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

It infuriates me when people talk about "the lovely bits of the bible" it's a bit like describing someone as an awful paedophile and rapist but he had lots of kittens and looked after his elderly mum so not all bad.

If Christians want to state that the bible is the word of god then all the bad bits don't make the good bits ok.

serenada the difference is that religions are usually trying to force their way of looking - and more to the point, structuring - the world on everyone else. They do so claiming variations on ‘this man in a pointy hat said you’re going to hell if you don’t’ (it is usually a man, too). It is both far more interesting to look at actual history - and ethnography and human geography - to see many different elements put together in hugely varying ways to structure societies, and instructive to see how certain elements are picked out and frozen out of context to use as justification.

@Pepperwort

Yes I do agree with you. Perhaps unfortunately we had to go through that to get where we are now?

What you means s that we have only, relatively recently, got to the point where we can study and research these things independently and distribute the findings through an infrastructure (schools, media, etc).

That has been in the last couple of hundred years but it was religious institutions that funded research to get us to this point (universities in Europe from Papal Bull, Islamic centres of study, Jewish yeshivas).

What I mean, sorry not what you mean.

Ironic that a PP asks if Christians will burn her at the stake for disagreeing. She’s obviously unaware that Christians are the most persecuted religious group on Earth - we have had churches firebombed, Christian converts from Islam have been murdered for apostasy, more of us are killed for our faith than any other.
Yet we live by the two rules Christ gave us - Love God, and love your neighbour. Neighbour meaning all other humans. I don’t see any mention there about burning anyone at stakes?

I agree, OP. Lots of meaning and tools for our lives, even today.

Ironic that a PP asks if Christians will burn her at the stake for disagreeing. She’s obviously unaware that Christians are the most persecuted religious group on Earth

That doesn't mean that Christians haven't historically persecuted people, and still do in some places.

That’s an interesting question Serenada. I don’t believe it had to be so, but it is interesting.

I don’t believe it had to be so because schools, or at least schooling, and libraries existed across the Roman Empire before Christianity, and even in the Ancient world before Rome. Knowledge was being shared and developed without Christianity’s input. Well, you could go way back to the Stone Age for that alone of course! Most obviously the Graeco-Egyptian connection in the Ptolemaic era enabled communities of knowledge to be built. Whether it happened without any spiritual input or inspiration at all I don’t know, and actually putting it like that spiritual inspiration is too wide a term anyway. The Great Library of Alexandria was housed in a religious centre, dedicated to, forgotten the name, think it was Serapis? Egyptian god of knowledge. In Greece and Ionia you had the philosophy movements and links between scholars leading to the big schools including the original Academy itself and the Lyceum. I think we could have kept such structures going Just as well if Christianity hadn’t come on the scene (linked to the destruction of the Great Library, remember).

Obviously the study of history and other study has developed over time. As far as I know, the Islamic Jniversities picked up the torch from the classical world and kept it burning until the Renaissance in the west, which went hand in hand with the reduction of Christianity. Monasteries in the Middle Ages in the west are credited with keeping knowledge going but they also lost and repressed a lot.

I find Dan Le Sac Vs Scoobius Pip's Thou Shalt Always Kill much more useful

Actually they repressed enough - and captured people’s thinking energies for long enough, both - that were now only just beginning to be able to explore what was lost with the death of the ancient world. Their knowledge and science had different emphases in different times, and theirs was a slave economy, but their understanding of physics and geography may have been equal to the later Victorians. Probably I’ve waffled on enough about matters I’m not fully knowledgeable about though! I know if I ever got given a time machine I’d be setting the controls for Alexandria!

@Mattttttt - yep I would say there’s as probably more wisedom in Harry Potter as the Bible -and I think there’s a very good reason for that -the same could probably be said for Blake and Shakespeare for similar reasons 😊.

Usually the mystery traditions (Often associated as a higher level of the basic teachings) hold much more wisedom and truth than basic religious texts. These traditions were often hermetic (as opposed to Hermetic) eg the Jewish Kabbalah, I seem to recall could, historically only be accessed by people who had the basics nailed down and were over 40. It is out of these mystery schools (dating in concept back to Egyptian times) that the esoteric beliefs arose, beliefs that focused much more on wisedom and truth as opposed to the exotericisn of many main stream [parts] of religions. It is the latter, visible and measurable elements of religion that are the most useful for those in power to use to control others. Encouraging esoteric belief systems is potentially the most dangerous.
@serenada it would have been interesting to see any of the other Christian sects becoming the main western interpretation of Christianity rather than the Latin church. Many people don’t realise how wide the Jesus based scriptures largely written at a time contemporary to the canon of the Latin church is and accept the Jesus PR put out by what became the Catholic Church. I can’t fully remember but I think the Ethiopian church inc the book of Enoch in its Old Testament. That this book was excluded from the Latin canon I think is very telling of the desire for earthly leaders to control the belief systems of their subjects. It’s really a combination of a complete And the fit for purpose (ie control) that the Latin church won out in the West.
@Pepperwort I think the position of Islam on some of the areas you identify is perhaps indicative of where it is in the cycle of the religion’s evolution. In pure timing Islam is a few hundred years behind Christianity and some of what we see now is precisely what Christianity witnessed 500-1000 years ago. Religions are like Empires, they rise,exist and fall in similar ways to each other and with depressing predictability in mans efforts to explain life and offer guidance and meaning to it all, only to be replaced by something brighter and shinier at a later date.

Actually there’s another answer - China.

@Whatscrackinmypeppers

Ironic that a PP asks if Christians will burn her at the stake for disagreeing. She’s obviously unaware that Christians are the most persecuted religious group on Earth

That doesn't mean that Christians haven't historically persecuted people, and still do in some places.

