Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
The response I was actually expecting is that USA is a Christian millet, so non-Christian USians need to read their holy book to understand their legislation.
Heh. My experience was not that, in part because I was raised (part of my boyhood) in California, not in the Bible Belt or Oklahoma. In part because my parents were non-militantly non-religious. We did observe Christmas and Easter, but I as a boy would have been utterly astonished by the notion of these being Christian. Christmas was a tree and presents, and a dinner with family. Easter was decorating and finding eggs in the outside lot of one of my aunts and uncle's house, and then a dinner with family. And, the larger point is, in California, nobody pushed religion at you. That would have been deemed terribly impolite and Not Done. I was distantly aware that religion existed, but it had no centrality in public life, because that was (and still is) deemed inappropriate. In 1980, I mentioned during my time as a kibbutz volunteer that my family had observed Christmas in this fashion until 1968 when Dad was killed by the negligence of Boeing Company and his employer Pan American World Airways. One of my fellow kibbutzniks, an Israeli, made a comment about 'you Christians', and I boggled and said 'Excuse me? _Whom_ are you calling a Christian? I don't hate Christians, and some of my best friends are such, but I never said I _was_ one, and haven't been one for a day in my life, thankyouverymuch.' I was obliged to explain that, among other things, we Scandinavians had been celebrating that seasonal occasion since long before Christianity showed up, under the name, Jul, that it is still known by in the Germanic-language Nordic countries such as my father's native Norway. So, Christmas doesn't necessarily imply Christian, dammit. Get it right, my Israeli friend. And never accuse me of membership in a Middle-Eastern death cult again. Because of a historical oddity, I am technically an arguable Christian on account of baptism, even though absolutely not in any real sense: When my parents found they could not conceive children, and arranged adoption of first me and then my sister in infancy from private parties, they found to their great annoyance that a fossil statute of the state of California still required adoptive parents to give their children some bare minimum amount of religious instruction and education. (Christianity was not required.) Mom and Dad therefore sought locally for the least-bothersome option. They found a new social-activism-oriented congregation, that didn't yet even have its own building. (It met at, I believe, a high school's building on weekends.) The main attraction was the minister, a great and good man named Reverand Stephen Peabody. Rev. Peabody met the highest ideals of Christianity by my standards, in that he didn't care what if anything you believed. He just wanted to help make the world a better place, and he and his congregants would be found helping and feeding the poor, doing civil rights actions, and other deeds of good character. My family thus became in theory congregants from 1958 to 1962, and I attended Sunday School there at which I remember colouring books and instructive toys but no religion whatsoever. Many years later, when the elderly Rev. Peabody and his wife retired, they sold everything they owned and moved to rural Bolivia to spend the rest of their lives trying to teach and feed poor rural children and their families. And that was their story.
Personally, I tried to read an English translation, but didn't get past about page ten. That seems to be about par for holy books for me.
The key to reading the Tanakh (the Old Testament) is to prepare to skip great gobs that are just peculiar wastes of time, such as all the begats, and read it in the framing of ancient politics, as if you were reading about the Wars of the Roses. And of course there is obvious and less-obvious mythology lying and pretending to be history, but you can read all that tall-tale gibberish and just think 'This is mythology, less accessible than Edith Hamilton, but also less grim and terse than the Eddas and less alien than Hesiod.' There is some fine writing, such as the tales of King Saul and King David. The history is suspect and sometimes outright fraudulent, e.g., the invasion of Canaan and the 40 years in Sinai and escape from Egypt, none of which happened and are pure literary fantasy. Even the _Iliad_ is better founded in fact. But you don't read it as history. You read it as politics and commentary on the human condition. It helps to adopt the (imperfect) framing used for the Tanakh by Jewish tradition, which divides it (the 'Old Testament') into three parts. (1) Torah (law), the first five books. Of course it's not just the 613 commandments to the Jews from God, but that's the concept applied. (2) Navi'im (prophets). These are the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., social critics of several stages of the (claimed) history, and a meaty source of insight into character and