The Bible is a Book of Fairy Tales

Once again you miss the salient point!

 

Ironic given that is EXACTLY what YOU are doing!

 

Of course he does. All Christians exercise that right all the time. That's why we have tens of thousands of Christian denominations.

 

I had to look. LOL.

 

That's irrelevant to the topic under discussion.

 

Of course it is.. The Hebrews had no historic narrative until AFTER the Babylonian exile.

 

This subtopic in this thread is about textual criticism, an issue brought up by others to which I am responding. Discussions in threads wander, you should know that by now.

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As to whether the Bible is a book of fairy tales, I say it is not. But to make an honest assessment requires a person actually understand the Bible, and its clear that most people have not taken that step.

Does the Bible teach positive moral values? Of course it does - the 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Good Samaritan, almost all the Proverbs, etc., are clearly positive moral principles from both a secular and a religious perspective.

 

The Bible is didactic literature.. It is NOT science or history.

 

Wow, you clearly have not read the Old Testament and know nothing of Judaism. When Judah (the Southern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been conquered by the Assyrians around 720 BC) was captured by the Babylonians, there was no Jewish nation and the major issue to the Jews was related to maintaining their identity. At that time, the Jewish leadership made the deliberate decision to base their identity not on a land nation but on the Torah - they literally became a "people of the book". Jews were already literate, one of the purposes of bar Mitvah and bat Matzvah was to demonstrate the ability to read and understand the Torah, that's why so many Jews were used as scribes and in govt positions in the ancient world. During the Babylonian exile, even though Jews were scattered all over the Babylonian empire, they would be bonded together by the rituals and beliefs and lifestyle of Judaism.

They had a long historic narrative before the Babylonian Exile. In fact, there were other critical documents referenced repeatedly in the Old Testament that were available at the time, documents such as the "Annals of the Kings of Israel" and the "Annals of the Kings of Judah" which covered the period from roughly 930 BC to 580 BC. These were secular documents which recorded the activities and events of the 2 Kingdoms.

 

The book doesn't exist.

 

That's one of the most ignorant statements I've seen in the forum.

 

Annals of the kings of Judah doesn't exist.

 

There are no known copies today. Its one of the "holy grail" documents for archaeologists and historians.

 

So now you are admitting that the Jews were literate as far back as 720 BC.

Explain why a "nation of scribes" did not document anything contemporary about Jesus? Not even his disciples, and we know at least two were literate, wrote down anything that Jesus said. Jesus himself was literate and he didn't write anything down either.

This dichotomy between a nation that documented everything that happened to it, including a succession of profits and screeds of births, never wrote down anything at all about someone who was allegedly "king of the Jews" and the "son of god"?

That it wasn't contemporaneously documented says volumes!

 

The fact Jews were literate well before 720 BC is simple historical, secular fact.

There were documents written about Jesus, some are called the "New Testament". His disciples did write - John, Peter, Matthew. James was Jesus brother but not Jesus Disciple, James converted after Jesus crucifiction and resurrection and wrote James. Josephus, Tacitus, Suestonius, Pliny, all 1st century writers, mention Christianity and/or Jesus.

And how do you know they did not write even more documents which did not survive? Because we don't have them does not mean they did not write. For example, Thallus (1st century historian, probably Greek, not a Christian, died around 50-60 AD) mentions Jesus in one his writings but the document no longer exists. Its known because Julius Africanus in a 221 AD document includes a quote from Thallus document regarding Jesus.

At the time, Jesus and his followers were not the global religion of today. It was originally a small sect of Judaism, all of them were Jews and Jews were not a large group to begin with. After the Council of Jerusalem it began to greatly expand but in terms of the Roman Empire was still small. Even so there are 1,000's of documents from the early AD centuries.

 

RE: The Bible is a Book of Fairy Tales
※→ tkolter, Battle3, Margot2, et al,

Here we have something rather confusing. The difference is whether the document under investigation is:

• "Fairy Tales" (A work of fiction),
• The document "is true,"
• The document "is textually correct," (The reliability of the text and the criticisms of the Canons; versus which books were included in the Bible.) The collection of the works were created in a ≈ 1,600-year period.

(COMMENT)

The very first set of fifty Bibles, as originally assembled by the backers of Emperor Constantine I (brought about by a vote in the shadow of bribery and corruption), on a collection of writings over more than a millennium and half. The belief is that the invisible hand of the Divine eminence. The phrase and language most often used is: "sacred character" and "inspired literature."

The Bible, like many books today which are a compilation of poetry, essays, correspondence, and biographies from many authors and sources, are taken as face value. Individually, making the Bible "non-fiction" in its character. But the assembly and interpretation of the end publication (The Bible) is a product of The Emperor → and both his competitors for power and his allies. Thus the Emperors reason for even calling for the creation of The Bible politically motivated to establish control over the population. Constantine had control over the Bishops → and the Bishops had control of the people → the people are the source of revenue. (Pyramid of Power)

The man-selected compilation of sacred scripture, the letters from John or Paul and the rest --- are (most probably) "true." It would be like putting a poem from Robert Frost's works next to the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Individually they are "true" and "inspirational" works. But because they are found in the same book of many great works, does not necessary that their is some divine meaning.

The concept of the invisible divine hand is still in use today → in the ritual of the coronation; or in the selection of a Pope.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

Most of the OT was written after the Babylonian exile.. or around 600 BC.

 

For goodness sake! When will you learn that the Ten Commandments are found in Exodus 34:12-28? Now go redeem the firstborn of your donkey with a lamb. All of the biblical stories are based upon the passage found in Exodus 34:10-28.

Which of the Ten Commandments did Yeshua say was BS and he refused to follow? Moses would have killed him for not following it.

 

The question asked was does the Bible "teach positive moral values to children and adults". If you can't read the posts, then don't comment.

 

You're the one who mentioned the Ten Commandments, which you erroneously identified.

 

Again, go read the post I was responding to. If you cannot keep up - or even read the posts so you can respond intelligently - then don't play.

 

You claimed that the Ten Commandments teach moral values. I say that they don't. You might think that they do but that's because you don't know what the real Ten Commandments are. So if you don't know the essential thing that all of the biblical stories are based on why should any of your other statements about the Bible be given any credibility?

 

agree, myth would be a better term and many in power used those myths to control the people

nowadays we use laws for the same purposes

 

you have to remember that people back in those times believed things like rainbows had a magic behind them

 

I don't think they are myths exactly. I think they are ancient stories, based in fact, that were learned and retold countless times over the course of history. The same stories have been told across the Orient, but each with a twist of cultural originality. You may want to say Noah is a myth, but then there is evidence that much of the earth was underwater at one point, and humans survived the catastrophe. Somebody explained it with a story of an ark. They also sought to deepen the significance by trying to show how all creation was something precious to the creator. It really is no different from American Indians and their relationship through nature to the Great Spirit.