• Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      That’s mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.

      R crumb, the comics artist, has a fantastic graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate. This made genesis, the most boring and pedantic part of the Bible, more interesting.

      The Bible has undoubtedly led to incalculable suffering as a cult, but just as a book, it’s nowhere near the worst piece of literature I’ve ever read.

      • [object Object]@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        That’s mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.

        But then, don’t discount the chapter where the twelve Jewish tribes send their gifts to Moses (iirc), and the full account of the lavish gifts is given, per each tribe. I’ve read through the whole thing to confirm the madness that the list is identical for each tribe, and is repeated twelve times.

        I’d like someone in a US church choose that chapter for their Sunday reading of the Bible, and then see the faces of the congregation sitting through it.

        Whoever wrote those books, didn’t have much consideration for the reader.

        graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate

        I have a long-standing dream of someone just adapting the Bible to the screen exactly as it’s written — at least the first parts up to and including Moses’ wanderings. I have a feeling that a direct retelling would cause more than a few butts to be hurt.

        Pasolini, an atheist and communist, came close in the approach with ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’, but the result is a rather romantic vision of the life of Jesus, perhaps dictated by both the chosen source material and Pasolini’s ‘nostalgia for belief’.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          A direct retelling wouldn’t be allowed to air. Murdering your wife in Christ’s name for not cooking you dinner, divinely owning slaves as an entitled Christian, lobster sending you to christian hell; the production wouldn’t get very far.

        • SparroHawc@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Whoever wrote those books, didn’t have much consideration for the reader.

          Sizable chunks of the Old Testament were documentation, rather than formatted with the intent of being engaging. It’s like how a family bible often has genealogy hand-written inside it, except it’s the contents of the book itself.

          • [object Object]@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            That’s cool and dandy, but I still think that writing “every tribe brought exact same shit” would work swimmingly.

        • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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          2 months ago

          Pasolini, an atheist and communist, came close in the approach with ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’, but the result is a rather romantic vision of the life of Jesus, perhaps dictated by both the chosen source material and Pasolini’s ‘nostalgia for belief’.

          As a former Christian and current socialist, it makes sense for socialists/communists to have a romantic view of the life of Jesus. It’s the one part of my old beliefs that I can’t let go of, since it shaped the values that I have now. The values that Jesus preached are often the same values that lead people to socialism/communism.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        It’s definitely not just the first chapter of Genesis. Like the entirety of First Chronicle is genealogy.

    • IronBird@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      what’s wild to me is the people who swear by it as the answer to all lifes questions and yet…they’ve never read it.

      if i thought and all knowing all powerful being put answers to all lifes questions into a book i’d be reading the shit out of it

    • mech@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      When I was around 20 and looking for purpose in life, I actually really tried to get into Christianity.
      I mean, they seemed to have a light guiding them through life, something that takes away the feeling of senselessness and chaos in the world. I especially loved the idea that “you can never fall deeper than into god’s hand”.
      So I prayed to god to show me the way to him, went to the local church every Sunday, and started reading the bible.
      All of it. Cause I obviously wanted to know what I was supposed to believe in. And it completely killed my desire to become a Christian.

      The only way to make sense of it, for me, was to interprete the old testament as a collection of the stories that goat herders told each other to make sense of world history, followed by a heavily propagandized history of the Israelite people, legitimizing their claim to Israel after displacing and genociding the people who had lived there before.
      The new testament is the story of a wandering preacher who tried to establish an early version of peaceful communism.
      But when that became too popular, the Roman state embraced and co-opted the message and turned it into the basis of a hierarchical state church, which later turned into Christianity as we know it today.

      Since I read God’s book while praying to God and that was the interpretation I was left with, I have to assume, it’s the one God agrees with ;)

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      And this fucking thing is partly responsible for why numerous things are going wrong with humans today and humans of history.

      No no no no. It’s the gays that are responsible. THE GAYS!!!

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      If you can get hold if it, look out for Thomas Jefferson’s The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s the New Testament with all the spirituality, supernatural, etc edited out. Instead you’ve just got a book about morals and ethics as taught by some guy.