Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[Ferrocyanide]

It's really not complicated.
God's people are the jewish people. It is their cultural religion.
Every culture developed their own gods, their own creation myth and various stories.
For whatever reason, the jews felt the need to identify themselves as god's chosen people.

"God's people are the Jewish people".......no, that's just an allegory. You have to dig deeper.

Do you really believe that?

It is pretty clear who the chosen people are.
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2 Kings 21:7 KING JAMES VERSION

And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which the LORD said to David, and to Solomon his son In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

^^^^^This doesn't exactly say it but it does give us a hint that jews are the chosen people or a subgroup of the jews are the chosen people.

Then you have this part: Revelation 7
It is about the 12 tribes of Israel. You find the magic number 12 a bunch of times.
12,000 people are going to heaven.

This is where the 144,000 comes from.
12,000 x 12 = 144,000 people.

The text (Revelation 7) is long. I am not going to copy it here.

There is also Revelations 21 which demonstrates who the Bible is for.
Revelation 21 describes the new heaven and the new earth and calls it the New Jerusalem.

There isn’t anything about New Montreal, New New York, New California, New Iceland or any other culture’s city/state/nation.

It also throws in the other nations
Revelation {21:24} And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it
but mostly, the christian religion is jew focused.
Notice how they don’t bother naming other countries.

Deuteronomy 7:1 KING JAMES VERSION
When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; {7:2} And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: {7:3} Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. {7:4} For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. {7:5} But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. {7:6} For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

^^^^^Here, it is describing ethnic cleansing or a genocide.
The jewish god is in favor of wiping out the 1. Hittites, 2. Girgashites, 3. Amorites, 4. Canaanites, 5. Perizzites, 6. Hivites, 7. Jebusites.
It is also descrbing the destruction of the products of those cultures.

Notice the "the LORD thy God".
"thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them"
"shew mercy unto them"
Deuteronomy {7:6} is the icing on the cake.

[Paleophyte]

It's really not complicated.
God's people are the jewish people. It is their cultural religion.
Every culture developed their own gods, their own creation myth and various stories.
For whatever reason, the jews felt the need to identify themselves as god's chosen people.

"God's people are the Jewish people".......no, that's just an allegory. You have to dig deeper.

I agree. Only by digging deeper can we possibly begin to plumb the depths of ignorance and bigotry displayed by its authors. Take this business with epilepsy and demons. Why demons? Did the kid start chucking balls of flaming brimstone? Grow cloven hooves? Open a portal to hell? No, the poor little bugger fell down, started frothing at the mouth, and went rigid. You can only get from there to demons by way of malignant superstition coupled with pathological religious zeal.

Jesus then mumbles some imprecations about everybody in general, casts out the kids demons (Which were never cast in, read the kid's charts dude!), and instantly heals him. Because few things are easier to heal than conditions that only last a few minutes. Until the next seizure of course, but by then you're well out of town. At no point in the story does Jesus have the basic wits to tell the father to Stop leaving your epileptic kid next to fire or water you fucking moron! And when asked why only he could do it Jesus goes holier-than-thou and reveals that it's because his faith is bigger, thicker, and harder. Did you feel the mountains move?

So even according to the Bible, faith is the cure for a problem you don't have.

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I remember the few discussions I have had with OEC (old earth creationists) of how Genesis is an allegory.

The problem with viewing the Bible as allegory is that allegory is based on culture. The Bible was written by several cultures and borrowed from even more. The most recent of those has been extinct for nearly two millennia and largely lost to history. That makes allegorical interpretation just a wee bit tricksy. What you're left with is a mandala.

[Ferrocyanide]

Jesus then mumbles some imprecations about everybody in general, casts out the kids demons (Which were never cast in, read the kid's charts dude!), and instantly heals him. Because few things are easier to heal than conditions that only last a few minutes. Until the next seizure of course, but by then you're well out of town. At no point in the story does Jesus have the basic wits to tell the father to Stop leaving your epileptic kid next to fire or water you fucking moron! And when asked why only he could do it Jesus goes holier-than-thou and reveals that it's because his faith is bigger, thicker, and harder. Did you feel the mountains move?

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I think the real story has been severely distorted.
The NT Bible is trying to claim to be history. But how should a historian evaluate the stories in it?

