RE: Illiterate men.
April 21, 2012 at 10:33 am
(This post was last modified: April 21, 2012 at 10:45 am by Drich.)
(April 21, 2012 at 10:01 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: This "Jesus" character was a 'Jew' so as a 'good Jew' he could "read" the Torah ....Yes? This counted for literacy in those days ...yes??
Not all Jews could read. This didn't make them good or bad. There was just very little to read in those days. Not every temple had complete sets of the Torah let alone family owned copies. Back then the writings of God were considered Holy and were only to be touched by certain orders of the priesthood.. In places like Galilee (where Christ grew up) temples shared copies of the Torah and they were rotated with other temples by this line of priest. It is my understanding in the story of the good Samaritan one of the two priests that left his beaten and battered countryman to die on the side of the road, was one such priest. it was his job to see to the delivery of the Holy text to the receiving temple.
The irony of the story shows that the delivery of the message that tell us to "do unto others" far exceeded that priest's desire to put that message into practice. (For the sake of preserving his reputation.)
(April 21, 2012 at 10:29 am)Cinjin Wrote:(April 19, 2012 at 11:58 am)Minimalist Wrote: It says in Star Wars that Luke Skywalker had a light saber.
(Hint: That's fiction, too.)
Exactly.
This is always a contentious point for me too. Lets say that at age 65 I wrote down my life story in a journal. You would most certainly find many historical facts that could be easily verified. Names of bars, friends, politicians, cities I'd been to, world events and so on and so forth. There are some things that could not be verified however. Lets say that I wanted to make my book more interesting for the reader. With that in mind, in chapter six, 4th paragraph, I wrote that I had a week long orgy/party with four supermodels in a Vegas penthouse suite. I write about it in detail and even mention the reactions of some of the hotel staff who witnessed the general goings-on in and around the hotel. Lets say I wrote the whole journal this way ... mentioning all the amazing places I'd been and the thoughts I had on the world around me, all the while adding amazing stories about spelunking African diamond mines while dating movie stars and becoming a cult icon. Then I died. My journal was published immediately and quickly forgotten. However a few of them were saved in various libraries and what not.
500 years later, my book is found ... and voila! I'm a fucking bad-ass pimp. Sure, there are people who question it, but true fans of my now legendary persona quickly point to the fact that my book must be true because it is congruent with known historical data. "Those cities existed," "that event happened... it must be true," Add to the fact that I was smart enough when writing my little journal to include "witnesses" to my week long orgy in Vegas. Now, not only do I have an awesome story, but I have "witnesses" to the event. Nevermind the fact that they're completely non-verifiable, my fans don't care and they'll use these witnesses as proof of the truth of the story. I'm a legend thanks to the fact that I simply included real events and places from the time period in which I lived.
My whole point here, is that whenever someone highlights something written in the Bible as evidence of the Bible it immediately makes me think that the person in question is mentally handicapped. (Either that, or how can someone be so fucking retarded?) Add to that fact that the Bible was not written by merely one or two people, but by dozens and dozens and then edited for 2000 years and it makes you wonder how ANYONE could attempt using the bible as proof of the bible.
Anyway, right on Minimalist. You and I both know they won't see this point, but we keep trying to show them none the less.
The irony here is the same phenomena that you have pointed out here happens in archeology and in anthropology, and yet very little is questioned when a "new discovery" is documented.
That said know the bible was not written in a vacuum. Where their was sole authorship and no verification of any of the historical events, as your story suggests. There are many 10's of thousands of collaborating works. to the degree that the bible is the authority and bench mark on ancient writings. If what we know of the bible can not be view upon as a legitimate work, then everything upto the point in our collective history where the printing press and writing materials were made available to the public is also in question.
