How do I read the bible.
Everytime I start reading it I can't stop thinking how retarded are christians for believing it.
I just read something like this:
Genesis 2:13 : God made male and female couple.
Genesis 3:17 : God saw Adan was alone and made him a partner.
It's literally fanfiction.
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Christianity is just the biggest meme that humanity has produced.
Whether you believe it is irrelevant. It's the foundation of Western civilization, and once you familiarize yourself with its details you'll start seeing allusions to it in everything. People quote the bible all the time without even realizing it.
>2:13
God creates the forms
>3:17
God actualizes the form
You're just a pleb m8
By taking off your fucking hat when you're indoors.
Read it like you would read Greek mythology. Abandon whatever modern notions you have of it and just take it as an anthology of Aesop tales. Make your opinions of it after the fact.
The first chapter doesn't have the woman in it and the second chapter is a run down of everything that happens in reverse, possibly because of different groups reediting and wanting to highlight different bit, and possibly because mnemonics.
Others have picked up on this tho and said things like there are normal non Adam and Eve people, and then people who matter (like kings and heroes and so forth) are descended from or more related to Adam and Eve. And in some oral traditions the first woman is Lillith who was way too sexy and powerful and liked to ride cowgirl so God got rid of her, and replaced her with Vanilla Eve who hated blow jobs and cucked Adam with the first big black snake she could find.
yeah, my first though was lilith as well.
OP is triggered by the fact that thousands of years old scriptures don't follow his linear story-telling.
Also, what's up with these boring kinds of Gnostics entering every single Bible-related thread and mentioning their irrelevant interpretations? Stay on /x/ with your tulpas.
Christians don't take all of it literally.
Read Ecclesiastes. That shit is pretty good. It's like some of the early Daoists.
Bible has some pretty funny fucked up stuff in it.
What's a good course on theology? Or a chart thats like starting with the greeks but starting with theology instead? Can anyone help?
This, it's basically nice/insane stories.
Read the new testament first
I'll probably make a chart here pretty soon. Thats a very common question.
>It's the foundation of Western civilization
It's a major pillar, to be sure. Don't rule out Ancient Greece though.
I am at Psalms right now and i am seriously began to feel how reading those 10 chapters per day is making me unhappy and bored especially when i see i will not finish it until end of year. Generally i must finish every book i started and i cant start another book without finishing one
...are you reading the Bible cover to cover?
And you're chewing through Psalms?
Psalms is just a bunch of poems Kind David wrote, you don't have to marathon that if you don't want to. Skip it and continue to Proverbs.
I really should work on that chart.
Don't read through it from start to finish. You'll just make it difficult for your stuff. Skip boring stuff at your leisure. There is nothing to be gained from memorising genealogies and Deuteronomic laws
*tips fedora*
*tips fedora*
*tips fedora*
*tips fedora*
*tips fedora*
You're gonna run out of fedoras eventually, motherfucker!
Ok user hurry up
I'm a Christian and I want to logically argue against obnoxious fedoraist.
Arguing with pseuds is a waste of time, user. Read for yourself.
sorry, my autism
leviticus stuff and laws was even interesting, chronicles was probably worst
Psalms are made to be sung. They are sung in synagogues, in J. S. Bach concerts, and in Boney M songs.
So you're reading song lyrics, and bored because there's no music.
I was joking
I genuinely want to study theology.
There's an existing chart somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.
...
Hmmm good enough i suppose
Whats the difference between theology and spiritual tho? And are the history/autobiographies literally just history and autobiographies?
This is a shitty list.
Theology is what you are interested when you discuss it with other Christians mostly.
What you really want is a strong philosophical basis, which is going through all the important philosophers from Plato to Aquinas, and then reading up on contemporary neothomism and analytical thomism.
I'm still going through it and there are a lot of works which are extremely hard (scholastic metaphysics is completely out of the box and your way of thinking, you need to learn it forcefully basically).
Now the best course of action is telling us here what you are interested in more specifically.
