twistor59 wrote:A long time ago, I read the bibble all the way through - took me about 6 months. To have it done in precis form in modern English like you're doing would have helped a lot. I think it's a really good job.

There were some bits in the boly hible that, when I read them, I thought "WTF is this trying to say ?". Very confusing, I'm sure you'll come across them. Looking forward to the story of the golden hemmorroids (Ist Samuel, chapter 5) !

Thanks, I'm not posting my notes, there's a lot of WTF in them and "Abe haggles with God" and "more promises of seeds spreading and great wealth"Because that's really what the whole story of Abraham is all about. The Abe haggling with God is the bit about Sodom and Gomorrah, "I'll see your 50 and raise you 40!" total rubbish. God keeps promising to not destroy people but then he does it all again. I'm reading the bit about Jacob and his wives - all I can say is WTF!

Or the short version :

And God said to Adam and Eve - "Do not eat from that tree. I'm serious."

And Adam and Eve said "Fair enough, You know best", and they moved far away from that place, never to see it again.

The End

The story of Jacob and Rachel.

Chapter 28 to 36 cover the story of Jacob and his problems with his father in law and his various journeys around the land that he and his ‘seed’ have been promised by God.

Briefly. he goes to his mother’s brother Laban, to find a wife among his cousins. He sees Rachel, the younger daughter and wants to marry her so he asks her father. Laban says OK but what will Jacob give him in return. So Jacob agrees to work for 7 years for Rachel. He does that, makes Laban really wealthy in livestock etc. and he is given Rachel. But in the morning after the night before he finds that he has slept with her older and less atrractive sister, Leah. So he’s not happy but Laban explains that the younger sister can’t marry before the older one, so he agrees to work for another 7 years for Rachel. He does that and finally he is given Leah and her handmaid as bed partners and he breeds with them both having lots of sons, and then he has Rachel but she doesn’t all pregnant, so he sleeps with her handmaid. He has all the sons, the ones who the 12 tribes are named after, except eventually Rachel has Jacob and then when she finally has Benjamin (after whom Bethlehem is named) she dies in childbirth.

In the struggle to get away from laban and go home to his family, he tricks his father-in-law to give him livestock. Some mumbo-jumbo with twigs and dyes manages to get him the borwn livestock he is promised. There’s much invoking of gods and Rachel steals her father’s gods which he’s not aalowed to search her for because she claims it is with her as “with women” so she takes them.

Then they come across Esau and because Jacob is worried that Esau will kill him, he splits up his family, sending the maidservants with their sons ahead so Esau can kill them first, and leaves Rachel and Joseph at the back. Nice puppy.

Esau isn’t interested anyway, in the meantime he’s accumulated his own wealth and has got another cousin as wife and his own concubines so he leaves Jacob to his business. Jacob travels to Canaan where his daughter, Dinah is raped by a prince who offers to marry her. Her father agrees as long as the men are circumcised, all the men of the kingdom. They agree and after the cirucmcision, his sons Reuben and Simeon kill all the men of the city. Jacob does nothing ecept to make his family hand over their images and gods and earrings and buries the whole lot saying that they will worship only the one god and he goes around naming places and building altars until eventually at Bethlehem, Benjamin who Rachel names Benoni, is born before Rachel dies.

Jacob builds a tomb to her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel's_Tomb before he returns to Esau to bury their father Isaac who is 180 years old when he dies.

Is there any reason why a modern writer doesn't write the stories in a ore user-friendly style rather than all the begats and begots?

Agrippina wrote:The story of Jacob and Rachel.

Chapter 28 to 36 cover the story of Jacob and his problems with his father in law and his various journeys around the land that he and his ‘seed’ have been promised by God.

Briefly. he goes to his mother’s brother Laban, to find a wife among his cousins. He sees Rachel, the younger daughter and wants to marry her so he asks her father. Laban says OK but what will Jacob give him in return. So Jacob agrees to work for 7 years for Rachel. He does that, makes Laban really wealthy in livestock etc. and he is given Rachel. But in the morning after the night before he finds that he has slept with her older and less atrractive sister, Leah. So he’s not happy but Laban explains that the younger sister can’t marry before the older one, so he agrees to work for another 7 years for Rachel. He does that and finally he is given Leah and her handmaid as bed partners and he breeds with them both having lots of sons, and then he has Rachel but she doesn’t all pregnant, so he sleeps with her handmaid. He has all the sons, the ones who the 12 tribes are named after, except eventually Rachel has Jacob and then when she finally has Benjamin (after whom Bethlehem is named) he dies in childbirth.