society. (3) Ketuvim (holy writings). This is the grab-bag of Everything Else, stuff like the Book of Esther, a bloody-minded fairy tale set in Persia. For the New Testmament, the main attraction is the four Gospels, which comprise the three 'synoptic' ones, the ones that are in close agreement about the life and teachings of Jesus, and then the outlier, the Gospel of John, from an author who spent way too much time warping his mind on Greek mystery cults and tried to overlay that on a biography of Jesus. Following that, you have many books largely concerned with the annoying and somewhat retrograde street-politician figure Saul of Tarsus (yclept 'Saint Paul'), the guy who inherited leadership of early Christianity when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and Christianity's incumbent (Judiasm-oriented) leadership along with it. Saul transformed Christianty away from Judiasm, intuiting that he needed to broaden its appeal, which paved the way for Emperor Constantine later to use it as a unifying principle for his east-leaning Roman Empire. Saul is also where much of Christianity's misogyny came from (or started and was perpetuated). An Israeli friend called him 'a one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid', which is about the size of it. ISTR that if the book has 'Epistle' (letter) in its title, it's in almost every case Saul writing to somewhere to speak in either a selling-his-religion role or writing to other church functionaries to tell them what to do. (I'm perhaps a bit vague on Saul/Paul's epistles because he struck me as repulsive in his ways of thinking.) And, as with the Tanakh (Old Testament) there is the grab-bag of stuff, some of which will cause you much WTFery, such as the Book of the Revelation of Saint John [of Patmos], which is like a terrible B-movie horror film directed by someone on magic mushrooms. (One theory is that it's mostly political allegory, avoiding using contemporary real names of powerful people so the author would not be killed.)
Shakespeare I had no problem with because it's mostly cross-dressing and fart jokes. The comedies, anyway. The tragedies and histories never interested me much.
They are worthwhile. And all of Shakespeare matters because a huge amount of the vocabulary and expressions of modern English come directly from his words. Seriously.
Wow!! I mean, wow!! 2000 odd years of biblical scholarship, and Rick has all the answers! I meant to respond to the ignorance of Russell, his raving opinions based on ignorance. I applaud Rick for calling Russell on his lack of knowledge, but I question his own OPINION-based conclusions, presented as FACT. Russell, hypocrisy screams from your post. YOU criticise evangelicals, while evangalising your own opinions. While I don't support southern evangelicals, purely because of their ignorant teachings, Christians are INSTRUCTED to evangelise, to spread the Word, so a blanket criticism of "evangelicals", while evangelising your opinion, is simply hypocritical. On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 11:54 AM, Rick Moen via luv-talk < luv-talk@luv.asn.au> wrote:
Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
The response I was actually expecting is that USA is a Christian millet, so non-Christian USians need to read their holy book to understand their legislation.
Heh.
My experience was not that, in part because I was raised (part of my boyhood) in California, not in the Bible Belt or Oklahoma. In part because my parents were non-militantly non-religious. We did observe Christmas and Easter, but I as a boy would have been utterly astonished by the notion of these being Christian.
Christmas was a tree and presents, and a dinner with family. Easter was decorating and finding eggs in the outside lot of one of my aunts and uncle's house, and then a dinner with family.
And, the larger point is, in California, nobody pushed religion at you. That would have been deemed terribly impolite and Not Done. I was distantly aware that religion existed, but it had no centrality in public life, because that was (and still is) deemed inappropriate.
In 1980, I mentioned during my time as a kibbutz volunteer that my family had observed Christmas in this fashion until 1968 when Dad was killed by the negligence of Boeing Company and his employer Pan American World Airways. One of my fellow kibbutzniks, an Israeli, made a comment about 'you Christians', and I boggled and said 'Excuse me? _Whom_ are you calling a Christian? I don't hate Christians, and some of my best friends are such, but I never said I _was_ one, and haven't been one for a day in my life, thankyouverymuch.' I was obliged to explain that, among other things, we Scandinavians had been celebrating that seasonal occasion since long before Christianity showed up, under the name, Jul, that it is still known by in the Germanic-language Nordic countries such as my father's native Norway. So, Christmas doesn't necessarily imply Christian, dammit. Get it right, my Israeli friend. And never accuse me of membership in a Middle-Eastern death cult again.
