what bothers me about christmas?

[cimorene]

well, among other things...


kairakume: the main thing is that everything in the Bible is the Word. i don't know yet the full extent of what all these caps mean, but i'm sure i'll crawl towards a linear progression of thoughts.
cim thing: it's supposed to mean it's the word of god.
cim thing: it isn't the word of god.
cim thing: it's the writings of old men who were trying to control other people, in many cases power-hungry and in almost all cases misguided, i'd say.
cim thing: if there were a god, i don't find it likely he'd pick a bunch of assholes at that particular time to tell a hugely inconsistent pack of mostly useless stuff to which frequently goes against the laws of all kinds of things including but not limited to physics and common sense.

Comments

I was once told...

[jennaria.livejournal.com]

...that the Bible was (roughly) equal parts history, philosophy, and poetry. I admittedly tend to read it through the prism of my childhood as the daughter of a minister: I grew up knowing the stories of Joseph and Moses and Abraham as well as I did the stories of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. There's beauty there, and hope. For the rest, I read it with the eyes of an English major willing to analyze and take context of its writing into account, and with the eyes of a Classics major who's taken New Testament Greek and knows how badly astray the combination of manuscript tradition and translation can go, even assuming the original writers were transcribing the Word of God.

Re: I was once told...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yes. those three particularly. a large part of the old testament is awfully chilling even as literature, though. and of course, greek wasn't the *original* language--it was aramaic, no? it's been translated, and edited by zealous catholic higher-ups, for a very long time. that accounts for a lot of the confusion, but the messages still, in large part, are attributable to the original text, i believe.