Because it’s a lesson about how it’s wrong to mock your religious elders. You know, a story to scare your kids into behaving.
Yeah. Ol’ Jimmy seemed to like replacing animals they couldn’t translate with mythical animals from British folk tales. It’s weird.
(Yes, I know he didn’t do his own translation, and that the translators were building on what came before.)
Yeah, I think Numbers killed the Bible threads here. Sure, I had to quit, but I know no one was reading them because of me. There just wasn’t anything to talk about.
Feel free to denigrate my maturity, but don’t say anything about my thinning hair – them’s bear-fighting words.
It’s really too much to bear.
Myself and those like me are bashed your bible every hour of the day. We don’t find it “adolescent,” we find it terrifying.
During my 13 years in Catholic school and catechism I noticed how we stuck around the saner parts of the bible (as it were). Once I decided to read the full thing my faith (as it were) began to crack.
:rolleyes:
Police those who follow your own “holy book” before you attempt to police others.
I had read it through twice, once in elementary school when I found it very dry and boring, once in high school when I found it ludicrously self-contradictory and, quite frankly, horribly unflattering to the purported author.
In Jr. College, a very devout classmate quoted a passage (the numbers of which I can’t recall) that went something like “Jesus said ‘The bible is a work unto itself and must be taken or dismissed as a whole’ and that’s why I believe.”
And I realized, yet again, that was excactly why I wasn’t a Christian at the time.
I’ve gotten better, though; now I’m a non-theist.
–G!
Open up the gates of the church
and get me outta here
So many people have died in the name of Christ
for anyone to heed the call
So many people have lied in the name of Christ
that I can’t believe it all
…–Graham Nash (Crosby, Stills, and Nash)
…Cathedral
Sometimes literally bashed. Although the perpetrators don’t tend to use a Bible for the actual bashing.
Gah. Less witnessing, more Bible crazy!
My favorite bit remains the bit about demi-gods in Genesis (the nephilim).
Also, for those into logic, the two contradictory creation stories in Genesis are fun.
Both, it seems to me, are a function of the fact that the OT is a real mash-up of different sources cobbled together, some very ancient; the religion was in the process of evolving. Yet the redactors did not edit odd bits out - they included them.
Someone needs a hug. [ol]
[li]I have not attempted to police anyone.[/li][li]You haven’t the slightest idea how I interpret my ‘holy book’.[/li][/ol]You simply persist in whining with mock righteous indignation.
[QUOTE=Numbers 5:11-21]
11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.
16 ‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, ‘If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband’— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—‘may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell.’"
[/QUOTE]
“I don’t understand, Rabbi.” Joseph complained, “You say she passed without even a tremble, but we’ve only just been married and I haven’t had time to…well, we’ve been getting ready to travel to Nazareth for the census.”
“Well, I’ve never seen it fail.” Reuben argued while thinking, Never mind it’s my first try…
“So how do you explain that she says she’s pregnant?” Joseph asked.
“Well, there are some legends.” Reuben suggested, “You know, Lot–”
“Yeah, lots of tales…” Joseph rolled his eyes, but then brightened, “Oh! You mean the messiah!”
“Oi, jesus, no–” Reuben tried to correct the visitor from Bethlehem.
“What?” Joseph asked, “‘Jesus’?”
“Oh,” Reuben was flabbergasted, “Uh, that’s just an expression in these parts…”
'Yeah, but it’s a nice name!" Joseph nodded. And he jumped up from his pew and ran out of the temple, excitedly telling everyone he encountered about his wife’s immaculate conception…
:smack:
–G!
If it’s good enough for Peter and Paul, it’s good enough for me.