To think there’s actually so much wisdom in the bible

[Lardlizard]

I can see why it’s so popular
Almost like an early age self help book in some ways
Also hymns

Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard has grossly unfair outcome.

@Piglet89

Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard has grossly unfair outcome.

Don't knock it! When I convert on my death bed, I'll have my hand out for my denarius, don't you worry.

@Pepporwort @Komacho

It is strange as I was raised to be the opposite. To challenge authority when it stops working for humanity, the right injustices, to fight for justice. The Bible is the world as it exists. - with all it’s barbarity. Religions just say there is a different way to behave that can change the outcome of events.

I think it has all become so normalised into our lives that we cannot see what contribution it made So much of what we value is shaped by a belief in the equality of all humans. We need an authority that asserts this.

We need an authority that asserts this.

Speak for yourself.

The Bible in One Year app is brilliant - David Suchet reads it and Nicky Gumbel explains it well.

Some proverbs and parts of it are great, uplifting and sensible. Some of it is not quite so applicable to the current day!

@TulipsInAJug yessss I use it too - so helpful! Most of the time I just read it but sometimes it’s too hard to understand so I listen to David Suchet as I read to help. Plus I love all Pippa’s little additions!!

@LinManWellWellWell I always listen to it as I love David Suchet's voice and expression. Nicky always sounds so positive and hopeful and I love that - I find it uplifting. So thankful for this App which I only starting using a couple of months ago - I hope to make it to the full year.

@TulipsInAJug I'm doing the bible in a year and I hadn't realised it's David Suchet reading it!!

I've found it fascinating. I started because I wanted to learn more about Christianity. But along the way I had no idea how many stories, traditions etc come from the bible. It's Song of Songs at the moment and I had no idea there was such beautiful love poetry in it. The historicity and culture is also fascinating.

I was ready to be incensed by some issues but either I haven't really got to them yet or Nicky Gumbel has explained them away rather surreptitiously!

@flowerycurtain, yes so much of western culture and language is from the Bible - references like the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, Damascan conversion etc.

The Old Testament has some questionable bits, and it's written from a patriarchal culture, however when reading through Kings I was cheered to read about the female prophet Huldah who ruled Judah with wisdom and success. There are female leaders in both the old and new testaments that often get forgotten about.

I was talking to DS(11) about this tonight. He is going to our catchment faith school in September and we are definitely in the cultural Catholic, spiritually agnostic space. But we are a Christian country which observes Christmas and Easter as national holidays, and I was taking to him about Jesus as an historical figure, Christian values (as opposed to doctrine) and the urge of all societies to create religions. As he is 11 he was clearly mainly humouring me by listening as he's a good lad who loves his mum, but as he is fascinated by history I will be revisiting this as some point, I am sure.

theres so many other fiction books available

I agree, my love of Stephen King is also about the supernatural (and I am not woo, though I do respect those who say they have a different experience to my own). It probably hasn't been so influential in shaping our society, however.

I rather like it from a story telling perspective - a lot of ancient religions have a flood story (Noah in the Bible, Gilgamesh in Sumerian, the Greeks had at least 2 epic floods in their mythology, etc). What I find fascinating is that they all have similarities (everyone gets wiped out except for one bloke/family) but the various gods have different reasons for the flooding (Christian god was fed up of people not worshipping him, Sumerian god's didn't like the noise humans made, Greek gods were offended by lack of hospitality). AND... They all have different reasons for saving the survivors (Noah was faithful, Gilgamesh just happened to be out floating around in his boat).

There is a theory that after the ice age there could have been massive floods as the glaciers melted and natural dams/barriers burst inundating vast areas of land with water. These events could have been blamed on the gods and stories of why it happened filtered down into religion.

That's fascinating, and rings very true.

Better Theologians/ History of Science types than me will come along and correct me I am sure, but I recall the idea of the God of the Gaps - if you can't explain it, that was God's doing, basically. Weather events would very much fall into that I guess.

I also think it's interesting that the person who proposed the big bang theory was I think a Belgian priest. You might explain the how, but not the why.

So we want the world and our place in it to make sense, and it's one framework for doing that.

And yes, alternatives exist.

@KeepOnKeepingOnAgainandAgain
I am sorry you don't feel supported by the Christians/church in your community.
Not all Christians lack sympathy or empathy for those of us with different families.

Christians are human - some are lovely, others not so much. But, like all humans we all have a lot to learn about life and its challenges.

For me, the bible tells me a lot about mainly mankind (but women too). We can be better to each other, we can learn from the past (even that far back ).
Yes, it's littered with history - biased probably, but there are some great words in the psalms and parables etc.
I don't get the enemy issue, but then I'm a pacifist.

Take care & try to hold on. Autism is not easy to cope with - for the person or their carers.

@CareBear50

People are so dispariging of the Bible. Imagine if people did the same with the Koran or other revered religious texts. People would be seen as anti Muslim, anti Hindu or whatever. Why are people so anti and disrespectful to the Bible?

@CareBear50 I think it is because we are taught to believe in it at school even though a lot of people don't believe. We are not taught to believe in the quran at school so having an opinion on the quran isn't so forced upon us.

@Lardlizard

Don't cast pearls before swine

One of my favs, learnt that one from someone that not popular in here Jordan Peterson
But it’s so so sensible !

Because he's a vile misogynist and purveyor of pseudoscience. Cherry picking to underline a conclusion he's already reached. Yuk.

@peppereort it’s also interesting to look at the particular interpretation of Christianity that eventually became the official version -ie the Latin church. There were so many Jesus cults in the first few centuries AD. Why, out of so many gospels did the church pick the ones that made up the New Testament (3 of which practically mirror each other) why was the Book of Enoch In particularly excluded from the Old Testament? It then becomes abundantly clear how The Bible is a carefully chosen “best of” collection to enforce a particular social order and political control.

Would society have been so happy to read about the boy child Jesus killing children and blinding his neighbours as told in the infancy gospel of Thomas? Would people have been so interested to hear about an Old Testament God pissed off at his angels doing a runner to shag earthly women breeding giants?

I would suggest the most telling thing about the morals of the Bible is not what was kept in so much as what was left out and why!

Try reading and studying the Qur'an. There is a lot of relationship to science in it. But people don't read it to find out. They only hear 'bad things'

For example. The Qur'an on a fetus and pregnancy. The last line is the verse and the paragraph and explanation.

This is one small example of many! How did an illiterate man make up this up as many people think he did.

Cupidity those three cultures you mention are all from the Eastern Mediterranean: the highly interconnected and communicative Eastern Med and Near East. There have been cultures and worlds before ours and people everywhere talk and spread stories. That was the case in the Bronze Age before it collapsed, later in the Iron Age after a recovery, and through Roman times. Given the stated origins of the Bible, a nomadic family out of one of the great Mesopotamian cities, it is not at all surprising to find retellings of common Sumerian myths in there. There are many common mythic images all the way through. The Messiah myth and the ancient prophecies of World peace can be better understood perhaps once one knows a little of the cycle of empire building in the Near East and surroundings, and the constant conflicts across these lands at the joining of three continents.

@Lifeisgenerallyfun good reminder, I haven’t read all of the Apocrypha still...

My understanding of the Quran is that infidels dishonour it by touching it, and women by merely breathing or looking at it. How much relationship does it have to history? It’s history that’s the true opposite to religion, not science.