Finished Reading The Entire Bible

[Neon Genesis]

I recently finished reading the entire bible. I'm not sure if it took me longer to read the bible or Lord Of The Rings. ^^;; Anyway, some interesting facts I learned from reading the bible. For all that fundies preach about hell, the bible gives very little details on what hell actually is. Like it's all vague on whether or not hell is a real place of eternal torture, if hell means you just stay dead when you die if you're a non-believer, or if hell is a metaphor. The most that's said about hell is in Revelation and in the story of Lazarus and Dives, and it's debatable if that's a parable or intended to be a real story and there's all that symbolism in Revelation. Bible God never once says he's pro-life. The trinity is not actually explicitly taught in the bible. The most you get is some vague symbolism about Jesus and I Am in the gospel of John. If we accept the traditional view of Revelation being a prophecy about future events, in the end times, the laws of nature will be suspended and stars will somehow magically fall to the Earth. Four horsemen who work for Satan will ride around on magical horses to fight against the xtians. Only 144,000 true xtians will be saved and everyone else stays on Earth. Revelation warns people not to sleep naked in case Jesus comes back while you're in bed. What if you're taking a shower when it happens or in the middle of having sex? When Jesus comes back on a magical flying horse, he'll lead the true xtians in a grand war against the non-believers.

 

After a 1,000 years where the xtians rule the Earth and Satan is locked away, God lets Satan out again for no reason at all other than to torment people. Then after God has had enough fun, all the non-believers get tossed into the lake of fire and all the xtians live happily ever after. I just never noticed most of this before when I was a Christian. Like when I was a Christian, I didn't believe in the Rapture although I believed in the Second Coming and I thought those people who believed in the Rapture were heretics. Now I can understand where they get their beliefs from if you read Revelation from the traditional fundamentalist view. It's also funny how the xtians at my parents' church love to preach about how the bible is so powerful that just reading it by itself can convert you yet reading the entire bible only had the opposite effect on me and only reinforced my skepticism, especially after reading the horrible stories in the OT that xtians for some reason glorify as being justice. But now that I know for certain the bible is human made and that it's not that powerful having read it all, it sort of feels weird, like you're disappointed in it. Have you ever read the entire bible? Were you disappointed when you got through the end? What things did you notice while reading it that you didn't notice before when you were a Christian?

[oddbird1963]

Neon G.,

 

I haven't read the bible in its entirety since deconverting. But I did read it through three times in my 30 year stint as a believer, plus do a lot of in depth book studies.

 

 

The thing that stands out the most to me is the supposed second greatest evidence that the bible is the word of god: Fulfilled prophecy.

 

When trying to study the prophecies themselves and then look at the supposed fulfillment of said prophecies, the written fulfillment rarely actually looked like a fulfillment. I began to think there was some biblically inspired method of prophecy interpretation I was missing out on - a hidden hermeneutic of which I had not been made aware. "How in the world is this a fulfillment of anything?" was a thought that often crossed through my head.

 

What really happened? The new testament writers needed a prophecy fulfillment, so voi la! They came up with one that sounded as close as possible and declared it a fulfillment. Most people in their receiving audience didn't know the scripture anyway and few were literate or had access to the written words, so it worked for them.

 

Great post!

[hereticzero]

The big problem is that many people take the Baptist's point of view when it comes to doctrines developed from scripture--that being the Once Saved, Always Saved and the Rapture doctrines. I never could find that much in scripture that supported the Baptist contentions of salvation or the rapture.

 

The upside to the babble is its written works, it is a fairly good read and not as cumbersome to get into as gnostic scriptures such as the Nag Hammadi, which hasn't had as much editing and rewrites. According to church doctrine, a person needs the Holy Spirit to guide them while they study scripture so that the True Meaning® of scripture is revealed, unlike the Nag Hammadi that is so poorly written you would have to channel Shirley McClain in order to get anything out of it.

