Why not just rewrite the Bible

[Hugabear]

It's not as if the Bible hasn't gone through extensive rewrites throughout history. Not just minor changes in translation either, but entire books and sections being added and tossed out. What we know as the Bible is nothing close to what existed thousands of years ago, in fact the Bible didn't even exist until a few hundred years after Christ. Until then, there were just a collection of stories that had been handed down from generation to generation. During the Middle Ages, various kings would commission their own Bibles, each reflecting what they wanted. The King James version that is popular with many fundamentalists is one of those.

The precedent is there. If you want to show that Christianity has evolved, then the Bible should evolve as well. Less on the hate, fire and brimstone. More on the 'love thy neighbor'.

Personally I'm not a big fan of religion to begin with. But with the understanding that it's not going away anytime soon, at least bring it into modern times.

And I'm also fully aware that the fundamentalists will cling to their hateful scriptures. Eventually they will die out, hopefully.

[KittyWampus]

1. The Talmud as read with gematria has been fairly consistent, though it evolved from oral tradition

Back before writing was more widespread oral tradition meant committing long, long tracts into memory.

As for the New Testament, those who are interested in unlocking its esoteric secrets learn Latin and Greek and symbolism of the Rosicrucians.

The Inner Meaning of the Bible can't be changed or rewritten, just the exoteric interpretation.

Perhaps a better suggestion would be for people to start investigating the hidden symbolism of the Bible. What it really means in terms of ones own Self and our individual relationship to the Universe.

[freshwest]

2. Kudos on the last paragraph. thanks.

[Scootaloo]

10. Because there is no "hidden symbolism."

The radically different interpretations of these "hidden meanings" reveal that it's just another sort of dogmatic factionalism... but in this case, the bible might as well not even be there, since it's being "creatively interpreted." by the people arguing it. Essentially whatever hidden symbolism they pull out of it could have as easily come out of The Joy of Cooking.

Except Joy of Cooking is eminently more useful in one's daily life.

[KittyWampus]

11. you have no idea what you are talking about. Just as the meaning of H20 is only fully understood

by someone who has studied the elements and atomic theory… same with symbolism and meanings within bible.

[Scootaloo]

12. How about a compromise?

I have no idea what you're talking about

[progressoid]

31. ...

[KittyWampus]

35. That was such a lovely, mature response I want to thank you - even if you were snarking.

[cleanhippie]

15. The "meaning of H2O"...

I have to agree with Scotaloo; what the fuck are you talking about?

[KittyWampus]

36. if you asked someone who learned chemistry and the elements what H2O is they'd say 'water'

because they learned about atoms, atomic theory, electrons, elements and how they combine.

Someone who has not learned this things would simply read H20 as H-2-O.

[cleanhippie]

47. ...and then ask "what does that mean?"

I'm really not sure what your point is with this analogy.

[Bradical79]

50. I know what you're trying to say

But the analogy doesn't work. H2O is simply an agreed upon shorthand for the atomic structure of water. There is one interpretation that everyone agrees upon. It is not the same as finding subjective hidden meanings in writings.

[cleanhippie]

14. Perhaps an even better suggestion would be for people to start investigating reality-based solutions

Instead of faith-based symbolism found in a self-contradictory book of mythology?

[KittyWampus]

41. Studying/working with Metaphysics and Philosophy are valid methods of self-evolution.

We all have world views. And few people ever really bother to self examine.

If you're willing to stretch and learn, you grow.

But I think from your posts you are a scientific materialist so wouldn't be inclined towards such introspection.

[cleanhippie]

48. I love philosophy and thinking about "what if."

Yet at the end of the day, reality-based fact is what is true for all of us.

Wouldn't you agree?

Surely your not suggesting that metaphysical pondering is the equivalent of scientific inquiry as the best way to understand the universe, right?

[LanternWaste]

65. Much like national borders, politics and economics, and host of other imaginary things we base our l

" faith-based symbolism..."

Much like national borders, politics and economics, and host of other imaginary things which exist nowhere but our own minds yet run our lives to an extraordinary degree.

[cleanhippie]

66. Sure, because geo-political boundaries are exactly the same as belief in the supernatural.

[dorkzilla]

26. As soon as someone says "Rosicrucians" I get suspicious...

One of the favorite words of my CT and NWO devotee brother...