In the struggle to get away from laban and go home to his family, he tricks his father-in-law to give him livestock. Some mumbo-jumbo with twigs and dyes manages to get him the borwn livestock he is promised. There’s much invoking of gods and Rachel steals her father’s gods which he’s not aalowed to search her for because she claims it is with her as “with women” so she takes them.

Then they come across Esau and because Jacob is worried that Esau will kill him, he splits up his family, sending the maidservants with their sons ahead so Esau can kill them first, and leaves Rachel and Joseph at the back. Nice puppy.

Esau isn’t interested anyway, in the meantime he’s accumulated his own wealth and has got another cousin as wife and his own concubines so he leaves Jacob to his business. Jacob travels to Canaan where his daughter, Dinah is raped by a prince who offers to marry her. Her father agrees as long as the men are circumcised, all the men of the kingdom. They agree and after the cirucmcision, his sons Reuben and Simeon kill all the men of the city. Jacob does nothing ecept to make his family hand over their images and gods and earrings and buries the whole lot saying that they will worship only the one god and he goes around naming places and building altars until eventually at Bethlehem, Benjamin who Rachel names Benoni, is born before Rachel dies.

Jacob builds a tomb to her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel's_Tomb before he returns to Esau to bury their father Isaac who is 180 years old when he dies.

Is there any reason why a modern writer doesn't write the stories in a ore user-friendly style rather than all the begats and begots?

You are doing a fine job! There have been a few attempts, but I suppose outside the churches any publishers are likely to think the market would be very small. Certainly though I can't see why a few modern versions of some of the more universal books in the OT, like the Song of Songs and Jonah- or Job( somewahat edited)- would not find an audience. I sometimes re-translate sections of the NT- I have some Greek- in an attempt to liberate the poetry.
Although not so easy with St Paul

great job Agri! It's interesting to read it that way.

Thanks to both of you.
Actually I'm finding it quite interesting. There are lots of things I didn't know, like about Abraham and Sarah being brother and sister. No wonder there was only one child.

The aging business puzzles me though. I'm surprised that no one has been able to figure it out though.
It could be a decade every hundred years but then that wouldn't explain the younger fatherhoods.
In ancient times they used to date by events, not numbers. So the numbering would be out.
If they used "the year of Seth's birth" and king lists, which is the way that the city-states in the regions dated, it would be so much easier. But they weren't an established city-state until after Moses and even then it was confusing, right to the Babylon exile which can be verified.

For me the big thing has always been that Herodotus din't speak about them. Other history writers say that he ignored them because they were insignificant, and I agree, but they weren't and still aren't insignificant to the Jews. All of Jacob's altars were marked out later, like the one that marks where Rachel is supposed to have been buried, but not by any pillars that Jacob built. Also the grave of Abraham and Sarah would have been important, so why didn't they mark it properly?

My problem related to Herodotus is that he remarks that the Egyptians circumcise and it's a big enough deal that he comments on it, and he says not a word about other circumcisers in the region. The fact that Jacob's sons destroyed a city-state because their sister was raped after they'd made all the men be circumcised would have been a big deal, but there's nothing about any other people circumcise. This is proof to me that even as late as more than 100 years after their return from Babylon, if there was a great temple at Jerusalem with a gold casket containing a great written work, and occupied by people who circumcise as the egyptians do, Herodotus would've mentioned it.

That he doesn't indicates one of two things: either it was too small and too insignificant; or he got the Egypt story from other travellers and didn't actually go there himself or travel as extensively as he claims. This is a question that historians have about him, i.e. whether he was a fraud and merely told stories in the style of the biblical ones or the biblical ones were attempts at emulating his stories and written later than even the Babylon return.

Questions, and more questions. And of course the reason why people still read and analyse it today.

There's no doubt that when put into layman's terms, the bible is much easier to read and understand. The bible's own words then become its undoing. It loses its mystical appeal , becomes less burdensome and really only portrays an ancient way of life. Like anything from the past related to mankind it becomes an artifact, a memento to how little we once knew or to what our ancestors once thought was fact. A testimony to a bygone era, not to be critical of, but to acknowledge their attempt at understanding the universe we live in. This is how they lived, all very modern to them .

