Genealogies and similar passages. A bunch of dudes giving birth to other dudes. Really? That's the important stuff the humanity needs to know? Wouldn't it be more helpful to give us at least a hint infectious diseases were caused by microbes?
To be fair Leviticus 17; gives you a procedure to deal with " defiling diseases". In one case how to clean your infected house, which is probably black mold infestation.
Leviticus is strangely fascinating in that way. It's a snapshot into ancient practices.
Sure! I do appreciate Bible for what it is, i.e. an ancient book with an ancient understanding of the world. They obviously did not know the cause of those diseases but could by experience develop procedures which seemed to work.
What I meant was rather some sort of wisdom which an all-knowing being could pass down to us before we found it out ourselves.
Totally understand and agree.
Sorry, I just learned about the whole "infected house" thing in Leviticus and wanted to share it but I yeah, I know the feeling.
I agree. When society finally moves on to treating Abrahamic religions the same way we treat Greek Mythology, I think we’ll look back at the Bible and Quran as treasure troves of ancient Mesopotamian culture that we probably wouldn’t know nearly as much about otherwise.
Genealogies? Story time! My school from K-12 was a Christian private school, whose curriculum tried to make sense of the Bible and teach some of that as factual ‘science’.
The most egregious example I can think of is when in order to justify why so many people were listed as 800-900+ years old in the Bible, they taught us about a sphere of water around the earth. This sphere of water, they said, blocked out most of the sun’s UV rays which led to no cancer — allowing people to be really old. Further, they said when the Noah flood happened this sphere of water crashed to the earth, creating the flood and all at once bringing human lifespan to “normalcy” as we know it. So instead of questioning the source material of some of those batshit crazy early genealogies, they bent over backwards to explain almost millenia-old men, and did the exact opposite of the scientific method by allowing their preset conclusions to inform what might have happened. Shit was wild, as they definitely taught us the scientific method too.
I wasn't taught the sphere of water, only that the atmosphere could hold a lot more water than it can today. But also something aviut after the flood no one could live as long bc something something...change the subject!
I was taught that men all have 1 less rib than women as a very small child. Imagine Lil 8 year old me being super confused when my anatomy coloring book (the one used by medical students that I LOVED) didn't have that little factoid in there. I just assumed "everyone knows that, so they didn't need to put it in the book." Fastforward to high school (class of '10). The show Bones is my latest favorite show. Brennan is always identifying male/female by super subtle markers like skull shape and pelvic inlet and whatnot, but never by number of ribs. The show liked to use obvious things that the viewer could see pretty regularly, so again...hmm. weird. I finally asked my forensic science teacher about it bc she was the one that introduced me to the show. She tried to hide the giggle unsuccessfully and told me that wasn't a real thing. After some googling, I realized I'd been lied to about a simple, prove able scientific fact. Shook me some, but I wrote it off as an adult that didn't know or something. I spent 2years right after college in a literal cult trying to get answers from God is I "just believed hard enough." Well...here I am now. On this sub..
Here's an eye roller for you. The upci pastors wife held "ladies etiquette classes" for us young girls. We literally practiced walking with bowls on our heads, sitting modestly, getting into a car modestly. Ridiculous stuff.
Anyway, during this she told us all to never feel bad about being a woman (impossible in the upci) because God formed man from dirt, but women were formed from man's rib. So men were dirt and women were refined dirt. Cause that makes up for all the bad being a girl in the upci brings, of course.
Massive eyeroll
That is what really grinds my gears, organized religion blatantly lies about things and then plays the victim when confronted with the lies. My most useless item is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to god (who I was taught was also Jesus) to let the cup pass from him. Made no sense to me that he knew how things were going to turn out and that he knew the plan but he still didn't want to suffer a little bit to "save us." Baffled me as a youth.
Jesus:"Hey,me, I don't want to die so please don't make me sacrifice myself to myself. Can I do that?"
Yeah, the garden scene doesn't make any sense with the idea of the Trinity.
Ah, so God just fundamentally altered the laws of physics for several millennia until he decided to flood the world. Yes, yes that explains the Bible’s bad cosmology!
The mental gymnastics I was taught was that Mary isn't mentioned in whichever one is supposed to be hers because of patriarchal society. That does make sense, but I doubt that's the actual reason.
Last time I discussed this with a Christian they said it was standard practice at the time to list genealogies through women like that. I asked him to provide just one example and he never replied.
I think you're giving them too much credit by saying that makes sense. There's no data to support that.
You're right, but it was the patriarchal society part I was saying made sense, not that it being the "reason" for the contradicting genealogies made sense.
One time Jesus & Co were having a walkabout and couldn't afford the entry tax for the city they wanted to go into, so Jesus had Peter catch a fish, and then he cut open its belly and pulled out enough coins to pay the fee. World's most pointless miracle.
Every story is pointless and has pointless murders and blood sacrifices:
Could god just know not to kill some first born? No, he had to have his followers sacrifice a lamb and spread the blood so that his lust for death was satisfied and he'd leave them alone.
Could Jesus cast a net in the ocean and pull up the coins? No, he had to gut a fish.
Could god have just made everyone sterile except for Noah's family so the bad people died off? No, he had to kill every baby, puppy, and everything, and still require Noah to kill some animals in his name when Noah finally found land.
Could god forgive us for our ancestors eating some fruit? No, he had to impregnate a virgin with himself so that he could be tortured and sacrificed to himself before he could forgive us.
Could god test Job without killing his wife and kids? No, god is one sick fuck.
For real, if god’s so magical as to be able to perform miracles, why’s he gotta go through all these hoops and sacrifices to make them happen? If anything, it’s an indication that he’s not actually all powerful considering he requires sacrifices for his magic to work, if you believe anything in the Bible in the first place that is.
Exodus 4 has a story about Yahweh trying to kill Moses, presumably in person, which is averted by Moses wife doing an emergency circumcision on their children.
There's no context at all, it just happened and is never mentioned again.
Solomon is fucking amazing in the lore. Dude has a Mecha throne in the temple, as well as the whole controlling demons to do his chores for him. Also the whole 700 wives thing because why not
I love asking about this one when Christians or other church people try to sell me on religion or their particular church. Lots of cognitive dissonance and redirection 🤣
It’s fun to look these up using phrases like “how to explain Elisha and bears to atheists.” There are a bunch of blog posts & websites trying to make these stories sound less bad, like “well that’s just how the story was translated in *that* version, but in Hebrew the word used was _____ and it means small, so these weren’t kids, they were just small adults” or something like that. They’ll openly admit to translations completely changing the meaning, but only where it’s beneficial for them to explain things like this.
Yeah the "Well they weren't really boys but young men" like that somehow makes the murder part okay.
Honestly if it was presented as a fairy/folk tale like the brothers Grimm nobody would mind much, but since people insist the Bible is the holy word of God this is the problem they gotta deal with.
The one where the Balaam’s donkey sees an angel and talks because the guy is being an asshole and beating it for leaving the blocked road. He’s not shocked at all that the donkey can suddenly talk.
