to buy my kids a childrens' Bible when I'm an atheist

[clairefromsteps]

My husband and I are both atheists. Not mad, ranting ones; we just don't happen to believe in god. Our village school is excellent and also happens to be a C of E school. Our twins (4) have just started there and while we are atheists we are happy for our children to be taught about god, Jesus etc as we think they should make their own mind up about religion when the time comes.

So, today they came home from school and DS said 'Do you know Mummy? Today we had assembly and Mrs Headteacher said that if you have a baby boy you all have to be killed! Phew, isn't it lucky that 2-month-old-DD2 came out as a girl! Or we'd all be KILLED! They'd KILL us! But it's OK because we could float down a river and escape.' I asked him if they'd had a story about a chap called Moses in assembly and he said that yes, they had.

Bearing in mind my son clearly does not intend to pay attention in assembly, I think it would be a good idea to get a kids' Bible to clear up any misunderstandings with. You know, a nice illustrated one with all the stories in. Not too hellfire-and-brimstoney. DH, however, thinks it would be hypocritical and got all huffy when I suggested it. I think he's being foolish and that we chose to send our kids to a CofE school and should be prepared to answer/clear up questions that our kids may have.

AIBU?

meteorite I don't think even the most ardent Christians honestly believe that the bible was "recorded by eyewitnesses"

Even if they beleive that these ficticious fables that were written down 300 years after the "events" t he New Testament is written by conetmporaneous sources, the Old Testament can't be - unless Adam and Eve were literate!!

I love the implication that, in a story about a man being made from dust and a woman from rib bone, a talking snake and a tree that tells you you're naked and it's wrong ... the think curry finds really implausible is that the protagonists might have sneaked in some writing lessons with the Knowledge of Good and Evil ...

I ask the question 'did it do me any harm?'... and the answer is NOOOOO! It was at worst amusing, at best it made me question. The middle ground is that the bible contains some bloody good stories... I didn't read Lord of the Rings and wonder if beyond my little hobbit village there was a mountain with a big eye, or wonder if the very tall man who manned the travelling market stall was Gandalf.

Its in the telling. If you tell it as a story, something will be gained. If you tell it as truth, the only thing to be lost is your child's faith in YOU when they read deeper.

Not the whole thing of course "CurrySpice", but certainly some of the events were recorded while those present would have still been alive. And no-one disputed what was written down.

Meteorite how can you be certain that some of the events were recorded while those present were still alive? Any proof of this?

"No-one disputed what was written down"? What's that supposed to mean?

Well, but people did dispute what was written down, quite a lot really.

echt - Paul's letters were obviously written while he, and his correspondans, were alive.

LRD I had 23 seconds to refute 2000 years of Christian teaching.... I had to tackle one thing at a time. I would've got on yo the talking snake next!!!

Of course meteorite it's an entire field of academic debate as to whether any of the bible was written down by contemporaries, and of course many people throughout those 2000 years have refuted the bible

But let's put those massive philosophical and theological debates to one side and ask which of the bible stories you tell your kids are true and which aren't...and how do you explain the difference?

I think you could probably say the Ark is the 'truest', isn't it? Oddly enough. It comes up in virtually every culture's mythology and I think People Wot Know Stuff about geography and so on think there was a real flood.

(I am Christian, btw.)

I find the whole debate about the historical veracity of the bible very interesting

I am a historian btw!

The bible is necessary reading imo if you want to have any understanding on our cultural and political history, women's place in society and most literature.

I'm an atheist and dd will read the bible (when she's old enough to read)

The gospel writers took great care to write down the events of Jesus' life and teaching as accurately as they possibly could. After all, they'd have believed they had the wrath of God to contend with if they changed anything.

Obviously people have questioned the meaning of the Bible over the past 2000 years, but at the time of the four gospels recording the life of Jesus? No-one disputed the recording of history or said "actually those things didn't happen".

As for which parts of the Bible are literally true and which are metaphors - well that's up to you to read as much theology as you see fit, and make your own decision, of course :)

curry - I find it interesting too. Not a historian, but a medievalist (lit mostly) so it kind of comes with the territory.

meteorite - actually, at as early as we have records of people writing about Jesus' life, we also have records of people disagreeing about it and about what should be included in the Bible! In fact, people didn't even agree with writings about Jesus' life should be counted as the Bible for centuries - and different Christian sects still disagree.

*which, not with, in the second-to-last line.

To say that people took care to write stories down as accurately as they could, 300 years after the event, is just a tiny bit different to saying it was written by Jesus's contemporaries!

