Roland

A god who doesn't need human sacrifice (or sacrifice of any kind) to be placated.


Anything of true scientific value - advanced medical knowledge, age and size of the cosmos etc.

Jayrok

Instead of resorting to script-mining from Hebrew scriptures to mold and fit passages using Midrash to support Jesus as being God or the son of God, I wish God in the Hebrew scriptures would have just came out and said he was going to come to Earth in the flesh as a man to be the end-all human-god sacrifice for mankind and replacing his laws and commandments... and after he does this it will be necessary to believe he bodily arose from the grave after 3 days and this faith will get you eternal life and disbelief will get eternal separation.

PhilosopherJay

Hi OneinFundieville,

Good points.

The Bible suffers the same problems as most literary anthologies. It contains a few great stories (like Samson and Delilah) and hundreds of mediocre and dull ones. It needs a good editor. I don't think anybody could complain if we ripped out the snarling, self-pitying, bitter and meandering letters of Paul. Do we really need both Chronicles and Kings? How many people would cry if we replaced the thousand or so "Snow White begat Sneezy, Grumpy, and Dopey" lines with a single line saying, "The people did a lot of knowing and as a result a lot of new people came along."

Of course, as a collection of several hundreds stories, letters and poems that circulated over an eight hundred year period in and around the tiny nations- cities of Syro-Palestine/Israel, it is a wonderful goldmine for understanding the psychology and cultures of that time period. However, it is pretty much like going through a city's garbage dump, you're just getting bits and pieces of a lot of junk.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Amaleq13

The actual name of the "Pharaoh" in the story of Moses.

Newton's Cat

A detailed description of love-making.

'And thou shalt .... '

Chili

Sickness was never God's idea and science still extrapolates from omniscience.

mountainman

The century in which authors in antiquity
first wrote down the gospels and the rest
of the new testament.

A number between 1 and 4 will suffice.
We know it was first published in the 4th.
But when was it composed? Why didn't
they date their work like other authors?

The biggest missing element of information
not mentioned in the (Constantine) Bible
is its priority date(s).

Chili

Ah but don't you known: the "unknown author" is timeless.

Anyway, I like it this way. It is so Romantic, don't you think?

Cheerful Charlie

See Isaiah 1.


CC

GenesisNemesis

I don't think I would wish the Bible had mentioned anything more. The 66 books of the Bible were written in a time when superstitions and mythology were a great deal more important. If I had lived in those ancient times, I would probably believe the story of Jesus. But now, in the age where Science exists, and freedom of speech is more popular, I can test the supernatural claims and mythological ideas in the Bible, and see whether it's true or false. In my mind, it's false (as an Absolute Truth).