Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[Ferrocyanide]

Correction.  It's a collection of manifestos.  The "Bible" is not a thing.  It is a collection of stories, texts, predictions and other religion ramblings.  No-one "wrote" THE Bible.  And at least as many texts were destroyed as the number that made it into the final edition.  Only those that were "approved", of course.

The Bible wasn't edited for nefarious reasons.

It was written by various humans at various times and eventually, europeans joined the christian sect and they decided to bring together the various texts and they noticed inconsistencies and they had to decide what text to keep, what text to reject.
Probably, they modified some of the original text. For example, there are multiple versions of the Mark version. It looks like some of the manuscripts have survived however, most likely, they destroyed a bunch of them.

I had heard that there is a bunch of scripts call the Jesus infancy Bibles.
There is one book called the Book of Mary, which focuses on the life of Mary.
There is the Book of Jubilee.
There is the Assumption of Moses.


I don't think the Bible was assembled for nefarious reasons either.
They were trying to form a unified singular religion but that never happened.

[Anomalocaris]

that depends on whose definition of “nefarious”. Inquisition didn’t think burning witches at the stake is nefarious because they were attempting to save immortal souls.

whether the editors of the bible consider their purposes nefarious is immaterial. it only matters whether we should consider their intents nefarious.

[The Grand Nudger]

Telling stories..................?

Any more questions about magic book?

Why did God opt to favor the Jews over the Moloch worshipers?

God didn't choose teh jews over the moloch worshippers.  There were no jews to choose at the time.  They were israelites then - I just fucking explained this.  There were no jewish people, there was no distinct jewish faith, before exile. Magic book writes then-contemporary judahite criticism of israelite society into the distant past as an explanation for why god had seemingly abandoned them in the present, and for establishing their kingdoms right to cultural authority in the then-future.

MLK worship was just another word for the race mixing cultural melting pot that the prophets of judah pointed to when opining on how they all probably deserved it anyway. If you want a very easy way to remember magic books genre, and to your comment about whether or not it was edited for nefarious reasons, just think of it like so; It's the history of the us and the civil war, as told by a surviving and resurgent south. The urban centers had been decimated, the goat fucking rednecks in hill-holds had not...and to a god botherer that's a straightforward one-two connection.

[Spongebob]

The Bible wasn't edited for nefarious reasons.

That depends on how you define "nefarious".  The Bible was curated by mostly Romanized Greeks sometime in the 4th century.  There were numerous disagreements on what constituted valid forms of worship and the selected works included only those deemed worthy and banned all others, which were consequently destroyed.  Recovered fragments of religious writings in the form of the Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed as much, although we likely know only a fraction of the truth.  So its clear that the Bible we know today was heavily influenced by men who had reasons to only select certain texts and those included culture, society, power, money, sex...etc.

Further, we also know that later translations purposely emphasized certain aspects of culture with the intention of controlling people to a certain degree.  So, the notion that THE Bible is a wholly unmolested text written only through holy inspiration and carefully handed down through the ages with no tampering is a fantasy.  The fact that much of the effort that goes into developing the Bible we know today (which is still being translated in different ways, btw) with the intent to influence culture and society makes it extremely nefarious.

[polymath257]

Correction.  It's a collection of manifestos.  The "Bible" is not a thing.  It is a collection of stories, texts, predictions and other religion ramblings.  No-one "wrote" THE Bible.  And at least as many texts were destroyed as the number that made it into the final edition.  Only those that were "approved", of course.

The Bible wasn't edited for nefarious reasons.

Is the desire for power nefarious?

[Spongebob]

The Bible wasn't edited for nefarious reasons.

Is the desire for power nefarious?

I consider that a fair question.  I don't believe the desire for power itself to be nefarious, but rather what one intends to do with that power.  Kingdoms, empires and even democracies have all experienced leaders of great power who did horrible things and those who did some pretty great things.  Managing a country cannot be done with out power, so its possible for people to desire power to good reasons.  Its also all too common for people to attain power and fall prey to corruption.

[Angrboda]

The bible was edited to reinforce the power of specific strains of Judaism and justify the exclusion and oppression of others. If that's not nefarious, then it'll do for a stand-in.

[Paleophyte]

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?

Bullshit.

[Spongebob]

If you think about it, the Old Testament consists of Hebrew religious texts that were sort of the Hebrew version of our Constitution. It was their book of laws. So there's an analogy to how our law makers write laws to control society and the way the Hebrews wrote religious texts to do the same thing. And the Christian Church followed that same path, selecting religious texts for the purpose of controlling society.

[vulcanlogician]

"Infallible" is the real problem here. It tends to suggest "can not be questioned"... "is perfect"... "is better than anything you might think."

I have long thought that Christianity would be much less poisonous and evil without the concept of biblical inerrancy. It's a kind of decent religion without all that. But alas....

infallible is not the problems.    that salvation  is needed if you know what’s good for you and there is a christ outside of which is no salvation is the problem.    if you embrace that, accepting infallibility seems like just the sensibly conservative bet regardless of whether on any particular issue there is doubt.

So if christianity were to make christianity appreciably less noxious, it must renounce it’s own necessity by renouncing the necessity of christ.

By "decent religion" I just meant that it is a good collection of symbols. Like Greek Mythology. How many of us have referred to "the fates" or "the muses" to describe various things? Are any of us under the impression that these immortal entities exist? No. That's what full allegorization would entail. To allow us to simply refer to the symbol... "crown of thorns"... "prodigal son" etc. without the baggage of literal belief.

Without literal belief, it's hard for any religion to be noxious at all.