Are The Contradictions Intentional?

[Eponymic]

Here's something I've started to mull over lately.

 

A great part of the reason the Bible became fashioned into the form it is now was in order to gain political subjugation of the masses. Constantine didn't accept it as the national religion of the Roman Empire until after the Bible had been fashioned into a more effective means of societal control than the existing mythological structure.

 

Given this, how feasible is it that those who formed the Bible, actually wrote contradictory & intensely difficult/convoluted passages to purposely confuse, intimidate, and keep the general population off-balance; thereby keeping them listening & obeying the political & theological hierachies?

[SBeeland]

It could've happened. I wouldn't be surprised, as bad as its written. But I've always thought people were as gullible then as they are now, and believed this stuff "Just Because."

[Lycorth]

Maybe, maybe not. We will never know, I am certain. But the fact that the Old Testament was put together a long time before the New was written down seems to explain something to me; the OT writers were just manufacturing a folk religion for their little Canaanite-offshoot tribe, whereas the NT writers were doing much the same, but for all people to buy into. And though the NT writers were familiar with the OT stories, one can be sure they didn't have a Torah sitting before them to cross-reference with, and when you write a sequel yet only have a basic outline of Part One to go on, your work will be sloppy.

 

That, and lots of people are just gullible.

[HuaiDan]

Mystics always accentuate mystery. It always amazed me, even as a child, that the English standard for the bible was the KJV in olde Englishe, vitrually indecipherable to me even today. I remember my Roman Catholic boyhood friend said he was forbidden to read scripture, and only recieve interpretations doled out through the church. In recent unrelated debates with some acquiatences of mine about scince vs, religion and skepticism vs. mysticism, they love to accentuate that life is a mystery and there will always be contradictions that can not or should not be explained.

Yes, ignorance and befuddlement do indeed seems to be tools used by mystics and theists alike. Strikes me as odd that they don't see this as all too convenient means of propagating ignorance. You

d think the message of the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz would've spread far and wide by now.

[Celsus]

I think it is a good thing to keep in mind that in the times when the biblical texts were developed and compiled, the overwhelming majority of humans were illiterate. In the Jewish religion, almost all males could read and write, as it was a mitzvah to read the Torah and almost all Jewish males could at least read basic Hebrew and Aramaic. Outside of Judaism, the only people who generally were literate were the wealthy and their immediate households including some slaves. As well it was a requirement for all member of the Roman military to be literate and the Roman military actually included literacy classes as a part of the training program. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in 450 CE, literacy also dramatically declined and remained restricted to a very small segment of the population, generally the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church and few nobles. This trend was not reversed until the invention of the printing press, and remained under 50% in the west until the 19th century. Interestingly, during the middle-ages to the industrial age, literacy was almost universal in Islamic lands and in the Jewish communities. As well, literacy was higher in the orient of China and Japan than in the west.

 

With that being said, it is instructive to know that most people could not read the Bible even if they had a copy of it in the biblical and church times. In the early middle-ages, the Roman Cathlic Church made it illegal to teach grammar (literacy) and it was a capital crime for a lay person to own or read the Bible. When the printing press was developed and the Bible was translated into vernacular languages (which was initially illegal too), the various different interpretations arose leading to the schisms that resulted in the 30,000 different denominations that exist today.

 

In my opinion, the church leaders always knew the Bible was not to be taken literally and it was not the be read and interpretted by the average believer. Interpretation and doctrine was the exclusive purview of the priesthood and the church. So I disagree with the original argument that it was deliberately made confusing to keep the average layperson of balance. The average layperson could not read until very recent times and it was just not considered a matter of importance as the only intepretations were confined to the leadership who could read and write.

[Checkmate]

Bruce has it exactly right here. And I would like to add that since the bible was hand-written, that also made it an EXPENSIVE tome to possess. Only the church and royalty had the cash to possess a bible.

 

And even IF the nobility was blessed with the ability to read, they would defer to the priestly interpretations anyway, out of fear.

 

All these factors explain why the Church was able to maintain it's power through a system of illiteracy, ignorance, superstitious fear and intimidation. People simply did not and COULD not know any better.

 

So...what is the excuse TODAY?

[white_raven23]

 

Interesting.

 

Lets give this a neo-apocalyptic allegory

WWIII has come and gone. Humanity and civilization are slowly making a comeback.

Few are literate.

 

Powers arise among those who can read from writings declared "sacred".

 

In time, literacy spreads, and someone outside the ruling power gets his hands on the "sacred" writing that is the basis for the social structure being the way it now is.

 

After much confusion....the new reader realizes that the major belief system that is now the root for practically everyone's life is based on someone originally called "Martha Stewart" and her recipie for the perfect grilled cheese sandwich.

 

Now....the ruling powers never made any mention of grilled cheese.....so people this new reader speaks to about his new understanding of the "sacred" writing all pooh-pooh him, declaring that the writing wasn't meant to be taken "literally", it was a figurative meaning.......and surely the social structure of today is better than it was before. So the writing is ultimately given credit for society's comeback, instead of the blood and sweat it took to get everything organized and functional again.

[Eponymic]

So...what is the excuse TODAY?

 

America is pushing us back to the dark ages. The literacy rates have been declining over the past three decades and they are trying to fight back to win, knowing that the current age of information has them between a rock & a hard place.

 

Plus there's such a thing as willful ignorance. People don't need to be illiterate, just so scared out of the prissy pants that they would rather stick to an archaic mythology than risk learning the reality.