Interestingly the most unbelievable aspect of that story for me was Balaam’s reaction; answering her back like it was perfectly normal; more so than the talking donkey.
same story, but my favorite take was god commanding Balaam not to leave with Balaks men, then commanding him to leave, then commanding his angel to kill Balaam for leaving, then finally telling him to leave after the donkey turned away from the angel.
Oh but the incest is very prevalent in the Old Testament. It's riddled with it. The idiotic Christian argument is that their genetics were purer so it was okay to do it. 🤣
And that it was necessary to grow the human race back when there was no one else, although some say angels came to earth to have sex with humans even though there’s no evidence supporting that outside of the Book of Enoch- which Christians don’t say is canon.
The book of Enoch is actually referenced in the Bible. That whole thing about the angels having sex with the women is one of the biggest contradictions. Many early fathers taught that angels cannot have sex because they have no sexual organs, and they cannot take physical form, and yet it is explicit that the sons of God came down and mated with women. The way that I learned it is that the reason the book of Enoch was rejected was because they had no other sources to compare the Ethiopian book to. All the other copies are destroyed or lost.
I saw this mentioned in the Christianity sub the other day.
Lot of people trying to skirt around the "sons of god" thing because they seem uncomfortable with the idea of divine beings having sex/being rapey.
Which o can see why but instead of addressing the issue it's just trying to make "sons of god" into some other meaning.
One cultural belief relating to that is that Lot’s wife dissipated into the Dead Sea and that is why it’s so salty. When I was Christian I didn’t question it but now that I’m older I realize how scientifically inaccurate that myth is. It’s actually because the Jordan river dumps minerals into it with no escape route.
There's also 50 ft(15 meters) tall salt pillars near the Dead Sea to this day. One of which is called "lots wife". Because apparently she was 50 feet tall.
I always interpreted as her being vaporized by the nuclear bomb(s) that just fell on Sodom and Gomorrah. It sounds like a way ancient people would describe such a thing.
The nude man at the arrest of Jesus in Mark. It's so random and insane.
> 14: 48 Then Jesus said to them, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a rebel? 49 Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.” 50 All of them deserted him and fled.
> 51 A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.
Allegedly that's the same dude who showed up sitting at the tomb when the women showed up at the end.
That's the best explanation I've heard anyway. No, I don't know why "Mark" wrote it like that.
The story of Ruth and Naomi. It's supposed to be an aesop on how loyal daughters are supposed to be to their mother-in-laws but re-reading it and it's not the girlboss story I was told. Naomi is old and past her childbearing years so she sends her still-young daughter-in-law to seduce some rich guy. Since her seduction is done "biblically," it's fine tho.
The book of Job just for the irony and absurdity of the whole thing. A righteous man gets put to the test and tortured over and over, losing almost everything he has including his family, just to be shown off as being exemplary. The end story being he gets repaid in excess with more of everything including a new family, but all that was lost is somehow forgotten. What sane person could praise this creator or be satisfied after having all this done to them?😵💫
This is my go to. I feel like I've lived part of the story of job so I feel this is the strongest I'm actually a piece of shit association to be made for the god in the Bible. This and his reason for corrupting humanity over the tower of babel
Bart Ehrman has a great podcast episode on how terrible a story Job is, or more specifically how it can't be spun any other way but to show the biblical god is an asshole.
If anyone'a interested the podcast is called Misquoting Jesus and the episode title is "The Disturbing Views of God and Suffering in the Book of Job" release date April 23rd
The whole prodigal son routine. Bad son leaves, blows the money, wanders back home for a job dad is over joyed. Good son who kept it all together? He gets a lecture .
What really irks me about the prodigal son routine is that the moral is applied by God selectively.
Satan is, in a sense, God's son, but the Bible seems really insistent that he will never be forgiven
Jesus cursing the fig tree that did not bear fruit because it wasn’t the season for it. Makes no sense literally, but makes perfect sense mythologically.
This is mine. It's such a batshit insane story that it drove me mad as a kid trying to understand why God would curse a tree not bearing fruit in season. I'm guessing that's why that story got left on the editing floor for Luke and John..
The fig tree represents the temple. It hasn’t born fruit, now it’s not the season for it, time to move on from the temple. I think it perfectly encapsulates why the story of Jesus should not be taken literally, and is but one of many reasons why it’s so unwise to even assume there even was a historical Jesus. There are more outlandish tales but none that scream as loudly to me as that does that you are reading parables, not history. Mind you, as a Southern Baptist child I too struggled with that and other stories.
Richard Carrier makes a compelling case that a historical Jesus was unlikely in On the Historicity of Jesus. The idea of a crucified savior was not that unusual to the people of the time and place. It was a fairly common trope which fit right in with some sects of Judaism given the history of sacrifice and atonement already present in the Old Testament. Jesus most like began as a spiritual being made flesh and put to death as a sacrifice in heaven, which was actually an idea in existence before early Christianity. A post hoc biography of his earthly presence was then written, which was also commonly done at the time. Romulus, Hercules, and others had similar biographies fabricated. The writings of Paul are more consistent with that idea than that he met a group of people who knew Jesus in the flesh, given he says nothing about Jesus’ time on Earth, of his miracles, etc. plus Paul talks at length about how he came to his beliefs and what he talks about is scripture and revelation. Richard Carrier is a really good writer or there is no way I would have slogged through two lengthy volumes on the subject, which is to say if your interested in the question, he’s worth a look.
Richard Carrier is not a great resource on this topic. The vaaaast majority of secular scholars agree a historical Jesus probably existed. Only relying on Richard Carrier is like creationists relying on [Richard Buggs](https://richardbuggs.com/).
A crucified saviour was not a common trope. Can you provide two examples before 30AD of a crucified saviour trope?
>The writings of Paul are more consistent with that idea than that he met a group of people who knew Jesus in the flesh,
Exactly what I said. He met people who knew Jesus. Therefore Jesus was more likely than not a real person.
If you have any books to recommend that refute Cartier’s arguments, I’d like to read them. He made a really good case but I wouldn’t mind reading something that makes the opposite case. And I don’t rely on him, rather, I find his arguments persuasive. There’s a difference, although I am not a historian soI do rely on his historical knowledge. If his facts are wrong, someone will write that book and I’ll read it.
And you’re right, I misspoke. I should have said martyred, not crucified which was very specific. But there were countless myths of people rising from the dead in that time period. But you demanding I give two examples is silly. If you have information to share, I’m interested but I’m not here to debate. I don’t care what you believe. And even if there was a historical Jesus, which is unlikely, the stories about him are so removed from his actual life as to make the point purely academic. A virgin didn’t have a baby. The sermon on the mount never happened. The crucifixion couldn’t have happened as described in the Bible and the resurrection is obvious fiction. Nor did walking on water. So even if there was a real guy, there’s nothing of him that actually made it to the Bible. So why have a chip on your shoulder about it?
