I'm re-reading the Bible

For starters, Leviticus says to kill gays - so the Bible is an abomination. Jesus never spoke up and said "whoa, my dad got it all wrong - we should love gays as equals, and I'm going to start letting them into heaven, because I'm a more loving person than my old man is"......that's because Jesus is a monster.

 

It says ALL of those things. Start with "the circle of the earth". A circle is not a sphere, but it is how the earth appears if you stand at the top of a very high hill or mountain and look around you at the horizon. It's a circle.

The rest is true too and the poster documented it with chapter and verse. Look it up.

 

Nonsense, people have known the world was round since Aristotle's time, "circle of the Earth" is poetic language that doesn't mean "disk". The rest of his post doesn't mean what he wants it to say, and I have looked it up.

 

"The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics(6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle provided evidence for the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds by around 330 BC. Knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on."

"[Augustine] was familiar with the Greek theory of a spherical earth, nevertheless, (following in the footsteps of his fellow North African, Lactantius), he was firmly convinced that the earth was flat, was one of the two biggest bodies in existence and that it lay at the bottom of the universe. Apparently Augustine saw this picture as more useful for scriptural exegesis than the global earth at the centre of an immense universe."

"Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 40, wrote that the Earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall"

"Chinese astronomers, many of them brilliant men by any standards, continued to think in flat-earth terms until the seventeenth century"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

 

I said this before but it seems I must repeat myself. If you put the Bible in the context of the audience and the time and simply state it as culture and history, that is perfectly acceptable.

What is NOT acceptable is people going around promoting the book as coming from a supernatural force thus making it "timeless wisdom" when clearly it is "dated wisdom", and then expect people to be spiritually uplifted when being read instructions on how to treat your slave.

You have not answered my earlier question though: do you feel the magic flowing through you when you hear a list of offerings repeated 12 times?

If Yahweh is all knowing and all powerful, he would not give dated wisdom. Sure, Yahweh (if you believe in Yahweh) can change the way he governs, but His older instructions would then NOT be timeless wisdom.

 

You show a total lack of understanding of Christian ideology.

Works don't get you into heaven, and works don't keep you out of heaven. Being gay does not keep you out of heaven any more than adultery or lying or murder. What keeps a person out of Heaven is not accepting the salvation that Jesus offers.

 

To understand the Bible, it must be read in the context of the times in which it was written - but that's true of all literature. The writers wrote in the context of their day, using examples from their lives and society to express timeless wisdom. The writing is dated, and an understanding of Judaism, ancient history, geography, and even Greek and Hebrew is needed to understand the Bible. The English translations try to encapsulate all that knowledge into the translation, but the simple fact is that it requires some effort to actually read and understand the Bible.

And that's to be expected. Why people think that they can just pick up a book written 2,000+ years ago, in a foreign language, and in a foreign culture, and think they have full understanding is naïve. Even Shakespeare, written just 400 years ago, presents some difficulty in understanding because society and the English language in common use have changed in those intervening 400 years.

And that applies to critics even more. Its easy to read something and apply the modern context to it, and get a completely false interpretation, and then claim the Bible is dated.

 

I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you. It sounds like you have already made up your mind.

 

I need to clarify one thing. Perhaps the Bible is timeless wisdom in the sense that we should know our history and where we have come from and how we have advanced.

But it is not timeless wisdom in the sense that it must be read and meditated on how it applies to our daily lives. And if something is not timeless wisdom in that sense, it certainly is not from a supernatural force.

 

The Bible contains a lot of timeless wisdom. Ecclesiastes and Proverbs contain solid truths and rules of life that even secular people will recognize. The 10 Commandments, the "golden rule", lessons such as the good Samaritan (which has a much deeper lesson, but its missed if a reader does not understand the history of the Jews), are so clearly true and timeless they are embedded in Western civilization. The general lessons of reaping and sowing, doing right, honesty, being of good character, are fundamental biblical lessons.

Pauls letter to Philemon argues against slavery. In all of human history up to that time and for centuries after, slave owning was a normal order of life, human labor was the means of production. To argue that every man should be treated as a brother was a radical and disruptive concept.

The Bible contains a lot of timeless wisdom from a secular perspective, and much more to a nonsecular person.

 

You are right that the Bible contains (key word) timeless wisdom. It's not timeless wisdom as a complete document. Instructions on how to treat a slave as opposed to no slaves allowed is dated wisdom. Instructions on how to build a tabernacle is dated wisdom.

And if the Bible contains dated wisdom, it does NOT come from a supernatural force.

 

It's not a complete document, it's an anthology.

 

1 Cor. 6:9-10 keeps gays out of heaven - that's because God/Jesus hates innocent people (gays.)

 

It also contains a lot of monstrous nonsense, some of which is even included in the 10 commandments: outlawing freedom of speech and religion, celebrating the punishment of someone for the actions of their ancestors for example, both enshrined in the 10 commandments.

 

Read it all, not just one sentence out of an entire message. The entire section is making a point, taking one sentence out of the entire message is like only reading Article 1 of the US Constitution and arguing the federal govt has all legislative power over the states and people.

1 Corinthians 6:11 continues "And that is what some of you were.But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." And even afterwards, people will still fall short and sin, but are still saved. Works are not what decides who is saved and who is not

 

They are actually the 10 principles, each is explained later in the Bible.

The 10 Commandments apply only to people who accept Judaism or Christianity. A person can always walk away from God, even a Jew in the Old Testament times. If you don't like the limits of the 10 Commandments, then walk away, pick another religion. Nobody is forcing it on you.

