Really? Not to offend the persuasion of any attendees (I do mean that, stop reading if your rage is easily focused), but did you try the Hebrew version? I have studied it, as part of my education, along with ancient Hebrew laws and such. The writing is unclear, terrible at times, poetic at times; the language is so simple as to appear broken. And nearly all of the story, morals, message, or poetic meaning you take away is your own,– because of how broken Biblical Hebrew is. Whatever you take away will end up being a by-product of you studying it, not a direct product.
Some 10+ years since, I can still read Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, and I'm still not sure there was any direct product in there. So much so, that I call modern spoken Hebrew which is somewhat loosely based on Biblical Hebrew, – I call it Jibberish in my own mind, with a `j'. Like the one in Jihad, or "sacred struggle"; something inspired by—but completely unrelated—to the original scripture.
And the King James is even better still, having been translated to English from Greek by a German man. Particularly the Revelations is—at times—absolutely 4chan material, I find.
And the King James is even better still, having been translated to English from Greek by a German man
What? That's not true at all. It was translated by a committee of English scholars and clergy. It is also a landmark of literature and history that contains some of the finest English ever written.
Ooh, look, I am being wrong on the Internet. I am now ashamed to have remembered this incorrectly. Thank you for pointing out my error, I'll be sure to double check things I have only passing familiarity thereof in the future.
EDIT: I'm not being sarcastic up there. I'm being sarcastic below here.
EDIT: and the historical/literary value remark is just plain balls.
"And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.
And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months."
For someone who studied Scripture in its original language, you've still managed to hit my pet peeve of pluralizing the title of the scroll of Disclosure.
That's the part that I didn't study, it's the Christian part. It has no Hebrew source/prototype; the original is in Greek (AFAIK), and not taught in the Migdal Emeq boarding school for boys (as it is a jewish school).
EDIT: I read some King James for the shear lulz. And lulz to deliver it has.
I find the theory by Rene Girard to be quite rational explanation of what product the Bible contains. He is an apologist of Christianity - but what he writes is completely convincing for an agnostic like me.
Out of curiosity, what would your reaction be if you found that it wasn't fiction? Would you accept the entity the author was conversing with as God? Or would you think he was a demon? Or just an advanced godlike alien being beyond which another, more powerful entity exists in the unknowable (kinda hard, since this being created the entirety of our reality).
If it wasn't fiction? Here's the thing: I might be open to the prospect of a humanoid 30-something white guy talking to me being an apparition of God. But I really don't get hung up or terribly passionate about things like all the laws in Leviticus, or whether certain stories are 100% literal or metaphors. Maybe I'd ask, but it wouldn't impact my faith one way or the other, really. And if it turned out that the guy who said he was God was just a telepathic, shape-shifting alien? Meh. A lying alien. Big whoop.
It's not a telepathic, shape-shifting alien, it's an omnipotent alien that created the universe and implies that there is no reality higher than this. Would that impact your faith? Assuming for the sake of argument that he's not lying, would you think that a) he's God, b) he's mistaken, there's a higher reality over which God presides or c) there is no God.
If it runs counter to what my beliefs are, I'd assume he was mistaken, but it would certainly put some kind of perspective on how my God went about things.
I am not the type of Christian who forces the issue on others, but I find debates of Christian canon interesting if trite, and all too often tantamount to trolling. I really don't assume to know how we got here, and whether the universe as we know it was actually wrought from nothing over the course of 168 Earth hours, or whether it was "steered" by some higher power over trillions of years is not something that matters too much to me. Therefore, the mechanical minutiae of said creation matters even less.
The fact is that we are here, and that's a mysterious and wonderful thing!
> advanced godlike alien being beyond which another, more powerful entity exists
It all depends on how tight one's definition of God is. If it's very rigid, anything they encounter in the real world except something that sufficiently satisfies all the attributes of a textbook-God (read: Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna) including physical appearance wouldn't qualify as God.