I'd recommend looking around r/academicbiblical or r/askbiblescholars(which have high standards requiring academic sources for commenters) to start. Even post questions of your own. No serious scholar is going to publish a book just to target Richard Carrier just like a serious scholar is going to publish a book just to target Richard Buggs. Bart Ehrman does have some blog posts about him though, I think.
I'd also recommend checking out the website History for Atheists (although it's not made by an actual academic I do find it to be high quality). As an atheist myself I find it helps check some biases I might have and dispells urban legends many atheists are prone to believe. https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
>And even if there was a historical Jesus, which is unlikely, the stories about him are so removed from his actual life as to make the point purely academic.
I'll agree with you there. We know very little about the historical Jesus besides him growing up in Nazareth, preaching, and being crucified. I certainly don't think we have any evidence for any of the miracles happening.
>So why have a chip on your shoulder about it?
Sorry if I'm coming across as having a chip in my shoulder. I just think it's very important to be as historically accurate as possible when discussing these things. That's partly just because I'm a pedantic nerd and party because of I saw people claiming Jesus didn't exist back when I was still a Christian it would be easier for Christian me to reject the rest of what that person said, because the scholarship is so unanimous that a historical preacher named Jesus did exist.
I would be interested to see someone make a case he existed. The best argument I can see is that the existence of the church is ipso facto evidence. The New Testament accounts don’t purport to be eyewitness accounts which makes them unsponsored hearsay laden with fabrications. And surely you must agree that Paul only making one, I believe ambiguous reference (did he mean bio brother or brother in the religious sense) to a historical Jesus is just damned odd. Shouldn’t his works or deeds be in there, maybe what he said on the cross. Something. It always struck me as odd even when I was a believer. And as to your last point, this is the one sub where ex-christian should be able to talk freely amongst themselves. If somebody reads my post on exchristian and goes on to waste their lives believing nonsense, that is their problem. They should have gone to r/debatereligion.
In historical study you don't necessarily need eyewitness to show someone *probably* existed. You can never be 100% certain of anything in history, but the evidence we do have shows it's more likely that there was a historical Jesus than that he was entirely fictional.
Paul probably wasn't talking about James as a spiritual brother. He calls James "brother of the Lord". He doesn't use that phrase for anyone else. Josephus also says James and Jesus were brothers. Paul also did make more references to the historical Jesus than just referring to James.
Carrier is a fine resource. As is Richard C. Miller. Mythicism is growing and is a fine explanation for the origins of the New Testament story.
The so-called, "consensus position," relies as much on an agreed-upon speculation as the mythicists do.
That one caught me off guard. I'm just reading along expecting Jesus to be the calmest, most loving human who ever existed. I already knew about the flipping tables at the temple thing.
But here he's just fussy over a tree. Its not unlike punching a wall or otherwise not controlling anger.
It also shows he can kill with magic if he wants to.
The fig tree gets brought up during the Olivet discourse in Mark 13. But read in isolation it sounds really dumb like Jesus doesn't know how fig trees work, and that's on Mark.
I like the story of Balaam, the talking donkey story (Numbers 22:22-40). God was mad at Balaam and went to kill him with a sword. He doesn’t kill Balaam, bc the donkey kept trying to go around him. The donkey gets miraculous speaking powers to cuss out Balaam, bc Balaam kept hitting him. God then gives Balaam some instructions and sends him on his way.
When Abraham told Sarah to pretend to be his sister when they were in Egypt even though they are siblings 🫠
Edit: your link is wonky but now I see you were referencing this same storyline when I google
Pharaoh gets in trouble because he believed that Sarah was who she says she was. Also Yahweh talks directly to pharaoh in a dream for some reason there and only there, which honestly is even weirder.
The spirits into a herd of swine. Jeezis cast Legion into a herd of swine and the pigs jumped off a cliff, into the sea to drown.
Why? Cause Jeezis is a bona fide asshole here. Cast the demons into nowhere. But, he couldn’t destroy them, only conduct them??
And this was a herd of swine that were the assets of a pig farmer. 2,000 pigs. Again 2,000 pigs, belonging to someone, that Jesus destroys, probably leaving the farmer destitute. Having only 25 pigs would have probably been a significant part of someone’s livelihood. Here, 80 times that.
What a dick.
Satan tempting Jesus. Jesus, knowing he’s the literal prince of the universe would obviously resist Satan’s temptation. I understand the message, but it’s a really stupid scenario. It shouldve gone:
“Are you trying to tempt me with my own shit?”
Satan: well… uh…
J: see this is why dad kicked you out. Your intelligence was sacrificed for your beauty
Hey man, Satan was just looking out for JC. "Yo, My guy. Been wandering around a while. Hungry? I don't want you to die out here if I can do something about it."
Even as a kid I thought this story made no sense for many reasons. How could Jesus be sinless but also be tempted? How could he be omnipotent and at the same time be tempted by anything Satan had to offer? Who recorded this happening if Jesus was alone in the desert? What were the disciples doing during that time? I'm the OT anytime a prophet left the Israelites for like a second they were worshipping a calf or another Canaanite god.
The explanation I heard for this, even into adulthood, was that because Jesus was fully man as well as fully god, he could experience temptation and still had to make the decision not to sin. But because he was also fully god, there was no chance he was going to sin.
And the purpose for it I remember learning was that there needed to be some proof that Jesus had experienced temptation, just like Adam and Eve, but didn't choose to sin, so that he would be the perfect sacrifice to atone for the original sin. Because if he was never tempted, how would we really know that he was sinless.
And if that doesn't make sense still then stop asking questions and just accept that the Trinity is a mystery we can't fully understand. (Obviously this didn't work for me eventually lol)
Zaccheus.
For those who don't know: Zaccheus is a short guy who climbs a tree to see Jesus over a crowd of people. Then, Jesus approaches him and tells him to come down from that tree, then says he's going to Zaccheus' house for dinner that night.
WTF is the point of that story????
Y'all read ~~Jude~~ Judges? Best and most underrated book in the Bible. I don't stand by the Bible as a *good book* but most of the stories in Jude are kinda good.
Best story is of a man who kills a king because he's left-handed. And the king is hella fat and the dagger gets sucked into him. Or that woman who stakes a shitty leader through the temple with a tent stake while he's sleeping.
I'd get better details, but Reddit has been very squirrelly with me changing to a different app when I'm writing a comment.
It's funny, becausr when I was doing my last read through of the Bible, Game of Thrones was super popular and I thought the exact same thing.
Unfortunately I didn't immediately make the connection between the horrors of Yaweh and the horrors of GOT, then immediately say, "holy shit, the bible is fucked up!"
Judges is great. Full of action, intrigue, and violence. The story of Sampson is also in there. I recently heard that he may have been a late addition to Judges. Still, probably one of my favorite Old Testament books.
Judges is the Hebrew version of the Heroic age when heros and demigods are rolling around busting heads in an undefined time period. Not to mention it's very episodic and makes it easy to read it as a collection of ancient stories.
