Chaupoline

I feel the genius in the Old Testament is in the questions that it poses. I don't believe that it is intended to even be taken literally. I also believe that all the cultures had the same beginning. This can be seen in the numerous accounts of the Great Flood throughout the world. The world is not 10,000 years old but the Bible is not filled with lies either. Some of the questions that I have asked are:

-Why did God even create Eve in the first place?

- Why did God even choose Noah and his family to save? He wasn't that good of a guy.

-Why did God choose to destroy all the people in the world?

There are many other questions that I had while I was reading and by thinking about them instead of just taking everything as just another passage without any real signifigance it eventually made sense.

- Is there a finite number of souls, precreated prior to Adam and Eve? Why did the Jews of Christ's time even ask if John the Baptist was the reborn Elijah?

LeeBuhrul

patchwork really of earlier fables, folk tales and miscellaneous idols and symbols... many of which contradict the very cornerstone of christianity (i.e that there is only one god)

JohnHud

Yes it literally is a collection of puzzles.
My favorites are the Pythagorean geometry puzzles in the Gospel accounts of the 153 fish and the fishing net (first identified in John Michell City of Revelation) and the amazing NT Roman logic puzzles--what Josephus described as scolastic exercises for young men-- that Atwill identifies in his forthcoming book Caesar's Messiah (Ulysses press, February 2005).

JH :rolling:

MadMez

To show us he's not an individual but a multiple!
"And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." -- Genesis 1:26-27

To show modern evangelists they can be "perfect in their generations" (Genesis 6:9), and a preachers of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5) yet still get drunk and behave like assholes.

Ah-ha! Trick question! He didn't of course, the Sons of Anak (created back in Genesis 6:4) survived and are met again, after the flood, in Numbers 13:33.

How'd I do?

Asha'man

Puzzles? There are no puzzles in the OT or the NT. It's exactly what it appears to be at first glance: a collection of ancient man-made myths.

Like all myths, some are intended to answer scientific questions that are not yet answered, some aim to provide moral guidance, some generate a cultural identity, and some provide justification for actions taken, and some are aimed at establishing power and control over a group. As long as you remember who write these myths (man), the puzzle becomes easy to unravel.

Sven

Something we can agree on.

And the latter points to the former ... how?
Did it ever occur to you that many regions of the Earth are often hit by catastrophic floods? Did you ever think about the fact that there are also many cultures without any flood myth?

Something else we can agree on.

I'm afraid it is. Read some books on archeology of the Near East to see this. This is not to say that there is no truth at all in the bible, but that great caution is necessary when reading its claim about history.

Never happened.

Never happened.

Never happened.

That was easy.

We have yet to find any evidence that something like a "soul" even exists.

dictatorofdiscipline

The Bible has got to be one of the most unintelligently written compendiums to ever have been written by human beings. I read a quote the other of how the book of Isaiah must've been written by a madman - there's no logical story flow, no cohesiveness of parts or details...it's just a jumbled up mess of words and unlinked thoughts. I don't really understand how religious authorities read this hodgepodge of what seems to be first grader writing, and make sense out of it. :down:

spin

So that Adam wouldn't be so refractory in looking after the animals.

Somebody had to look after the animals.

They were superfluous to creation and were getting in the road of the animals because there were too many. And it's time to start worrying again.


spin

Atheos

I believe that what eventually became "The Bible" began as a series of disjointed stories and fables shared by ancient shepherds and nomads. Some of the stories may have even been bedtime stories for children. As time went by they became a distinct collection of oral traditions. There is of course no way to substantiate any of this, but it makes sense when you look at the types of stories included.

I can imagine someone (maybe even a collective group effort) taking these oral traditions and incorporating them into a smoothly joined story such as you find in Genesis. Of course one of the main problems would be trying to resolve discrepancies about the god or theology wrapping the stories. There is no way of knowing how many iterations these stories went through before they ended up in their present form. It's doubtless that time helped smooth out some of the problems but some of them remain.

-Atheos

Godfather

Pythagorean puzzles? That is interesting. Could someone elaborate on that a bit. Are there more puzzles like that?

Here is a funny little trick: Look up Psalm 46 - count 46 words into it. Start from the last word of the psalm and count 46 words backward.
The two words you get are shake and spear.
This psalm was writted by William Shakespeare on his 46th birthday!
One wonders if this was done under the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit?. . . . . . . :huh: