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Reading the Bible for Yourself

gabeygoat

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gabeygoat
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So, inspired by an amazing book, both enlightening and hilarious, called Good Book : the bizarre, hilarious, disturbing, marvelous, and inspiring things I learned when I read every single word of the Bible / by David Plotz, I decided to re-read the Bible. I used to be a Catholic, and during my Catholic School years I won some bible competitions (basically they were like the SATs of bible study). However, I was reading the bible as it was interpreted by the Church. So this time, I'm just reading it as a story, and summarizing it.

Anyhoo, So I'm going to post my results bit by bit.
Feel free to discuss my interpretations, but also, I'd love if other people did the same thing.

So as to not create giant walls of text, I'll post bits at a time. I will probably edit as I learn more from Asimov's guide to the Bible about history etc.

Genesis
First day
God creates the heaven and earth. The term ‘earth’ is not capitalized here, for it isn’t actually named such until verse 3. His face was above the waters, which is kind of an interesting visual. Then God creates light, but not the sun or stars or any other source for the light yet. The evening and the morning were the first day. Evidently, this is how early Jews counted days, starting with the evening and ending in the morning. I forget why.
Second day
Firmaments! God creates a firmament between the waters, heaven is with the waters above the firmament, and what will be earth is below. I guess this is a primitive understanding of how water can be both in the ground and in the clouds. If true, it is perfectly reasonable then, to consider God to be a dude sitting on a cloud (above the firmament).
 
It also explains why the sky is blue, there's a huge body of water above it through which the light of day is filtered. (The sun was added later for decoration.)

The fun bit comes when you try and reconcile Genesis 1 with Genesis 2 as if it were continuing the same story. You end up with a hilariously fallible and absent-minded god. For example, Genesis 2 says that there were no plants because God hadn't created rain yet and there was no man to till the soil. Obviously all the plants he created in Genesis 1 died because God forgot to water them, and when he told the man and woman in Genesis 1 to go forth an multiply, they must have interpreted it to mean **** OFF, and so they did and were never directly referred to in the Bible again, which is why God had to start over.

But their descendants are referred to indirectly. After all, who else would have Cain married to produce his family as described by the Bible? (When he founded a city after God rewarded him for killing his brother by freeing him from having to slave over the fields and giving him a protective mark to prevent other people from harming him.)
 
I can save you some time... skip the book of Numbers. It's just the word "begat" repeated like 7000 times.
 
Good luck with your project, gabeygoat.
I did that some years back and found Isaac Asimov's guide to be an invaluable aid at the time.
Also, on another level, Robert Graves' Hebrew Myths
Which translation of the bible are you using?
 
Just as a quick aside, they didn't have capital letters in Hebrew at the time, and for that matter any ancient language I can think of. The one that comes even close to that is Egyptian, where you'd basically draw a balloon around proper names. So basically I wouldn't worry much about whether Earth is capitalized or not. That's an artefact of the translation to a modern language, as opposed to being some kind of nuance of the original story.
 
The descriptions in Genesis makes more sense when put into context with the universe as it was understood by its writers.
 

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MikeSun5 said:
I can save you some time... skip the book of Numbers. It's just the word "begat" repeated like 7000 times.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Numbers 5 is pretty illuminating. There's a section detailing how a woman, presumed to be unfaithful, may be given an abortion. By a priest. In a church.
 
pakeha said:
Good luck with your project, gabeygoat.
I did that some years back and found Isaac Asimov's guide to be an invaluable aid at the time.
Also, on another level, Robert Graves' Hebrew Myths
Which translation of the bible are you using?
Click to expand...

Good thinking, pakeha. I have my own copy of Asimov's Guide to the Bible which I have used to study each of the three Bibles I have. Choosing a Bible version to start with is very important. I have a KJV and a Geneva Bible that I use for my study of Shakespeare (which I keep near my Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare which is as invaluable as his guide to the Bible). I found a couple of examples where the verses of these two Bibles are numbered differently, but I forget what they are. This distinction is part of the reason pakeha's advice is important. Another reason to figure out which version to start with is that I also have a modern-language version called The Jerusalem Bible. It includes the Apocrypha rejected by Protestants.

Be aware that if you tell people that you are reading the Bible that they may ask you which version. Please do your homework first, and best wishes on your study of the Bible.
 
Mister Earl said:
I disagree. Numbers 5 is pretty illuminating. There's a section detailing how a woman, presumed to be unfaithful, may be given an abortion. By a priest. In a church.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I had to go look that up...

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 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), 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— 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.

“‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 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. 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. 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”— 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. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”

“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it. ”

“‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[e] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

“‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”
That's not exactly an abortion, but a curse which happens to cause bitter suffering and a swollen abdomen (and possibly permanent infertility if I'm reading it right) in addition to miscarriage. But it only works (or is supposed to work) if she actually has been unfaithful. If she hasn't been, the curse won't affect her.

ETA: But I suppose it is one of several passages that clearly indicates that the Biblical God isn't on the side of the pro-life movement.
 
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That is about as reliable as the hot poker on the tongue 3 times, that I've seen on YouTube.
A curse is only effective if the person cursed believes a curse can exist.
The hot poker, well, I'd wager it burns for real, but indiscriminately, about as effective as tossing a witch into the river. If she floats, the "pure" water... imagine how pure the local water supply would have been in the olden days.. has rejected her and she is a witch.
 
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