Understanding the bible

[Kayenneh]

Whistle Blower, I have have a small request for you, that has nothing to do with the OP. Is it possible that you could change your avatar, since downbeatplumb has got the same, and now it's confusing me?


Now, back to the topic. Did you miss the shitstorm Alter2Ego begun? She on the other hand said that the bible is quite literal, and that one shouldn't assume anything based upon the stories. Now, we come to the never ending topic of True Christianity™. Which one of you is right? If the bible used isn't the same translation everywhere, if different sects say it should be read differently, what makes you so sure that you got it right? You seem to assume that all of us read it as atheists, which is not the case. Many here read it as devout believers. For myself it was in fact the very thing that turned me towards agnosticism and eventually atheism, because of the absurdities and inconsistencies.

As for the beginning, middle and an end way of reading, well, that is something I think is essential. For ficiton..

[Creed of Heresy]

Basically what Kayenneh wrote in my case. Methodist turned atheist largely because of the inconsistencies involving the bible. If everyone reading the bible came away with the same general opinion of it, I'd find it far more plausible. But it doesn't work that way.

[Brian37]

No, here is the plot of the bible, beginning, middle and end.

Part one: "Be a good Hebrew and no one gets hurt".

Part two:" Thats not working, I'll sacrifice myself to myself so you can avoid me beating the shit out of you"

Part three:"Fuck it, I'll just beat the shit out of everyone who didn't kiss my ass and torture them forever"

That is the plot of the bible. As Hitchens put it "A celestial North Korea".

[Faith No More]

No, not whiskey, it is the act of smoking a pipe itself that can be used as a solitary or communal ritual to open the mind to God and to transform ones' mind in the pattern of Christ. Then you can truly understand the bible.

Only if you put crystal meth in the pipe.

[Cyberman]

UrbanDictionary has some fantastic plot summaries of the thing, including my all-time favourite:

Old Testament: God creates the universe and he sees it and it's serious business, but then Satan pretends to be a snake and trolls Eve, telling her "Apple or GTFO" (cuz she was already showing tits). She chooses the former and then her and her fuck buddy Adam get b& from Eden for being trollbait. Then a lot of serious fucking incest occurs and we get the human race (which explains a lot, really).

Then later, God gets über pissed about Pharaoh Hitler pwning the jews, so he gives Moses some cheat codes for the universe. Moses stages a mass slave runaway and opens up the sea so the Jews can run through, closing it behind him and drowning the ancient Nazis; God Lol'd.

Some other less important shit happens, mostly composed of a bunch of faggots writing emo poetry about god for him to fap to.

New Testament: God finds Mary sleeping and just sticks the tip in and drops his load. Nine months later Jesus is born. For his 13th birthday God gave Jesus more cheat codes than he gave Moses, plus the rcon password for life, and some CP.

Later, Jesus became a hard core ska punk and trolled the old school jews hard. They got super pissed and permabanned him with a cross and some nine inch nails. They forgot he had god mode turned on though, so he waited 3 days and hit vid_restart on the rcon panel, came back into life's server, and laughed at the Jews.

After that, 3 more guys tell the same story, then this faggot Paul wrote an assload of shit about sex being evil and a bunch of other stuff that Jesus never fucking said but everybody listened to Paul anyway because they're stupid.

THE END

Amazon customer reviews of it are dead-on as well.

[dtango]

Understanding an ancient text is not easy. One has to have studied all the other ancient texts in order to be able to distinguish between stories transmitted by oral traditions, which deserve studying, and stories produced by theologians, which should be discarded. The Old Testament contains both and so it is worth studying, while the New Testament being pure theological fiction deserves neither studying nor understanding.

There are passages in the OT which are beyond the comprehension of scholars of biblical studies, either they are believers or non believers. The reason is that mixture of theological and traditional elements mentioned above.
Moreover, the redactors of the texts of the OT out of respect for some traditional elements of their culture, which should be preserved but could not be preserved in the crude form they had originally being recorded, chose to preserve them by transforming them into short, or longer, incomprehensible, illogical stories.

For the atheists, who believe they are more clever and smarter than believers, here is one of the best of such stories:

Ex. 4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord (Yahweh) met him, and sought to kill him. 25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband are thou to me. 26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision

24 εγένετο δε εν τη οδώ εν τω καταλύματι συνήντησεν αυτώ άγγελος Κυρίου και εζήτει αυτόν αποκτείναι. 25 και λαβούσα Σεπφώρα ψήφον περιέτεμε την ακροβυστίαν του υιού αυτής και προσέπεσε προς τους πόδας αυτού και είπεν• έστη το αίμα της περιτομής του παιδίου μου. 26 και απήλθεν απ’ αυτου, διότι είπεν• έστη το αίμα της περιτομής του παιδίου μου.

The Septuagint translators, who seem to having had understood very well the meaning of the passage, they mention άγγελος Κυρίου ,“Angel of the Lord,” instead of “the Lord” and they present Zipporah casting herself at the feet of the Lord instead of casting the foreskin at his feet as a proof of the purity of her son; and, finally, they made sure not to mention at all the phrase “hatan damim ”, bloody husband or bridegroom of blood by which Zipporah called Yahweh.

This little story was obviously not intended for deceiving anyone in the manner it describes the particular deed of the Lord Yahweh. Why was that little story not removed from the collection?

Well, bright guys atheists, do you have anything to say or the only thing you can do is just trying to ridicule the scriptures?

[Paul the Human]

Nothing in your precious scriptures mean a thing unless your god is real. We "smart guy atheists" don't happen to believe that it is, so the scriptures are nothing more than an incomprehensible jumble of mythology that is still taken seriously by the needy and gullible, the wishful and the cedulous, the ignorant and the superstitious.

[Minimalist]

For them it's a never ending cycle of where "God's inspiration" can be 'seen' though.

Of course you are right about that FtR. If a scriptural passage said to slam one's nuts in a car door G-C would be singing soprano in the choir and claiming that "god" knew what was best!

[Cyberman]

I'm more inclined to think that a passage like that would be heavy symbolism that you can only understand after swapping out your reason for faith, or an obscure metaphor for something else (like it's only spiritual nuts, representing masculinity perhaps, that we need to place in the car door of heaven). Failing that, it probably means something completely different in context and in the original language. Of course, there's always the old standby that it's a commandment to slam the nuts of sinners - aka everyone else - in car doors.

[Angrboda]

"The spirit is willing, but I believe the flesh could use another five minutes."