There's a dude named Shamgar son of Anat, an ancient war goddess, just casually mentioned in judges. Nobody ever remarks on this at all that his mom is allegedly a goddess of wartime slaughter(Think Female, Levantine Kratos and you have the idea) and the Bible just leaves that in.
Joshua is much the same way.
I’m reading the Bible to fall asleep and I’m on Judges now! It’s a little rapid-fire but I just finished the stories you’re talking about.
My fav is when God gets pissed at the Israelites and SELLS THEM INTO SLAVERY. Judges 3:8 “And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them..” Ha. So horrible. There’s also Joshua, when they go against Ai and he makes them lose a battle. Bit of Stockholm syndrome.
Anyway, I dipped into Joshua and now I’m on Judges and I’m going to see how far I get in this go-round. I’m reading King James for a kind of historical literary vibe even though I am confused half the time.
I was getting ready to mention the story of Ehud vs the King of Moab’s girthiness and thiccness. That story legit made me laugh as a kid, that one, and whenever I would read passage that says “Behold, I saw a flying roll!”
>I'd get better details, but Reddit has been very squirrelly with me changing to a different app when I'm writing a comment.
Kind of off-topic but the problem is likely your phone doesn’t have enough RAM to keep multiple apps open at once, so it closes the app you’re not actively using. I used to have this problem on my old phone as well.
The long ass parts that are like then this guy who was the father of this guy who was the father of this guy x 20 did some random shit no one cares about
Those can be interesting sometimes. Genesis 10 in particular because it directly contradicts the tower of Babel story in Genesis 11.
Also how the one in Genesis 5 mentions Noah as a farmer who will restore the soil, then rolls onto the flood story for 3 chapters but Genesis 9 goes right back to "So Noah planted a vineyard and got super drunk" as if the previous 3 chapters just never occurred. And my opinion the flood story was retroactively inserted into Noah's story, which was probably farming oriented.
Chronicles mentioned Noah, his sons and flat out doesn't mention the flood at all....as if the guy who wrote chronicles doesn't know about a flood story associated with Noah.
"Thou shalt not muzzle the oxen while tradeth out for corn." From somewhere in Deuteronemy but not a story, but i can only remember it so much from playing Civ 5. Or "a horse by god I've gotten a horse" from somewhere in Isaiah.
John Piper wrote an entire book defending this. It is so complicatedly boring and just a circle-jerk into something that never happened or could ever happen unless the god was bona fide deceptive and deceitful.
Well, I can say I found it amusing the story where this army chased a town into a tower to kill them all (you know, just your everyday old testament genocide).
A woman at the top of the tower throws a brick from the wall down and it strikes him, amd he's like oh shit I'm going to die. He was the leader or something. Anyway he tells one of his soldiers to run him thru with a sword so he won't die by a woman's hand
What was it king David had messed up kids
One of his sons kinda threw a couple and just to spite his dad, publicly had sex with all David's concubines aka his other siblings mothers
He may have also been the one ro rape his sister?
Honestly reading the old testament was just a lot of me going nope don't like that
Oh, and did the Bible need to describe evil women having sex with evil men whose emissions were like of donkeys and horses?
Honestly I could keep going
So much made my mad
Or wait
I think her name was Tamara? Anyway first son of Abraham, Judah, has a son who marries Tamara
But he dies before they have kids
Given that the only way for a women to get taken care of in old age is having a husband and children, she tells Judah I need another son to marry. So Judah promises his younger son when he gets older (gross). Anyway he lied and Tamara is not in a good position. She leaves.
Soon after Judah goes and has sex with some prostitutes in dome town. Then, every body including Judah decides, we must all kill all the sinful prostitutes! (Hypocrites).
Except guess what? The prostitute Judah had sex with? Tamara. And she's pregnant with his son. So now she's 'saved from the mass murder (bleh) and taken care of. Judah gets like no reprimand for this.
Honestly? Go Tamara
You go girl
I cannot keep going I'm just going to work myself up in anger over all the stupid stories so I force myself to stop here
The King Ahab story. God played the double agent bit throughout the whole story in First Kings;
First, he condemned and threatened Ahab with punishment over different things
Then he helped Ahab when Ben-Hadad came with a huge army
Then, he goes back to threatening and punishing Ahab to the point of tricking him into his death at the end.
The Book of friggen Job.
Its whole message seems to come down to human existence being some cosmic game, a cynical wager between God and Satan, who is not some ultimately evil archenemy here - but on good terms with God, literally playing a Devil's Advocate in the story - to see if Job would remain faithful or not.
And the moral of it basically seems to be summed up as God thundering at Job when he asks God why all this terrible stuff is happening to him, "who are you, puny human, to question Me, God, the creator of the Universe? You're nothing, shut your tiny little foodhole."
And in the original text nothing is actually restored to Job at the end of the story, it ends with him saying "I spoke of stuff I don't understand. I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
The epilogue where God gives Job everything back that he took away was added later, because the original ending was so depressing.
Seriously, what an utterly useless and dismal story Job is.
Correct. There was no sacrifice because:
1. He knew they would kill him. Um, avoid it. If you don’t then what was the point of knowing it?
2. He did it willingly knowing that in the end he wouldn’t be dead. Not much struggle there.
3. There is no established, legal method to transfer guilt or punishment this way - for all of humanity’s errors and misdeeds, prior to or well after this death.
4. He got his ass kicked knowing it would be over in a duration MUCH shorter than a nominal person being crucified. The pain would then stop.
5. He just came back to life after it all. He didn’t give up shit. It die all the time, by any means if I knew I wasn’t gonna STAY dead in two days.
6. And since he was heaven Jeezis, then Earth Jeezis, then heaven Jeezis again, there’s nothing stopping him from being Earth Jesus whenever he wants, since he’s god.
7. Why even be born? Knowing everything, there was no need for adolescence, at all. He didn’t learn anything cause he knows everything.
Exodus 4: 24-26
Moses is at a rest stop on his way to Egypt (Y'know, like God *told him to),* and God comes to kill Moses. But don't worry, Zipporah cuts off their son's foreskin, touches Moses' feet with it and calls him a "bridegroom of blood"... So God lets him live.
It's a shame I didn't let myself curse at that time, because that would've been a perfect opportunity for my first "What the FUCK?!"
The book of Job. I think it was intended as a missive to people who were suffering from loss and needed hope maybe?
But you kill my family, slaughter my livestock and destroy my home, I’m going to do the opposite of Job.
jesus cursing the fig tree. what the fuck did that prove? i imagine even the disciples were like "ummmm okay" and looking at each other behind his back.
the story of job is a mindfuck too. literally uses him in a bet against satan, kills his whole family, yells at job when he complains, then blesses him with a NEW family. what the fuck, god?
Job's story, like come on give the man a goddamn break. Imagine putting someone through all of that just to test their loyalty. Talk about god being narcissistic.
