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That's mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.
R crumb, the comics artist, has a fantastic graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate. This made genesis, the most boring and pedantic part of the Bible, more interesting.
The Bible has undoubtedly led to incalculable suffering as a cult, but just as a book, it's nowhere near the worst piece of literature I've ever read.
But then, don't discount the chapter where the twelve Jewish tribes send their gifts to Moses (iirc), and the full account of the lavish gifts is given, per each tribe. I've read through the whole thing to confirm the madness that the list is identical for each tribe, and is repeated twelve times.
I'd like someone in a US church choose that chapter for their Sunday reading of the Bible, and then see the faces of the congregation sitting through it.
Whoever wrote those books, didn't have much consideration for the reader.
I have a long-standing dream of someone just adapting the Bible to the screen exactly as it's written — at least the first parts up to and including Moses' wanderings. I have a feeling that a direct retelling would cause more than a few butts to be hurt.
Pasolini, an atheist and communist, came close in the approach with ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’, but the result is a rather romantic vision of the life of Jesus, perhaps dictated by both the chosen source material and Pasolini's ‘nostalgia for belief’.
A direct retelling wouldn't be allowed to air. Murdering your wife in Christ's name for not cooking you dinner, divinely owning slaves as an entitled Christian, lobster sending you to christian hell; the production wouldn't get very far.
What are you on about?
Whats that?
When did someone murder their wife in Christ's name for not cooking you dinner
Love that you're like "we all know shrimp sends you to christian hell, but wife discipline? Seems farfetched!"
Corinthians, ephesians, most books of the Bible reiterate that women must submit to their husbands:
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands."
And to not submit to their husbands is to go against God.
"But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God."
And guess what happens if your husband asks you for dinner and you say no?
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Eve’s decision to prioritize her own desires over God’s instructions led to disastrous consequence including physical death and eternal obeisance.
"Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you."
"Genesis 2:18-24 “And the lord god said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him"
Christian women are servants to men, and if they defy men, they defy god. Through all of every version of the bible, the Christian punishment for defiance is death.
Why?
"For the wages of sin is death".
Before I address your insane cherry-picking, where did you get the whole "murder your wife in the name of christ for not cooking dinner" from.
your bible is a cherry tree.
I was worried there were too many quotes for you and removed a few, but I'll simplify it further:
Women must obey every desire of their husband, according to the word of god(cooking dinner, for example). Disobeying the word of god is punishable by death.
1, 2.
No, it's not. In fact, verse numbers weren't a thing until a few centuries ago.
I would say that you have done one of the worst jobs of biblical interpretation I have ever seen, but if you, for whatever reason, think that it's just a random assortment of verses, then it's understandable why your take was so bad. So I'll pose and answer two questions.
Who carries out the punishment of death?
What is God's instruction to the husband?
These are questions which are only answerable if you don't use the Bible like it's a cherry tree.
The punishment of death is carried out by God. Who are sinners? The same writing that says "the punishment for sin is death" says "all have sinned". What that means is the reason we die is BECAUSE of sin, so God punishes us with death.
If you kept reading on in what you originally quoted, you would have seen a much greater burden put on the Husband.
Ephesians 5:25
Christ is God. So husbands must somehow try and love their wives with perfect love. This is the same God who keeps forgiving even the worst sins, and died in a horrific manner in order to save them. So husbands are expected to die for their wives. And taking the bullet is the easy bit- you may need to die to your own desires or preferences in order to show love to your wife. Maybe you were saving some money to go to a sports game with your mates, but your wife really wants a nice date. To die to yourself would be to use that money to go on a nice date with your wife.
Sizable chunks of the Old Testament were documentation, rather than formatted with the intent of being engaging. It's like how a family bible often has genealogy hand-written inside it, except it's the contents of the book itself.
That's cool and dandy, but I still think that writing “every tribe brought exact same shit” would work swimmingly.
Not in the USA, but I've heard some pretty interesting sermons on the topic. Generally about prophecies and how the ancient Israelites viewed certain numbers
As a former Christian and current socialist, it makes sense for socialists/communists to have a romantic view of the life of Jesus. It's the one part of my old beliefs that I can't let go of, since it shaped the values that I have now. The values that Jesus preached are often the same values that lead people to socialism/communism.
The begat stuff is Matthew, it's the genealogy of Jesus. This was important within Judaism and also for the prophecy that Jesus was in the line of David, so He was an eligible Messiah.
what's wild to me is the people who swear by it as the answer to all lifes questions and yet...they've never read it.
if i thought and all knowing all powerful being put answers to all lifes questions into a book i'd be reading the shit out of it
HE LIVED FOR 942 ~~DAYS~~ YEARS AND THEN HE DIED.
Edit how incredibly stupid I am saying "days".
Honestly it’s probably just a poor translation/carry-down from what would now be understood as “months”. That makes it 72 years which is entirely reasonable.
942 days is nothing though... 2 and a half years?
Cancer
When I was around 20 and looking for purpose in life, I actually really tried to get into Christianity.
I mean, they seemed to have a light guiding them through life, something that takes away the feeling of senselessness and chaos in the world. I especially loved the idea that "you can never fall deeper than into god's hand".
So I prayed to god to show me the way to him, went to the local church every Sunday, and started reading the bible.
All of it. Cause I obviously wanted to know what I was supposed to believe in. And it completely killed my desire to become a Christian.
The only way to make sense of it, for me, was to interprete the old testament as a collection of the stories that goat herders told each other to make sense of world history, followed by a heavily propagandized history of the Israelite people, legitimizing their claim to Israel after displacing and genociding the people who had lived there before.
The new testament is the story of a wandering preacher who tried to establish an early version of peaceful communism.
But when that became too popular, the Roman state embraced and co-opted the message and turned it into the basis of a hierarchical state church, which later turned into Christianity as we know it today.
Since I read God's book while praying to God and that was the interpretation I was left with, I have to assume, it's the one God agrees with ;)
No no no no. It’s the gays that are responsible. THE GAYS!!!!
That's not even what it says. The Bible doesn't really mention homosexuality too much.
If you can get hold if it, look out for Thomas Jefferson's The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It's the New Testament with all the spirituality, supernatural, etc edited out. Instead you've just got a book about morals and ethics as taught by some guy.
"but Jesus never actually talked about slaves
Yeah, and that's a major fucking problem