of a problem those inconsistencies, one of the reasons for my deconversion was ultimately how it was impossible to reconcile some of the contradictions within the Bible itself. You'd think a divinely inspired book would at least be consistent in its message but no it can't even get important things like the details of Jesus' life consistent throughout the Gospels.

Odd. If I were a Christian that wouldn't bother me. Then again I wouldn't be one of those "literalists".

Lol No as in for example if the holy book said that Santa Claus was born on the 24th Dec on one page, and then the 25th on another. Impossible to reconcile.

Jesus said in the Bible that he came to judge, yet he did not. So which one is it Jeebus? :shock:

It's only a problem if you view the Bible as being one work by one author as opposed to a collection of works by different authors at various points in time interpreting the experience of something (we do not necessarily know what) through their own subjectivities/prejudices/etc.

Precisely.

And it's possible to be a Christian and to not view the Bible as one work by one author etc.

So why the :?:

It is? :shock:

There's nothing in the Apostle's Creed (usable as a baseline definition, though there are Christian traditions that would dispute parts of it) that implies anything as to the Bible:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit

and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

[legov]

So God is entitled to lie, give contradictory statements, and make up rules that are impossible to follow because you have to both obey and avoid them (know what I mean). Okay.

[Nigel]

The god fest has even infected the book thread....run for the hills!

[legov]

The god fest has even infected the book thread....run for the hills!

It's because of me, sorry

[leviramsey]

So God is entitled to lie, give contradictory statements, and make up rules that are impossible to follow because you have to both obey and avoid them (know what I mean). Okay.

:?

All of that only follows if you believe that the Bible is the statements of God.

Any thought given at all to reading it will show that it's not (whether there's no God to make said statements or because it's human recordings of the experience of divinity).

[theboyangel]

Just finished Bateman's 'Orpheus Rising' a very kooky book exploring authors and the state of purgatory!!!!

A fine read, funny in places and touching in others!

[Rodders]

decided to mix up my time between fiction - raymond chandler noir and non-fiction The Age of Wonder / Juvenal the satires. good fun

[AVFC_Hitz]

I've just finished Hammer and Tickle about the history of Communist jokes. Not as droll as it sounds. Funny and entertaining and also a stark reminder of the effects of totalitarianism on people.

Just opened the first page of Metroland by Julian Barnes.

[mjmooney]

I've just finished Hammer and Tickle about the history of Communist jokes. Not as droll as it sounds. Funny and entertaining

So it IS droll, then? :?

[AVFC_Hitz]

I've just finished Hammer and Tickle about the history of Communist jokes. Not as droll as it sounds. Funny and entertaining

So it IS droll, then? :?

Well erm yes... but my main meaning, which I left out entirely, was that the book manages to uncover the real suffering of these people. The droll bit often comes from interviews with pro-communist people who still defend and attempt to justify the time they lived in.

[legov]

So God is entitled to lie, give contradictory statements, and make up rules that are impossible to follow because you have to both obey and avoid them (know what I mean). Okay.

:?

All of that only follows if you believe that the Bible is the statements of God.

Any thought given at all to reading it will show that it's not (whether there's no God to make said statements or because it's human recordings of the experience of divinity).

Yeah, precisely the point I was trying to make.

[leviramsey]

So God is entitled to lie, give contradictory statements, and make up rules that are impossible to follow because you have to both obey and avoid them (know what I mean). Okay.

:?

All of that only follows if you believe that the Bible is the statements of God.

Any thought given at all to reading it will show that it's not (whether there's no God to make said statements or because it's human recordings of the experience of divinity).

Yeah, precisely the point I was trying to make.

Except that you've been so brainwashed by what passes for mainstream Christianity that every few posts you circle back to the Bible as the inerrant word of God. Another example of the typical Christian church being the best ever recruitment office for atheism....