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The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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Gnostic Bishop
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The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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The Bible. Myth or Reality?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAEpc1zhcuo

As a Gnostic Christian I see literal reading of the Bible as a gross distortion of what the Bible was written to do. That being to inspire people to seek God and his best laws and rules. Literal readers just become idol worshipers and do not seek God the way Jesus instructed.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Literal reading has created and idol worshiping closed minded people who have settled for an immoral God whom we name as a demiurge as his morals, if literally true, are more satanic than God like.

Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.

What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?

Remember please that if not a book of myths, then real talking serpents are somehow supposed to still exist and believers have to believe in a lot of supernatural phenomenon without any evidence whatsoever. Literalist Christians, it seems to me, have suspended rational judgement that has created in Christians a new Dark Age of thought and an Inquisitional attitude towards all other thinking. They no longer seek God and are true idol worshipers instead of the God seekers that Jesus wanted to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvBxFXQy7-M


Do you think the Bible to be a book of myths or a book trying to show reality and history?

Regards
DL
youkrst

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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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GB wrote:As a Gnostic Christian I see literal reading of the Bible as a gross distortion of what the Bible was written to do.
yes, ant sees it the same way i think, he recently said...
ant wrote:It wasnt uncommon for people of antiquity to write metaphorically. Im not aware of anything in the Bible where a claim is made that scripture is to be interpreted as mechanistic explanations for natural phenomena.
GB wrote:Remember please that if not a book of myths, then real talking serpents are somehow supposed to still exist and believers have to believe in a lot of supernatural phenomenon without any evidence whatsoever.
mythology is the least understood of all subjects in my experience.

it's use of metaphor seems to defy the modern mind so to speak.

so many like to call a spade a spade but mythology speaks a whole 'nother dimension on it..
All that I did
Was call a spade a spade
And I became enemy number one,
Of many a spade.
If calling a spade a spade
Can be termed a betrayal of trust
Then so be it
For it is better to betray the trust of such
Than just be another hypocrite
And become another spade
A spade can dig when it wants to
Dig deep into hearts
As well as the earth
But a spade can never
Ever understand the
Purpose of calling a spade a spade
For it is after all
Only made of cold metal.
i mean mythology is very much poetry really, both use metaphor, allegory and symbolism etc extensively.

bread is not bread, wine is not wine and yet it is, this is not call a spade a spade territory.

but then a spade is hardly the sharpest tool in the shed.

imagine trying to read Finnegans Wake while calling a spade a spade
The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which many critics believe were attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams.
at times i love to call a spade a spade but i also realise at other times that it will not be appropriate.

reminds me of classic Campbell
“Popular religions all over the world, for the most part, are misunderstandings of … poetic images. The chief way to misunderstand an image is to imagine that it is a fact. One says to one’s beloved, “You are a rose,” “You are a swan,” and she says, “Make up your mind.” She’s what I would call a theologian.” (laughter from the audience follows)

The Myths and Masks of God, disk 4, track 1
The chief way to misunderstand an image is to imagine that it is a fact.

you are mistaken Samael (blind god) :lol:
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DB Roy
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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Gnostic Bishop wrote:The Bible. Myth or Reality?

Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.

What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?
It's a good deal worse than that. Today, the academics and intellectuals don't even challenge the lies in public but actually go along with them. Every Easter, the cable educational channels run all these life-of-Jesus specials of which not one will admit there is no evidence that Jesus was historical. Now it's more important that we don't upset people. It's all pop culture and trash culture made-for-mass-consumption idealized histories that are mostly, if not entirely, fictional.
Do you think the Bible to be a book of myths or a book trying to show reality and history?
It's mythology but over the years many priests and revisionists have inserted fictional histories.
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Flann 5
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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DB Roy wrote:Gnostic Bishop wrote:
The Bible. Myth or Reality?

Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.

What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?




