My parochial high school days included boys' religion class.
The instructor was a sixtyish years old priest who was bored and didn't care who knew it.
One of my classmates asked for his interpretation of a Biblical passage.
His answer shaped my view of the Bible and those who thump it.
He caught my classmate in his stare and said, "It says in the Bible that Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked ten miles. Now one interpretation of that is rather straightforward and involves a donkey. However, another interpretation would require a relaxation of the amount of elasticity in Moses' skin."
I've never ran across that particular Bible passage -- but his point was well-taken. The Bible is meant to provide guidelines for Christian behavior. It is not meant to be taken too literally.
Jill
Comments
Amen
Most clerical works come from the hand of man. The hand of God writes on our hearts. According to Buddhist teaching, God resides in all of us. All we have to do is listen.
Most clerical works come from the hand of man.
wrong - they all do.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
What’s so special about the cheese makers?
Every time I hear someone getting all literal about the Bible, that scene from Life of Brian comes into my head. Even people who wrote what they called “history” 2000 years ago were not aiming for literal accuracy.
Think of the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The dialogue certainly never occurred, and Thucydides would have been mystified by anyone who believed otherwise. He inserted the dialogue because he wanted to make a point about the position of minor powers in conflicts between great powers. He cared about that truth; accuracy was irrelevant. The Bible was written in the same type of tradition.
— Emma
The bible should be taken literarily
The bible should be taken literarily, i.e. as literature.
Good literature can give you some insights. Then there is bad literature.
Aren't we all here
To gain "pearls" of wisdom from the written word. I know I am. But I pick and choose what I tend to use.
After having read the Bible through each year for 5 years
I can tell you that is not in the Bible. However, in discussing whether the Bible is to be taken literally one must first determine how much supernatural they are willing to believe in. The question that needs to be asked is, "Could God do things or cause things to happen the fly in the face of natural laws?" I.E. Could he part the Red Sea and make the bottom of that sea dry ground for the Israelis to walk through. Could God sustain Mose on Mt. Sinai for forty days without food or water? Could God bring down the plagues that are reported to have happen in Egypt and leave the descendants of Abraham untouched by them. Could Jesus literally walk on water and make it so that Peter could join him for a stroll on the surface of the lake? Was Jesus' birth really a virgin birth... was he conceived by the Holy Spirit and not by man?
All these things are impossible in the natural... some more than others. If you don't believe that even God could do that then you have to relegate the Bible as a kind of myth and give it no more credence than the stories the Greeks told about their gods.
I, for one, have no problem with believing that God, who set up natural laws, has the power to circumvent them. That means that miracles of all manner can happen at the behest of God. As a Christian, I have to believe that, because if one part of the Bible isn't totally factual, than all parts are questionable and none of it can be trusted.
I've seen too much of God's hand in my life to deny that God has the power to do what ever he pleases in what ever manor he pleases.
I won't preach here, but if anyone would like for me to expound on it, send me a message I'll be glad to answer any question as best I can. I do have resources I can call on if your question is over my head.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
As a Christian
I take exception to your statement of the acid test for Christianity.
I don't believe a lot of what is said in the Bible. For example; I don't believe Adam lived 800 years or Noah lived 950.
I do believe Most things stated in the Nicene Creed. The parts about the church are more than a little shaky.
I believe Paul was an evil man who wrote about five percent of the Bible. That part of the Bible should be mostly ignored.
I believe much of the Old Testament is mythology or inaccurate history. I believe Christ told us that love and compassion are the keys to happiness. He asked us to come to him as children. The warrior Christians came into being nearly three hundred years after his death.
I believe true Christians emulate Christ, who was inclusive and accepting of humans in all forms.
I believe Leviticus Is a joke.
I believe the Book of Tobias is a much more valid part of the Bible that expresses God's will for how we should live our lives. Too bad it didn't make the cut for most Bible thumpers.
Faith is beautiful. However I've witnessed those who wield Faith as a weapon. I watched a paedophile priest ruin lives. My first cousin committed suicide after being raped by our parish priest because the faithful would not believe him when he accused a "holy man" of rape. Another friend did the same taking his own life after being priest raped.. I saw priests build magnificent cathedrals while ignoring the needs of their parishioners. I spent time at a monetary contemplating a monastic life but no longer believe Church is key to Christianity.
