/edu/ - Education

first of all, the bible is different from christianity, for the least reason that christianity as a movement preceded the council of nicea (325 AD), where the bible was "officially" compiled (excluding various "apocrypha"). the bible was also largely monopolised in its reading by the priests (the same way the hindu brahmin kept scriptures for themselves). mass literacy was obviously non-existent before modernity, but moreso was a lack of personal possessions of bibles, not just because the printing press was not yet invented (est. 1440), but because the elites saw it as improper that the public should interpret the bible for themselves (the official doctrine of the catholic church is called "dogma" and this is what determined interpretation). in 1517 however, the "protestant" reformation is said to begin, where martin luther puts 95 theses against the church. this revolt spreads everywhere, combined with new interpretations of scripture and personal readings of the bible (a political radical at this time was the reformer thomas muntzer, who supported peasant revolts against the royalty, while luther as a conservative spoke against the peasants).

the most famous bible is created in 1611, the "king james" version, or "authorised" translation. what is interesting is that this "seal of approval" by the king gave it a form of intellectual property over publishers (e.g. "crown copyright", which is still in effect today). this allowed revenue for the state (hitler actually did the same thing with mein kampf, where he forced the state to distribute it, granting himself wealth). the reformation clearly inspired later politics, with oliver cromwell having a war against the catholic king (1642-51), and later "liberating" ireland from the catholic church. political radicals at the time like gerald winstanley (1649) also used biblical references to advance a form of socialism, with john locke (1680-95) also using christianity in explaining various aspects of his liberal philosophy. of course, its also the puritans who travel to the new world. later radical christians are people like john brown (1800-1859) who used the bible to argue against the enslavement of negroes in the US, acting as a terrorist - this is said to contribute to the origins of the american civil war (1861-65). of course you bring up a point that interpretation is inherently relative; what causes one man to support or not support slavery from the same book? but Jesus confronts the pharisees in a similar way, where he distinguishes between the "letter of the law" and "spirit of the law", such as in the case of the sabbath, or the adulteress waiting to be stoned. this is where Jesus says that all the commandments only derive from two:
>Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
<matthew 22:37-40
it is not simply that one must interpret the letter then, but also the spirit of what is written. we see this in literal terms with paul, who is the earliest writer on Christ.

paul's epistles are the earliest writings of the new testament, beginning around 50 AD, years before the first gospel (the book of mark, 70 AD). whats interesting about this however is that paul claims to have discovered Christ in the "scriptures", which cannot refer to the new testament, but the old testament. the Christ which paul then speaks of is different from the one later described. the original Jesus does not resurrect, for example (the original gospel of mark cuts off at 16:8, but later copies include Jesus' physical resurrection). the later books of matthew and luke (80-90 AD) includes a physical resurrection, and the book of john (90-100 AD) also includes greek philosophy in its first chapter, identifying Christ as the "logos" (e.g. "word"). some people like dennis macdonald attempt to prove that tracts of the book of john are directly copied from an ancient greek play, euripides' "bacchae" (405 BC), thus relating Jesus to dionysus. so then we see the new testament as a work in progress, hardly inerrant or "eternal". the old testament is the same, with the god yaweh clearly being another name for the mesopotamian god "enlil" (e.g. the epic of gilgamesh, 2100 BC), who is described as causing a global flood, with survivors on a boat (e.g. noah's ark) receiving foreknowledge of the event.

as for the contents of the bible, they are part of our inherent mythology in the west, with atheism itself clearly being some sort of protestant sublation (thomas paine in "the age of reason", 1794, already claimed that christianity was a type of atheism, since it had made God into a man). various writers like pierre-joseph proudhon (1840) claimed that man himself is God (with anarchy having part of its roots in inspiration from the bible, 1848), the same as ludwig feuerbach (1841), but from a critical hegelian perspective, later identifiable in marx's communist humanism (e.g. 1844 manuscripts), where "alienation" takes a central role. i personally think its essential for anyone interested in being cultured to read the bible, since its so canonical, and there are still billions of christians existing today.

