Banned from the Bible

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A serie of documentaries on christian/hebrew books that were not made part of the Bible, some with wild imagination.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZMNE7IE6bM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpHmpD62BW4[/youtube]

A lot of them are available here.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/index.htm

The Bible is a collection of largely apocryphal stories that generations of Semitic nomads passed down orally. The first written copies of the Bible's Old Testament were allegedly penned about 400 B.C., and the books of the New Testament were written decades after the alleged events they described. Much exaggeration went into these works.

It was all written by the Patriarchy to justify slavery, the subjugation of women as second-class citizens, and the acquisition of land through the genocide of the people already living there - the very same "Christian Values" that America was founded upon.

If I had a backward time machine it would be Paul and Marcion that I would eliminate.

Paul and Marcion betrayed the spirit and the word of the Jew, Y'hoshua the son of Yosef.

ruveyn

Yes because they we all so civilized before...Christianity after all was a reaction against mainstream Judaism and Roman rule.

Interestingly Jesus wasn't the only Messiah back then, there were dozens of them with followers, certainly several that were crucified. At least two with a Resurrection story. Jesus wasn't the first.

There is similar selection of the old testament. There was at five different versions of the early Hebrew Bible, it was edited down into one.

Were those things not already there? I don't think the Church elders had any part in establishing that injustice, yet their general lack of protest towards it should indicate it's not earthly prosperity and comfort or civic equality that was their biggest concern.

A lot of American bled to get rid of slavery. The Civil War resulted in 620,000 deaths and 1.5 million maimed and wounded. That comes to about 6 percent of the population as it was then.

Americans also promoted the fortunes of women with the amendment permitting women to vote and the promotion of women to importance in industry during WW 2. Remember Rosie the Riveter. Also many of the B-17's flow from the U.S. to England were piloted by women. It was a ferry run rather than combat, but it was a start.

ruveyn

Curiously, a general decline in church (and temple) attendance seems to have been in effect since the War Between the States.

Imo, once Americans and Europeans people started getting away from those three Patriarchal values*, they also started drawing away from the more fundamentalist beliefs, as well ... laws against adultery, sodomy, mixed-race marriage, drinking, and the like seem to be getting cast aside.

Imo, if the GOP wants to regain power, it will have to push legislation that rolls back civil rights to the Antebellum era, and eliminate all Constitutional amendments from 13 on up.

(*Slavery, Subjugation of Women, and Conquest by Genocide.)

@ruevyn Yes, a lot of Americans died to end slavery in the US, but to say that the soldiers in the Civil War could be divided into virtuous Union soldiers who wanted nothing more than to bring an end to slaver slavery and evil Confederate solidiers who only cared about preserving the institution would be to create a false dichotomy. And I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Christianity was undeniably used to justify slavery. Of course, it's also been used to condemn slavery. but that doesn't change the fact that the US has had some pretty serious problems with the patriarchal views Fnord was talking about.

@Fnord Nah, I think they'll just have to make some significant changes in order to remain competitive. There's already been a couple of relatively high-profile Republican politicians to come out in favor of gay marriage since Obama's reelection. There's going to be a lot more where that came from. Barring some sort of massive conservative religious movement akin to a Great Awakening, I think the GOP is destined to change. Public sentiment on political issues puts constraints on the platform of essentially any major political party, so if the Republican party wants to remain remotely relevant they're going to have to become at least marginally more progressive.

Incorrect. Slavery, the subjugation of women, and genocide were pretty standard fare back then. They had no need to justify it. The Hebrew people were no more distasteful than, say, the Babylonians, and far less so than the likes of the Assyrians. The reason why an organized, written religion arose at that time had nothing to do with justification. It had to do with the fact that in 722 BC, Israel fell to the Assyrians. This left Judea as the only Jewish stronghold, and a lot of Israelites were worried that their civilization would die out. The religion was written to save the culture. It was just written at a very brutal time.

When viewing history, ask yourself "What was the world like back then?", rather than merely ascribing 20th century morality to a very different time and place.

Chicken ... egg ... whatever ... the point is that the Bible does not "speak" against those three Patriarchal values, and thus tacitly approves of them.