 

I still read my Bible but with more criticism than when I was a believer. I'm not angry anymore when I read it. I think I am more angry at myself for having believed it in the first place--Christians took Jewish fantasy and combined it with gentile fantasy and the result was Christianity. I do not depend on it for help because now I feel it is more useless trash to carry around. The OT and NT scriptures, I don't find compatible. The OT and NT were never intended to be part of the same book. They are two opposing religious views and only Christians believe the two volumes are of the same religion. I have always been opposed to joining the two parts together. This is because a lot of Christians, including myself, do not know all the history behind the church or Judaism. Christians firmly believe Judaism was the religion of the ancient Jews before Christ and to some extent, it was. However, the Jews did not exist, as a religion, until their return from exile. This is why I have always asserted the OT was not written until after the exile in order to give the religious hierarchy legitimacy over the Jews--Moses was invented as were the 600+ laws written in the OT and gaps in the religion were 'back-filled' in order to close any gaps that remained. The religion prior to the return from exile was 'Hebrewism'. The fact that Gentiles took the Jewish religion and made it into a Gentile mess called 'Christianity', is one big reason why so many denominations have sucky doctrine based on religious observances of the Jews, ie passover. So, in reading the Gentile Bible, one can be left scratching one's head trying to figure out how the church comes up with its doctrines.

[Arctic]

The more and more I study the bible and its teachings from a more neutral and skeptical perspective then what I used to,

it keeps appearing to be more immoral and wrong and in a way evil,

 

and I can't believe I just said that about something I used to love so much.

[godlessgrrl]

I've been rereading the Bible again too, paying attention this time to sexism and misogyny. I hadn't ever realized what a shameless sausagefest the Bible is before now.

 

Amazing what you see, when you come at it again years later, with a whole new perspective...

[Dagan]

Way to go, it's a tough slog!

 

The hell thing is interesting, isn't it? I believe that's because the understanding of hell evolves throughout the bible from nothing, to Sheol (a place where dead bodies were burned) to a hybrid of Sheol and Greek Hades in the New Testament. It reflects whatever the times dictated. Isn't that interesting? What other teachings in the bible reflect what the times dictated, and not necessarily the revealed truth of God?

 

The hell thing and that very question was one of the many questions which led to my deconversion. It's fascinating, and all it takes is someone to read the bible in context and ask a few questions. How come more Christians don't deconvert? Because they don't read the book they profess to be the revealed word of God.

[Evolution_beyond]

I've read it most of the way through a couple of times. At both times I was ex-christian but still believed in God. I had my own spin on it and was trying too hard to read into it what I wanted to read into it.

 

Now I am attempting to read the whole thing through again. This time I am an atheist and I really honestly don't care what it says or what it doesn't say because I can always reject it as nonsense anyway. So I have no spin and I am not wanting it to say anything in particular. So this time I'm more likely to perceive what it actually is saying.

 

I also decided to do it in the order it was probably written this time. In the autumn I read most of the Old Testament (except for Esther and Daniel).

 

Recently I picked up where I left off and read Esther and Daniel and am now part way through the New Testament (having read the genuinely Pauline letters, the letter of James and I am currently partway through the Gospel of Mark).

 

I agree with most of your points by the way. I am also blown away by just what a lot of bollocks is in the Bible and how little relevance it seems to have to my own life.

[Evolution_beyond]

And there's not really a devil in the Old Testament. just a snake and a weird 'accuser' angel who seems to be an underling to God and not at all an opponent.

 

And most of the Old Testament is coming from a point of view of no life after death (with the exceptions of Elijah and the guy in Genesis who ascended to heaven)

[Neon Genesis]

Way to go, it's a tough slog!

 

The hell thing is interesting, isn't it? I believe that's because the understanding of hell evolves throughout the bible from nothing, to Sheol (a place where dead bodies were burned) to a hybrid of Sheol and Greek Hades in the New Testament. It reflects whatever the times dictated. Isn't that interesting? What other teachings in the bible reflect what the times dictated, and not necessarily the revealed truth of God?

 

The hell thing and that very question was one of the many questions which led to my deconversion. It's fascinating, and all it takes is someone to read the bible in context and ask a few questions. How come more Christians don't deconvert? Because they don't read the book they profess to be the revealed word of God.