It's a good deal worse than that. Today, the academics and intellectuals don't even challenge the lies in public but actually go along with them. Every Easter, the cable educational channels run all these life-of-Jesus specials of which not one will admit there is no evidence that Jesus was historical. Now it's more important that we don't upset people. It's all pop culture and trash culture made-for-mass-consumption idealized histories that are mostly, if not entirely, fictional.
Bishop's claim here is just blatantly false with the pretense that "good academics" support his opinion. The truth is that scholarly opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of an historical Jesus.
As usual Bishop presents a caricature of what he calls "literalist" interpretation despite the fact that it's repeatedly pointed out that so called literalists don't interpret everything literally. No one for instance, thinks the beasts in the book of Revelation are literal and it's simply misrepresentation to set up a distorted opposing view.
What is all this "academically well accepted information" scholars,historians,archaeologists and academics have uncovered and who are these scholars,historians and archaeologists? Evidence please.
D.B. posits conspiracy in academia to let "lies" go publicly unchallenged as if the scholars know better but for some mysterious reason (not to upset people) they bite their tongues.
The reality is that scholars,and historians in these fields overwhelmingly reject the mythicist view based on the evidence.

https://jamesbishopblog.wordpress.com/2 ... y-existed/
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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A parallel with what Flan is saying could be the claim you sometimes see that academic biologists are cowed into ignoring evidence against evolution. The "good evidence" against evolution generated by a few biologists with an ID perspective is dismissed by the mainstream allegedly because they fear the consequences of bucking the party line. So, too, supposedly, do the vast majority of academically trained historians reject evidence against the historical Jesus because they need to conform to orthodoxy.
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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They know it's true, Flann5, just as you know it's true so stop being a dick.
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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let your arguments do the talking.

refrain from personal insults.

Pinkies up folks.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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youkrst wrote:[

The chief way to misunderstand an image is to imagine that it is a fact.

you are mistaken Samael (blind god) :lol:
Nice. Thanks.

A new phrase for me to plagiarise.

The chief way to misunderstand a scripture is to imagine that it contains facts.

Regards
DL
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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DB Roy wrote:
Gnostic Bishop wrote:The Bible. Myth or Reality?

Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.

What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?
It's a good deal worse than that. Today, the academics and intellectuals don't even challenge the lies in public but actually go along with them. Every Easter, the cable educational channels run all these life-of-Jesus specials of which not one will admit there is no evidence that Jesus was historical. Now it's more important that we don't upset people. It's all pop culture and trash culture made-for-mass-consumption idealized histories that are mostly, if not entirely, fictional.
Do you think the Bible to be a book of myths or a book trying to show reality and history?
It's mythology but over the years many priests and revisionists have inserted fictional histories.
You are kind. I say that priests and imams lie constantly. Political correctness is not my forte.

Regards
DL
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Re: The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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Flann 5 wrote:
DB Roy wrote:Gnostic Bishop wrote:
The Bible. Myth or Reality?

Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.

What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?




It's a good deal worse than that. Today, the academics and intellectuals don't even challenge the lies in public but actually go along with them. Every Easter, the cable educational channels run all these life-of-Jesus specials of which not one will admit there is no evidence that Jesus was historical. Now it's more important that we don't upset people. It's all pop culture and trash culture made-for-mass-consumption idealized histories that are mostly, if not entirely, fictional.
Bishop's claim here is just blatantly false with the pretense that "good academics" support his opinion. The truth is that scholarly opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of an historical Jesus.
As usual Bishop presents a caricature of what he calls "literalist" interpretation despite the fact that it's repeatedly pointed out that so called literalists don't interpret everything literally. No one for instance, thinks the beasts in the book of Revelation are literal and it's simply misrepresentation to set up a distorted opposing view.
What is all this "academically well accepted information" scholars,historians,archaeologists and academics have uncovered and who are these scholars,historians and archaeologists? Evidence please.
D.B. posits conspiracy in academia to let "lies" go publicly unchallenged as if the scholars know better but for some mysterious reason (not to upset people) they bite their tongues.
The reality is that scholars,and historians in these fields overwhelmingly reject the mythicist view based on the evidence.

https://jamesbishopblog.wordpress.com/2 ... y-existed/
How can you deny that all those who believe in Jesus do not read scriptures literally?

If you are to believe in Jesus at all then you have to read some of the bible literally and you also need to believe in miracles. IOW, you have to go into intellectual dissonance and dump reason and logic.

I would say that there may well have been some Rabbi called Jesus but that man was a man and not some sacrificial lamb that his own father decided to have killed just to forgive what he could have forgiven without immorally having his son needlessly murdered.

To believe in a Jesus as a part of God then you have to believe that his father is a vile prick.

Regards
DL
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