Was there really a kid and a parent who met Jesus because he had a reputation to heal people? I doubt it.
I doubt it because there are from 30 to 35 “miracles” in the NT and they are all far fetched.
However, what you are proposing is a possibility.

For example, I think it was in a Louis Theroux documentary for the BBC. It was about prophets and gurus. There was a physicist who was following a guru in India. Apparently, there are hundreds of them there.
Louis Theroux asked him (physicist) why he follows that guru. Why does he think that the guru is special.
The guy (physicist) said that the guru can generate matter out of thin air. The guru was in a store once and was going to buy something. The guru pounded his foot on the ground and money appeared under his foot. The guy (physicist) states that he saw that with his own eyes.

^^^^^So yes, there are certain tricks that the prophet might perform to impress the superstitious.

Was there really an old man named Zechariah and an old wife named Elizabeth and they are childless all their lives and the angel Gabriel visited them and said she is going to have a child and they must name him John? (Luke 1:8)
I highly doubt it. It is probably pure fabrication. I have such a person in my family. They make up none sense to add some flavor to their lives.
As long as people listen to them and believe, they continue to make up fake stories. They are not journalists. They are people who love to get attention.

Let’s list the possibilities:
1. The story about the kid with epilepsy is a total fabrication.
2. The story about the kid with epilepsy really happened and Jesus prayed and rubbed his head and said to the kid you’ll be fine and the witnesses chose to believe the kid is healed.
3. Jesus, the kid and the parent planned the entire thing and setup a show for the witnesses.
4. Jesus is satan or god or an ALF and he uses his advanced tech to heal the kid and the witnesses chose to believe the kid is healed.

What’s the historian going to do? Which one is the most likely explanation for the entire series of wild claims in the NT Bible?

I would say that 1 or 2 would work fine on a superstitious population.
I would say 3 is less likely. Look at Luke 1:8.
Luke 1:8 sounds like a #1.
Since there are 30 to 35 miracles in the NT Bible, probably most of them are pure fabrication.

Check this one:

Matthew 4:23 KING JAMES VERSION
And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. {4:24} And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. {4:25} And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.

Would you say the above is a #1, #2, #3, #4?

[The Grand Nudger]

"God and His people" isn't an allegory.  0/10

Blah blah blah blah..honesty...blah blah blah blah reading.  Go fuck yourself.

I can see the Bible is a sensitive subject for you. Was there ever a time in your life, when you read the Bible, and didn't think it was all bullshit?

Sure, right now, and every minute before that.  My turn.  Was there ever a time in your life where you could deliver?

What you appear to be babbling about now is called "cultural appropriation", not "allegory". A dictionary will clear things up for you. It's nothing new. As others have mentioned some society has been busily engaged in the effort for all of recorded history, and the authors of old and new magic book both did it as well. The "People of God" generally turn out to be the ones with enough weapons to pursue their claim and a desire for what some other non-people have. For example, the people making that claim in old magic book didn't go whole hog on it until after they returned from exile, needing leverage to re-secure what they believed was their rightful property - and so invented a legendary history that never occurred, set in the distant past, but described by tactics, equipment, structures, settlements, and beliefs that would not be invented, present, employed or endemic until centuries after the alleged fact as the narrator tells it - and all of it..every word, in the style of their captors narration.

This, btw, is the historical value of magic book that you might hear about from time to time. Not that it accurately describes history as told..but, in such a transparent fabrication, manages to tell us about the history of a much later period for which we had few records in the region owing to the fact that it was a underdeveloped shithole sandwiched between real superpowers who never took notice of them beyond vague descriptions of how many assorted men women and children were taken with and as livestock in passing on their way to battle with each other. Ala, some few thousand prisoners and goats. We're free to imagine what the distribution was because no one gave a shit to count the number of either..and when they did, they generally counted the animals explicitly, rather than the people.

Jesus nuts glommed onto the people of god routine for the same reasons, wishing to be on the right side of a conflict they believed was immanent, and as pretext for conflicts they intended to pursue, thus necessitating a rewrite to let gentiles, mostly roman (well practiced appropriators themselves), in on the action. There are numerous examples of what we call "a romanizing influence" in the pages of magic book which sought to include the new appropriators while simultaneously excluding the old appropriators - setting the stage for christian pogroms that would continue for over a thousand years.

