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Have you read the whole Bible?

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princesscookie19
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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no,and I wouldnt want to-Simply because its all about Sins-Dont do this-dont do that.and a history of people and there lifes and what they followed. Plus its too much infomation for 16yrs... Why????? :roll: :wink:
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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princesscookie19 wrote:no,and I wouldnt want to-Simply because its all about Sins-Dont do this-dont do that.and a history of people and there lifes and what they followed. Plus its too much infomation for 16yrs... Why????? :roll: :wink:
It also teaches you what to do, but you have to read it the way a Gnostic Christian does to get the full value of the scriptures. Read them and all holy books in an esoteric ecumenist way and you just might enlighten yourself.

I keep a bible in the house even though I think this quote quite correct.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Then again, I am a Gnostic Christian and know how to read the filth in it.


Said of Gnostic Christian versus Christian bible reading practices.

“Both read the Bible day and night; but you read black where I read white.”
William Blake.

I would take this further and advise you to read any scriptures from as many POV as is within you. Question everything including yourself.

The bible, if read as a book of wisdom, does have much wisdom though.

You just have to read it the way Gnostics do and revers a lot of the Christian morals.

Christians call evil good while Gnostic Christians call evil, evil.

I E. Gnostic Christians think that bible God, the demiurge to us, is quite immoral for thinking that torturing King David's baby for 6 days before finally killing it is good justice. Gnostic Christians think that evil while Christians think that a good form of justice.

Which group do you think is right?

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DL
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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I found the Gospel of Thomas a handy quick reference to the sayings of Jesus http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html Even better I'd recommend Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings (Seastone) Paperback – January 12, 1999 by Marcus Borg. It really helps to give weight to the theory that Jesus spent his missing years in India. More importantly it gathers some of the most fundamental and iconic wisdom of the Buddha which Jesus borrowed to bring his message of peace and love. I studied Religious Education at an advanced level when I still called myself a Christian and found no time for the brutality of the Old Testament. It has nothing to do with Christianity just a history of Palestine.
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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DavidPugh wrote:I found the Gospel of Thomas a handy quick reference to the sayings of Jesus http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html Even better I'd recommend Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings (Seastone) Paperback – January 12, 1999 by Marcus Borg. It really helps to give weight to the theory that Jesus spent his missing years in India. More importantly it gathers some of the most fundamental and iconic wisdom of the Buddha which Jesus borrowed to bring his message of peace and love. I studied Religious Education at an advanced level when I still called myself a Christian and found no time for the brutality of the Old Testament. It has nothing to do with Christianity just a history of Palestine.
I think the bible lost most of it's usefulness when people started taking that book of myths literally.

Did your advanced level of study have you look at the history of the O.T./Torah to see why Jews ended in with a genocidal son murdering god?

If yes, then you would know that they are not literalist and use midrash to show that.

You would also know that their oral traditions rule their thinking and they put man above god.

That theme might be exemplified when Jesus asked, have ye forgotten that ye are gods?

Let me give you an old O.P. that has a Gnostic speaking on this literal reading issue.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

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

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."
Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02cia ... =PLCBF574D

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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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John 10:34 "Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?"(KJV) This quote fascinated me the most and over the years I've found my own interpretation. When I decided at about the age of twelve that the Old Testament had no relevance to my idea of Christianity, I turned from being a Welsh Baptist to a Wesleyan, as the small church I attended only had copies of the New Testament, the Bible stripped down as I saw it. During my years of religious study I turned my back on Saul of Tarsus, as I saw him as seeking to enhance his own glory, a kind of early Osho heading up the new cult. His letters were so long that they would never have been delivered due to the weight of the things. I decided that the only true Christian doctrine could be only be found in the Gospels, so my Bible became even thinner. The John 10:34 quote perplexed me along with the one quote I held onto from Genesis 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image." (KJV) It began a process of wondering why the god made us and the answer was simple, the god was self-serving and didn't know how to love. Human life is so brief that we spend our short lives in the shadow of loss which makes our feeling of love stronger. Added to that the god is an abstract thing that cannot appreciate what physical love is like, so the god has to be satisfied to feed off the joy that humans are capable of. Jesus knew the value of love and opposed almost all the laws of his so-called Heavenly and Vengeful Father. In short I believe Jesus was an incarnation of the Buddha but living in a time of violent insurrection against Rome his teaching was not appreciated. It's ironic that the Roman Empire would adopt the Bible and use it as a way to control the masses, a tradition that the Abrahamic Churches embrace to this day with their doctrine of delayed gratification.
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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To control the masses means controlling their purse and that is what Christianity is all about.