[KittyWampus]

40. The Rosicrucian scholars of yore are unrelated to schools today who claim to be Rosicrucians.

They like using the name and supposed link to antiquity for cache.

And people who don't bother investigating and learning about the symbolism see it as alien.

It really is just a symbolic language.

[LeftyMom]

28. I know when looking for insight into ancient religious texts I consult organizations formed in

the mysterious and ancient city of San Jose.

[progressoid]

34. Therein lies the problem. The interpretation.

Christians can't even agree what the 'inner meaning' is. Hence the tens of thousands of different denominations and centuries of bickering and fighting over it.

Instead, how about we stop trying to use the various interpretations of stuff written a couple millennia ago for some people in a desert as a guide book for today's issues.

[KittyWampus]

39. No, actually esoteric Christianity is very much in accord within itself and Judaism, Hinduism

and all religions.

The Truth is like sunlight that colored through which ever colored glass it pours through.

[Blanket Statements]

3. Why not outlaw it. Problem solved

[On the Road]

18. Great Idea There --

problem solved. Great screen name, too.

[valerief]

51. If only!!! nt

[tina tron]

4. Jefferson did

he took out all the magical thinking and miracles.

[LostOne4Ever]

19. This!!!! (nt)

[icymist]

5. A right wing group is doing just that, rewriting the Bible to a more conservative slant...

No, it's not The Onion, either:

Right-Wing Group Seeks Help Rewriting the Bible Because It's Not Conservative Enough
The King James Bible and more recent translations are veritable primers of progressive agitprop, according to the founder of Conservapedia.

December 20, 2013 |

Liberal bias in the media pales in comparison to what you’ll find in your standard-issue Bibles, according to Conservapedia.com, a kind of Wikipedia for the religious right. The King James Bible, not to mention more recent translations like the New International Version (NIV), are veritable primers of progressive agitprop, complains Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia.com. (His mother, Phyllis, is an activist best known for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment.)

But not to worry. Andy Schlafly’s group is on the case, and they have invited you to pitch in. Well, maybe not you, exactly, but the "best of the public,” whose assistance is solicited in proposing new wording for left-leaning Bible verses.

Don’t know Aramaic, Hebrew or ancient Greek? Not a problem. What they are looking for is not exactly egghead scholarship, but a knack for using words they've read in the Wall Street Journal. They have a list of promising candidates on their website— words like capitalism, work ethic, death penalty, anticompetitive, elitism, productivity, privatize, pro-life—all of which are conspicuously missing from those socialist-inspired Bibles we’ve been reading lately.



http://www.alternet.org/belief/right-wing-group-seeks-help-rewriting-bible-because-its-not-conservative-enough

[idwiyo]

6. You gotta be kidding! It's "Divine Truth" (tm) (R)! Every word is sacred!

Including all those lovely parts describing genocide, incest, murder, and all the direct contradictions in descriptions of the same events.

[valerief]

52. Sacred as every sperm.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Hmm, you are forgetting a whole slice of History here

with kings commissioning it. The Christian Bible was, but the Jewish Bible is much older than Christ.

That said the collection of stories were mostly commissioned by a King of Israel. But that is a whole different story. One that I find far more fascinating than the god gave this document to Moses at Mt Sinai.

[Agony]

8. "God said it, that settles it, I believe it."

Who wrote the bible? Why not write it again? Good point!

Agony

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Thanks. I enjoyed that a lot

[TexasTowelie]

9. The LOLCats come to the rescue!

http://lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

[madinmaryland]

23. That's a classic. I think I may order a couple of those for some fundie people I know!!

[Scootaloo]

33. You laugh, but Tacgnol walks among us!

[seattledo]

13. Why says they aren't already?

[randome]

16. I think it has to be ratified by the Elder Gods.

Always a time-consuming process.


[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Scootaloo]

32. No kidding

I mean first, you've got to join the cult, and boy, that can get messy. Especially if you can't quite get the "fhtagn" thing right. Lord help you if you bring a buddy. Then after that, you have to wile away your time screaming gibberish in front of a big rock that could be anything from a timeless menhir, to a crude representation of Ed Asner, all while waiting for the stars to be right.

And man, if that isn't a vague proposition, especially when you're committed to the devotions of beings who transcend time itself. But okay, you catch a lucky break and here they come. Your first task is to not get eaten. You're in a crazy cult, so everyone's going to be pushing everyone else to the front of this line, so, good luck.