This needs to be updated with like 20 more books I've read in the meantime, should make a new one, but reading these is if anything great literature.
>interested in specifically
Hard to say. I'm less of a proof of God guy, what I really want to get into is the nature of God itself. Also, books talking about how Christianity is unique and completely difference from stuff like Islam is also a plus. An in depth talk on the concept of "faith" is also interesting
Looks good Ill check it out
>Catholic reading list
>Bible is missing
Checks out. This is why you cocksuckers got reformed.
You really think your autistic mind is the only person to notice this? You really think the Jews and Christians that have read these for thousands of years haven't noticed this? Use this as an argument against a theologian and look like a fool.
>How do I read the bible
Get rid of your presuppositions and google your retarded laymen tier questions
>this butthurt
>Hard to say. I'm less of a proof of God guy, what I really want to get into is the nature of God itself.
God himself also has more aspects to the discussion, for example there's the existential part related to faith, but there's also the broader metaphisical discussion with pure actuality, divine simplicity etc.
>Also, books talking about how Christianity is unique and completely difference from stuff like Islam is also a plus.
That's really not something which I found particularly interested, after all Islam is more or less a Christian heresy.
>An in depth talk on the concept of "faith" is also interesting
This could get tricky with weather you are a protestant or Catholic, as they are seen differently in many ways.
But based on what you have here, and mind none of this will help you with fedora vs Christian pitfights,
Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger was a wonderful read. It is a contemplation on the person of Christ as well as the exegesis around him, it is quite enlightening on that part. It's pretty long, around 800 pages, but it isn't hard to read.
On Christianity in history, Hilaire Belloc may be the go to author with his Europe and Faith and Great Heresies .
Edward Feser has a book dedicated to discussing popular atheist misconceptions and general nonsense in his The Last Superstition, but it's also his worst work exactly because it's dedicated to arguing with dumb people. His Aquinas is an amazing introduction into scholastic metaphysics and covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time. His Scholastic Metaphysics is if you want to go hardcore.
>Mad that his fairy tales are being called into question
>Mad that centuries of theidiocy have fallen to produce answers to those questions
The problem of evil has had a literally irrefutable argument since Augustine.
>linear story-telling
aka, logic
Being this spooked.
All that matters is the New Testament.
The Old Testament is there for historical purposes and Jewish references.
There's more fedoras than there are books of the bible, bitch!
evil is a spook
What a moron. One can easily prove the existence of God, if one is not an animal.
What I mean by this is that language, i.e., judgment, distinguishes the difference between man and the other animals. So, if you do not know the single paradigm upon which all of language is based, then you are not linguistic, you are proto-linguistic, i.e., not yet a man.
If one is a man, then they can easily prove the existence of God, simply by stating the principles of judgment, or again the principles of predication, as Christ did in John 1:1
A mind is responsible for the behavior of the body within which it resides. It is wholly linguistic by function. There are two, and only two, primitive branches of language, Logics, such as common grammar and mathematics, and Analogics, such as geometry and any human "art" using the Platonic definition of art.
Language is effected by standards of behavior, both branches, i.e., all language is fundamentally based in analogic, or again behavior which is the only thing a mind can do. Standards of behavior is called Law. As standards of behavior is not yet recognized for the foundation of language, nor effected as the foundation of social discourse, mankind is still an animal.
Both Logic and Analogic have their foundation in living biology, they derived from the paradigm of what a life form can abstract from the environment for survival, or again, to have life and have it more abundantly.
For Logics, this mean that we can name forms and we can name material differences, By combination of these two, we name things. Language is the only power a mind can wield, can know. i.e, the principles of Law, or language, functionally resident in a mind is God, i.e., that which creates everything.
In John 1:1
'In the beginning was the Word; i.e, the first word in a definition is the name of a thing.
And the Word was with God. i.e., material difference is with or again within limits.
And the Word was God. i.e, the limit or form. In the short of it,
The name of any thing is defined in terms of the names of that things material and the name of the limit within which it resides.