I believe in the beatitudes in the sermon on the mount and that whosoever is angry at his brother without cause is in danger of judgment. Isn't Christ telling us to live and let live?
I believe the Bible is much like the Constitution. Men use both in evil ways to gain power and make money.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Bible
The bible is politics. A lot of old testament is social control and politics during a period in history where religion was a serious element of social control. After all, even kings were crowned by God after all. The divine right of kings and such. So it always serves the monarch's purpose to support religious dogma in return.
Using the bible in this way provides an out for people who, when through rational thought, has been shown out and loses an argument but then in desperation points to some arbitrary thing in the bible as a way to bolster their 'position'. In modern times Climate Change deniers have people in their ranks that claim it can't happen as God had made the world 'perfect'.
It is the willful ignorance of humanity that will bring about its downfall. The bible in my opinion is not helping at all.
It is time to trot out the ol' 'The Boxer' quote that was in Maximum Warp.
All Lies and Jests ....
This is something I posted in
This is something I posted in another thread.
I think a lot of zealots like to think everyone but their own little sect is going to burn. They sit there all smug because some half-educated idiot who calls himself a "preacher" or a "parson" is someone who knows the true word of god.
I hate sanctimonious self-satisfied organized religions. Didn't Jesus tell his disciples to give all their possessions away? How rich are all the main Abrahamic based religions? Sheer hypocrisy.
You know that line (Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live), was actually never included in the original Bible.
King James himself, (Who wrote the King James version) was extremely afraid of witches and pagans, and CHANGED the original text to serve his own purposes.
The original line was “Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live.” Which means murderer
In the original Hebrew manuscript, the author used the word m’khashepah to describe the person who should be killed.
This led to a few hundred years of death and torture.
The Catholic faith for hundreds of years burned anyone that did not toe the Catholic line and pay due to Rome. It was run like a mafia protection
racket.
I think religion is a personal thing. You don't need to buy it off an organised religion.
I saw a discovery documentary that explained a lot of the plagues of Egypt with volcanic and seismic activity.
Lower status members of a household would sleep on the roof, the father and oldest son would sleep nearer the floor. If there was Co2 coming from a volcano the ones nearer the ground would suffocate. An adult may survive , but a child would not.
I rivers can contaminated and turn red . Blood-red water attributed to natural causes. When a body of water suddenly turns blood-red, it is often the result of a rare natural phenomenon called an algal bloom or a red tide. An algal bloom occurs when conditions are just right for colonies of algae to grow out of control. In high concentrations, the algae’s pigmentation discolors the water. Algal blooms can happen in fresh water and in salt water.
Some animals would leave the water and you could get a plague of frogs etc.
Before a tidal wave rivers near the sea will run dry as the tide is pulled out toward the huge wave,
Tsunamis can strike thousands of kilometres away where the earthquake is felt only weakly or not at all. Also, in the minutes preceding a tsunami strike, the sea sometimes recedes temporarily from the coast, which was observed on the eastern earthquake rupture zone such as the coastlines of Aceh, Phuket island, and Khao Lak area in Thailand, Penang island of Malaysia, and the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
Perhaps this happed to let Moses cross?
Now I'm not saying God never caused all those things, but..
Leeanna
The King james version
was done under the orders of King James (I/ VI) mainly using a version written by Tyndale who had been executed as a heretic. Again it's based on what people think should be in there and the Old Testament is based on an oral tradition of Jewish history and that was based on Babylonian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Canaanite worship. Remember Yahweh started off as a Canaanite fertility god of agriculture.
Angharad
I heard it was JC who rode his ass to Jerusalem,
tied it up at the gate and walked into the city. The Bible is book of religious fairytales about the Jews, the New Testament is a load of guff written about Jesus some years after he died. Some of it is political and written to counteract the gnostic gospels. The church of Rome was busy wiping out the competition and I suspect threw out the true meaning of Christianity along with the bath water. How they have kept the lies and myths going so long astonishes me and says a lot about the gullibility of people. Worshipping a dead prophet and elevating him to the godhead defies logic and the status of Mohamed is equally questionable, sounds like temporal lobe epilepsy after sitting in a cave for too long. Religion defies critical thinking and suppresseses the masses. It seems religion can take umbrage at my lifestyle, which does no one any harm, but I can't get to speak to god to complain. It's as bad as microsoft or apple.
Angharad