But then you've got to figure out what the damned thing is saying, in its unfathomable, indescribable, yet somehow squamous language from beyond the stars. And odds are, if you can understand it, you're not going to be of much use to anyone, anyway.

Oh wait no; I'm thinking of Pentecostalism.

[randome]

62. Or Republicanism.

Nice creative rant! Ed Asner???
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[LostOne4Ever]

17. I want to know why Religious Groups who don't think their book is literal

Don't simply pull a Thomas Jefferson and cut out all the crap.

For instance, why not start by removing the Old Testament and then severely editting the New Testament. Leaving all the crap like Leviticus only invites future bigots to read it and use it to try and justify their hateful ideology. Why give them ammo?

[uriel1972]

24. Can't remove the Old Testament...

It forms the basis for the New Testament by having Jesus fulfil them in some way, shape or form. The gospels are all about Jesus taking the God of the Old Testament from the underserving Jews and giving to the more deserving.

Nasty business, that. Doesn't get much airplay, but that's the way it is.

[stopbush]

27. Actually, Jesus fulfills very little OT prophecy.

Take the virgin birth, for example. There is no mention of a virgin birth in the OT. What there is is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for "young girl" in Isaiah into the Greek word for "virgin" in the Septuagint. The NT writers - using the Septuagint as their source - picked up on the mistranslation and created a virgin birth story around Jesus. And why not? It was claimed that Julius Caesar was born of a virgin, so why not Jesus?

Also, the passage in Isaiah that doesn't talk about the virgin birth isn't even a prophecy. It's a story about a Jewish king.

Also, that same passage says that the child born will be called "Immanuel." Yet, Jesus is never referred to as Immanuel in the NT.

Then there's the whole business in II Kings that describes the Messiah as a military deliverer of the Jews. That's what god promised them. Does god break his promises? So why has he never sent the military deliverer?

[uriel1972]

29. I know that and you know that...

But the very few of those who take the Bible "literally" seem to. As an atheist what parts Jesus does or does not fulfil aren't very important, as I don't believe in the mythical/biblical Jesus, but it is interesting what other people think is in the bible.

[stopbush]

42. We atheists tend to know more about the Bible than do most Xians.

It comes with being prepared for the verbal wars.

[stopbush]

44. Actually, the Gospels are all pretty clear that Jesus was sent for the Jews, not the Gentiles.

That said, the story of Jesus' loathsome treatment of the Canaanite woman with the sick daughter and the parable of the good Samaritan are two examples where Jesus is 1. forced to realize and 2. posits that one can have faith or do the right thing and not be a Jew.

It's Paul's epistles that take Jesus' teachings and extend them to include the Gentiles.

[Nye Bevan]

20. Focus on the Gospels instead of the Old Testament.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you would have done to you. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Be a Good Samaritan. And last but not least, turn water into wine if the booze runs out. All good stuff and with NO condemnation of gays.

[cleanhippie]

30. Focus on reality instead of mythology.

Be good to one another because its the right thing to do, not because one thinks their god told them to seems the better option.

[PassingFair]

38. +1000 nt

[grantcart]

21. The Bible has not been extensively rewritten throughout history.

What is now know as the Old Testament or the Torah was edited together during the Babylonian captivity.

Background on authorship here:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

Background on Babylonian captivity here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_captivity

Prior to that there were different traditions (mostly oral) but it wasn't until they were in metaphysical crises with priestly resources allowed by the Babylonian captives that they were motivated to come to an integrated theme which, not surprisingly, centered on liberation from a previous captivity as one of the central themes. While there were works previous to that time they didn't exist in a canonized form, and therefore cannot be considered early versions of a "Bible".

The formal canonization of the books now considered to be the 'Old Testament' probably happened in the 2nd century BCE.

Similarly the New Testament was written during the metaphysical crises that occurred when two events: the crucifixion of Jesus and the destruction of the temple happened leaving people wondering, "what does this all mean". Both the Old and New Testament were written for contemporaries to answer the pressing questions that they felt at the time.

For the Early Christian Church the conflict eventually centered on questions on the nature of the Christ and two fundamental schools developed: Believers in the Trinity and Gnostics. The canonization process was meant to build a wall around understanding the essential principles of the winning side, the Roman Catholic Church (which has since splintered).