>>25451
>Paul
did you hear about this?
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/suspect-confesses-killing-arizona-pastor-admits-he-had-more-targets
<He was aiming to "crucify" 14 pastors across the country, and he admitted that he was about to kill two priests at the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona before he was arrested by police.
<Sheafe says he was planning to target people of different faiths.
<"Christian, Catholic, Mormon. Anyone preaching that Jesus is God, essentially, the Trinity, a concept created by man, by Paul. He's not God. God, the father alone, is God," he said.
history is still in flux, history never stopped being in flux

>>25452
Scary, stuff like this

>>25452
irs rare that you find religious jewish terror like this

>>25470
youll notice that intolerant christians hardly ever quote Jesus directly, with these highlighted verses largely being commentary from paul (who, as i have shown, had a different concept of Christ than that which we read in the gospels). if we are to read Christ on sinners however, we see him rebuke prideful pharisees;
>While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
<matthew 9:10-13
so as Jesus says, it is not the righteous, but sinners, who ought to be delivered unto him.

as for the old testament, its authentic antiquity is constantly professed; it was moses himself who wrote the first five books (even supposedly describing his own death at the end of deuteronomy), with the rest of the prophets adding to it. of course, this is entirely disputed by scholarly consensus, even concluding that the hebrew exodus from egypt was an event which never occured. as i have already demonstrated, previously existing myths such as the deluge, are later added to the contents of the scriptures, proving that it is not original or "revealed". this is barring any "scienific" privileges this book is supposed to possess, as a divine work.

conservative scholars such as yonatan adler and russell gmirkin make shocking claims as to the historicity of the texts. adler dates the historical canon of jewish torah back to the second century BC, at most. he says then, that judaism as a religion is no older than 200 BC (t. "the origins of judaism", chapter 7). adler however makes distinction beween judean "yawehism" and "judaism" in particular. elephantine papyri from the 5th century BC show that self-identified judeans worshipped a deity named YHWH, the only issue being the evidence of polytheism, and a lack of comprehensive jewish rite in this community (with moses also having no mention). he concludes by seeing the adoption of mosaic law as something influenced by greek prescriptive legislation and ultimately by the maccabean revolt, within the hasmonean uprising of 167 BC. only after this period, claims adler, do we see the adoption of torah as instruction. only after this do we get synagogues, etc.

so then, did judaism begin in 167 BC? perhaps, but what of the books of moses (the pentateuch) themselves? we may now move over to russell gmirkin, both in his books "berossus and genesis, manetho and exodus" (2006) and "plato and the creation of the hebrew bible" (2017), where he affirmatively states that the pentateuch was written in 270 BC by about 70 greek-jewish elders, and of which, was heavily inspired by plato, particularly "nomoi" (350 BC). we have already seen the influence of greek philosophy and playwriting in the book of john (i.e. dennis macdonald), so this should not be entirely surprising. if we are to take this seriously then, we have the literary history of the bible: the old testament begins in 270 BC, and the new testament ends around 150 AD, with the bible itself being compiled in 325 AD. so then, these are some thoughts on the bible.

>>25447
>Some of the greatest art of all time has been religiously motivated
mostly because artists had to cater to their sponsor

>Christianity might even be the reason that the Roman Empire fell
yeah nah, on the contrary it was pretty unificating

>is responsible for a lot of really bad imperialism & colonialism
it was more a justification than the true cause, as religion often is

>Jesus was surely a good man
if the guy really existed (likely) and was and said things as depicted in the bible, the guy seemed pretty chill. like some sort of hippie
cathares were likely more true followers of the guy than the official church that won (dunno if you can find his things in english but pacome thiellement is pretty obsessed about them)

>The word of god has saved homeless, sick, and morally corrupt
lol nah, good people that happened to believe all this shit have saved those, not "word of god" (aka words attributed to god)