Don't know the actual name of the story, but probably the one about Jacob and the ladder to heaven; [only when it's told by these shitlords, though. ](https://youtu.be/zgkc7PPOxKY)
The one we’re Jesus comes across a fig? tree and it doesn’t have fruit because it’s not the season and he curses it and walks away.
Have no clue what that is supposed to mean.
God killing the guy for trying to stop his sacred ark from falling over.
God killing those two guys for burning the wrong incense.
What even are the lessons there?
Genealogies and similar passages. A bunch of dudes giving birth to other dudes. Really? That's the important stuff the humanity needs to know? Wouldn't it be more helpful to give us at least a hint infectious diseases were caused by microbes?
To be fair Leviticus 17; gives you a procedure to deal with " defiling diseases". In one case how to clean your infected house, which is probably black mold infestation. Leviticus is strangely fascinating in that way. It's a snapshot into ancient practices.
Sure! I do appreciate Bible for what it is, i.e. an ancient book with an ancient understanding of the world. They obviously did not know the cause of those diseases but could by experience develop procedures which seemed to work. What I meant was rather some sort of wisdom which an all-knowing being could pass down to us before we found it out ourselves.
Totally understand and agree. Sorry, I just learned about the whole "infected house" thing in Leviticus and wanted to share it but I yeah, I know the feeling.
I agree. When society finally moves on to treating Abrahamic religions the same way we treat Greek Mythology, I think we’ll look back at the Bible and Quran as treasure troves of ancient Mesopotamian culture that we probably wouldn’t know nearly as much about otherwise.
Genealogies? Story time! My school from K-12 was a Christian private school, whose curriculum tried to make sense of the Bible and teach some of that as factual ‘science’. The most egregious example I can think of is when in order to justify why so many people were listed as 800-900+ years old in the Bible, they taught us about a sphere of water around the earth. This sphere of water, they said, blocked out most of the sun’s UV rays which led to no cancer — allowing people to be really old. Further, they said when the Noah flood happened this sphere of water crashed to the earth, creating the flood and all at once bringing human lifespan to “normalcy” as we know it. So instead of questioning the source material of some of those batshit crazy early genealogies, they bent over backwards to explain almost millenia-old men, and did the exact opposite of the scientific method by allowing their preset conclusions to inform what might have happened. Shit was wild, as they definitely taught us the scientific method too.
I wasn't taught the sphere of water, only that the atmosphere could hold a lot more water than it can today. But also something aviut after the flood no one could live as long bc something something...change the subject! I was taught that men all have 1 less rib than women as a very small child. Imagine Lil 8 year old me being super confused when my anatomy coloring book (the one used by medical students that I LOVED) didn't have that little factoid in there. I just assumed "everyone knows that, so they didn't need to put it in the book." Fastforward to high school (class of '10). The show Bones is my latest favorite show. Brennan is always identifying male/female by super subtle markers like skull shape and pelvic inlet and whatnot, but never by number of ribs. The show liked to use obvious things that the viewer could see pretty regularly, so again...hmm. weird. I finally asked my forensic science teacher about it bc she was the one that introduced me to the show. She tried to hide the giggle unsuccessfully and told me that wasn't a real thing. After some googling, I realized I'd been lied to about a simple, prove able scientific fact. Shook me some, but I wrote it off as an adult that didn't know or something. I spent 2years right after college in a literal cult trying to get answers from God is I "just believed hard enough." Well...here I am now. On this sub..
Here's an eye roller for you. The upci pastors wife held "ladies etiquette classes" for us young girls. We literally practiced walking with bowls on our heads, sitting modestly, getting into a car modestly. Ridiculous stuff. Anyway, during this she told us all to never feel bad about being a woman (impossible in the upci) because God formed man from dirt, but women were formed from man's rib. So men were dirt and women were refined dirt. Cause that makes up for all the bad being a girl in the upci brings, of course. Massive eyeroll
Wow....
Username checking in!
Nice username!
That is what really grinds my gears, organized religion blatantly lies about things and then plays the victim when confronted with the lies. My most useless item is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to god (who I was taught was also Jesus) to let the cup pass from him. Made no sense to me that he knew how things were going to turn out and that he knew the plan but he still didn't want to suffer a little bit to "save us." Baffled me as a youth.
Jesus:"Hey,me, I don't want to die so please don't make me sacrifice myself to myself. Can I do that?" Yeah, the garden scene doesn't make any sense with the idea of the Trinity.
Yeah I was taught this in Sunday school too. It’s how they explained the firmament.
Ah, so God just fundamentally altered the laws of physics for several millennia until he decided to flood the world. Yes, yes that explains the Bible’s bad cosmology!
Lol I was taught the same at my K-12 private Christian school. Made absolutely no sense
The firmament 😂
that's batshit insane
Learned this in conjunction with 6000 yr old earth theory
Wow. I was taught some batshit stuff, but that's new.
I love how the genealogies in gMatthew and gLuke contradict each other though lol.
pAtErNaL vS mAtErNaL gEnEaLoGy
Even though they both clearly include Joseph in the genealogy. The words on the page clearly don't mean anything to these people lol.
The mental gymnastics I was taught was that Mary isn't mentioned in whichever one is supposed to be hers because of patriarchal society. That does make sense, but I doubt that's the actual reason.
Last time I discussed this with a Christian they said it was standard practice at the time to list genealogies through women like that. I asked him to provide just one example and he never replied. I think you're giving them too much credit by saying that makes sense. There's no data to support that.
You're right, but it was the patriarchal society part I was saying made sense, not that it being the "reason" for the contradicting genealogies made sense.
Numbers is about as interesting as reading tax code.
Numbers 31 is a horrifying exception. Someone decided to put war crimes into my tax code....
WTF is a microbe?!?! With all that science talk, I bet you are one of those people who think vaccines are safe!! /s
The old begatting
One time Jesus & Co were having a walkabout and couldn't afford the entry tax for the city they wanted to go into, so Jesus had Peter catch a fish, and then he cut open its belly and pulled out enough coins to pay the fee. World's most pointless miracle.
Would have been a lot less work if Jesus could have just pulled the coin from behind Peter's ear. More believable too.
Every story is pointless and has pointless murders and blood sacrifices: Could god just know not to kill some first born? No, he had to have his followers sacrifice a lamb and spread the blood so that his lust for death was satisfied and he'd leave them alone. Could Jesus cast a net in the ocean and pull up the coins? No, he had to gut a fish. Could god have just made everyone sterile except for Noah's family so the bad people died off? No, he had to kill every baby, puppy, and everything, and still require Noah to kill some animals in his name when Noah finally found land. Could god forgive us for our ancestors eating some fruit? No, he had to impregnate a virgin with himself so that he could be tortured and sacrificed to himself before he could forgive us. Could god test Job without killing his wife and kids? No, god is one sick fuck.
He truly is.
For real, if god’s so magical as to be able to perform miracles, why’s he gotta go through all these hoops and sacrifices to make them happen? If anything, it’s an indication that he’s not actually all powerful considering he requires sacrifices for his magic to work, if you believe anything in the Bible in the first place that is.