Because of a historical oddity, I am technically an arguable Christian on account of baptism, even though absolutely not in any real sense: When my parents found they could not conceive children, and arranged adoption of first me and then my sister in infancy from private parties, they found to their great annoyance that a fossil statute of the state of California still required adoptive parents to give their children some bare minimum amount of religious instruction and education. (Christianity was not required.) Mom and Dad therefore sought locally for the least-bothersome option. They found a new social-activism-oriented congregation, that didn't yet even have its own building. (It met at, I believe, a high school's building on weekends.) The main attraction was the minister, a great and good man named Reverand Stephen Peabody. Rev. Peabody met the highest ideals of Christianity by my standards, in that he didn't care what if anything you believed. He just wanted to help make the world a better place, and he and his congregants would be found helping and feeding the poor, doing civil rights actions, and other deeds of good character. My family thus became in theory congregants from 1958 to 1962, and I attended Sunday School there at which I remember colouring books and instructive toys but no religion whatsoever.
Many years later, when the elderly Rev. Peabody and his wife retired, they sold everything they owned and moved to rural Bolivia to spend the rest of their lives trying to teach and feed poor rural children and their families. And that was their story.
Personally, I tried to read an English translation, but didn't get past about page ten. That seems to be about par for holy books for me.
The key to reading the Tanakh (the Old Testament) is to prepare to skip great gobs that are just peculiar wastes of time, such as all the begats, and read it in the framing of ancient politics, as if you were reading about the Wars of the Roses. And of course there is obvious and less-obvious mythology lying and pretending to be history, but you can read all that tall-tale gibberish and just think 'This is mythology, less accessible than Edith Hamilton, but also less grim and terse than the Eddas and less alien than Hesiod.' There is some fine writing, such as the tales of King Saul and King David. The history is suspect and sometimes outright fraudulent, e.g., the invasion of Canaan and the 40 years in Sinai and escape from Egypt, none of which happened and are pure literary fantasy. Even the _Iliad_ is better founded in fact.
But you don't read it as history. You read it as politics and commentary on the human condition.
It helps to adopt the (imperfect) framing used for the Tanakh by Jewish tradition, which divides it (the 'Old Testament') into three parts. (1) Torah (law), the first five books. Of course it's not just the 613 commandments to the Jews from God, but that's the concept applied. (2) Navi'im (prophets). These are the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., social critics of several stages of the (claimed) history, and a meaty source of insight into character and society. (3) Ketuvim (holy writings). This is the grab-bag of Everything Else, stuff like the Book of Esther, a bloody-minded fairy tale set in Persia.
For the New Testmament, the main attraction is the four Gospels, which comprise the three 'synoptic' ones, the ones that are in close agreement about the life and teachings of Jesus, and then the outlier, the Gospel of John, from an author who spent way too much time warping his mind on Greek mystery cults and tried to overlay that on a biography of Jesus.
Following that, you have many books largely concerned with the annoying and somewhat retrograde street-politician figure Saul of Tarsus (yclept 'Saint Paul'), the guy who inherited leadership of early Christianity when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and Christianity's incumbent (Judiasm-oriented) leadership along with it. Saul transformed Christianty away from Judiasm, intuiting that he needed to broaden its appeal, which paved the way for Emperor Constantine later to use it as a unifying principle for his east-leaning Roman Empire. Saul is also where much of Christianity's misogyny came from (or started and was perpetuated). An Israeli friend called him 'a one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid', which is about the size of it. ISTR that if the book has 'Epistle' (letter) in its title, it's in almost every case Saul writing to somewhere to speak in either a selling-his-religion role or writing to other church functionaries to tell them what to do. (I'm perhaps a bit vague on Saul/Paul's epistles because he struck me as repulsive in his ways of thinking.)
And, as with the Tanakh (Old Testament) there is the grab-bag of stuff, some of which will cause you much WTFery, such as the Book of the Revelation of Saint John [of Patmos], which is like a terrible B-movie horror film directed by someone on magic mushrooms. (One theory is that it's mostly political allegory, avoiding using contemporary real names of powerful people so the author would not be killed.)
Shakespeare I had no problem with because it's mostly cross-dressing and fart jokes. The comedies, anyway. The tragedies and histories never interested me much.