We've known conquest by genocide in the last hundred years, women are still not considered equal to men everywhere, and slavery is still rampant in many countries, while Christian leadership is more concerned about declining attendance and what two (or more) people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. This is a clear indication that Christianity's Patriarchy is still intact and in charge - at least, when it comes to the G.O.P. in America.

Interestingly enough some of the stories in the Old Testament - such as the story of the Garden and the story of Lilith - actually come from Mesopotamia mythology itself, with evidence to suggest that as political and cultural conquest occurred repeatedly, characters and other gods and goddesses were edited out of them over and over again until what you have left is reduced to what we have today. Much of what was cast aside was for political or cultural purposes regarding conquest.

And interestingly enough the Abrahamic faiths are part of the minority of faiths which refuse to recognise how their belief systems formed and disregard the majority of their own history - a sad and highly inaccurate due to the decontextualisation of it by the standards of any faith.

The Bible certainly approves of them. I was not supporting the view that it did not. I was taking issue with your assertion that the sole reason for the development of the Abrahamic holy book was to justify those crimes. It's historically inaccurate.

As far as patriarchy goes, patriarchy is not Christian, it's not Jewish, it's not Islamic. Patriarchy has been central to civilization since the rise of Sumer. Ancient institutions do not go away overnight. Slavery has been virtually eliminated in the West. Women are free to do whatever they like, marry whoever they like, withhold sex, any rights that have been denied to them through history are available for them to seize at will. As far as genocide, whereas once, not all that long ago, it was the norm, it is considered to be the greatest of sins by our modern society.

A lot of the reason for that is Christianity, by the way. Good, practicing, true believing Christians, men like Thomas More and Erasmus, gave birth to Humanism. The very rights that we enjoy were borne out of the Christian Renaissance. So take a nuanced view. The Christian Orthodoxy doesn't care for women, true. Neither do any of the ancient religions. The vast majority of Christians believe that women are more than capable of taking care of themselves, and Christ himself always struck me as a rather decent guy on the subject of women.

Yahweh was a Sumerian/Babylonian deity. The Cult of Yahweh in Israel just happened to get the most power and decided to push for Monotheism. Much of the Old Testament stories come from Sumerian/Babylonian mythology. The serpent, for example, was a corruption of Tiamat. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the character of Utnapishtim is something of an amalgamation of Noah and Methuselah.

Then we'll just have to disagree on that. Whether or not my assertion is valid, it is what I believe until proven otherwise beyond any reasonable doubt.

I also believe that Paul subverted the message of Jesus to perpetuate the Patriarchal values and keep peace with the Romans. I mean, what better way to keep the oppressor's foot off your neck than to preach that they have every right and reason to conquer you and keep your people enslaved?

Then again, even Jesus never preached against slavery ... at least, not according to any record that survives today ...

The Bible is friendlier to the Roman Empire for political reasons, yes. I don't even necessarily blame Paul. It's because the Bible was compiled by Roman theologians for a Roman emperor so that it would lend legitimacy to his rule over an increasing Christian population. Constantine and the Council of Nicaea standardized the Bible in a way that was friendly to them. Take a note of how Pilate is relatively sympathetic and how the Pharisaim are portrayed to be the ones to bear sole responsibility for the death of Christ. Classic deflection.

Now, Christ never spoke against slavery. He never spoke for it, and that's what was more important. Biblically speaking, the Old Testament exists primarily to serve as backstory. This is what the Jews believed. This was wrong. So God sends his only son to forgive sins and show a new way. So, by my interpretation, the slate is wiped clean, and Christ's teachings are the only ones that are applicable. There's nothing quite so eloquent as Buddha's embracing of the untouchable, but it is certainly hard to both love thy neighbor and enslave him at the same time. Christ also demonstrated in his parables the equal goodness of other peoples, such as the Samaritans, which breaks down the wall of "other" that permits slavery. The best way to approach the Bible, in my experience, is to read the New Testament without the influence of the Old. I can understand how, when we are primarily read stories from the Old Testament in Church, and when Leviticus is held to be as important as the moral teachings of Christ, we can come to the idea that the Bible implicitly supported the idea. What we have to do is ask ourselves, given Christ's general attitude towards people, judging by his actions and words elsewhere, what might have been his opinion on this subject?

God gave man free will so that way they can have a sense of humor, those who take the bible too seriously have no free will and are brainwashed thralls manipulated by gods puppet strings!