What Is The Theme Of The Christian Bible?

[hereticzero]

Now, I know many do not care about this topic but I have come to the conclusion and believe the christian bible is not about salvation through Jesus but rather, the bible is a collection of stories showing, without a doubt, that total mandated legislated prohibition of ANYTHING, even under penalty of death, does not work! No amount of law in our society will change human behaviour. The only way to live with each other in peace, is to accept one another as fellow human beings and get on with our own lives, minding our own business. Peaceful consenting activity between two people should not be illegal, so long as it does not involve physical coercion such as rape, murder, robbery, etc. Prohibition does not work even if the direction to do so comes from god almighty!

[R. S. Martin]

I'm not sure what direction you want to take this thread. In answer to the question in the title, I don't think the Bible has a theme. I think it's a collection of literature that happened to end up inside the same set of covers. What makes most sense to me at this moment is that at the time of the Babylonian Captivity the Israelites became conscious of themselves as a people with a history. As a remnent reestablished at Jerusalem the learned among them, in Babylon and Jerusalem, decided to dig up the folklore and write it down before it was lost to posterity forever. They probably learned the hard way that in order to retain their identity they had to have a written history and law and heroes like the Babylonians had. So we get a Hebrew creation myth, Adam and Eve, Noah and family, Abraham and the other Patriarchs, the Chosen People, etc. All of this explains the Israelites.

 

This is how and why the Old Testament was written, in my opinion, to explain how and why the Israelites and their God originated. Thus, it's a collection of literature about ONE PEOPLE ONLY, not about God's Special People. Other people were the special people of their own god. At that time, it was believed that every geographical place had its own unique god that had jurisdiction over it. There is evidence of this in the Bible itself if only we understand what we read. It reeks of polytheism and is therefore unacceptable to monotheism and Christianity so it is explained away.

 

And then, as fate would have it, the most powerful ancestor of Western society, i.e. Constantine, adopted one version of that religion many centuries later. The Sacred Text was updated and closed (more or less; it keeps getting opened and closed time and again), and has come down to us as the Holy Bible. The religion is known today as Christianity and is at the moment the most powerful religion in the world politically.

 

Christianity will say the theme of the Bible is salvation through Jesus Christ. But I've seen Christianity read the Bible in so many different ways--and all of them make sense because none of them can follow one rule only due to the terrible inconsistencies of the biblical text itself--that I conclude you can make the Bible have any theme you want it to have. Once you choose what you want the Bible to say, you can make the rest of it line up to agree with your favourite messsage.

 

The parts that don't agree, or simply make no sense, you can always relegate to "God's mysterious ways," or "faith makes no sense." The all-time stop-gap answer is "So far as the heaven is above the earth, so much higher are God's thoughts than our thoughts and God's ways than our ways." In other words, "God's ways are past finding out." Yes, there truly is no end of biblical passages to quote to prove that it's okay for the Bible to make no sense. I think I've heard them all yet new ones always keep popping up.

 

Finally I just decided "to heck with it!" If an answer existed to my questions god would have allowed me to find it by now. Since I have not yet found an answer--and Jesus said "He who seeks will find"--there must be no answer. In my OT course I got the impression that the Bible was probably written by religious leaders for political reasons. So disgusting! And that is probably the reason for many religious rules and customs to the present day. I don't know how we can ever hope to get at the real root of the problem because religious people daren't look at it--the stakes are too high, and ex-religious people are likely too biased (hurt and angry from being victimized in some way or another) to look at it objectively. People who have never been religious often don't understand the depth of religious feeling, conviction, and obligation. Thus they cannot really investigate it, either.

[hereticzero]

The bible is very much a political book of how to write controlling laws. I use this theme idea to get funny mentals on a roll--as they believe everyone should be arrested that lives and believes differently than they do. The bible itself has no real direction. It was created by a bunch of old boys that wanted to control what was read and believed.

[HuaiDan]

I think the story of Isaac and Abraham is an ancient version of the Milgram experiment.

[Fweethawt]

When I read the title to this thread -- "What Is The Theme Of The Christian Bible?", I instantly thought of the theme to, 'Rocky'.

 

D'duh duuuuuuuh

D'duh DUUUUUUH

Duh d'duh duh duh'nah

Dah duh'nah duh dah d'naaah

Duh duuuuuuuuh

[Mythra]

 

OMG - I could hear the song! Just by your duhs!

 

[Fweethawt]

Liked that, did ya?

[mwc]

The bible is very much a political book of how to write controlling laws. I use this theme idea to get funny mentals on a roll--as they believe everyone should be arrested that lives and believes differently than they do. The bible itself has no real direction. It was created by a bunch of old boys that wanted to control what was read and believed.

I'm not sure how to respond to this. You have the Hebrew bible (the OT) which was used to "unite" the states of Judah and Israel. This one reason Israel is always doing something "bad" and Judah is generally the "good" one in the stories. Israel was being usurped by Judah. That and some swords worked alright. After some Maccabees you get a repeat with Galilee in the 2nd century BCE. It took awhile but they got the goal originally written down in the Exodus story. It closed canon around 100CE.

 

The whole NT additions is another can of worms altogether. Those people thought they were going through an apocalypse and then a physical resurrection pretty much right when the OT was being canonized. After that it seems they wanted to build and strengthen the church. That seems to have worked.

 

Anyhow it seems that both "books" had different themes overall but achieved them (essentially after the fact in a way but that's neither here nor there depending on your point of view).

 

mwc