Is the bible left or right?

[Sal]

It's not left/right in any meaningful way. It's authoritarian though, very. Do this, do that. The Bible doesn't even consider owning slaves or not a meaningful discourse, as it jumps straight to how you're supposed to treat slaves. Women are subservient to their husbands. Lots of stuff like this.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yeah, is the Jesus a republican or a democrat? Depends on who you are - it can go both ways. This is just one of many situations that show how Jesus is useless.

^This.  The Bible can mean whatever you need it to mean to support your agenda.  Rather like how some people view Moby Dick as a cautionary tale about revenge and perception, but to others it's a REALLY cool fishing story.

Boru

[ignoramus]

I see Moby Dick as a "David and Goliath". Goliath will win 99% of the time. Like trying to sue Google

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I see Moby Dick as a "David and Goliath". Goliath will win 99% of the time. Like trying to sue Google

If only Ahab had brought along a slingshot instead of those stupid harpoons...

Boru

[mordant]

Like all holy books, the Bible is a vague template on which each generation and culture and society and individual can project their hopes, fears and desires. It is incoherence masquerading as profundity. You just cherry pick what you want to see in the Rorschach test that is the text. There you'll find, for example, meek and mild Jesus, manly Jesus, hippie revolutionary Jesus, angry judgemental Jesus, longsuffering noble Jesus -- among others. Whatever it is that you're looking for. You might even choose to trot out each version of Jesus for different occasions.

Because the text makes no pretense at being self-consistent and non-contradictory, each theology extracted from the text will conflict with the plain meaning of many things written within, but you just dismiss these as unimportant, not intended for modern times, to be understood metaphorically or symbolically or prophetically or in some contrived "proper context", etc. You develop a hermeneutic (interpretational system) that systematizes the particular way in which you prefer to torture the text into submission to fit with your objectives.

[The Grand Nudger]

I would actually posit that magic book isn't vague, regardless of peoples need to make it so in order to justify their own predispositions -by- magic book.

The kind of jesus you find is not at all open to whatever you want to see, rather, on an orderly progression as to how the authors chose to convey his character in relation to divinity. In the transition between the synoptics, and from the synoptics to john, jesus becomes increasingly divine and, thus, increasingly authoritarian. Hippy and buddy jesus movements rarely quote from john, and not for no reason.

[mordant]

I would actually posit that magic book isn't vague, regardless of peoples need to make it so in order to justify their own predispositions -by- magic book.

The kind of jesus you find is not at all open to whatever you want to see, rather, on an orderly progression as to how the authors chose to convey his character in relation to divinity.  In the transition between the synoptics, and from the synoptics to john, jesus becomes increasingly divine and, thus, increasingly authoritarian.  Hippy and buddy jesus movements rarely quote from john, and not for no reason.

I don't disagree really, but the vagueness I speak of is in the different versions of Jesus (or whatever) that is presented in the total canon. You are correct, the gospel of John is not a favorite urtext for Buddy Jesus, but it's part of the package deal, and you seldom see Christian sects rejecting parts of the Bible wholesale. Rather, they de-emphasize the inconvenient bits and perhaps interpret them liberally or metaphorically. There is a tiny crackpot sect that rejects the NT except for Paul and others who basically do the inverse, questioning the canonicity of Paul. But for the most part, Christians everywhere find the Bible as a whole to be "no problemo" for their particular dogma of choice.

It is this diversity that tells me that the Bible, as a whole, is self-inconsistent, and easy to interpret however you want. Maybe "vague" is the wrong word for that, but I don't think it's an entirely unfair characterization.

And then there are the controversies around, e.g., Calvinism vs arminianism. It is impossible for there to be free will or no free will at the same time, yet you can find proof-texts for both and argue violently about it for centuries. If that's not vague, what is?

[The Grand Nudger]

We see wholesale rejection all the time, they just can't bring themselves to accept that this is what they're doing. Hell, they had to shitcan old magic book in it's entirety even though it was required for their very claim, as they saw it, and regardless of the fact that they still attach it in order to maintain the grift, lol.

Being very clearly contradictory and being vague, are...I think, different things. If new magic book had better editors, and was just a tad bit more vague, then the contradictory nature of it's many different iterations of christ wouldn't be so pronounced, and that whole non-problematic problem wouldn't exist to be ignored in the first place.

We might also do well to keep in mind that the reason for the inclusion of these specific stories was, ultimately, a negotiation between their popularity and their content being amenable to those who would be or would become authorities here on earth. Revelation is a great example. It was regarded with skepticism, but people loved it...and it's useful, so it made the cut. The character of christ, as it changes, is often ancillary to some other more important theological position we find, when the change in the character of christ isn't the vehicle for that position itself, ofc.

(as I understand it I'm not blowing your mind with anything you don't know, lol, just carrying on the convo)

As far as finding proof texts for two beliefs..well..that's to be expected, since these stories actually came from communities with different beliefs. Both are clear in those respective beliefs, and I doubt that their originators could have envisioned them being cobbled together into a fraudulent monolith.

[Fireball]

All this deep talk. I just wanted to say that I left it right there in the night stand at the Motel 6.

[Smedders]

Old Testament = right wing. Do as I say or I'll kill you.

New Testament = left wing. Love and happiness and just be nice to everyone, even though we know it'll never work in practice.

People tend to become more right wing as they get older but for the Bible it's the other way around.