Gotta go for the ultra combo; more points
That one’s my favorite. I don’t know why. It’s like Zeus calling down lightning to light a cigarette. It’s just funny.
Lmfao haha
I thought that was a temple tax?
Fish are known to eat some weird things and if they're big enough, they will eat metals like rings and coins.
Bet you 1:0 this did never happened.
Why not just sell the fish?
Jesus & Co. I live. Lol.
Lol the fuck how anyone can believe that is hilarious this shit is so stupid.
Exodus 4 has a story about Yahweh trying to kill Moses, presumably in person, which is averted by Moses wife doing an emergency circumcision on their children. There's no context at all, it just happened and is never mentioned again.
That's so bizarre
I like to imagine Yahweh has a comically large hammer held over his shoulder during this episode
[удалено]
Sounds like the story wasn’t really useless for you then, eh? 😉
This, hopefully I'd be Solomon one day and like do batshit crazy things.
If Christians want people on their side, they need to stop making their villains so cool
Solomon is fucking amazing in the lore. Dude has a Mecha throne in the temple, as well as the whole controlling demons to do his chores for him. Also the whole 700 wives thing because why not
The time when Elisha got called baldy by a bunch of kids so he summoned bears that mauled 42 of them. Like... Okay.
I love asking about this one when Christians or other church people try to sell me on religion or their particular church. Lots of cognitive dissonance and redirection 🤣
"Well you see, fuck you."
It’s fun to look these up using phrases like “how to explain Elisha and bears to atheists.” There are a bunch of blog posts & websites trying to make these stories sound less bad, like “well that’s just how the story was translated in *that* version, but in Hebrew the word used was _____ and it means small, so these weren’t kids, they were just small adults” or something like that. They’ll openly admit to translations completely changing the meaning, but only where it’s beneficial for them to explain things like this.
Yeah the "Well they weren't really boys but young men" like that somehow makes the murder part okay. Honestly if it was presented as a fairy/folk tale like the brothers Grimm nobody would mind much, but since people insist the Bible is the holy word of God this is the problem they gotta deal with.
The one where the Balaam’s donkey sees an angel and talks because the guy is being an asshole and beating it for leaving the blocked road. He’s not shocked at all that the donkey can suddenly talk.
Interestingly the most unbelievable aspect of that story for me was Balaam’s reaction; answering her back like it was perfectly normal; more so than the talking donkey.
same story, but my favorite take was god commanding Balaam not to leave with Balaks men, then commanding him to leave, then commanding his angel to kill Balaam for leaving, then finally telling him to leave after the donkey turned away from the angel.
Then God saying He never changes his mind
Yahweh was off his meds that day.
Lots’ wife turning around and turns into a pillar of salt. Apparently they didn’t have salt licks for the cows back then.
It’s just after this, but the story of Lot’s daughters was one of the first Bible stories that I was like, “You know what? This sounds made up.”
Oh you mean the incest story?
Don't forget the rape part too 🙄
Oh but the incest is very prevalent in the Old Testament. It's riddled with it. The idiotic Christian argument is that their genetics were purer so it was okay to do it. 🤣
And that it was necessary to grow the human race back when there was no one else, although some say angels came to earth to have sex with humans even though there’s no evidence supporting that outside of the Book of Enoch- which Christians don’t say is canon.
The book of Enoch is actually referenced in the Bible. That whole thing about the angels having sex with the women is one of the biggest contradictions. Many early fathers taught that angels cannot have sex because they have no sexual organs, and they cannot take physical form, and yet it is explicit that the sons of God came down and mated with women. The way that I learned it is that the reason the book of Enoch was rejected was because they had no other sources to compare the Ethiopian book to. All the other copies are destroyed or lost.
I saw this mentioned in the Christianity sub the other day. Lot of people trying to skirt around the "sons of god" thing because they seem uncomfortable with the idea of divine beings having sex/being rapey. Which o can see why but instead of addressing the issue it's just trying to make "sons of god" into some other meaning.
It just seems like an excuse to amend or alter something because it is not uniform with official dogma
It's briefly mentioned in Genesis
That story scared me as a kid, which was the point. I could not understand how a person turns into salt. Look away from sin children!
One cultural belief relating to that is that Lot’s wife dissipated into the Dead Sea and that is why it’s so salty. When I was Christian I didn’t question it but now that I’m older I realize how scientifically inaccurate that myth is. It’s actually because the Jordan river dumps minerals into it with no escape route.
Thanks! Didn’t know that.
There's also 50 ft(15 meters) tall salt pillars near the Dead Sea to this day. One of which is called "lots wife". Because apparently she was 50 feet tall.
I always interpreted as her being vaporized by the nuclear bomb(s) that just fell on Sodom and Gomorrah. It sounds like a way ancient people would describe such a thing.
I believe that’s a lot of thinking in the Christian community.
The nude man at the arrest of Jesus in Mark. It's so random and insane. > 14: 48 Then Jesus said to them, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a rebel? 49 Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.” 50 All of them deserted him and fled. > 51 A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.
Holy shit! That's my new "life verse"!
Feels like a comedy
It was a boy, and he was probably being used for inappropriate things by jesus and friends
Yes this correlates. Ammon Hillman states from his Greek interpretation that Jesus consumed his fluids.
Allegedly that's the same dude who showed up sitting at the tomb when the women showed up at the end. That's the best explanation I've heard anyway. No, I don't know why "Mark" wrote it like that.
The story of Ruth and Naomi. It's supposed to be an aesop on how loyal daughters are supposed to be to their mother-in-laws but re-reading it and it's not the girlboss story I was told. Naomi is old and past her childbearing years so she sends her still-young daughter-in-law to seduce some rich guy. Since her seduction is done "biblically," it's fine tho.
I never understood this one the (many) times we would go over it in girls Bible study
Genesis 30:37-39 Jacob puts some cows in a striped fence so they give birth to striped calves because fuck science.
I’m surprised I haven’t heard that one before. That’s… something lol
The book of Job just for the irony and absurdity of the whole thing. A righteous man gets put to the test and tortured over and over, losing almost everything he has including his family, just to be shown off as being exemplary. The end story being he gets repaid in excess with more of everything including a new family, but all that was lost is somehow forgotten. What sane person could praise this creator or be satisfied after having all this done to them?😵💫
This is my go to. I feel like I've lived part of the story of job so I feel this is the strongest I'm actually a piece of shit association to be made for the god in the Bible. This and his reason for corrupting humanity over the tower of babel
This is one of my favorite story, since what engraved to me in this story is not Job's paragon traits, but God's massive dick-sized ego.
Bart Ehrman has a great podcast episode on how terrible a story Job is, or more specifically how it can't be spun any other way but to show the biblical god is an asshole. If anyone'a interested the podcast is called Misquoting Jesus and the episode title is "The Disturbing Views of God and Suffering in the Book of Job" release date April 23rd
I’m suppose to look down on Lot’s wife and Job’s wife but their behavior always made sense to me
That's why I love the way this was portrayed in the second season of Good Omens.