If I was going to write a history of the English civil war, I would do my best to make it accurate. But that doesn't mean i was there at the time, no matter how earnest I was

And yes, lots of people did, at the time, (and ever since) say that the teachings and writings of Jesus were untrue. The Jews of whom jesus was one, and the Romans are just 2 examples

There are many parts of the childrens bible that will apply to life in general whether you are religious or not

The Good Samaritan - (helping others) is a perfect example

Even if you are atheists, then it should be no different to letting your child read a book of fairy tales.. it will do him no harm at all.

Where do you get "300 years after the event" Curry?

The earliest gospel is said to be Mark, dated between 55 to 70 A.D.

Which "writings of Jesus"?

And yes people have thought his teachings were not something they wanted to follow, but that's different from saying they didn't take place.

Sorry, I'm confused who you're quoting there meteorite? My fault, I'm tired.

People have disputed which was the correct version of events, not just whether or not they believed in Christian tenets. One of teh biggest debates of the first millenium was, what's the true version of events and which of all these miscellaneous writings we have should we consider to be qualitatively different (Holy Scripture) from teh rest (Holy Tradition and/or apocrypha).

Oh, it's ok, seen the first bit. I swear I read this page about 5 times!

As LRD said meteorite, many parts if the new testament were only written down and accepted as part of the bible many hundreds of years after the "events"

But even 70 or 80 years is hardly contemporaneous. I was not in the trenches in WWI so any history I write of that war would be 3rd hand at best.

I am not knocking your beliefs. I am (speaking as a historian) disputing your assertion that the bible us a contemporaneous historical source material.

Reading the bible, thoroughly and several times, helped me to become an atheist.

My kids have a number of bible stories, plus a nice illustrated copy (the Lion Children's Bible.)

I frame it as a story, no different than any other. A knowledge of it, especially the King James, is as important as a knowledge of Shakespeare in terms of learning about literature. And if my children become atheist (DD is a bit woo ATM, aged 8) it will help them to know their enemy!

So do you dispute the conclusions they reached LRD? Do you think the historians and scholars of the day got it wrong and different writings should have been included in the Bible?

Curry, Jesus died at the age of 33, so AD55 would be 22 years after his death. The writers of the gospels would have interviewed eyewitnesses. Some other books such as Acts were written by people describing events they witnessed themselves.

Retiring from this thread now as it's getting rather off topic - sorry OP!

meteorite - interesting question. I'd say for starters that there's no 'conclusions' really: there is not complete consensus today between different Christians about what books are in the Bible.

And I think that, before about the fifteenth/sixteenth/seventeenth centuries, people had very different ideas about why they wanted to include something in the Bible, and what the Bible was for, and what writing 'history' was all about. IMO it is a modern, Protestant idea that the people who wrote the gospels and the people who chose the gospels were primarily concerned with recording 'what really happened'.

Even if you believe Mark's gospel was written at the earliest limit, it's pushing it to say all the gospels were written by writers who interviewed eyewitnesses (not that eyewitnesses are terribly reliable). But I think in any case, thinking that the most important thing about the Bible was its accuracy as a record of real life, is anachronistic.

I think this is relevant to the OP - though, um, not immediately relevant to her children teh age they are now, I guess! - because we learn about a different kind of purpose for stories through reading myths or parables or fairytales. We learn that there isn't just a choice between 'truth' and 'lies', there's also a 'story', which we don't have to believe exactly, but which has a logic of its own (eg., we know the brave hero must slay the dragon) that is satisfying.

(That is, in my opinion, which sounds more than usually pompous, reading it back, and probably shows I should be in bed not faffing around on MN and pretending I'm still working.)

Definately YANBU. It's part of your children's cultural history. The poet Andrew Motion, also not religious, made some very intelligent comments a while ago to this effect, ie, lots of children cannot understand much poetry written before 1900 because they don't recognise the metaphors, allusions etc from Scripture.

There are, however, plenty of stories that I don't tell my children, although I know lots well enough to tell them from my memory.

Also, what LRDtheFeministDragon said. The belief that Scripture is "inerrant" or literally true is a very recent idea, although it's fair to say that in mediaeval times, most people would have believed, for example, that books like Judges, 1 & 2 Kings and so on were accurate records of the history of the Jews and the Jewish kingdoms.

Offtopic NB: it is unfortunate that just as extremist Islam is funded by petrodollars, so hardline inerrantist seem to have limitless reserves of American dollars. It is not just people outside the church who are getting a hard time because of this.