Reading The Bible

[Arne Saknussemm]

I have read it once through and it took several months if I recall(I too like to read),Psalms and Job were my faves in the Old Testament. Psalms for the simple fact that it flowed rather easily and Job because the story fascinated me. Out of the new The Gospel of John and bits of Corinthians were my faves, not because I am a fan of Paul by any means but because of some of the verses regarding agape love. After many years and books later I would recommend you read A Confederacy of Dunces over the Bible, as far as literary value.I will say this the Bible, is much easier to study than the Veda texts, all those gods gets a bit confusing.

So Quinn, is that a different picture of Eugene Debs, or have you decided to take my suggestion and go for the Smith Brothers Cough Drops brother who had no beard and so wasn't allowed to appear on the box?

Psalms and Job are also very good, but to be honest, I don't much care for the earlier psalms. They are too vindictive and whiney for my taste.

Job is a common favorite despite The Lord's answer to Job basically being, "I'm God, I can do whatever I want", but, well, whattaya gonna do?

I have read A Confederacy of Dunces, and love it very much. I really am due for a rereading.

I have also read much of the Vedas and Buddhist sutras, but whereas the Bible takes half a year to read from cover to cover, it is still at least, a single volume. The Hindus and Buddhists could both fill a china cabinet with their scriptures. So when I say, 'much' I really mean something much more modest than that. :shy:

 

[Arne Saknussemm]

The most Bible readin i ever did was in the 7th grade when our home room teecher made us take turns readin a verse to the class each mornin.!!!

I was suckered by the hype into readin "The Satanic Verses" which was much mor readable than the "Bible"... but surly worse than you'r aunts novel.!!!

Yes, I don't know why Salman Rushdie is considered to be so great. I have tried several of his books, and they are all tedious without exception. The Satanic Verses actually goes out of its way to be offensive to Muslims. Rushdie gives seven whores the names of the Prophet Mohammad's wives. Right, like he didn't realize that would offend any one. I think Rushdie was just a literati troll a decade before the term 'troll' was invented. What a dumb ass! A fatwa on him!? He is as they say in the old cowboy flicks, "Not worth the powder, to blow him to hell."

 

[Aqueous Id]

Good and tasteful choices those.

There is only one passage in the New Testament which best crystallizes the message given to Christians, purportedly by Jesus himself. And those are the commandments of Jesus which modify the ones purportedly delivered by Moses--from Matthew 25: take care of people in need, or burn in hell.

For better or worse, the fact is Christianity took the so-called Pauline route rather than the Jacobean (that of James, the brother of Jesus).

That's what was rumored. There is nothing to attest to this. No one knows who the writer of James was. No one knows when he lived or where he lived. Evidently someone wrote it. But so did countless unknown people write countless things that were thrown out. There is no basis for accepting the Epistle of James over the Gospel of Thomas, other than the fact that some ancient committee decided to leave it in and leave the other out. Martin Luther decided to leave James out.

Like all of the salient facts of the Bible, they are either clear inventions, or else rumors or legends, or else possible grains of truth which are forever lost from the annals of history.

The world would be a very different place if it had been otherwise. Perhaps an early brand of communism would have reigned, the church as it is described in Acts where all the brothers and sisters shared all they had with one another, even taking their meals together.

And a welfare state would have existed if people prioritized the word of the New Testament, placing at the top the commandments of Jesus I mentioned above. While churches do some of this, to their credit, they do not as a whole do it in proportion to the way a prioritized list would demand it. What is so shocking is the Christian aversion to welfare as expressed by the Right Wing Christians. Indeed you have a point. Sounds like some serious Bible reading is called for. :bugeye:

So you know James' view, and in one of his letters, Paul goes to Jerusalem to meet James. it would be interesting to know what transpired.

You don't know which James he was referring to. It couldn't have been the brother of a person executed in the Roman attack on Jerusalem, since Paul was born after that, unless this James was perhaps 100 years old, perhaps older.

As for Ecclesiastes, the Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft terms it the the key book of the Bible - it almost comes off as atheistic. It is the book that ask all the hard questions that the rest of the Bible (the keyhole, as he terms it) answers.

People must have often used adages in their daily speech. It's hard to imagine how anyone could gather these together from random oral sources otherwise. And that's what must have happened since no authors claim to have written them. I suppose we could speculate that over time the Church decided to erase the authors' names, in order to stifle the question "who wrote this?" Other than that, it amounts to oral tradition, the same medium for conveying the legend of Jesus told in the Gospels.

 

[wellwisher]

I like Isaiah because his use of language.

Isaiah 61: 1-4 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations, and they will repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.

 

[Arne Saknussemm]

Yes, Isaiah is known as the Shakespeare of Biblical prophets. Do you know that his book is seen as a summary of the entire Bible? The first 38 chapters are about the Old Testament, and from 39 onward they foretell the New Testament - written and well known 700 years before Christ was born. So it is not, as some would suggest that Old Testament prophecies were altered later to fit the Jesus story. Any one familiar with The Old Testament and the painstaking care that generations of rabbis took to preserve them as is can see this.

 

[Magical Realist]

I have a soft place in my heart for various Bible verses. Many inspire me and move me with thoughts of how God really is and how to live my life. I have several of these hung up on my living room wall. Here's just a few:

"I will sweep away everything in all your land," says the LORD. "I will sweep away both people and animals alike. Even the birds of the air and the fish in the sea will die. I will reduce the wicked to heaps of rubble, along with the rest of humanity," says the LORD. "I will crush Judah and Jerusalem with my fist and destroy every last trace of their Baal worship. I will put an end to all the idolatrous priests, so that even the memory of them will disappear. For they go up to their roofs and bow to the sun, moon, and stars. They claim to follow the LORD, but then they worship Molech, too. So now I will destroy them! And I will destroy those who used to worship me but now no longer do. They no longer ask for the LORD's guidance or seek my blessings." (Zephaniah 1:2-6 NLT)

Revelation 19:11
"I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.”

Ecclesiastes 10:19
"A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things."

Psalm 137:8,9: "O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, How blessed will be the one who repays you With the recompense with which you have repaid us. 9How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock."

Ezekiel 20:25-26 "I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; I let them become defiled through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD."

 

[joepistole]

Now, did you understand it?

 

[Jan Ardena]

I'm still working on Genesis. Didn't God lie? He said Eve would die if she ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but she didn't.

No. It meant that as a pure soul (at that time) she would not have withered. ''The wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life''.

jan.

 

[iceaura]

The first 38 chapters are about the Old Testament, and from 39 onward they foretell the New Testament - written and well known 700 years before Christ was born. So it is not, as some would suggest that Old Testament prophecies were altered later to fit the Jesus story.

The more usual comment is that the New Testament accounts have obviously been fitted to the Old Testament prophecies, the occasional awkwardness of physical reality or carelessly incorporated narrative details later found inconvenient being handled via "interpretation".