to atheist and theist, what do you think of this greatest story. Do you accept it as history? Does it hit you the wrong way? Do you wish that there be changers to the story? if your and atheist, Who is dogmatic about religion and not about to say that God exist or not, Can you be objective in reading the story and not biased as often many on this web site are.What do you think of the virgin birth, of the star that led the wise men to the holy family? do you believe that the town of Bethlehem existed going back to the era? there are many other details to the story, Please add your own.
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The greatest story in my opinion is Hamlet. The Bible is lame.
The holy babble is a horror story. Racism and slavery, murder, genocide, sexism, paranoia, homophobia, rape, incest. A horror story
Beowulf, the Icelandic Sagas, every Shakespeare Play, the Journey to the West, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones....All offer far better stories, deeper insights into human nature and the human condition. The Bible relies far too much on Deus ex Machina. It fails as fiction and non-fiction.
What is the story, anyway? In Part 1 a thuggish puppet master with a foreskin fixation creates the world and all life, and then bullies, torments, drowns, and murders people directly or through minions for worshipping the wrong way, eating the wrong food, being gay, or wearing the wrong clothes. In Part 2 a hippy rebel wanders around giving sermons, doing a bit of faith healing, but then gets himself killed for becoming a political nuisance. There's no sense of narrative unity or direction.
Virgin birth: translation error
Clearly The Big Lebowski. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of philistines!
The Big Lebowski. Of course. I stand corrected. The best fight scene and the best funeral scene in all cinema history. The Dude rules.
The ironic thing is that I had to Google the term philistines to confirm the spelling.
I feel sorry for the Philistines. They got a bad press because of Israelite propaganda about that stone-chucking prick David. Not much is known about them, but it looks like they were fairly advanced and civilized for their day.
Algebe:
I was reading a magazine the other day, probably Discover, and it mentioned the discovery of a Philistine grave yard this year. Evidence points to a rather sophisticated urban civilization.
It is thought that the Philistines were originally indigenous Greeks. They called themselves Peleset and traded with the Cretans and Egyptians. As the Achaeans and their sky gods took over the Greek mainland the Peleset evacuated south and settled in Canaan. They named it Pelesetina (Palestine). Philistine is also based on Peleset. Leda, Helen, Jocasta, Danae, Andromeda were mythical Peleset queens (they had no kings, only war lords who served the queen).
I have to admit...The Dude has his own church. I am a minister. Hamlet does not. Abide or not to abide.....
The greatest story of ever told has to be the Dark Tower series. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. (greatest opening line of any story)
The star and the "virgin" birth are old pagan symbols that are routinely attached to the birth of prominent men and divine favorites. The crucifixion is another item common to pagan mythology where gods get crucified on a pole or tree. (The cross would just be a modification of a tree or pole.) The idea that God screwed things up so badly that he had to send his son (which was really himself) to be sacrificed (but not really sacrificed since he promptly went up to heaven), the exercise somehow forgiving human sin (which did no good since humans went right on sinning) is bizarre beyond belief! I don't see a great story here, let alone the "greatest story ever told." That title is Christian bias on steroids.
@ agnostic enlightener
You obviously don't know who you are posting to. Most if not all atheist are well versed in religion. Many are experts.
You are a fraud. You registered as an atheist, yet all you do is proselytize.
The bible is NOT the greatest story ever told. It's the greatest lie ever told. It is nowhere near "history". None of us are "biased." We are educated. BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE!
As far as Bethlehem existing, every great lie has truths sprinkled in to simulate credibility. Hitler used the same tactic. Undoubtedly he learned from the bible.
How can we take you seriously when you joined this forum on a lie?
You profess a lie, you pose as a lie, you believe in a lie and obviously live a lie.
We cannot reason with a liar.
So go elsewhere and lie all you want!
As a work of literature it's a beautifully written story that examines all of the Ten Commandments from various perspectives. But the first thing you must realize is that the real Ten Commandments that were written on the stone tablets and that are called the Ten Commandments are the ones in Exodus 34:11-28. The traditional "Ten Commandments" are just everyday laws and were spoken and never written on the stone tablets.
Once that's understood you can see how just about all of the biblical stories are based on one of those Ten Commandments. That's what makes it a good story, considering that it was written by an English committee around the year 700 as a gift to the Pope. The Bible didn't exist before then as an unified actual book. Sure, there were various bits and pieces of scrolls floating around but there was no book. The Pope needed a complete story in a single source to counter Uthman's Koran that his committee had written.
While the Bible does include a few historical people, such as Darius and Cyrus, over 90% of it is pure fiction. But the English were great story tellers and they wrote it as a novel. Later on other writers and committees revised it and renamed the main characters with more modern names so that the readers could relate to them. One of the major discrepancies that crept in was their description of corn as one of the main grains in the Bible. Remember, corn was a Western Hemisphere plant and it was unknown in Europe and in the Middle East until after Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. So all biblical references to corn were written after Europeans became aware of corn, probably around 1550 - 1580. Just as an aside, a lot of Roman era movies mention corn as well. The writers didn't pay attention in school.
Eventually other writers revised the stories into numbered chapters and verses. They also revised the Koran into the same format.
"considering that it was written by an English committee around the year 700 as a gift to the Pope. "
I thought the Bible was produced by church synods in the 4th century and then translated into Latin by St. Jerome. As far as I know the first English translation was done by John Wycliffe in the late 14th century. William Tyndale produced a translation in the early 16th century. The pope certainly didn't want the Bible translated into other languages. Tyndale was strangled and burned by the church, and Wycliffe's body was dug up and burned many years after his death. The first authorized version was produced for Henry VIII, but the msot famous one is the King James version. The English Bible translators certainly didn't "write" the Bible, as a novel or otherwise.
