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The Alter Bible

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Re: The Alter Bible

#51
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prohibition against conducting business on the sabbath might be where this comes from.

Sure but the Sabbath is Saturday not Sunday. And current christian dogma is that the law is no longer required to be kept (Grace). So whatever mainstream christian religions do today in terms of what they "allow or do not allow" is just whatever they decided they wanted to allow or not allow. So these people are not reading the Bible and taking it literally, they are reading the Bible to get ideas on how tell others…

There are many Christian sects that sync their day of rest with the Sabbath. I believe current Eastern Orthodox Christians observe Friday Evening to Saturday Evening as the day of rest and there are, as well, sub-sects in Catholic and Protestant Christianity which follow sabbatarian notions. I grew up near some Methodists which held the Sabbath. Then there's Messianic Judaism which is a whole other level of observation.

> And current christian dogma is that the law is no longer required to be kept (Grace). So whatever mainstream christian religions do today in terms of what they "allow or do not allow" is just whatever they decided they wanted to allow or not allow.

There's some truth to this and there's some over-simplification in this. There's a long, anguished tradition in Christianity with regard to figuring out what was meant by Christ coming to fulfill the law. James the Just, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, was clearly of the opinion that the Law was still valid and must be followed. Paul held that the Law had been superseded, though having been a pious Pharisee he can't help himself from re-introducing 'superseded' things back into the true and moral way for the new Christian community to live. That Pauline Christianity is the norm these days is very much due to the actions of the Romans in 70CE+.

I'd argue that most sects, at least at their outset, are attempting very earnestly to discern the Will as best they can but slight differences in emphasis will have outsize impact over time. Consider that the difference between Lutheranism and Catholicism can convincingly be argued to be rooted in an emphasis on Augustine's notion of the Individual Before God in the former and an emphasis on Augustine's notion of the Church Before God. Look at all the difference in relationship to worship that has blossomed out of that.

> So these people are not reading the Bible and taking it literally, they are reading the Bible to get ideas on how tell others to not do, or do, whatever they approve of or don't approve of.

Some do. Others behave this way because they've never lived outside of sect-specific hegemony, let alone Christian hegemony and it doesn't occur to them that they're enforcing a very specific way of life that should be chosen. Others follow a very ritualized faith and are, at some level, aware that it is only ritual and therefore fear people outside of the ritual. Kierkegaard spent a good chunk of his life thinking about this kind of ritualized worship and its degradation for the faith of a community.

Anyway.

I've read, though I can't for the life of me remember where, that the best thing for Christianity will be the utter destruction of Christendom. I quite agree.

> It is rather...what would Christ say, Pharisaical?

This would likely be Scribe-ish, given the lawyerly behavior. Luke and John tended to paint the Pharisees in a bad light -- amusingly, often, as stand-ins for the Romans -- but Jesus was sympathetic to the devout, even if he was unsparing in his criticism of hypocrisy.

Re: The Alter Bible

#52
post #5

I've always been fascinated by the difficulties of translation. There is the issue of expressing the original thought. Already I've edited this post several times. Then there is the issue of the surrounding context which will be different for different people. Even for people in the same culture at the same time in the same place. Then the issue of the attitude of the reader. It's not uncommon to get different meanin…

I'd prefer a translator that just gave me the words and sentences. As a receiver of that information I can learn to do my own interpretation. Imperfectly and only after some thought and experience, but at least the translator won't be 'in the way' changing the message.

There are two versions of the poem “Ozymandias”[1][2]. They tell the exact same story but in two completely different ways. After reading both, I’m almost certain you will find one more effective than the other. So I hope you reconsider that some ideas are not simply reducible to plain statements.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#Comparison_of_the_t...

[2]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQKUvv3bew (recited)

Re: The Alter Bible

#53
It reminds me of "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0...), which I enjoyed.

He, as an atheist, tries to present it in the raw form, without "explaining the hidden message" or any religious interpretation (neither Jewish nor Christian).