Or taking John 1:1 for any definitive sentence:
Tom (the name of a thing)
is a ( a is some material difference)
cat (the name of the form within which that material difference resides.
In order to prove, then, the existence of God, which is the only power a mind has, one simply has to know that everything is composed of some material within limits and that each of these abstractions are a matter of perception. Christ spoke in analog, one had to say what they saw. He was not about the miricles, but about judgment.
I like this chart a lot.
>language, i.e., judgment
I shout out, "Oh God," when I'm having sex. That's proof enough for me.
CHAPTER 1
This morning I went to the bathroom.
CHAPTER 2
This morning I pooped and peed.
>OMG he didn't mention pooping and peeing in Chapter 1! CONTRADICTION!!!!!!!
This is literally how gaytheists read the Bible.
Ancient Greek philosophy influenced Christianity (along with Judaic Theology/Philosophy).
Atm it seems a lot of history students and no doubt a few academics are wanting to draw a very hard distinction between gnostic christianity and everything else.
Lilith is actually part of Jewish folklore, and tends to crop up at different points in time. And aside from Lilith the rest of that bit on relatedness to Adam and Eve is p much the kind of argument you might see from a monarchist like Robert Filmer. So nothing really to do with Gnosticism at all.
Easy. Don't start with Genesis.
Esther, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Wisdom. Just don't start with Genesis then.
Or go straight to the gospels. Just come back to that part later.
Your mentality kills your experience.
Come back to it in 10 years.
Just read the whole thing in a row. If you can't handle it, you just don't want it bad enough.
>reading a huge chapter with the precise measurements and materials used in the construction of the ark of the covenant, only to get the entire thing repeated verbatim immediately when it gets built
How to Read the Bible like a Jew
1. Read thematically, not by chapters. The chapters were imposed for organization by Christian scholars. Read each story as it stands and then move on.
2. Read each section many times, word by word, and then make a list of as many questions as you can generate. The Bible is about the questions it makes you ask, not the answers it provides.
3. Find as much secondary literature as you can to solve your questions. You can answer questions differently by treating the Bible differently.
4. Read literature which does not answer your question, but try to find out what question it is answering. Often this is harder than it appears.
Once you get in this habit, you'll begin to realize you actually don't understand anything at all. Every word will bring you innumerable confusion. This is how Jews can find meaning in this book year by year, because they focus on questions and not on answers.
>Genesis 2:13 : God made male and female couple.
>Genesis 3:17 : God saw Adan was alone and made him a partner.
did anybody in this thread actually bother to check the bible? the op is full of bullshit and you got trolled and began to invent "actualizing forms" and that the third chapters is "a run down of everything that happens in in reverse" when the third chapter is completely different from the second
to begin with genesis 2:13 has nothing to do with the topic, here it is:
>13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush.
the actual creation of the first man and women it's genesis 2:7 for the man:
>7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
and genesis 2:22 for the woman
>22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made[h] into a woman and brought her to the man.
now, genesis 3:17 doesn't says anything about the god seeing adam alone and making him a partner, that chapter describes the original sin and the man and woman are described through the whole chapter together, here is is, genesis 3:17:
>And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
the actual line when the god decides to make him a partner it's genesis 2:18:
>18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
and there was not a single mention of any adam's partner before that. the first line when the word woman is mentioned it's the aforementioned genesis 2:22
tldr, Veeky Forums is incredibly pleb
Many stories can be rooted into reality, for example:
>moses
the ice caps that was left from the latest ice age had periods in which it melted extremely fast, potentially wiping out ancient civilizations as it reshaped the land
>adam and eve
very few h.sapiens managed to walk out of africa (if the out of africa theory is correct), the apple could have something to do with ooga-boogaing neanderthals
t b h civilization is impossible to sustain without an order of the masses through religion, if anything, current europe is an indicator of that
Just accept that religion is a product of ignorance and fear, and therefore must be approached skeptically in your studies.
With this in mind, read it as a piece of fiction with embedded aphorisms to life and morals. Whether these are right or not, it is debatable; however be aware of how it molded western thinking and how important it is for understanding the history and culture of the world you live in.