Another example that reflects the times is the role of women in the bible. Like in the authentic Pauline letters, Paul writes that there is no male or female in Christ, Phoebe is a female deacon in Paul's church and there are women with major leadership roles like Priscilla. I remember Bart D Ehrman also mentioned in his book Misquoting Jesus that one of Paul's apostles was a woman and later manuscripts tried to censor it by changing her to a man and the sexist verses in Paul's letters were not written by Paul but were added in by later scribes. But then you get to "John's" letters and women are referred to as the "weaker vessel" and are to be submissive to men, so I actually have a bit more respect for Paul now more than I do for whoever wrote John's letters. I also find it amusing whenever the authors of the NT letters keep insisting that they are who they say they are but half of the time, the authors ended up being somebody else. Other interesting things I learned from reading the bible are that the OT prophecy books are awfully obsessed with threatening pagans who practice idol worship with torture. I remember one part where one of the prophecy books (I think it was either Isaiah or Jeremiah) where it was giving the reasons why the pagan gods were false by accusing the pagan gods of never answering prayers and I just have to wonder why the author couldn't make the obvious connection with their own god.

 

At one point in Ezekiel God says he'll make people who worship the pagan gods eat cow poop for some reason. And the NT only explicitly condemns same sex relations twice in all their scriptures yet Christians act like homosexuality is the worse sin you could possibly commit next to atheism and live their whole lives around getting rid of the ebil liburhal ghey agenda. Also, contrary to the claims of Christians, the bible never once says we have freewill and it seems to be more inclined to predestination instead. I've also noticed that Jesus' personality is different in all the gospels. Like in Mark's gospel, Jesus is a charismatic faith healer that often gets angry at the world but in Matthew and Luke's gospels, Jesus is shown as being more compassionate. In John's gospel, Jesus' message is more symbolic and philosophical. I don't know why, but John's version of Jesus is just kind of creepy to me. He just has this feeling to him that's different than the kind of familiar Jesus I grew up with or maybe it's the idea of a guy having philosophical debates with people while hanging on a cross being tortured that's creepy. As for why more Christians don't deconvert, I agree that most don't read their bibles but I also think another reason is because many of them, especially fundies, already have a sick and twisted understanding of morality, like the recent survey that showed fundies were more likely to support torture than any other group. When your mind is already that screwed up, there's no hope for them at that point.

[Seeker630]

I read the entire Bible from page one to page 1167 in the version I have. It took me nearly two years to slog through it. I had to keep putting it down so my stomach would settle. I was already a de-convert by that point. Having come up Catholic, I never had a Bible until I was about 35 or so. I found most of it to be revolting, or completely wacko. There is some accurate historical information in it, and the geography seems to be mostly right. But it didn't translate well into English, and the poetry sucks. And I was unable to find a single fulfilled prophecy anywhere.

[mwc]

And there's not really a devil in the Old Testament. just a snake and a weird 'accuser' angel who seems to be an underling to God and not at all an opponent.

 

And most of the Old Testament is coming from a point of view of no life after death (with the exceptions of Elijah and the guy in Genesis who ascended to heaven)

Heh. Congratulations on becoming a Jew.

 

mwc

[Dagan]

As for why more Christians don't deconvert, I agree that most don't read their bibles but I also think another reason is because many of them, especially fundies, already have a sick and twisted understanding of morality, like the recent survey that showed fundies were more likely to support torture than any other group. When your mind is already that screwed up, there's no hope for them at that point.

 

True. I think that is done by first feeding Christians a diet of bible fragments (Bible Flakes! Now with 10 per cent less fibre!) that are totally taken out of context, but sound like they're saying the same thing and support the preacher's position. Then if a Christian does finally bother to read the bible, he/she already has been issued the official "truth"-tinted glasses so they can interpret the bible in the right way (the fourth guy in the fiery furnace? It's Jesus! Song of Solomon? Jeezus! Creation of the world? JAEEEEZUS did it, hallelujah, aMEN!)