So I spent the afternoon yesterday reading the New Testament.

[JVS]

Read all of Mark and skipped to Acts because I figured the best way to get bored to death is to read the story of Christ's life (which is very familiar anyway from so many years of Xmas and Easter services) four times in a row. So I went to Acts after Mark.

Interesting piece of info is that Christ considers re-marriage after a divorce to be adultery. Mark 10:11-12

A funny thing happened in Acts ch. 5 where people are selling there posessions and joining the Christian communes bringing along their money. Ananias decided to sell his farm and join the commune, but he and his wife hid some of the money away. When he comes to Peter to join up, Peter somehow knows he's holding out. Peter rebukes Ananias and Ananias falls to the ground and dies. After Peter questions Ananias' wife, she too falls to the ground and dies.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Why in the world aren't the Bible thumpers

insisting that divorce be outlawed because it goes against what is said in the Bible?

[HEyHEY]

3. Cause they can't stand their S/Os

[pocket]

7. they did try to keep it illegal

and now they push things like 'covenant marriage'

[BJ]

2. So how do rich guys get into Heaven?

[JVS]

4. It says that it is as hard as putting a camel through a needle, but...

when asked "then who can be saved?" Christ answers "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God"

Mark 10:25-27
So this really takes the sting out of camel problem because God can handle it. Generally for the rich the same requirement for redemtion applies as for the poor: one is to follow him.

[BJ]

9. hmm...let's see....

Dubya became a Methodist after marrying Laura. I was raised in the Methodist Church tradition(biographical note: personal friends of Tinkers of "Tinker v Des Moines Board of Education" fame.)

Sometime around 1985, perhaps after coming off a particularly bad bender, Dubya declares he is a "born again-Christian."

Sometime in the late-Sixties or early-Seventies I became an atheist.

This works. I go the hell while Dubya goes to heaven.

Funny how this God thing works.

[stopbush]

12. I've read that the "camel" in that verse is a mistranslation.

The original the word actually refers to a thick rope that was used to make ships. The rope was passed through a largish needle-like device; this device was then pushed through the boards used to make the ship with the rope pulled after it.

This translation would certainly make sense to the disciples of the Biblical myths as they were all fishermen and would know the process. More importantly, it changes Jesus' saying from a description of the impossible to the description of something that, while difficult, happens all the time.

Has anyone else ever seen this reading?

[Dan-W]

6. By passing a camel

while sitting on the eye of a needle.

[rogerashton]

5. I have a copy of the Bible authorized by the Dallas Theological Seminary,

and the footnote at that point is interesting -- they make a big point about how communism was right for Christians only at that time, under special circumstances, wouldn't be right now. Of course, being fundamentalists, they NEVER interpret. The literal word of the Bible is infallible, don'cha know.

This question came up at lunch -- at the table were one Jew, one nonpracticing Shiite Muslim, one agnostic hell-raiser, and me. The Jewish guy quoted what he said some Christians had said to him: that the prohibition on divorce was only binding during Jesus' life, since Jesus' death had atoned for all sins. By that reasoning, strikes me, the prohibition on murder would also have applied only while Jesus lived? No accounting for .....

[JVS]

8. The way I understand the verses on divorce in Mark ch 10

Christ is unsupportive of Divorce, but I cannot see that he forbids it. What is heavily and clearly condemned is the idea that any member of a divorced couple would re-marry. So I am not certain that the text would forbid divorce entirely, but possibly only second marriages.

[Bertha Venation]

10. it might be interesting to read both Luke and Acts -- same author. Also,

it might interest you to go ahead and to read all four gospels, even though it is basically the same story. The contradictions are clear -- and astounding. They're especially so when you consider that not only do the fundies reject the possibility of contradictions, but vehemently state -- with an assurance they'd stake their lives on -- "The Bible does not contradict itself!" Well, they'd better be ready to die, because it contains a great many contradictions -- and they are obvious in the gospels.

When I was a fundy, I never saw the contradictions in the Bible. Even when I renounced my fundamentalism, it took me many, many years to see the contradictions, even when they were pointed out to me. Brainwashing is a powerful thing.

[JVS]

11. I'll return to them later.

I don't want to have different gospels going around at the same time. I figure to get back to Matthew after 1st Corinthians and then Get through Ephisians before Luke I can read John before Hebrews

[rogerashton]

13. John is different.

The other three, the synoptic gospels, do tell roughly the same story, though they seem to draw on several different sources. (Mark is believed to be one of the sources). John is much more theological, and Luke/Acts arguably more mystical.