The punishment of children for the sins of their parents is obvious - parents have an impact on children, the repercussions of that influence can easily impact several generations. If a parent breaks the law and goes to jail, his family is disadvantaged and suffers, and that suffering is likely to flow down to several generations. Parents also teach children, teaching both directly and by example, bad lessons lead to problems for the children.

If a man steals, does God punish the mans children because the man stole? No. Will the children suffer because the man is a thief and of poor character? Yes.

But all of that is not actually relevant because in that commandment, God was specifically addressing idolatry - read the entire commandment:. Idolatry results in a cultural change which is long lasting, the children repeat the sins of the parents, they are punished for their own sins, not their parents sin. And as the Commandment shows, they can always repent of the lessons of their parents, stop the sin they learned from their parents, and then be blessed.

 

Paul was not writing instructions on how to treat a slave, he was writing that a all people are equal in the eyes of God, all are made in the image of God. All Christians in particular should treat each other as a fellow brother in Christ, not as slave and master. Paul was writing that people are equal. Read it.

That conclusion does not follow your assumption. And I disagree with your assumption.

 

How do you know? Who said that? Relevant Bible passages can be taken in different ways.

 

Beware that both of your identified approaches are based on a literal reading of the bible. You seem to have omitted the influences of a spiritual reading for a spiritual meaning.

 

First, you are forgetting the laws of Moses we do not follow today. To take just one; there are better medical treatments today for handling skin diseases and bodily fluid leaking than just putting them in short quarantine. That is DEFINITELY dated wisdom. There are still cases like ebola, but not a blanket policy on all conditions. My skin allergies would make me "unclean" in ancient Hebrew society. And quarantine did little to stop the bubonic plague. Also, the omission on a command to outright ban slavery in the New Testament is tolerance of slavery. By the way, Paul was no hero in my eyes either. He was a misogynist.

And why would the conclusion not follow my "assumption"? If a document contains dated wisdom, it does not come from an all knowing and all powerful supernatural force.

Are you suggesting Yahweh is not all powerful and all knowing? Or are you suggesting that Yahweh is a liar? Because the laws of Moses are not true for us today making it an untruth and/or dated wisdom.

 

Salvation through faith is the main theme of the New testament. All of Romans argues that one thesis. Its in Acts, James, Ephesians, Corinthians, Galatians, and more. Read the Bible.

 

You seem to be expecting the Bible to provide a solution to all earthly conditions, at least a cure to cancer. That's not the purpose of the Bible, it is not a medical cure-all, its a record of the 4,000+ year long discussion between God and humanity. The disease related rules were geared to preserving the God's chosen people as a distinct culture, which require some rules for living in close quarters in those environments. And they are not as dated as you think. Quarantine is still a valid course of action to preserve public health.

You apply modern morals to a situation 2,000 years ago. In the first century, a call for an outright ban on slavery would have been ridiculed and the caller silenced (imprisoned or killed). Throughout almost all of human history, the world was a slave owning world, slavery was accepted as a normal condition of life. The "engine" of those times was human manual labor. To call for an immediate ban on slavery at that time would be as radical and impractical as today calling for an immediate ban on the use of all energy sources.

Your all or nothing attitude is unrealistic even today.

No, very wrong and clear proof you have not read the Bible. Many of Pauls closest friends and co-workers were women, he appointed women as leaders throughout the Church.

For example, Pauls letter to the Romans. He starts by introducing Phoebe (a woman) and asks that the Church in Rome accept her as a saint. Next he greets by name the leaders of the church in Rome, almost half are women, 10 of which he knows personally. The first one he lists is Priscilla, a leader who he works with throughout his career.

Possible Pauls closest friend is Lydia, a business woman who became a leader in the Church, and Paul stayed at her house whenever he was in Phillipi or Thyatira.

God presents knowledge at the level people can understand and implement. If you explain to people of the 1st century how to transplant a heart, not only would they not understand what you are trying to teach, they have no way of performing such a procedure. God explains to the Jews what they can handle at that time, all the while pointing them down the proper road of salvation, culminating in Jesus.

 

I HAVE read the bible, and what you said isn't in there if you don't cherry-pick. You said "What keeps a person out of Heaven is not accepting the salvation that Jesus offers."

Since it is all through Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, I'm sure you can identify a few verses that make your point, right?

 

Easy. Its throughout the New Testament.

Romans presents the argument for salvation through faith alone. Romans is a formal scholarly argument in the form of a scholastic diatribe (a classical Greek structure for presenting a thesis, common at the time in Greek intellectual circles). The thesis is stated in Romans 1:16-17 - salvation (righteousness) through faith. All the rest of Romans argues this thesis or addresses potential counter arguments. 1:18 to 3:20 is the demonstration by antithesis, it argues the thesis from the perspective of the opposite. 3:20-31 is the thesis restated, Chap 4 is demonstration of the thesis, Chap 5 is the exposition of the thesis, Chaps 6-11 addresses anticipated objections to the thesis (such as why did God give the Mosaic Law), 12:1 - 15:13 are practical implications of the thesis, and 15:14 to the end (16:27) is the conclusion.

The major theme of Galatians is salvation through faith. Read all of Galatians but for a sample, Galatians 2:16 "know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified".

Ephesians 2:8 " For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast.

 

The best example from today are the fathers and mothers who abandon their children, placing them at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives and is the biggest single reason for the poverty many think can be solved by throwing money at it.