It should be full of errors. It should be repulsive and unattractive to many. What it shouldn't be is gospel.

petwo wrote:There's no doubt that when put into layman's terms, the bible is much easier to read and understand. The bible's own words then become its undoing. It loses its mystical appeal , becomes less burdensome and really only portrays an ancient way of life. Like anything from the past related to mankind it becomes an artifact, a memento to how little we once knew or to what our ancestors once thought was fact. A testimony to a bygone era, not to be critical of, but to acknowledge their attempt at understanding the universe we live in. This is how they lived, all very modern to them .

It should be full of errors. It should be repulsive and unattractive to many. What it shouldn't be is gospel.

That is very insightful and so true. If only the people who believe in its holiness would see that it is no more god-inspired than the wisdom of Plato or the philosophy of Socrates and no more historically accurate than Herodotus.

Up to this point. Where Rachel is buried, I'm inclined to go along with it being an interpretation of Near Eastern folklore.

What comes next, the whole thing with Joseph and the Exodus story, I think that is the people in Babylon taking the stories of the Assyrians and Persians, and their exile and changing it to suit their need to create cohesion among their people who were becoming assimilated into Babylonian culture. Like old people today try to make their younger family members remember their history (I know I'm doing it to my own kids) and to try and retain their family culture by making it seem important, the old men who were born at the time of the removal by Nebuchadnezzar and who didn't remember what it was like to live in "Israel" simply twisted their own story to give them a history they didn't have. Anyway I'm going to read the Joseph story today, and see what i can dig out.

petwo wrote:There's no doubt that when put into layman's terms, the bible is much easier to read and understand. The bible's own words then become its undoing. It loses its mystical appeal , becomes less burdensome and really only portrays an ancient way of life. Like anything from the past related to mankind it becomes an artifact, a memento to how little we once knew or to what our ancestors once thought was fact. A testimony to a bygone era, not to be critical of, but to acknowledge their attempt at understanding the universe we live in. This is how they lived, all very modern to them .

It should be full of errors. It should be repulsive and unattractive to many. What it shouldn't be is gospel.

Very well put

Agrippina wrote:

petwo wrote:There's no doubt that when put into layman's terms, the bible is much easier to read and understand. The bible's own words then become its undoing. It loses its mystical appeal , becomes less burdensome and really only portrays an ancient way of life. Like anything from the past related to mankind it becomes an artifact, a memento to how little we once knew or to what our ancestors once thought was fact. A testimony to a bygone era, not to be critical of, but to acknowledge their attempt at understanding the universe we live in. This is how they lived, all very modern to them .

It should be full of errors. It should be repulsive and unattractive to many. What it shouldn't be is gospel.

That is very insightful and so true. If only the people who believe in its holiness would see that it is no more god-inspired than the wisdom of Plato or the philosophy of Socrates and no more historically accurate than Herodotus.
.

Justin Martyr would not have differed too much from your first point I am not so sure about your second though, Herodotus was much closer to the events and more critically minded than most of the final authors/editors of the historical books in the OT

Ian Tattum wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

petwo wrote:There's no doubt that when put into layman's terms, the bible is much easier to read and understand. The bible's own words then become its undoing. It loses its mystical appeal , becomes less burdensome and really only portrays an ancient way of life. Like anything from the past related to mankind it becomes an artifact, a memento to how little we once knew or to what our ancestors once thought was fact. A testimony to a bygone era, not to be critical of, but to acknowledge their attempt at understanding the universe we live in. This is how they lived, all very modern to them .

It should be full of errors. It should be repulsive and unattractive to many. What it shouldn't be is gospel.

That is very insightful and so true. If only the people who believe in its holiness would see that it is no more god-inspired than the wisdom of Plato or the philosophy of Socrates and no more historically accurate than Herodotus.
.

Justin Martyr would not have differed too much from your first point I am not so sure about your second though, Herodotus was much closer to the events and more critically minded than most of the final authors/editors of the historical books in the OT

You're right of course. In the absence of any other history of the ancient world, and especially about the middle of the second millennium BCE in the Near East, Herodotus is all we have and it is a lot more probable than the OT. The OT is merely a history of the folklore of the Jews, rather than their actual history. That is, in my opinion anyway, the big difference between them. At least we know from other sources that the major events in Herodotus did occur. Which is more than I can say about what I'm about to post next.