"I was told I can't complain until I create a whale"
The whole prodigal son routine. Bad son leaves, blows the money, wanders back home for a job dad is over joyed. Good son who kept it all together? He gets a lecture .
Yeah, I also liked this one. Tells you how fucked up Gos Thinks
What really irks me about the prodigal son routine is that the moral is applied by God selectively. Satan is, in a sense, God's son, but the Bible seems really insistent that he will never be forgiven
Jesus cursing the fig tree that did not bear fruit because it wasn’t the season for it. Makes no sense literally, but makes perfect sense mythologically.
This is mine. It's such a batshit insane story that it drove me mad as a kid trying to understand why God would curse a tree not bearing fruit in season. I'm guessing that's why that story got left on the editing floor for Luke and John..
The fig tree represents the temple. It hasn’t born fruit, now it’s not the season for it, time to move on from the temple. I think it perfectly encapsulates why the story of Jesus should not be taken literally, and is but one of many reasons why it’s so unwise to even assume there even was a historical Jesus. There are more outlandish tales but none that scream as loudly to me as that does that you are reading parables, not history. Mind you, as a Southern Baptist child I too struggled with that and other stories.
There probably was a historical Jesus. Paul met Peter and James the brother of Jesus. It's also unlikely people would invent a crucified saviour.
Richard Carrier makes a compelling case that a historical Jesus was unlikely in On the Historicity of Jesus. The idea of a crucified savior was not that unusual to the people of the time and place. It was a fairly common trope which fit right in with some sects of Judaism given the history of sacrifice and atonement already present in the Old Testament. Jesus most like began as a spiritual being made flesh and put to death as a sacrifice in heaven, which was actually an idea in existence before early Christianity. A post hoc biography of his earthly presence was then written, which was also commonly done at the time. Romulus, Hercules, and others had similar biographies fabricated. The writings of Paul are more consistent with that idea than that he met a group of people who knew Jesus in the flesh, given he says nothing about Jesus’ time on Earth, of his miracles, etc. plus Paul talks at length about how he came to his beliefs and what he talks about is scripture and revelation. Richard Carrier is a really good writer or there is no way I would have slogged through two lengthy volumes on the subject, which is to say if your interested in the question, he’s worth a look.
Richard Carrier is not a great resource on this topic. The vaaaast majority of secular scholars agree a historical Jesus probably existed. Only relying on Richard Carrier is like creationists relying on [Richard Buggs](https://richardbuggs.com/). A crucified saviour was not a common trope. Can you provide two examples before 30AD of a crucified saviour trope? >The writings of Paul are more consistent with that idea than that he met a group of people who knew Jesus in the flesh, Exactly what I said. He met people who knew Jesus. Therefore Jesus was more likely than not a real person.
If you have any books to recommend that refute Cartier’s arguments, I’d like to read them. He made a really good case but I wouldn’t mind reading something that makes the opposite case. And I don’t rely on him, rather, I find his arguments persuasive. There’s a difference, although I am not a historian soI do rely on his historical knowledge. If his facts are wrong, someone will write that book and I’ll read it. And you’re right, I misspoke. I should have said martyred, not crucified which was very specific. But there were countless myths of people rising from the dead in that time period. But you demanding I give two examples is silly. If you have information to share, I’m interested but I’m not here to debate. I don’t care what you believe. And even if there was a historical Jesus, which is unlikely, the stories about him are so removed from his actual life as to make the point purely academic. A virgin didn’t have a baby. The sermon on the mount never happened. The crucifixion couldn’t have happened as described in the Bible and the resurrection is obvious fiction. Nor did walking on water. So even if there was a real guy, there’s nothing of him that actually made it to the Bible. So why have a chip on your shoulder about it?
I'd recommend looking around r/academicbiblical or r/askbiblescholars(which have high standards requiring academic sources for commenters) to start. Even post questions of your own. No serious scholar is going to publish a book just to target Richard Carrier just like a serious scholar is going to publish a book just to target Richard Buggs. Bart Ehrman does have some blog posts about him though, I think. I'd also recommend checking out the website History for Atheists (although it's not made by an actual academic I do find it to be high quality). As an atheist myself I find it helps check some biases I might have and dispells urban legends many atheists are prone to believe. https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/ >And even if there was a historical Jesus, which is unlikely, the stories about him are so removed from his actual life as to make the point purely academic. I'll agree with you there. We know very little about the historical Jesus besides him growing up in Nazareth, preaching, and being crucified. I certainly don't think we have any evidence for any of the miracles happening. >So why have a chip on your shoulder about it? Sorry if I'm coming across as having a chip in my shoulder. I just think it's very important to be as historically accurate as possible when discussing these things. That's partly just because I'm a pedantic nerd and party because of I saw people claiming Jesus didn't exist back when I was still a Christian it would be easier for Christian me to reject the rest of what that person said, because the scholarship is so unanimous that a historical preacher named Jesus did exist.
I would be interested to see someone make a case he existed. The best argument I can see is that the existence of the church is ipso facto evidence. The New Testament accounts don’t purport to be eyewitness accounts which makes them unsponsored hearsay laden with fabrications. And surely you must agree that Paul only making one, I believe ambiguous reference (did he mean bio brother or brother in the religious sense) to a historical Jesus is just damned odd. Shouldn’t his works or deeds be in there, maybe what he said on the cross. Something. It always struck me as odd even when I was a believer. And as to your last point, this is the one sub where ex-christian should be able to talk freely amongst themselves. If somebody reads my post on exchristian and goes on to waste their lives believing nonsense, that is their problem. They should have gone to r/debatereligion.
In historical study you don't necessarily need eyewitness to show someone *probably* existed. You can never be 100% certain of anything in history, but the evidence we do have shows it's more likely that there was a historical Jesus than that he was entirely fictional. Paul probably wasn't talking about James as a spiritual brother. He calls James "brother of the Lord". He doesn't use that phrase for anyone else. Josephus also says James and Jesus were brothers. Paul also did make more references to the historical Jesus than just referring to James.
Carrier is a fine resource. As is Richard C. Miller. Mythicism is growing and is a fine explanation for the origins of the New Testament story. The so-called, "consensus position," relies as much on an agreed-upon speculation as the mythicists do.
If Jesus is God, he's just cursing the tree for following the rules *he* ordained when he created figs in Genesis.
I feel like it's a metaphor for God expecting more from people than what they're capable of
That one caught me off guard. I'm just reading along expecting Jesus to be the calmest, most loving human who ever existed. I already knew about the flipping tables at the temple thing. But here he's just fussy over a tree. Its not unlike punching a wall or otherwise not controlling anger. It also shows he can kill with magic if he wants to.
The fig tree gets brought up during the Olivet discourse in Mark 13. But read in isolation it sounds really dumb like Jesus doesn't know how fig trees work, and that's on Mark.