TLDR version, if you wanna bullshit somebody about something, it might help to make sure you've got the right mark. We get tons of nuts who drop in legitimately expecting that the people here will know less about whatever fairy tale they're flogging, and whatever mound of profligate excuses they need to make for their intentional misunderstandings..and I understand the expectation - but it's demonstrably inaccurate...and not just here, but, broadly...all over the world. Turns out the joke about reading magic book s being the best way to atheism rings true..because people who don't believe in fairies tend to be more knowledgeable about those fairies than the people who do - and it just might be the case that the stories are completely unbelievable right on the face of it. What else are allegorists like you saying, in so many other words, after all?

"No, no..you can't read magic book that way. It doesn't mean what it says or say what it means - that would be ridiculous" Well, agreed. It is ridiculous.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

‘I know, O God, that we are the chosen people. But, just once in a while, couldn’t you choose someone else?’ - Tevye

Boru

[Ferrocyanide]

What you appear to be babbling about now is called "cultural appropriation", not "allegory".

Exactly, and that is why I often write jewish god instead of “god” or “God”.
If I want to talk about the general concept of a god, I tend to write “generic god”.

This seems to generate surprise with some people.
It has happened that some people start to claim there were no jews back then.
Some people say that I should not say jewish god because it is the god of all the people. (Nope. The god of all people would be a universal god or generic god)
One guy recently told me that the word “jew” is an english word invented in the 15 th century and that there were no jews in Jesus’s time.

I think 3 people have called me an anti-semite. I explained to them, if I talk about the greek gods, does that make me anti-greek? If I talk about the USA made Ford cars, does that make me an anti-USA-mite?

I think quite a number of christians, muslims, mormons are not aware that they are doing cultural appropriation.
And that is why I call it the jewish god.

This is what one guy wrote to me:

Nefer khnumu Builders Society:
all the stories in the bible originate from african philosophy and etymology.  Jewish language is made from african consonants.  Most Christians have never broken down the etymologies of the names on the bible .   The symbolism in the bible is the only way to decipher the bible ,Quran, torah. African linguistics is the best tool to use  to see what the bibles words actually mean. All abrahamic religions are speaking afro-asiatic languages and all of abrahamic religions cant truly show the origins of any of the words .  In my studies I found that nigeria is the home of most abrahamic, sumerian and Egyptian knowledge.  Nigerian languages are the most ancient languages that hold the understanding and origins of most words we speak now , including in english,spanish and Latin.  Africas development of words span over 300,000 years.  When the philosophy was kept in africa , Africa thrived . But once egyptian started to document africas philosophy on hieroglyphics asiatics could steal it as tomb raiders,  and claim africas knowledge  in the form of the bible, Quran.   For example the first so called biblical king of the jews was saul. Saul is not a name , saul comes from

Saul  became the first King of Israel
Originate=asali(hau)
Asal=origin,source(Somali),
Nature=asili/tabia(swahili)
Isha=source(som)

Asiatics are europeans , jews, arabs , Iranians.

[Paleophyte]

Jesus then mumbles some imprecations about everybody in general, casts out the kids demons (Which were never cast in, read the kid's charts dude!), and instantly heals him. Because few things are easier to heal than conditions that only last a few minutes. Until the next seizure of course, but by then you're well out of town. At no point in the story does Jesus have the basic wits to tell the father to Stop leaving your epileptic kid next to fire or water you fucking moron! And when asked why only he could do it Jesus goes holier-than-thou and reveals that it's because his faith is bigger, thicker, and harder. Did you feel the mountains move?

I think the real story has been severely distorted.

What? Like it originally said "demons" throughout the story but some Greek who actually knew what epilepsy was inserted it to try and give the tale some credence? And then the entire mess of rubbish never saw an editor to fix the bugger up? The pious would never commit such fraud!

One more reason that the Bible isn't allegory. It isn't coherent enough.

[Ahriman]

I think the real story has been severely distorted.

What? Like it originally said "demons" throughout the story but some Greek who actually knew what epilepsy was inserted it to try and give the tale some credence? And then the entire mess of rubbish never saw an editor to fix the bugger up? The pious would never commit such fraud!

One more reason that the Bible isn't allegory. It isn't coherent enough.

Well if it isn't allegory, and it isn't literal, what exactly is it?

[The Grand Nudger]

An establishment legend that sets the scene with a creation myth.

[Ahriman]

An establishment legend that sets the scene with a creation myth.

The scene of the crime, no?