Re: The Alter Bible

#54
post #11

Very interesting, and although I have little to no experience with reading the bible, I have to say that everything Alter is quoted as saying in this article makes obvious sense to me. The difficulties translators have with any text should be a reminder of how painfully inadequate any language is as a mediator between two different brains. So much depends in context. > Perhaps the first person to openly suggest other…

in my experience, the atheists that mocked the unrealism of the scripture did so as a reaction to christian fundamentalists, who interpreted it literally and until recently wielded considerable political power

Re: The Alter Bible

#55
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are. I don't think atheists would have a problem with anyone treating the Bible (or any religious text) as literature, since there would be a lot less religious violence in the event that religious doctrine couldn't be cited as an absolute authority. But,…

Karl Marx, whose ideas have been used to justify so much mayhem, misery, and death - all in the name of 'progress'. I think we do without more of that sort of progress.

So you're advocating abandoning scientific and Enlightenment principles and returning to societies based on superstition and theocratic authoritarianism?

That seems like an odd stance to take given how much mayhem, misery and death religion has caused but to each their own, I guess.

Re: The Alter Bible

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people were burnt alive says more about the people in power than about any text. Certain people in power will always find ways to persecute people that disagree with them. See also, the French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, Mao's Great Leap, and many other sad episodes where nasty people achieved power. There is no motivation in the teachings of Christ to burn people alive. Quite the contrary.

I agree with your first paragraph, but I really, really have to ask you: don't you consider the threat of being burned for all eternity, postulated by Jesus himself as a punishment for not believing not enough motivation?

That would be a motivation to believe yourself, or maybe to altruistically try to convert someone else, not to make the problem worse by getting someone else's burning started early.

Re: The Alter Bible

#57
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there is an argument to be made that a person's beliefs are better represented by their actual behavior under the conditions of life, rather than what they profess about them in hypotheticals. In that perspective, the best way to be an atheist would be to simply act like one.

Atheism is not a thing, it is not a religion nor a political position; it is not a cult where everybody acts the same, thus you cannot "act like an atheist". There are no actions you are required to perform in order to be considered an atheist. You can even go to church every sunday, as many atheists do, and still be an atheist.

You can "act like an atheist" by not making decisions which are based on the presumption that a deity will intervene. Pretty basic stuff here.

Re: The Alter Bible

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years. Last time I checked, there weren't nations willing to go to war and religious orders wiling to persecute and murder people based on the works of Shakespeare, Dante, or Goethe.

What about Hitler or Marx or Engels? It isn't just religious texts that result in wars.

Those texts were treated as religious texts in the regimes that followed them.

Re: The Alter Bible

#59
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karl Marx, whose ideas have been used to justify so much mayhem, misery, and death - all in the name of 'progress'. I think we do without more of that sort of progress.

So you're advocating abandoning scientific and Enlightenment principles and returning to societies based on superstition and theocratic authoritarianism? That seems like an odd stance to take given how much mayhem, misery and death religion has caused but to each their own, I guess.

Societies based on Marxism - are they not based on superstition and theocratic authoritarianism? Marxism is a non-falsifiable theory that appears to explain things, but in reality it's just wrong, as shown by the many experiments conducted to make it work.

Scientific and enlightenment principles got a huge push from the Bible. The Bible makes certain truth claims that make science possible, such as the claim that there is a physical universe that is worth studying in its own right. Many other belief systems emphasize that you can only know the physical through the metaphysical.

Re: The Alter Bible

#60
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer a translator that just gave me the words and sentences. As a receiver of that information I can learn to do my own interpretation. Imperfectly and only after some thought and experience, but at least the translator won't be 'in the way' changing the message.

I am left jumping to the conclusion that you don't speak a second (living) language. There are very often thoughts in one language that can not be directly expressed in another specific language. I have those problems quite often between English and German (meaning the modern versions). Sometimes you need multiple sentences to explain, even in approximate terms, things that need only a single word in the other langua…

Oh yes historical language, that's a deep subject.
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