Fiction usually has highs and lows. Unfortunately all the authors wrote under pseudonyms, and multiple editors went through the plagiarized stories, some books were left out, and the consistency is just a mess. Not to mention the terrible translations.
Your local Library most certainly has better Fiction books that are very well written and highly entertaining.
Not to get all religiony but why in the old testament God was all fire and brimstone and fatal consequences? But the new testament God is all about forgiveness and such??
Submitted 4 hours ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
Zier@fedia.io 44 minutes ago
bizarroland@lemmy.world 19 minutes ago
He’s very much not.
I mean, using Jesus to recontextualize the Old Testament God definitely misses the mark. Jesus was here on a mission of mercy to cross the boundary between the sinful ape and the rising angel, and to bring as many people along with him as he could.
But once you’re grafted into the tree of Judaism through Christianity, you still have to abide by the rules of Judaism (with the exception that foods are no longer verbotan or whatever).
Jesus was an incredibly stern man who was very rigid and inflexible on his views because he had the eternal viewpoint.
He refused to perform am exorcism for a Samaritan woman’s daughter who was half Jewish because she wasn’t full Jewish even though she was perfectly faithful until she made such a hue and cry that she publically shamed him into it.
He would snap at his own friends if they said the wrong thing or failed to understand something because he didn’t effectively communicate it to them so that they would understand at the same level he did.
And I don’t hold any of these actions against him, he was on what should be the most important mission in all of human history, right?
But the modern Christianity teachings of Christ where he’s like buddy Jesus and he’s just a happy-go-lucky, I love everyone peace, love, and harmony dude is absolutely not the way he’s actually represented in the Bible by his closest followers.
It was not out of the realm of normalcy for him to do things like beating the fuck out of a temple full of salespeople.
But once again, the sheer stress of his every moment, the fact that if he told a lie, if he felt lust, envy, greed, selfishness, anything that even approximated a sin, it would destroy all of humanity, and himself in the process, must have been so stressful, that in a way, I believe it was a mercy that he died so young.
If Jesus had had to stick it out into his 80s, I don’t know.
Maybe he would have fallen along the way.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 4 hours ago
its almost like the whole thing is an amalgam of thousands of texts edited and repurposed across thousands of years by human beings with various motivations.
bigfondue@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The religion of the Israelites wasn’t even monotheistic at first. Yahweh was one of many gods.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
And Christianity isn’t technically monotheistic either, as it has the trinity of God, Christ, and the Spooky Spirit… errrm… I mean Holy Ghost.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
The book of Job is literally written in different parts in entirely different dialects that were spoken hundreds of years apart. The opening and ending is from the older dialect, and written much like a folktale. The middle is newer and written much more like an epic poem.
Even the a single book of the Bible comes from numerous sources.
Ging@anarchist.nexus 3 hours ago
And yet they persist, so it’s almost like it’s not quite that simple either, eh? Funny how the devil stays in the details, no matter which side you lean
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 3 hours ago
absolutely correct. humans have been scamming humans since inception, and the best methods last the longest.
Maeve@kbin.earth 2 hours ago
♥️
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 4 hours ago
If you want an honest answer, only my own theory for it but supported by actually having read and learned academically about small chunks of the bible which I think is more than a lot of people who have opinions on this topic, your answer is:
- The people who wrote the old testament lived in a world that was almost unfathomably dangerous and difficult compared to today’s first world. Death, disease, starvation, natural disasters, the collapse of whole towns and settlements, unexplained daily suffering for which there is not even an explanation let alone a cure, were constantly present. If you’re in that place, and you believe there’s a God who’s in charge of it all, there is absolutely no conclusion to come to other than he’s a real son of a bitch.
- I definitely believe that Jesus had some kind of genuine religious inspiration, that a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life. The stuff about forgiving your enemies, living for good works through action and how it really doesn’t matter what you say or what team you’re on, trying to build a better life by caring about people around you, taking care of the sick and injured, even if they are beggars or prostitutes or foreigners or otherwise “bad” people in your mind simply because of their circumstances, seems pretty spot on to me. It was 100% at odds with the religion of the day, pretty much as much as it is with modern religion. What Jesus actually said does obviously have “spiritual” and supernatural elements also, but it is also focused to a huge extent on what you as an individual can do, and a sort of alignment towards the greater good and a calling for humanity, as opposed to this wild half-Pagan mythology about a capricious and bad-tempered God who might kill you at any instant.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 hours ago
I like this reasoning a lot, however:
#2. In terms of there being a real-life Y’shua, AFAIK it’s hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated ‘King Arthur’ / ‘Robin Hood’ type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.
AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person’s existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 2 hours ago
In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, “He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[13] Richard A. Burridge states: “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus’s non-existence “a thoroughly dead thesis”.[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), “In recent years, ’no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, “there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy."[19]
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
I guess they did some market research between the two testaments
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
“nobody shares my kinks”
jbrains@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
It made sense to scare people into being reasonable. That was the Old Testament.
Once they acted less stupidly, it became safer to let people be as they are. That was the New Testament.
MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
ethaver@kbin.earth 1 hour ago
the only "um akshually" I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There's also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at that was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of "a translation of a translation of a translation of-"
MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world 50 minutes ago
Yeahhhh… I took a class on the history of the Bible, but that was about a decade ago, so I’m spotty on some of the details. Thanks for fleshing it out, though - I knew my take was probably missing something!
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
dirigibles@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
The old testament is essentially Judaism which is an ethnic religion. There is no marketing needed because it is a religion for a specific group of people from a theoretical single lineage. There is no need for God to be accepting or patient since the goal appears to be unify and keep people under control during times of great strife.
Christianity is a universal religion ie. it tries to create new followers. If you’re a religion that is trying to spread grow your following, you need to have a message of openness and acceptance.
CatpainTypo@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow. The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.
Rhaedas@fedia.io 3 hours ago
A nitpick, none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses, the documents were written long after Jesus was gone. They are interpretations of stories passed down, and all four gospels have different takes on events. So the phrase "gospel truth" is very ironic in its definition.
Maeve@kbin.earth 2 hours ago
Not only that, Jesus doesn't fit the requirements for the prophesied Jewish Messiah, to the best of my understanding. He may well be the Christian Messiah, but no one else is under any obligation to accept or reject anyone else's religious beliefs.
CatpainTypo@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses.
njm1314@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Relative stability? Buddy I don’t know where the hell you got that notion from. When was it stable exactly? During the Jewish revolt? That extremely bloody time?
dontbelievethis@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
You know what relative means?
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 hours ago
This is one of the reasons Gnosticism exists. In the gnostic interpretation the God of the old testament was the demiurge, while the snake (which may actually be an eagle, translation is hard) is identified with God or Jesus.
__siru__@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
Not a particularly informed comment, but I always figured because people started getting scared of the Christian god, so they started turning towards other religions. As a consequence, the Christian church needed to figure out how to make Christianity a bit more approachable, so the new testament and forgiveness were created.
HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
There were no Christian before Christ. They were Jews, as was Jesus.
fredofredo@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Maybe because JC was a great guy and a lot of people believed in what he had to say. So, in order to benefit from his fame and gain the trust of his past and potential future followers, there was a gathering a hundred or so years after his death where they chose suitable accounts of his life to include in the book called the new testament. Accounts like the ones later found in the Nag Hammadhi texts and “gnostic gospels” were excluded because they undermined the authoritiy of the church and the power of priests to be the only ones to interpret the will of God.
tazeycrazy@feddit.uk 2 hours ago
It depends where you read. There is fire and brimstone in the new testament. Revelation is a book that doesn’t hold back and we see a wrothful God of judgment. But then there stories of Josiph and his brothers, or the book of Daniel, shows that there is forgivness in the old testament as well.
Ging@anarchist.nexus 3 hours ago
There are more than a few disrespectful answers here, but if any of these ppl talked to someone who honestly believed, they’d be more inclined to tell you to investigate the new covenant
Ging@anarchist.nexus 3 hours ago
Am a Christian atheist ftr–just feels bad to see so many accept convenient lies over the honest truths of a worthwhile series of stories (wether they factually happened is of little to no value in the pursuit of truth, no?)
Rhaedas@fedia.io 3 hours ago
Just to clarify - so you don't believe in any of the supernatural stuff and are just about the better teachings of Jesus? Aka a Jefferson bible take?
Ledivin@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
The simple answer is that the gospel wasn’t working as well as it had been, so they had to change it up to continue attracting people. Cults are basically popularity contests, and you can’t win if you’re scaring everyone away.
bitcrafter@programming.dev 16 minutes ago
Keep in mind that most likely the historical Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers going around telling people that, within the lifetime of some present, God was going to come down and vanquish evil once and for all, so one had better be prepared and be on God’s good side when this happened. (Incidentally, the Romans probably could not have cared less about this; it was when they got word that he was claiming to be an earthly king–which may have been how Judas actually betrayed him–that they got seriously pissed and executed him because they had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.)
You can see imminent apocalypse theme in the epistles where John writes that there is no real point making big life changes like getting married since the world is going to end any day; amusingly, when this did not happen, they needed to start coming up with alternative policies, and so other letters start to set down rules which thematically contradict the earlier letters, but it turns out that there are other things about these letters that make them different too so I’m many cases they are considered to be forgeries. (Obviously this is an oversimplification of the academic research!)
(Also, it’s also worth noting that John and the apostles had really different notions of what Jesus was all about, and part of the whole point of Acts is to paper over these differences and make it seem like they had all been past of one team all along.)
Finally, it is worth pointing out that there were a lot of texts floating around in the same genre as Revelation, so it was not all that unique and it almost did not make it’s way into the Bible, but the Church Fathers thought incorrectly that the John who wrote it was the same as the author of the Gospel of John; if they had known that these were two different Johns, then the Left Behind series would never have been written (amount other consequences).
So in conclusion, be very wary of trying to read a lot of significance into the New Testament as a whole because it was not a unified document written with single purpose.