CX

Xian, as I'm sure you know, is an abbreviation first invented by Christian scholars. I use it mostly out of habit because one sees it so often in secular scholarship. I do understand that some find it offensive and generally try to avoid using it if that is the case. Nonetheless as this is a discussion forum with a scholarly focus I feel no compunction to avoid using it here.

Chuck Rightmire

Actually, Sumer is a rather late comer in civilization's history. I'm not sure if it's been changed by now or not, but the original dating of Ebla was given as 6000 to 8000 BP, several thousand years before Sumer arose. And Leonard Wooley, the original excavator of Ur, believed that there had been an earlier culture which had built a city on the site which had been destroyed and replaced by a later culture which was the Ur of the Bible.

If you've ever read any of Immanuel Velikovsky, you know that even bad scholars can come up with pages of references. Even Van Daniken could do it. What works is the evidence of the stones, without reference to the beliefs of the people. What they believed is essentially immaterial 4000 or so years later in a different culture. So even if the bible is good on history (which I do not accept), it still occurred in a culture of 2000 years ago that has no resemblance to ours. :devil3:

Magus55

I meant by first civlization, the first urban civilization with "cities", as well as the first writing system. There were other sparse communities in Mesopotamia prior to Sumeria though.

Perry5

(Grait bit of doublr talk but evil is evil.)

Perry5

A book of parables and mythology written by men for men.

(The parable.)

A short story that was never intendid to be taken literaly.

spin

So were you sitting in the sawdust with all the rest of the spectators waiting for the next execution and hoping for a bad swing of the axe so the spectacle would be gorier? Them evil-doers need to get their just desoits don't they?

Brief response: one person's pleasure is another's evil.


spin

Perry5

man is not mineral or vegetable,we are human animals and preditors,find a way to stop the killing and i will support it.

Crucifiction

http://www.unquietmind.com/banbooks.html

No, the Bible is not suitable reading material for children.

spin

Whoa. Humans are no longer animals. Animals kill because they need to. Uncle George didn't need to kill those Iraqis. The Hutu didn't need to kill all those Tutsi. Harry S. didn't need to kill all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Old Joe Stalin didn't need to kill all those Kulaks. A-dolf didn't need to kill all those Jews. The Ottomans didn't need to kill the Armenians. And so on and on ad nauseum.

How do you stop it? Beats the hell out of me. Why the hell does someone want to kill someone else? -- it's almost never because if you don't kill you'll be killed. It often turns out that those to be killed are not considered worthy of consideration as human beings. Red Indian savages. Black fiends. Yellow peril. We've had the Palestinians dehumanized for decades. Then there's the fact that my economic advantage is worth more than their lives. Or what's a few hundred thousand when we can save millions? (It's never clear whether that's people or dollars.)

But the person down at the workmen's level, rolling up their sleaves and using the tools of war -- "a rifle is a tool with a workman at each end" --, why do they kill? A famous poet, Wilfred Owen, who died at the end of WW1 discussed "the old lie: 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'", a classical saying inscribed on the tombs of soldiers fallen in combat. Still, it's the rare person who, in the situation, can realize the lie. It's not something that would make the job easier to perform.

You've seen films that analyse the dehumanization process that marks the training of professional soldiers, the classic being Full Metal Jacket. Do you think it's strange that American soldiers can play with their Iraqi prisoners in such a shameless way, even photographing the acts? They make their enemies even less human than themselves.

I could go on and on, but this is a forum to discuss BC&H.

Your original objection was in my eye way out of line, because your target is the wrong one. The book is just a book. The users and purveyors of the book should be the targets of your sentiments. The book is just a reflection of its time, but what has that time got to do with us? Very little. We don't learn from our mistakes. History teaches us nothing... except that we need better weapons.


spin