>Where does the justification to do evil come from
have you looked at the bible? you can find justification for anything, because you have plenty of contradictory shit, an old testament god who is a violent abusive psychopath and a new testament who is more about love and redemption. And evil is relative, if you do kill to protect christendom or something its justified.
You have to understand the church is a social organization a lot more powerful and complex than just a book. The book isnt really important, the guys in positions of power using it is whats important

adding to the demystifying of the bible, we can see more mythological plagiarism by the appropriation of the enki and ninhursag story, which entirely mirrors the adam and eve myth. enki eats a forbidden fruit and his consort is made from his own rib. its unmistakable;
https://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/texts/retellings/enkininhur.htm

on the same topic, here is a deconstruction of islamic literature, proving that islam is a false and conjectural religion, like judaism and christianity. the most popular faiths of the world rest on nothing but fantasy, and so it shows humanity is an irrational species.

now, what is shocking in my own research is that if we read plato's politeia (375 BC), we see what appears to be the invention of heaven and hell, along with a description of the noble lies; religion and class society. everything in this age seems to return back to plato, the father of idealism…

>>25447
A product of its' time, among many axial texts such as those of Buddhists and Confucianists. Some modern philosophers of science have proposed that they make better sense as a collection of 'sacred metaphors', that is, truthisms that let readers (or listeners, as before the Protestant Reformation the Bible was recited among a crowd instead of read privately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_Divina) break frame and connect themselves to their lived world. In this sense, there's a lot of evidence of an Aristotelian methodology within the Bible, which is something I typically talk about with the LW Protestants (Lutheran, Episcopalian, Eucharists) in my city to make the case for commie politics.

That being said, I don't believe the Bible is literally truthful, or even reliable, historical text. I think the prevalence of a literal interpretation comes from the myth-fetishism (folk theories) that most people have to shortcut understanding how the meaning of a thing relates to its' literal expression. Though I wouldn't doubt that's a holdover of religion in general being used as the locus of social control for millennia.

If you're interested in this, I ended up learning this framing of sacred texts in general from this one (sometimes annoyingly liberal) CogSci doctor from UoT. It's a 50-hour long web lecture series. I'll link the playlist here: https://johnvervaeke.com/series/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis/

>>25470
that is just anglos being protestants

The idea that humans are innately evil is the most toxic idea you could ever implant into civilization, to indoctrinate people into believing that their lives have no intrinsic value and take away their self-awareness and agency and consciousness and everything else that makes them human, and turn them into passive dummies who only seek external validation. It lays the groundwork for totalitarianism, acclimatizing people to the idea that only an outside authority figure can tell you who you are; you can never know the answer yourself and you should never try to find out.

>>25495
Humans are inclined to evil but the problem with Christianity is that Christianity wants people to be infantilised patrons for Jehovah and Jesus.

“Not by my will, but HIs Will”
“Without Jesus, my life has no purpose”

It reeks of vulnerable narcissism, using God as your ego shield

>>25501
only a life-denying, nihilistic religion like christianity can convince people of martyrdom. the idea that being tortured to death by rapists who will conquer your land is better than fighting them is peak psyop shit;
>oh, please crucify me upside down!
this is why peter holds the keys to the kingdom lol

If it were not Christianity, it would be Islam, if it were not Islam, it would be Buddhism. The religious inclination of man has inspired him to do great things. At the same time, none of it is true, so make of that what you will…

>>25520
As an abrahamic, I'm very envious of the eastern religions. And only a couple of atheists, the one's that aren't annoying

>>25480
>Calvary Chapel Chino Hills exists to uphold unchanging biblical truth that breaks the powers of darkness, transforms lives, and equips the church to stand as the salt and light of the earth.
Not even the biggest fan of Islam, but lmfao

>>25538
the source is biased, but still valid
you dont get a lot of ex-muslim scholars debunking their old religion either