They are worthwhile. And all of Shakespeare matters because a huge amount of the vocabulary and expressions of modern English come directly from his words. Seriously.
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On Thursday, 15 March 2018 12:32:18 PM AEDT Michael Scott via luv-talk wrote:
I meant to respond to the ignorance of Russell, his raving opinions based on ignorance. I applaud Rick for calling Russell on his lack of knowledge, but I question his own OPINION-based conclusions, presented as FACT.
Russell, hypocrisy screams from your post. YOU criticise evangelicals, while evangalising your own opinions. While I don't support southern evangelicals, purely because of their ignorant teachings, Christians are INSTRUCTED to evangelise, to spread the Word, so a blanket criticism of "evangelicals", while evangelising your opinion, is simply hypocritical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism Being an "evangelical" is not about evangelism of opinions. There are people who identify as "evangelical" who don't evangelise and there are people who evangelise other religions. I don't criticise evangelical Christians for evangelising their religion, they generally aren't as annoying about it as Mormons. I criticise them for what you describe as "ignorant teachings". Go ahead and evangelise the teachings of Jesus regarding healing the sick, feeding the hungry, etc. I'll applaud you for it. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Quoting Michael Scott (luv@inoz.net):
Wow!! I mean, wow!!
2000 odd years of biblical scholarship, and Rick has all the answers!
I meant to respond to the ignorance of Russell, his raving opinions based on ignorance. I applaud Rick for calling Russell on his lack of knowledge, but I question his own OPINION-based conclusions, presented as FACT.
I actually do _not_ acknowledge any obligation to bow and scrape with frequently inserted disclaimers to the effect that 'THis is just the best present understanding of a non-Christian, Californian, English-speaking, non-koine-Greek-speaking, barely Hebrew-literate, heathen who happens to have read the Bible as a necessary part of a well-rounded Western education, and has views that he believes are reaasonably well founded but other people doubtless will differ. As you would seem to imply otherwise, sod off. ;-> If your point is that not everyone agrees on basic tenets of religion, and question what other people consider established fact, then, gosh, Michael, I am shocked! Shocked! At gambling in this casino.</Casablanca> I mean, really? You have an opinion on religion and therefore think the entire world should not accept _my_ view? How long did it take you to arrive at this earth-shaking epiphany, sir?
Russell, hypocrisy screams from your post. YOU criticise evangelicals, while evangalising your own opinions.
While I'm at it, Trent cited something out of Wikipedia saying that about 25% of Americans self-identify as 'evangelical', or something like that. What I wanted to add is that, if you'll pardon the metaphor, the devil's in the details. The term 'evangelical' means diferent things to different people. Strictly speaking, the root word 'evangelise', from the Greek 'euangelizesthai', just means seeking to persuade others to adopt a view of religion, to be a salesman for it. _Some_ people who so self-designate doubtless are like the Southern Baptists described in the article and hold views antithetical to social-mission-oriented normal Christianity, but whether that is the same as the 25% claimed at Trent's link is a different question. Trent's point that you cannot extrapolate from 25% of the American people to determine what a 'majority of Americans' think and do is, however, nonetheless key, and I greatly applaud and share his point.
While I don't support southern evangelicals, purely because of their ignorant teachings, Christians are INSTRUCTED to evangelise, to spread the Word, so a blanket criticism of "evangelicals", while evangelising your opinion, is simply hypocritical.
So, basically, you're an evangelical, non-Southern-USA-psychotic subtype, who doesn't like mean things being said about evangelicalism (which you somehow conflate with evangelism, which of course is NOT the same thing), because you might somehow feel slighted. Why am I not surprised?
So, basically, you're an evangelical, non-Southern-USA-psychotic subtype, who doesn't like mean things being said about evangelicalism (which you somehow conflate with evangelism, which of course is NOT the same thing), because you might somehow feel slighted. Why am I not surprised?
So you've decided who I am, what I am, from that very short response to you? No, I wouldn't call myself "evangelical". I simply took you to task on YOUR opinions of the Bible, and Russell on his conclusions from the article. Up until your summary of the Bible I applauded you (mostly), but as I said, you seemed to have all the answers, just as Russel seemed to have a great knowledge of Christianity, rom his childhood. I, too, applaud Trent, in his taking Russell to task on his conclusions from the article..
