A Book You Can Trust

Post Reply New Topic

greece fathered much of that thinking in its infancy, i went to the court house in delphi and one can draw an almost direct parralel to the layout and look of a court room in western culture today.(though much of that is common in any layout supposed to accomodate multiple groups of people in a confined space)

The Bible, in terms of its usefulness to me, is somewhere between Yaffa storage blocks and an incomplete set of Pampered Chef spotted stemware.

That is all.

I like your shakespere analogy - but for a different reason.

The collective works of shakespere has a lot to say about life, the human being, and humanity. Even if it were an authorless series of stories, Do you need documentation and proof of authorship to learn something applicable to life or your understanding of it from shakespear's work?

The same is true of the bible/torah. Fiction or not, it is a powerful series that play out humanities drama and one can still learn a great deal from this authorless text as one can learn from shakespere

that isn't for you to follow. Those are popular near eastern customs and traditions, and the text applied a tortured group of people called the Jews who God conditioned into being the vehicle by which the world would receive ethical monotheism, and ethics. Unless of course you are a 1.) Jew, 2.) living thousands of years ago, 3.) with a God that lives with your tribe. That you would stone someone today is only legitimate if you live somewhere where the society finds it an appropriate form of punishment.

You can learn a great many ethics and ethical codes of behavior that are still the golden standard yesterday, today, and forever. For example prayer - the first prayer asking God for something in the bible - petitionary prayer(somewhat the only prayer people know these days) - was by Abraham's servent( who was not a patriarch, not a matriarch, not a hebrew, and the person is even nameless) on behalf of another's wellbeing. We can learn from this anonymous human being (race and origin unknowable) that anyone can come to God, not just the religious, and that the most elevated ways, particularly when you ask for God to do something for you, is to request it for the better wellbeing of someone else. Most petitionary prayers today read like lists of favors or desires for God, your butler in heaven, to fulfill. Prayer is universal, practiced mainly by theists, but also many non-theists as well, and if there is an ideal, it is that it is on behalf of someone else.

I'm terribly sorry, but prayer is not as effective as pushing button #1 and at least getting a recorded answer.

I'm terribly sorry, but you've missed MarketAndChurch's point.

So? That doesn't change the fact that lex talionis appears in the Bible. It was good for the ancient Israelites, it was good for the Greeks, and it's good for us. It still stands that the Biblical model is a good one. It doesn't really matter what the courtroom looks like or the format of proceedings. What matters is whether a mechanism exists to administer justice. The Bible doesn't lay out an exact procedure but rather a basic model. That leaves it up to the judges and priests as to how best to implement judicial principles. The elegance of the Biblical model is in its simplicity.

What we tend to either downplay or overlook is how merciful that law really was. In the tabernacle/temple, the mercy seat was placed over the law symbolizing that mercy was to take priority over the law. While a criminal had to pay some form of restitution for his misconduct, by no means was it required that he suffer permanent, physical harm. Sure, there are a few exceptions--and they are all understandable in cultural context. In other words, these would be very deliberate crimes that no one would be forced to commit, like a woman trying to defend her husband by grabbing another man's giblets. I can't think of any other example of mutilation being used as punishment in the Bible. If there are other examples, they are quite rare. You might say "eye-for-an-eye" literally means that, but that was really more the Sadducee interpretation rather than the more accepted Pharisee position. By paying in some way the equivalent worth of loss or injury to someone, whether physical injury or material property damage/loss, the prevailing attitude is mercy rather than vengeance. Oddly enough, the idea of insurance and personal injury torts derive from this same idea of compensation for loss of "life or limb." There's even a distinction among "accidental death," "negligent homicide," and "murder."

An interesting and useful point. Most of the toktok is from people [some of them, alas, considering themselves Bible-believing Christians] who do not quite get what the Bible is for, this collection of history, poetry, law, advice, philosophy prophecy and all.

Consider 2 Timoth 3:16-17 - I use here, not without pain, the NIV rather than the normally preferred KJV: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Graece: πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ ὠφέλιμος πρὸς διδασκαλίαν, πρὸς ἐλεγμόν πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν, πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ, ἵνα ἄρτιος ᾖ ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος, πρὸς πᾶν ἔργον ἀγαθὸν ἐξηρτισμένος.

It is an interesting text. Nobody really know what θεόπνευστος [more or less literally "God-breathed"] actually MEANS. But many, perhaps most take it as "inspired" which thdey take to mean God dictated the contents of the Bible which they take to imply that the Bible is authoriotative and trustworthy which is then taken as a license by the pseudoliteralists [I say again, you cannot ACTUALLY take the Bible consistently literally].

It is normally taken to refer to the Bible - the canon as we know it. But That is in fact impossible. At the time of writing the Christian canon did not exist. Paul has to be referring either to the Jewish canon - the OT - or to "any writing - all literature" without distinction.

Add in the fact that certain manuscripts leave out the all-important "and" καὶ . Without the "and", the reading changes:

"All of the OT OR All written material, when God-breathed [possibly when opened by the Spirit], is useful etc."

Either way, Paul does NOT say the Bible is an authoritative encyclopedia. He does not say it is an authoritative legal code. He says it is "useful for training Christians". Nothing more.

So ignorant people who point at Christians and howl that they are sworn to obey a bad and inaccurate book need to cease to be ignorant. They can still howl at people who actually are sworn to obey every word of Leviticus, and if they want to howl at the people who say they take the Bible literally, fine by me.

But unless they can show that the Bible is NOT useful for training Christians [and I like the interpretation without "and" by which Homer and Shakespeare are also useful sources], they should stop howling at me.

Philologos wrote ~ So ignorant people who point at Christians and howl that they are sworn to obey a bad and inaccurate book need to cease to be ignorant. They can still howl at people who actually are sworn to obey every word of Leviticus, and if they want to howl at the people who say they take the Bible literally, fine by me.

But unless they can show that the Bible is NOT useful for training Christians [and I like the interpretation without "and" by which Homer and Shakespeare are also useful sources], they should stop howling at me.



I still recommend the bible as piece of resource one can use as a basic guide to better themselves or help in living a more satisfying life whether christian or not. It contains some really good common sense advice when passages aren't taken out of context. I find some of the new testament especially helpful. It isn't the only self-help resource I read either. ~ Good luck in proving any of your arguments. Personally I find rehashing the same old arguments over and over waste of time. Thx Ya'll! ! ~ Trista

heres a book I trust. and actually own and read everyday

Hey thanks for the post Richard. I'll have to give it a read and see if it fits in my everyday library.

you are welcome. i'm almost certain you'll enjoy it, its a very beautiful read.

Putting this Taoist link in the ibrary:

http://texts.00.gs/texts,_Han.htm

The bible is useful at training christians which is a useless task.