Is The Bible Still Relevant Today?

[loveboof]

Now if you'd said that..."When considering it's relevance today, I'm talking about the Bible as a source authority."

That's meant to be 'source of authority' - but I assume everyone still understood what I was saying.

Yeah, I'm more interested in all the facets and the implications of various stances in this debate than simply a yes/no response.

But you are right that the question is about the bible's general relevance.

[Stavros]

Some interesting ideas floating around -there was a time when literacy was power, when the Church did not want biblical texts translated in case ordinary people could read them; the early translator of parts of the Vulgate into English, John Wycliffe, an early anti-Catholoic, died in 1384 -in 1428 his remains were exhumed on the orders of Pope Martin the Fifth, burned and the ashes scattered in the river. In order to learn Hebrew and thus translate books of the Bible in that language, William Tyndale had to travel to Germany where there were Jewish communties, as Jews had been expelled from England at the time. Another anti-Catholic, he was arrested in a town outside Brussels in 1535, and a year later strangled to death and his body burnt at the stake. Ok so they were considered heretics opposed to the Church, but the attempts by both Wycliffe and Tyndale to make the sacred texts available to all were deemed to undermine the authority of the Church of Rome -which was part of their intention.

Abraham and Isaac, along with Cain and Abel are two accounts of sacrifice which I think is one of the most complex subjects. In Violence and the Sacred, Rene Girard argues that Cain killed Abel because he was a farmer with no animals to sacrifice whereas Abel as a pastoralist had sheep or goats: the issue of rage, or anger expressing itself in violence thus suggests Cain had no other outlet for a ritual display of anger, motivated by jealousy -so he killed his brother. Isaac is spared because the option of killing a ram instead of a human is preferred -thus these narratives could mark a moment in human society when human sacrifice came to an end: this makes the crucifixion even more compelling, as Jesus is possibly arguing that all violence against the person should end, and he will offer himself as the last sacrifice -the belief being that after him, people will learn to love, and not to kill.

But I agree with Trish that many of the biblical stories are not that compelling; but I can't understand why people assume the Middle East is desert -the snow-capped mountains of Lebanon, the olive groves and plum trees of Palestine, the rolling wheat fields of central Jordan, the verdant valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates....there is so much more to the place than camels, sand dunes, and hairy men with apocalytpic messages...

[LibertyHarkness]

no its not relevant imo

[martin48]

Good idea. From here on out let's use CUJO. It has about the same moral tenor and literary value as the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran and the Book of Mormon combined.

A bit hard on the works of Stephen King! I'd go for this The Dead Zone

[mrtrebus]

I wish Richard Dawkins would just fuck off!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[martin48]

I wish Richard Dawkins would just fuck off!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A very meaningful and insightful contribution to the debate, methinks

[Prospero]

Dawkins is actually a hugely nice guy - just a bit fixated.

[martin48]

No doubt the Bible has had enormous literary influence and continues to have some literary influence (though considerably less so) on Western writers. The Bible was the first book published by the very first printing presses. It was often the book that children learned to read from, often because it was the only book in the household, sometimes the only book in the entire community. Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens and Melville are just some obvious examples of great writers who have borrowed biblical stories or been driven by biblical themes.

But as a work of literature in and of itself... well just try reading it sometime. The plots are confused, characters are largely undeveloped, it jumps into stories without providing background...it’s a miracle anyone can follow it. Except for a few books, it was not written with style or presentation in mind. It was written by amateur historians and moralists jotting down their memories and conclusions as briefly as possible on a limited supply skin or papyrus for safekeeping. At least that’s the way it reads. A literary accomplishment it is not. To say that it is would be like saying “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” is a masterpiece of musical composition.

But yes, it is necessary to know the Bible if you want to understand much of Western literature. I suspect, however, it’s influence is diminishing.

As a source of moral authority, Americans still turn to the Bible, even though few Americans actually have read it. Yet as others have said in this thread, there was morality before the Bible and morality seems to spring from a source independent of religious feeling and spirituality. From nearly the time of Gutenberg up to about the twentieth century The Elements of Euclid was the second most published book in the world. There were years when it outsold the Bible. Philosophers, ethicists, moral thinkers, just plain thinkers took the axiomatic method and the rules of logical inference to heart. It might be argued that in some ways The Elements has been more influential than the Bible. From our space probes to our practical appliances, from our science to just the way we think and apply everyday reason, the logic and geometry of Euclid is the real source of Western genius. The lunatic ramblings of a Middle Eastern desert god have been a centuries old detour.

Ah, Euclid's Elements!! How I imagine our commensurability. Don't be too hard on God. His only son must have been a big disappointment to him - no grandchildren, got into trouble with the authorities, etc, etc

[martin48]

Dawkins is actually a hugely nice guy - just a bit fixated.

These fanatics are all the same

[broncofan]

Dawkins is actually a hugely nice guy - just a bit fixated.

I agree with that and he's a great scientist though I've only read the first three chapters of the Blind Watchmaker. Although I am an atheist myself I always felt he was wasting a great deal of time on the lecture circuit talking about how he thinks there isn't a God. I mean he could have gotten his point across about the damage he thinks intelligent design and creationism have done to science generally, and that he thinks evolution explains the humble origins of mankind and then gotten back to his very important work. It's not that there aren't important issues ancillary to theism and atheism, it's just that a great scientist is wasting a good deal of his precious time proselytizing his non-belief.

Again, I say this as an atheist that I actually think the idea of non-belief is not that interesting or stimulating. It's worth a discussion or two but since it's non-belief, even my own non-belief, I don't think it is a way of life, a philosophy or a culture. I still hold to it though