Chapter 36 is a long lineage of the descedants of Esau. It’s importance is merely to point out that the Edomites were descended from Abraham and Isaac as were the descendants of Jacob.

In chapter 37, Joseph is 17, he makes himself unpopular with his brothers by taking advantage of his father’s favour by telling them how he dreamt that they and the “sun, moon and stars” bow to him. They get jealous and decide to kill him but Reuben suggests that they rather throw him into a pit and leave him to nature. However, while they are away eating some ‘Ishmaelites” see him there and they sell him to some Midianites who are on their way to Egypt to trade where they sell him to Potiphar the captain of the Pharaoh’s house as a slave. Some comment on this, I see this as a little dig by the people who were experiencing the rise of Islam to point out how the descendants of Ishmael abducted and sold Joseph to the Egyptians. I would be interested to know if the original text spoke of Ishmaelites or if it spoke of Medianites because it could point to tampering after 700 CE. Please enlighten me on this. If I'm wrong I'm happy to be corrected.

His brothers think he has in fact been killed but they have no proof, so they dip his coat in goat’s blood and take it to Jacob who mourns. An interesting comment in this chapter is the first mention of mourning ritual, rending of clothes and wearing sackcloth for a number of days.
Jacob can’t be comforted for the loss of his favourite son.

Chapter 38 tells of Judah, Jacob’s son’s lineage and how his sons marry a woman named Tamar. The first son is “wicked’ so God kills him. She is then told to marry the next son, Onan but he feels guilty about having sex with his borther’s widow so he practices “coitus interruptus” but God sees it as masturbation (onanism) so he kills him too.

She then has to wait for the third son to grow up before she can have a husband. But they don’t offer him to her so she tricks Judah into having sex with her by pretending to be a harlot. He does and she gets pregnant, but to pay for the sex her offers to send her a goat, she accepts but says she wants a pledge. She takes his ring, bracelet and staff and then when they threaten to burn her for being pregnant while she is promised to Judah’s son, he is embarrased when she shows him her pledge. She has twins.

In Chapter 39, it tells the story of how Joseph who was sold by either the Ishmaelits or the Midianites, to Potiphar the captain of the guard, who sells him to a rich man. Joseph becomes the rich man’s overseer and the man’s wife takes a shine to Joseph so she tries to seduce him. When he refuses and runs away, she manages to get hold of his ‘garment’ which she shows to her husband saying he tried to have sex with her. Joseph is thrown into prison where he soon becomes the chief overseer of the prisoners. I find it amusing that the heroes are always so pious and good (yet they make a deal to get out of prison for interpreting dreams and sell their wives who are also their sisters for wealth) and the guys who really are good and who find sleeping with their brother’s wife a little off, are killed. This god is weird.

Right, now chapter 40, Joseph meets up with the butler and baker of the Pharaoh who are in prison because they pissed the king off. They dream, and Joseph, being the dream interpreter, tells them that the butler will be returned to his job in three days and the baker will be hanged. It’s very convenient that Joseph knows that the three days thing will happen when the Pharaoh’s birthday is in three days, no! How clever of him! But the butler forgot about one hand washing the other and when he’s back in his job, he forgets that he was supposed to spring Joseph.

In chapter 41, he conveniently remembers Joseph when the Pharaoh has a dream about fat cows and lean cows and fat corn and lean corn, which Joesph interprets as being fat and lean years and he advises saving food for the lean years. He is rewarded with his position and the daughter of Potiphar as wife, he has two sons, Mannaseh and Ephraim. This sounds all wonderful when people want to believe in miracles but anyone who has lived in lands where water is scarce, knows that there are years and years when rain doesn’t come and years and years where there is an abudnace. It doesn’t take God’s wisdom to tell anyone this. People know that when who have lots of income, you save for the day when you don’t have income, it’s all folklorish common sense for people who don’t know anything, as a little bit of sage advice and making it ome from God makes it valid. Also I have a problem with the Pharaoh recognising that Joseph “dwells with God.” The Egyptians had literally hundreds of gods, there is no way in hell that the Pharaoh, who was always supported by members of his own family in the administration of Egypt, would have put a stranger and a slave at that, in charge of the wealth of Egypt. The Egyptians knew that there were years when the Nile didn’t come down and they did make provision for the times when there was no flooding. They were the bread basket of the known wolrd, so this whole story is, as Penn and Teller would put it, “bullshit.”