Where is this happening now out of interest?

I know it has been the case in the past but often it was to do with the state and politics and life was cheap,

@Lifeisgenerallyfun, certainly those two big centrally-organised religions we’re all familiar with behave like empires. They’re closely linked to the maintenance of power structures, so to that desire to control belief systems. I’ve always had a soft spot for the strands identified as ‘Celtic Christianity’.

@dubiousdecision
It infuriates me when people talk about "the lovely bits of the bible" it's a bit like describing someone as an awful paedophile and rapist but he had lots of kittens and looked after his elderly mum so not all bad

If Christians want to state that the bible is the word of god then all the bad bits don't make the good bits ok

This ^

Seems to me that the cherry pickers have decided to conveniently 'forget' to the passages that have been responsible for the subjugation and degradation of women for centuries. Namely Deuteronomy, Esther, Romans, Genesis, Leviticus.

And OP, it's probably been mentioned already but 'this too shall pass' is not in the bible but 'it shall come to pass' is mentioned many times.

I find it absolutely mystifying and also infuriating that after struggling for first emancipation then equality that some women still laud organised religion as something beneficial to women.

Organised religion and in this case the Bible has been used to justify the oppression, subjugation, abuse and exploitation and of women since it was written.

"Women submit to your husbands". Sleep with someone you're not engaged to or commit adultery? Stoning. St Paul "Keep your silence". Get raped and don't shout loudly enough? Stoning. Paul, New Testament "the natural use of women is to supply men with sex". According to the Bible women are unclean when they menstruate (I suppose we should be grateful that's not a stoning offence too). Timothy "a woman should learn quietness and full submission". Women are property of first their fathers and then their husband's.

I always find it fascinating that in prehistory women were revered, worshipped and celebrated as givers of life, they were literally the creators of life. Then organised religion comes along (Judaism and Christianity) and suddenly women are responsible for men being thrown out of Eden, God is now definitely male and the only people who can talk to him or relay his wishes are, yep you guessed it, men and women are now second class citizens for the next two thousand years.

Not doubt someone will be along to tell me the Bible is actually lovely to women and says they are to be treated like treasures but as someone said earlier basically saying "be nice to your wife" does not negate the violence and abuse of women that the Bible actively instructs and preaches.

@achillesratty

' in prehistory women were revered, worshipped and celebrated as givers of life, they were literally the creators of life. '

That is even more deluded than the Bible. You really can't believe that, surely?

For a large part of the organised early Church, the traditions in the different countries were brought into Catholicism and sanitised slightly. So that any thing of too harsh a nature that impacted adversely on other members of the community was diluted. Similar to how most big religions did it - it was an attempt to show people that everyone was equal and had rights and that it wasn't OK to treat some as lesser.

How it all went so wrong is a different matter - coopted under the Romans and made political I suppose.

@Pepperwort - that’s interesting, what in particular draws you to the various groups we now put under the umbrella of Celtic Christians? Of course it’s difficult to know much of their beliefs but I greatly sympathise with their belief God was everywhere, in trees,
In water, in the flame, in the earth, in the air.

I think it’s so interesting that for many years different interpretations of Christianity were allowed to exist, especially further away from Rome, merging ancient pagan beliefs with those of the Latin church, often varying between geographical locations.

I always find what we now refer to as the Gnostic religions fascinating, how, despite identifying as Christian their belief systems were generally so separate from those of the Latin church it seemed like they only had the word Christ in common, yet they seemed to be tolerated both by the Church and local citizens until the crusades in what is now the Languedoc region of France.

I think it is so telling that the versionS of Christianity which prevailed, inItially with the Catholic Church and thereafter with the various Protestant churches were designed specifically to control through fear, the concept of hell and damnation was pushed well beyond that suggested by the Bible. God became increasing anthropomorphised in art and prayer, any inclination to a more pantheistic concept of god was quickly pushed down in favour of a sentient God who could give and take earthly power, kings were once again on the verge of becoming Pharohs.

I personally really like the concept in the 1st Rosicrucian manefesto that pushed away from these increasingly rigid religious views and idealised the need to take the best of all religions, that religion should evolve and all religions should share their ideas and practices. This, of course was picked up by many of the great European thinkers of the age, with hope of a general reformation. The political leaders weren’t quite so keen of course and continued to prefer the stability of a static, rigid religion with which to exercise control.

Most of the Bible is old stories that have been adjusted to suit a patriarchal culture and disvalue women.

Continuing with what serenada asked and picking up a contemporary theme I suppose I’d have to ask to what extent Christianity helped get rid of slavery. And rather grumpily have to admit that it might have helped. Although, again, whether it was necessary to get shot of it I don’t know - and it wasn’t a universal cure. Technology may be more reliable for that. Morality can be and was and is considered outside religion.

I certainly blame Rome for a lot of things.

Morality can be and was and is considered outside religion.

I don’t doubt that for a second but religious practice is about taking that knowledge about morality from philosophical and abstract consideration and applying it in real, tangible ways that bring it presence in our lives and communities.

Where is this happening now out of interest?

There are still countries like Uganda where gay people are persecuted and woman are denied reproductive rights.

My favourite story is in the Old Testament. The prophet Elisha, not Elijah he had already gone up to Heaven in a chariot of fire , was walking down a road and some children yelled ,"Baldy", at him. He got really cross and got some bears to maul them all to death.

As true today as it was then.

@Lardlizard re love and marriage I love this reading from the book of Ruth

‘Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live there shall I live. Your people will be my people and your god will be my god too. Wherever you die I shall die and there I shall be always beside you. We will be together forever and ever and our love will be the gift of our lives’

For those who like hymns