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Bible API

bible-api.com

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Re: Bible API

#181

Post by brightball »

sjwright wrote: post #144
brightball wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you believe the entire Bible is false. And that is certainly a choice that anyone has the right to make.

That is disingenuous framing. One does not need to “believe” that the Bible is false, only lack a belief that the Bible is anything other than another book written by humans. Besides, there are hundreds of religions with their own holy books. Why should I take yours any more seriously than the Bibliotheca or Dianetics?

Excellent question. What do you think?

Re: Bible API

#182

Post by TomMarius »

brightball wrote: post #181
sjwright wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is disingenuous framing. One does not need to “believe” that the Bible is false, only lack a belief that the Bible is anything other than another book written by humans. Besides, there are hundreds of religions with their own holy books. Why should I take yours any more seriously than the Bibliotheca or Dianetics?

Excellent question. What do you think?

I think it's comparable to Harry Potter. Actually, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid and Dumbledore set way better example than any person in the bible, while not requiring anyone to believe the world of Hogwarts to be true.

Re: Bible API

#183

Post by smitty1e »

biolurker1 wrote: post #174
smitty1e wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. "Society" is the mental crutch we all use. We are born and are judged as individuals, achieving greatness or ignobility as we do. Don't buy into the corporate piffle.

Said the molecule of water in the sea

Only if you think a three-atom molecule capable of awareness.

Re: Bible API

#184

Post by reshyith »

wcarey wrote: post #106
shampto3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tldr; Why not both? I agree that it's odd that we have atomized the writings in the scriptures. You can find reader's editions if you want to remove the verses structure. However, I don't agree that the verses are "diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures". I believe that there is room for both reading whole books and reading short quotes. For instance, I don't think there's anything wrong with…

So, having read the whole of what you wrote, the reason not to do both is that atomization promotes an epistemology that does grave violence to Christian belief. God's self revelation could have been a math textbook: a collection of independent propositions related by logical necessity. But it's not. His self revelation is a person who has a story and who tells stories. When we atomize the scriptures, we're implicitl…

I would like to reply positively to what it is you are insisting that chapter and verse does to the Holy Scriptures. Your reply is beautiful and it is helping me reflect on how I will be presenting information in a forthcoming book on ancient biblical history.

To the defense of the creator(s) of this web application, I feel that the chapter and verse divisions have been in existence, and problematic, for a very long time.

For certain reference work this is a wonderful tool.

Re: Bible API

#185

Post by reshyith »

wcarey wrote: post #162
cloakandswagger wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The verse structure's practicality as a reference mechanism far outweighs its downsides. It's a bit of a stretch to indict the verse structure for the general decline in Biblical literacy in Christians. It's entirely possible to quote a verse with correct contextual interpretation that conveys its meaning; if we're looking for a culprit for declining Biblical literacy I'd be much more apt to blame loose translations…

What are the upsides? What are the downsides? (And to whom?) Note that I'm not saying the downside is "declining Biblical literacy" - by many metrics I'd imagine that's increasing? I wonder how you'd measure that? And I wonder whether whatever scheme you came up with wouldn't presume some hermeneutic and really just measure the extent to which people buy into that hermeneutic? For example, who is more Biblically lite…

Are you aware of any movements that aim at solving the problem you are referring to?

I am not a chapter and verse person, and almost my entire understanding of the Bible comes through my own remembrances, all paraphrasing now, of what I learned when I was younger.

I often wonder if there's a great many people out there like myself. Seems like there is?

Re: Bible API

#186

Post by TomMarius »

op03 wrote: post #46
TomMarius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't take advice from a book that has caused so much physical and mental pain, ruined lives and families.

Give us a better story then. Or point at one that produces Hope and Faith in you, when you have experienced suffering. All religious text give us story, imagery and ritual. Why? Because they are the tools available to produce Faith. Faith in those suffering, that tomorrow will be a better day. The tools evolve and change. New tools are discovered. Yet with all the tooling and knowledge we still have, producing Faith…

Harry Potter. It sets a great example of friendship and love and teaches faith in better tomorrows - and does a better job at that than the bible. It also does not teach magical bullshit as if it was real and does not tell people how to behave or what is right or wrong.

Re: Bible API

#187

Post by chrismorgan »

wcarey wrote: post #109
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christianity is also man made.

Christians, in particular, would believe Christianity man made. After all, God became incarnate and fully human!

That would depend upon a belief in the doctrine of the trinity, which while mainstream is far from universal. As a Christadelphian I refute the doctrine of the trinity: it simply doesn’t appear in the Bible; it was developed over the course of time in roughly 100–325 AD. (Even apart from that I doubt that trinitarians would go along with your interpretation, but the whole thing of the trinity is confusing and depends upon a peculiar form of logic that is widely called a mystery, so I can’t simulate how they collectively would actually respond.)

Re: Bible API

#188

Post by memling »

jacquesm wrote: post #120
chippy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a theory that much of what we think are universal human values such as morality or justice or democracy comes from the book. Indeed many would support the idea that all utopian movements such as the The French Revolution or Communism have their philosophical roots in the book and Christianity. Humanism and the notion of Progress, could be based on the Christian idea that we are morally autonomous beings and…

I beg to differ. I don't believe in God and see him as a man made concept, but I do believe it is possible to have ethics and morality outside of religion. Proof of this is that there are many cultures, historical and present day that do not share this book or any other and that do possess ethics and morality, besides the obvious counter example of atheists.

> I beg to differ.

I think the point was not that ethics and morality are impossible without religion, at least not exactly. I think the questions were a little different, e.g., where did the ideas come from?

Re: Bible API

#189

Post by chrismorgan »

CivBase wrote: post #32

I find it strange that you have a default translation. I expect the sort of crowd who would most likely use this will also be very particular about which translation is being served.

I think a default does actually make sense: if you don’t provide one, people will start by getting confused, and if they get past that will try to decide which version they should use, and probably go with the KJV as a name that they recognise—but the KJV is simply not a good translation any more, mostly because English has changed and it hasn’t but also by reason of its textual sources. The WEB family¹ is superior in both these regards and not obviously inferior in others, while remaining public domain, so defaulting to it does people a service. (Note that in all this I’m assuming that any default will be English. I think that’s a reasonable assumption because of the shape of both the world and the internet.)

¹ “Familiy” because the WEB also has a British/International spelling edition, not present through this API. If anything I think it would make a better default than the American spelling edition. Matches the spelling used by more of the world, and lines up with the KJV better.

Re: Bible API

#190

Post by josh_fyi »

sb057 wrote: post #122
skissane wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention, the original Mosaic writings have been completely lost to time, having been written in Ugaritic and not Hebrew. Where did you get the bit about the Torah originally being written in Ugaritic? What scholarly sources say that?

I was speaking slightly out-of-hand, but it's the natural conclusion if you take the writings to have been authentically authored by Moses. Religious traditions place him in approximately the middle of the 2nd millenium BC, while secular scholarship, when they assume he even existed, put him in the 13th century BC. There are numerous scholarly sources attesting to the fact that Hebrew only began to exist as a languag…

The earliest parts were written in a early form of Hebrew which existed roughly at the same time as Ugaritic, a closely related language. However, this early Hebrew was not Ugaritic, which had sounds, words, and grammar that was quite distinct from any historical or pre-historical Hebrew.
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