If you read the older Judaic beliefs, you will find that they had an esoteric shamanistic sect that Jesus likely trained under and that is why the quotes above seem so Buddhist like. I see Jesus as a Gnostic Christian and that is why I chose that label.

You are wise and moral to reject the Christian genocidal son murderer as you god.

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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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I'm fascinated and quite excited to hear about this esoteric shamanistic sect, I shall look further into this. My final break with the fundamental Christianity came in January 2012. The previous year my twenty-seven year career as a comic book artist ended, the years of meeting deadlines were breaking me. I'd been taking more and more time off, taking long periods of time working as a voluntary Computer Arts teacher in Dharamsala, India. Being the home of the Dalai Lama I began learning more of the Buddhist way of life. I had intended to spend more time there in March 2011 but as I'd just lost my last remaining comic strip, I bought a one way ticket and began a search for my true self which continues to this day. The end of 2011 found me in Sikkim, I became caught up in a series of coincidences. After only catching three morning glimpses of Mt. Khangchendzonga and suffering from the cold, I decided to head south sooner than planned. Feeling defeated I went to the computerised train booking office in Gantok to try to get a through ticket from Siliguri to Puri, via Kolkata but the computer went down. I took this as a sign that it was not yet time to give up on Sikkim, so I decided to see what the weather was like in Namchi. When I arrived the next day, it was to glorious sunshine and spectacular views of the Himalayas, a stunning surprise that I should have missed had the Internet been working. Now things get spookier, I climbed Mount Solophok to visit the newly opened Siddhesvara Dham complex with the massive statue of Shiva, who looks to the opposite mountain, where the even larger figure of the Buddhist Padmasambhava looks back at him. I had no idea that this spiritual theme park contained scaled down replicas of India’s most holy temples, including my favourite, the epic Rhameshwaram temple in Tamil Nadu. Each of these scaled down replicas are still considered holy and are attended by their own priest. I entered the Jagannath temple, not realising that it was in Orissa, my next destination and closed to non-Hindus. I knew very little about Jagannath other than he lent his name to the word“juggernaut” after the huge cart, drawn through the street of Puri by 4,000 devotees, once a year. I had no idea what the god looked like and when I entered the holy of holies I was blown away, he looked African. This figure is possibly the earliest interpretation of Vishnu and therefore the possible starting point of all Hindu belief. Combine this with the strong African similarities to the tribal people of Orissa and you realise that not only did humankind originate in Africa but Hinduism could have arisen out of Juju. To cut a very long story short about a week later in Puri and despite being denied entry to the main Jagannath temple, I stumbled upon a small Jagannath beach temple open to all. The young priest hugged me and said he had been told by Jagannath to expect me and led me into the shrine. An intense feeling of happiness filled my entire being, something that no Christian church had ever done. I had a full out of body experience, I was looking down on myself from the temple's pyramid roof. I wanted to remain in this state for the rest of my life and asked Bulu the priest what was expected from me if I were to follow Lord Jagannath. He asked me how I felt, I said, "I feel so happy" I'd only ever experienced this high state of joy twice before, when my children had been born and put in my arms. Bulu smiled at me and said that all that was expected of me was to remain happy. I've returned to Puri several times since then, spending several months there. It was two years later that I learned of the Jesus connection to the town but that can wait for another day, if you'd like to listen. Thank you for the interchange.
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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DavidPugh

Thanks for this.

Look to Jewish cabalist traditions and you will get quite a view of a better way of thinking about gods.

The only god you can ever know is you.

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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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If you're Catholic, you can follow the Daily Roman Missal and after three years get to read almost all of it.

Another option is the Great Adventure Catholic Bible.
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Re: Have you read the whole Bible?

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ralfy wrote:If you're Catholic, you can follow the Daily Roman Missal and after three years get to read almost all of it.

Another option is the Great Adventure Catholic Bible.
Are you reading those as myth or literally and as history?

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