The word "corn" is correct English usage. In pre-American English, it meant any kind of grain crop, especially wheat or barley. Settlers in the New World first used the word to refer to maize.
Another historical figure in the Bible is Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.
Aren't you familiar with the Codex Amiatinus? Codex Amiatinus - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Amiatinus
An English committee wrote it in Latin. It weighed about 75 pounds. The propaganda is that Jerome had written an earlier Bible but that's almost 100% pure BS since it doesn't exist. Besides, there was no one named "Jerome" because that name didn't exist in the 4th & 5th centuries. None of the "J" words existed until the 16th century. Any "J" word written in an English book was written after 1633. J - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J
I think I'm right about "corn" since the word originated in the Middle Ages. Online Etymology Dictionaryhttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=corn
Some passages from the KJV regarding corn =
Genesis 41:5 And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.
2 Kings 4:42 And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat.
That sounds like American corn to me.
There are other historical figures in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar varied from a god to a lunatic.
King Darius made people pray to him for 30 days because he was God.
Antiochus has a big story in the books of Maccabees in the CEB version.
@Diotrephus: "Aren't you familiar with the Codex Amiatinus?"
Yes. It's a Northumbrian copy of Jerome's Latin Vulgate translation. It's not a new compilation. It's a copy, albeit the oldest surviving one.
Jerome is the Anglicized version of Hieronymus. Jerome was an historical figure born in the mid-4th century. He's the patron saint of translators and librarians.
"Corn" goes right back to proto Indo-European. One version of it came down through Latin as "grain." Another came through Germanic languages as "corn." Wheat and barley also have ears.
"That sounds like American corn to me."
Maybe. There are theories that there was a form of maize in the Old World, possible originating in India.
So the writers were too stupid to use wheat for wheat, barley for barley, and grain for grain? The biblical verbiage describes American corn.
Hieronymus didn't get his alias of Jerome until the 17th century, when "Jesus" got his.
The problem with the Bible is that it's mainly fiction that's passed off as historical fact. I suppose it's OK to play fast and loose with words and names but there should be a disclaimer in it that says it was changed for ease of reading.
Diotrephes: "So the writers were too stupid to use wheat for wheat, barley for barley, and grain for grain?"
When I was growing up in England in the 1950s, the word corn was commonly used for wheat and other grains. And they weren't writers, they were translators. Lots of errors creep in when people attempt to translate between widely different languages. You know the one about the word "virgin" don't you?
"Hieronymus didn't get his alias of Jerome until the 17th century, when "Jesus" got his." The "J" was commonly used to represent the initial "i" in Latin, as in "iuppiter" and "Jupiter", "Iulius" and "Julius." The fact that Jerome's Anglicized name dates from the 17th century doesn't mean he didn't exist in the 4th.
He might have existed in the 4th Century but you wouldn't have found him by calling out "Jerome". The point is that by giving everyone aliases it increases the likelihood that the stories are pure BS.
The bible is a sham. It was written to capture a pre-existing, verbally contrived story replete with a cast of characters developed within it that men conceived, lofted into history from their imaginations and then created an industry of worship to surround it with bristling defenses.
I keep reading on this site's forums theist inquiries into the bible as a work of fact or fantasy, or even its inerrancy. That alone in evident of people who do not take the time to delve into it for themselves, are decidedly loyal to it and yet come here seeking what atheists think of it. Read the archeological record for yourselves and come away understanding that it is a sham. You have to have some logic buried deep down you're disallowing to surface that will certainly broad brush your ideologies as false. That is your fear. You come here seeking to flaw the atheist logic that you so fearfully deny your own psyche's fragile faith to see the light of. You come here to imbue yourselves with credence for a story that never happened, armed with desperate desires cloaked as truth and poorly camouflaged as logic, and hope that someone takes you seriously.
This is an atheist website. Your inquiries are entertaining but your obliviousness is shining through with each challenging word. What are you seeking? What is the truthful motivation for your presence here? Are you serious about reverting atheists to theism? We came from there. We could not be so easily sold on the fantasies so markedly attributable to human desire in imagination's clothing.
Hans Christen Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes has a moral to it. Read it. It's tells us of two weavers who are also swindlers. In the case of the bible, we have a parallel story of weavers of its contents swindling the ignorant masses to be believe it as a truth. If you cannot read the historicity of the bible, understand it to be a tale no different than Andersen's.
But, immortality is strong with the Force so I doubt you'll have the courage to academically deny it.
The greatest story ever told was probably 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J. D. Salinger.
Geoffrey Chaucer's The Caterbury Tales is high on my list.
@Truett: The Canterbury Tales.
Oh yes indeed. Especially the Pardoner and the Summoner. It's amazing that Chaucer get away with lampooning the church Gestapo like that.
I'm smiling! The Miller's tale is my favorite.
Oh yes. Alan and Absalom and the red hot poker
In that same vein (sp), 'Arthur Rex'. Monty Python's 'In Search for the Holy Grail' was a parody of that book.
I say "candide" by Voltaire. :)
The Bible itself says that it's just a story meant for entertainment.
2 Maccabees 15:38-39 (CEB) = "38 If the story was told effectively, this is what I wanted. But if it was told in a poor and mediocre fashion, this was the best I could do. 39 Just as it is harmful to drink wine or water alone while wine mixed with water is delightful and produces joy, so also may the writing of this story delight the ears of those who encounter this work.
The end."