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Michael Scott via luv-talk wrote:
[…] Russell seemed to have a great knowledge of Christianity, from his childhood.
Note that Christianity is practiced differently by different communities, so e.g. growing up in Nagorno does not automatically make you qualified to talk about Axumite Christians.
On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:44 PM, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael Scott via luv-talk wrote:
[…] Russell seemed to have a great knowledge of Christianity, from his childhood.
Note that Christianity is practiced differently by different communities, so e.g. growing up in Nagorno does not automatically make you qualified to talk about Axumite Christians.
I'm talking about Christianity as it is taught in the Bible. Again, I'm not an expert, but I am a Christian with a bit of knowledge of the Bible, not of traditions carried on by different communities, even Roman Catholic.
Michael Scott wrote:
On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:44 PM, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael Scott via luv-talk wrote:
[…] Russell seemed to have a great knowledge of Christianity, from his childhood.
Note that Christianity is practiced differently by different communities, so e.g. growing up in Nagorno does not automatically make you qualified to talk about Axumite Christians.
I'm talking about Christianity as it is taught in the Bible. Again, I'm not an expert, but I am a Christian with a bit of knowledge of the Bible, not of traditions carried on by different communities, even Roman Catholic.
Ah, but *which* Bible? :-) In Nagorno-Karabakh they use an Armenian translation, I presume straight from the Greek/Syriac versions (Septuagint). In Axum they use a Ge'ez translation, I presume straight from Amharic, which is even older. If you're reading KVJ, that has (AIUI) passed through several generations of Latin jiggery-pokery, during which time who knows what happened to the original message? Cf. pterry's (apocryphal) example of drowning witches in treacle making a lot more sense when you realize "witch" is probably a mis-translation of "locust". My original point was that you seemed to be saying that because Russell grew up among one Christian sect, he was entitled to make sweeping statements about *all* Christians. If you DID mean that, I disagree. :-)
Quoting Michael Scott (luv@inoz.net):
So you've decided who I am, what I am, from that very short response to you?
No, I was merely trying to parse what you said, and understand why you were upset. That was a surmise based on your posted text. ('Text communication proved imperfect! Full story at 10!') Here's something to know and tell: No, I absolutely do _not_ know you, sir. I cannot recall you previously speaking. I get an impression from you based only on a totally bizarre and somewhat logic-challenged mailing list posting, and have attempted to guess what your problem is -- a point I will return to, below.
No, I wouldn't call myself "evangelical". I simply took you to task on YOUR opinions of the Bible, and Russell on his conclusions from the article.
So, OK, you tell me, then: What the aitch ee double-hockey-pucks was your problem? You seemed to have 'evangelical' completely and tragically confused with 'evangelism', and on that erroneous foundation to be taking theatrical offence on behalf of all Christians who ever felt a need to _evangelise_, which IMO seemed to require a particularly thick massive misreading of the entirety of what I wrote. I don't believe I said anything that should have rationally caused offence to Christians. Well, some Biblical literalists (both Christian and Jewish) would have been offended by my dismissal of the historicity claims of the entire story of Moses, etc., but hundreds of years of archaeology and careful textual analysis make the truth of that IMO indisputable to anyone open to scientific evidence, and anyone madly arguing with science has bigger problems than being upset at me for alluding to it.
Up until your summary of the Bible I applauded you (mostly), but as I said, you seemed to have all the answers, just as Russel seemed to have a great knowledge of Christianity, rom his childhood.
Again, you take theatrical offense that I eludicated my view, as if I had somehow denied anyone the right to hold a contrary view, but the latter is simple not the case. So, yay for you in managing to hold an opinion about religion in contrast to billions of other people who are so intimidated by Rick Moen posting his personal assessments to luv-talk that they cannot form one. Um, OK, great. Let's run with that. I had previously thought that only Americans suffered from the peculiar capacity to take great public offence because someone else dared to articulate what they think, as if this prevented the other party from doing likewise. Today, I have learned that this bizarre mental quirk is also known elsewhere, so you've given me that gift, so yay?
participants (4)
-
Michael Scott -
Rick Moen -
Russell Coker -
Trent W. Buck