Amlodhi

Hello rlcjhardesty,

What do you make of these verses?:

Acts 21:18-26 [excerpted for brevity and clarity]

vs. 18 "And the day following, Paul went in with us unto James, and all the elders were present.

vs. 19 . . . he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles . . .

vs. 20 And when they heard it, they . . . said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous for the law.

vs. 21 And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.

vs. 23 Do therefore this that we say to thee; we have four men which have a vow on them.

vs. 24 Them take, and purify thyself with them . . . (that) all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning thee are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law.

vs. 25 As touching Gentiles . . . that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.

vs. 26 Then Paul . . . purifying himself . . . entered into the temple . . . until that an offering should be offered for (him).

It is plain from these verses that the original disciples of Jesus, (who received the Spirit for understanding at Pentecost), never understood the gospel to remove the obligations of Mosaic law from the Christian Jew and, for the Gentiles (who were not obligated under Mosaic law to begin with), it was decided that some obligations would now be imposed.

Thus, while the assertions in your above post may be said to apply to some extent to Paul's doctrine, they don't apply to the doctrine of the Jerusalem disciples as taught to them by Jesus himself.

Namaste'

Amlodhi

Jayjay

Early Christians had enough sense to...

1) Carefully select the contents of new testament from the variety of sources present at that time, and then suppress the rest.

2) Leverage the Old Testament history and mythology.

3) Extensively testing their sales pitch before writing it down.

I think these three are the main factors why the bible today is considered more special than, say, the Koran or the Book of Mormon.

Radcliffe Emerson

The bible's fiction, and not even very good fiction. The writers of the so called holy books can't even get their story lines to be consistent.

aikido7

A Christian's Answer:

I own a dozen Bibles.

One, a King James Version, was a gift for college. I rarely consulted it, but I placed its black ribbon at Isaiah 11, where a vision of paradise regained fed my 1960s idealism.

I bought several in seminary, all heavy Bibles with study notes. It was probably a New English Bible that I was reading on that magical day when, while grappling with Mark 10.46-52, a lens turned and the Scripture came alive to me.

The one I use daily is a leather-bound New Revised Standard Version that shows the stains and rips of being flipped through while preaching. I yield nothing to the fundamentalist preachers who wave their Bibles, like Senator McCarthy waving his files, and claim to know it all.

Many ask about the Bible and its authority. Some are confused by allegations that there is a single "Biblical faith" and that this belief system clearly condemns this and requires that.
Some find themselves demeaned by that "Biblical faith." Some wonder why the Bible is used to justify division and hatred.

One reader is close to quitting her Bible study group because she cannot reconcile the commandment not to kill with passages where God commands killing. I responded:

"The Bible contains many contradictions. That is one problem with the fundamentalists' determination to harvest quotes and to treat them all the same. (And that applies to secular fundamentalists as well as the religious kind).

"The Bible is more like a living person, or the story of a large family. Some parts don't jibe with others, and some stories get told from multiple perspectives and sound different each time. But if you read the Bible as showing the trajectory, complexity, tragedy and joy of humanity's journey with God, the books start to come alive."

Rather than let fundamentalists continue to hijack Scripture as their particular property and as meaning only the one thing they say it means, all Christians need to do their own reading of Scripture.

It isn't easy, but it isn't impossible. If a believer wants a solid
foundation, I think Scripture has to be taken seriously. For the answer to the reader's question, you see, is, Yes, we do "pick and choose" what to believe. It isn't that we "get to," but that we have no other choice.

People make many assertions about God, Jesus, Spirit, Church, human life, sin and hope - assertions that cannot possibly all be true. Virtually every one of those assertions can be buttressed by reference to Scripture, even the most outlandish. If you are willing to think creatively about Scripture- to read between the lines, to notice what isn't said, to plumb the emotions and motivations on display for additional meaning - more can be asserted and defended.

That is maddening to those who want an easy faith, to those who build brilliant careers on offering an easy faith, and to those who have arrived at a particular political or moral conclusion and want to impose that conclusion on everyone else.

But so it goes.

The Bible was never intended to be a rulebook, instruction manual, or objective history. It is many stories about God told by certain branches of humanity over a period of some 1,100 years. Other stories can be told about that God and that period, other branches of humanity tell their own stories, and a lot has been written, sung, prayed and lived in the past 2,000 years.

Sorting through these stories and discerning the God who lies behind them can be an exciting journey. But you have to allow the pages to get dirty, and you have to allow room for other people to find different meanings.

--Tom Ehrich

Godless Wonder

Mark 10:46-52, is apparently about a blind man who is made to see by Jesus who tells him that it is his faith that cured him., I'm not precisely sure what's so special about these verses that made things "come alive." Maybe it's a round about way of calling me a "blind man," (an unbeliever) and telling me I must have faith to see why the Bible is true. In other words, believe the Bible just because, then afterwards you will understand why you believe it?

This convinced you? Are people so easily taken? Humanity disappoints me again, if so.

I'm still not sure I understand why you decided this book has anything to do with an actual god, except "just because."

aikido7

I cannot answer for Tom Ehrich, but as for what "convinces" anyone of something, it could be "anything." Since some believers do not take the biblical texts literally--or allegorically, as you seemed to have done in Mark 10--a "meaning" could be taken from anything.

Example: What, specifically (chapter and verse), caused you to fall in love with that particular woman?

The more biblically literate I become, I approach a belief that the historical figure of Jesus did most of his teaching parabolically and metaphorically--and in short, pithy remarks. The rest is church editorializing. Jesus' parabolic teachings, I believe, tend to undercut accepted reality. Because of this, and judging from the tone of much of the gospels, I am of the opinion that most of his first-century listeners were not "easily taken" at all. And neither are us 21st Century sophisticates....

the_cave

That's why there are theologians and religious philosophers and historians and churches and traditions...the Bible was created by religion, not the other way around. A wise Christian knows this...

Gawen

It's a great source of comfort for those that have no one to comfort them or unwilling or unable to comfort themselves. It gives a great sense of values for those that cannot or will not think for themselves.

This list would take pages to write.

Jogyo

I'm going to throw one out here for the lions to devour, here it goes:

Maybe the bible was written in the way that it was to keep people argueing about it's validity and contradictions. Look at the amount of time that atheist in this forum spend studying the bible searching for contradictions. If it was written in some "believable" format maybe intellegent people would have put it aside a long time ago. Wouldn't it be brilliant to write a book that could survive interest for over a thousand years simply because it was so contradictory?

This is my Buddhist perspective.

Shulammit

Just the poetry of the Bible is and of itself quite eloquent and beautiful, not all, but most of it. The language that is used and the personal meanings that can be gleaned, the many possibilities it holds, like poetry and music, stands eternal and there is something that the human psyche holds precious in the concept of eternal.