Yes christians suck! Why do so many poets talk about the bible, i literally had to return most of my english poetry books my mom got me for college, I hate stupid man in sky!!!
...
Don't start in Genesis. I'd say look at the poetic/prophetic books first from the old testament.
stop posting
1) read the Passion of Christ
2) kill yourself
>muh symbolic interpretation
Veeky Forums doesn't really read generally, most threads are just assumptions and arguments based off the OP and maybe a synopsis they found online. People just assume it's smarter because what they're talking about seems harder to get into.
>did anybody in this thread actually bother to check the bible? the op is full of bullshit and you got trolled and began to invent "actualizing forms" and that the third chapters is "a run down of everything that happens in in reverse" when the third chapter is completely different from the second
Did you bother to read the comment? Chapter 2 is a reversal of everything that happens in chapter 1. So God spends 6 days making everything, ending with man and woman. Then he has a rest at the start of chapter 2. The he makes man out of dust. Yes he makes man again. Then he makes animals and plants and so on. It's a weird aspect of the bible for sure but none the less it's there.
This is true.
And it cheapens all of Western Civilization for having been built on such incredulous lies.
The book of morman is fanfic
That was clearly a restart. Its what happens when youbcobble together other peoples creation myths.
Not so much.
You don't read it. You read secondary literature about it.
Do... Do you take the bible literally? Was the law given by god not just? Why aren't you outside stoning non virgins at their weddings instead of posting here? Do you realize just how retarded the story of the flood is? How about everything about the story of Babel? There is so much prior art to Genesis and all of Moses' work that it's hilarious. Sorry if this is a scattered post it's hard to pick one thing about the bible that's the most retarded thing to believe.
this is reductive and disproven try again
...
nice
Stop browsing Reddit.
What if Adam and Eve were dinosaurs?
Is there a good reading list for an atheist who is having a crisis of faith?
IT WAS JUST A PRANK BRO
No, but seriously just read it with an open mind. You don't feel the need to tip your fedora while reading about ancient Greek mythology, do you?
this, plus laws and justice came from the bible, you like it or not, before the bible there was no objective value of right and wrong
Hammurabi's code predates the Old Testament.
rekt
hm. you should maybe use a study bible (NIV study bible or something) or a commentary in that case. remember the bible's more akin to an anthology in some senses; there's dozens of authors, different genres, different styles, etc.
for example, lots & lots of repitition in the bible, that's how their culture works. gen1 shows the creation story, gen2 does almost the same. genesis 1-11 is more like an epic, after that it becomes more narrative.
seriously though if you're not using some other sources to help you understand the details you're missing out. it becomes a lot more interesting then.
I'm gonna personally recommend the Harper Collins Study Bible, which is up to date with biblical scholarship and has lots of annotations regarding dates and sources and historical events, etc. There is a lot of duplication in (esp. early) Genesis because two separate version were combined.
You're thinking of the Greeks.
>Everytime I start reading it I can't stop thinking how retarded are christians for believing it.
Because most Christians haven't read it.
religion is like believing in Santa. fucking retarded.
...
t. someone who obviously doesn't get religion
oh yeah what is it
This is the most retarded post I've seen all day, and I browse /tv/. Get a fucking grip.
Maybe, if you are a hopeless pleb. Now go back to reading Wikipedia plot summaries.
Do people read the dictionary? The bible was a reference book. When there was a theological questions all the priests would gather around and argue for months until they resolved it and would use the bible as a reference for their positions.
The shack is pretty plebtier. Its closer to oprah reading lists and really doesnt belong with Tolstoy and such.
>because two separate version were combined.
especially if you realise that, according to theories, the bible was first passed down orally for 100s, if not 1000s of years. Then written, added to bit by bit, until it became what it is today (plus, in this case, it might be interesting to hear why the church put together the bible the way it did, and why there's differences -- the canonicity (canon) of the bible; if OP is interested, look into this).