The Scriptures are not intended to be a checklist of policy options and people who pick and choose particular versus to support their position are as silly as those who would quote versus supporting the Bible's endorsement of slavery when the main thrust of the entire story is one that belief in God allows for liberation from enslavement.

BTW Thomas Jefferson edited his own version of the Bible something that I think would shock most of the reactionary followers of Fox who like to fool themselves into believing that the founders were pietistic fundamentalists, which they obviously were not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_bible

[intaglio]

55. ARRRRGHHHH Wikipedia is not a good source for Bible articles

It keeps getting edited and generally takes the most conservative positions because of fundie flame wars.

[grantcart]

56. On the question of bibilical authorship they reflect the widely held peer review

opinion of scholarship that has been widely accepted for decades by generally everyone except the fundamentalists.

[stranger81]

67. That's five out of 66 books of the Bible.

The rest has been revised over and over. The concept of the Trinity, for instance, was added to the New Testament in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, for instance:

http://www.ucg.org/booklet/god-trinity/spurious-reference-trinity-added-1-john-57-8%C2%A0/

Revising the Bible to fit one's own political agenda has been used as a tool for social control for more than a millenium.

[DavidDvorkin]

25. Better yet, let's treat it as an occasionally entertaining collection of myths.

[Marr]

37. I assume you've heard of the Conservative Bible Project?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/conservative-bible-projec_n_310037.html

Christianity is evolving, alright.

[Codeine]

43. Why not just bin the whole thing and move the heck on?

Nobody takes the Myth of Gilgamesh seriously anymore, so why should we believe goofy tales about boats full of animals and talking brushfires?

[stopbush]

46. Amen! Why people refuse to move on from the horror that is the Bible is beyond me.

eom

[Yo_Mama]

45. The Torah existed

That's the Old Testament, in Christian terms.

The New Testament naturally did not come about until after Jesus, and there are two current versions - the Catholic and Protestant.

You can rewrite it if you want to, but it's not going to change the usage of the old versions.

[justabob]

49. there is a group doing just that

Their stated aim is to rewrite the Bible without all that icky liberal stuff.

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

[spin]

53. Interesting thread. It's easy to determine those posters who have read the Bible and studied ...

theology and those who have not.

I'm not fond of the idea of rewriting the Bible to make it politically correct. In my opinion it would be somewhat like rewriting Moby Dick to make it less boring and more understandable and entertaining.

[GeorgeGist]

54. If Moby Dick was rewritten to make it less boring ...

I might finish it.

[spin]

61. I finally finished Moby Dick a couple of years ago. ...

It was definitely a challenge.

It helped that I obtained a version with a good study guide. This is also a good plan for anyone hoping to read the Bible.

[JHB]

57. IMO, a lot of fundy/evangelicals already do that

[MrScorpio]

58. I'm all for doing a Kobayashi Maru solution with the scriptures nt

[tjwash]

59. It is the world's oldest game of telephone

[NaturalHigh]

60. Why not just ignore it if you don't like it?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

63. And, resurrect Mark Twain to do the rewrite.

The bible is a book with some beautiful poetry, a blood stained history, a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of 10,000 lies. Mark Twain

[loyalsister]

64. Why not just keep an open mind about the potential for reasonable interpretations

For example...

"Even atheists acknowledge the divine. Through acts of love and charity the atheist acknowledges God as well, and redeems his own soul, becoming an active participant in the redemption of humanity.”

In a speech that shocked many, the Pope claimed “All religions are true, because they are true in the hearts of all those who believe in them. What other kind of truth is there? In the past, the church has been harsh on those it deemed morally wrong or sinful. Today, we no longer judge. Like a loving father, we never condemn our children. Our church is big enough for heterosexuals and homosexuals, for the pro-life and the pro-choice! For conservatives and liberals, even communists are welcome and have joined us. We all love and worship the same God.”

On the other hand...

"We will consider excommunication for those whose souls willingly dwell in the darkness and evil of intolerance and racism."


http://diversitychronicle.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/pope-francis-condemns-racism-and-declares-that-all-religions-are-true-at-historic-third-vatican-council/

-- As an atheist, I have no problem with someone interpreting my behavior as being in line with a religious understanding of my motivations.

I'm glad to see that the pope is basically on board your idea in spirit.