The whole Joseph in Egypt thing is pure political nonsense. The Egyptians don't have records of Joseph when such a huge event as 14 years of him being in charge of everything and second only to the king would've put him in the history books. but I'll soldier on.

When you get to Moses, it's the same B/S. The Egyptians left no records of any Moses or any exodus.

I love the idea. What the Bible needs is some catchy new names for the books. Who wants to read crap with names like "Leviticus" and "Deuteronomy"?

For example, instead of "Genesis", how about "The Great Produce Transgression"

or rather than "Joshua", how about "Genocide Rocks!"

the guys who really are good and who find sleeping with their brother’s wife a little off, are killed. This god is weird.

Seems that way. "Only the good die young"

Aggie: At this point the bible contains so much sex, so much murder and various crimes against humanity, it's like Harlequin Romance meets Mein Kampf. Sex is literally everywhere. The women are basically screwing machines, insatiable, very submissive and when they`re not they just get raped, and age is no barrier. There's more incest in one chapter than in a Redneck family planning guide. Even through all that, God is not totally sexually liberated. Tallywhacking is verboten and punishable by death. Clandestine rendezvous are a secret for all of a couple minutes...everybody knows who`s doing who. What a bizarre little world.

petwo wrote:

the guys who really are good and who find sleeping with their brother’s wife a little off, are killed. This god is weird.

Seems that way. "Only the good die young"

Aggie: At this point the bible contains so much sex, so much murder and various crimes against humanity, it's like Harlequin Romance meets Mein Kampf. Sex is literally everywhere. The women are basically screwing machines, insatiable, very submissive and when they`re not they just get raped, and age is no barrier. There's more incest in one chapter than in a Redneck family planning guide. Even through all that, God is not totally sexually liberated. Tallywhacking is verboten and punishable by death. Clandestine rendezvous are a secret for all of a couple minutes...everybody knows who`s doing who. What a bizarre little world.

What I find particularly disturbing is that incest is not frowned on but perfectly normal behaviour is. You can almost see how men who see nothing wrong in sleeping with their brothers' wives and their own sisters get it from. You'd think that a god who wanted to see people being 'good' would say "rather than raping your sister, your brother's wife and so on, just go find a quiet corner somewhere and help yourself!"

@ Latimeria yes,Genesis could also be "the first family cover-up."
Isn't it also a little disturbing that the narrow-minded have banned books like Lady Chatterley's Lover yet this one is given to children to read. Of course when you ask fundamentalists about that they say that the Children's Bible doesn't contain all the sex. So do they exclude Genesis from the CHilden's Bible? If they don't all the censoring must make it pretty incoherent to read,

petwo wrote:

the guys who really are good and who find sleeping with their brother’s wife a little off, are killed. This god is weird.

Seems that way. "Only the good die young"

Aggie: At this point the bible contains so much sex, so much murder and various crimes against humanity, it's like Harlequin Romance meets Mein Kampf. Sex is literally everywhere. The women are basically screwing machines, insatiable, very submissive and when they`re not they just get raped, and age is no barrier. There's more incest in one chapter than in a Redneck family planning guide. Even through all that, God is not totally sexually liberated. Tallywhacking is verboten and punishable by death. Clandestine rendezvous are a secret for all of a couple minutes...everybody knows who`s doing who. What a bizarre little world.

I can just imagine a little girl who is reading the bible ask her mum.

Mummy, what's a begat

? "Err, never mind dear, ask daddy when he comes home."

Skinny Puppy wrote:I’ve read it cover-to-cover.

I’ve always felt that if you don’t believe in something; know what it is that you don’t believe in.

I discuss theology with a professor of theology (he’s my neighbour) quite often. He and I can fire quotes back and forth like wildfire.

We’re both mindful and respective of each other’s beliefs. I don’t make fun of theists; he doesn’t make fun of atheists.

Having mutual respect for each other allows both of us to seriously question why we both hold such diametrically opposite views of the world.

He’s a Catholic; I’m an ex-Pentecostal, so he’s helped me to gain a fairly good understanding of the workings and ideologies of the Catholic Church.

Respect!

That's a very good view to have, Skinny Puppy.