by digderidoo 52 Replies latest jw friends
It's not a book of supersitions though .. it's extremely intelligible and easy to see a reasonable framework.
[if you can't handle metaphor, sure, the Bible isn't for you]
Have you read the Book of the Dead? Enuma Elish?
Those are superstitions from the time period. God-men (and gods) doing 'awesome' things, like a Michael Bay movie.
I study the Bible (old testament) and know it better than most Christians. it's an admirable achievement of the Hebrew/Jewish/Israelites people to keep a long enduring identity that no other group in the history of mankind has ever pulled off. In a historical context it's a book worth studying. But as a moral guide is anticuated, and as a source of divine revelation... well...it amounts to superstition.
I know about Enuma Elish but never read it. I have, however, read the Ugaritic texts. It's all quite similar, it's all loaded with superstition and mixed with history. Regarding Gods and men doing fantastic (literally belonging to fantasy), read the Bible beginning to end: deluge, exodus, Samson, David, Saul, Solomon, Jesus, the apostles, and the main character, Jehovah (the mixture of Canaanite Baal and El). It's all superstition, no better, no worse than the Homer's Iliad or Virgil's Aeneid. Try reading biblical scholarship from highly respected scholars such as Frank Moore Cross, Hebrew Epic and Canaanite Myth.
Apocalyptic Christians have to believe that the world is getting worse and worse; it's an integral aspect of their worldview.
It's related to the authoritarian need to have an existential enemy.