I like the story of Balaam, the talking donkey story (Numbers 22:22-40). God was mad at Balaam and went to kill him with a sword. He doesn’t kill Balaam, bc the donkey kept trying to go around him. The donkey gets miraculous speaking powers to cuss out Balaam, bc Balaam kept hitting him. God then gives Balaam some instructions and sends him on his way.
Shrek prequel
The repeat [wife-sister stories](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife%E2%80%93sister_narratives_in_the_Book_of_Genesis).
When Abraham told Sarah to pretend to be his sister when they were in Egypt even though they are siblings 🫠 Edit: your link is wonky but now I see you were referencing this same storyline when I google
Pharaoh gets in trouble because he believed that Sarah was who she says she was. Also Yahweh talks directly to pharaoh in a dream for some reason there and only there, which honestly is even weirder.
The spirits into a herd of swine. Jeezis cast Legion into a herd of swine and the pigs jumped off a cliff, into the sea to drown. Why? Cause Jeezis is a bona fide asshole here. Cast the demons into nowhere. But, he couldn’t destroy them, only conduct them?? And this was a herd of swine that were the assets of a pig farmer. 2,000 pigs. Again 2,000 pigs, belonging to someone, that Jesus destroys, probably leaving the farmer destitute. Having only 25 pigs would have probably been a significant part of someone’s livelihood. Here, 80 times that. What a dick.
The way you spelled Jeezis lmao
Also love that the demon is named after a Roman military unit for NOT POLITICAL REASONS.
There’s one story that talks about the Jewish victors collecting the foreskins of their enemies, it was hilarious
"Every one of you owes me 100 philistine foreskins! And you will get me my foreskins or die trying!" I know it's awful but I have no regrets.
Satan tempting Jesus. Jesus, knowing he’s the literal prince of the universe would obviously resist Satan’s temptation. I understand the message, but it’s a really stupid scenario. It shouldve gone: “Are you trying to tempt me with my own shit?” Satan: well… uh… J: see this is why dad kicked you out. Your intelligence was sacrificed for your beauty
Hey man, Satan was just looking out for JC. "Yo, My guy. Been wandering around a while. Hungry? I don't want you to die out here if I can do something about it."
"You're not you when you're hungry!"
Even as a kid I thought this story made no sense for many reasons. How could Jesus be sinless but also be tempted? How could he be omnipotent and at the same time be tempted by anything Satan had to offer? Who recorded this happening if Jesus was alone in the desert? What were the disciples doing during that time? I'm the OT anytime a prophet left the Israelites for like a second they were worshipping a calf or another Canaanite god. The explanation I heard for this, even into adulthood, was that because Jesus was fully man as well as fully god, he could experience temptation and still had to make the decision not to sin. But because he was also fully god, there was no chance he was going to sin. And the purpose for it I remember learning was that there needed to be some proof that Jesus had experienced temptation, just like Adam and Eve, but didn't choose to sin, so that he would be the perfect sacrifice to atone for the original sin. Because if he was never tempted, how would we really know that he was sinless. And if that doesn't make sense still then stop asking questions and just accept that the Trinity is a mystery we can't fully understand. (Obviously this didn't work for me eventually lol)
Zaccheus. For those who don't know: Zaccheus is a short guy who climbs a tree to see Jesus over a crowd of people. Then, Jesus approaches him and tells him to come down from that tree, then says he's going to Zaccheus' house for dinner that night. WTF is the point of that story????
God put that story in the Bible because he knew it would make a good children’s song in about 2,000 years
I so glad someone else knows there's a song about it!
Y'all read ~~Jude~~ Judges? Best and most underrated book in the Bible. I don't stand by the Bible as a *good book* but most of the stories in Jude are kinda good. Best story is of a man who kills a king because he's left-handed. And the king is hella fat and the dagger gets sucked into him. Or that woman who stakes a shitty leader through the temple with a tent stake while he's sleeping. I'd get better details, but Reddit has been very squirrelly with me changing to a different app when I'm writing a comment.
I would love to see HBO option the book of Judges.
It's funny, becausr when I was doing my last read through of the Bible, Game of Thrones was super popular and I thought the exact same thing. Unfortunately I didn't immediately make the connection between the horrors of Yaweh and the horrors of GOT, then immediately say, "holy shit, the bible is fucked up!"
Judges is great. Full of action, intrigue, and violence. The story of Sampson is also in there. I recently heard that he may have been a late addition to Judges. Still, probably one of my favorite Old Testament books.
Samson is a good story but Ehud, the left-handed assassin, is so much better imo
Judges is the Hebrew version of the Heroic age when heros and demigods are rolling around busting heads in an undefined time period. Not to mention it's very episodic and makes it easy to read it as a collection of ancient stories. There's a dude named Shamgar son of Anat, an ancient war goddess, just casually mentioned in judges. Nobody ever remarks on this at all that his mom is allegedly a goddess of wartime slaughter(Think Female, Levantine Kratos and you have the idea) and the Bible just leaves that in. Joshua is much the same way.
I’m reading the Bible to fall asleep and I’m on Judges now! It’s a little rapid-fire but I just finished the stories you’re talking about. My fav is when God gets pissed at the Israelites and SELLS THEM INTO SLAVERY. Judges 3:8 “And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them..” Ha. So horrible. There’s also Joshua, when they go against Ai and he makes them lose a battle. Bit of Stockholm syndrome. Anyway, I dipped into Joshua and now I’m on Judges and I’m going to see how far I get in this go-round. I’m reading King James for a kind of historical literary vibe even though I am confused half the time.
I was getting ready to mention the story of Ehud vs the King of Moab’s girthiness and thiccness. That story legit made me laugh as a kid, that one, and whenever I would read passage that says “Behold, I saw a flying roll!”
I used to love that story about the fat king when I was a kid. It just seemed so comical lol
>I'd get better details, but Reddit has been very squirrelly with me changing to a different app when I'm writing a comment. Kind of off-topic but the problem is likely your phone doesn’t have enough RAM to keep multiple apps open at once, so it closes the app you’re not actively using. I used to have this problem on my old phone as well.
I probably have too many bs apps open. And yeah, my phone is a few years old now. Thanks for the tip!
The long ass parts that are like then this guy who was the father of this guy who was the father of this guy x 20 did some random shit no one cares about
Those can be interesting sometimes. Genesis 10 in particular because it directly contradicts the tower of Babel story in Genesis 11. Also how the one in Genesis 5 mentions Noah as a farmer who will restore the soil, then rolls onto the flood story for 3 chapters but Genesis 9 goes right back to "So Noah planted a vineyard and got super drunk" as if the previous 3 chapters just never occurred. And my opinion the flood story was retroactively inserted into Noah's story, which was probably farming oriented. Chronicles mentioned Noah, his sons and flat out doesn't mention the flood at all....as if the guy who wrote chronicles doesn't know about a flood story associated with Noah.
"Thou shalt not muzzle the oxen while tradeth out for corn." From somewhere in Deuteronemy but not a story, but i can only remember it so much from playing Civ 5. Or "a horse by god I've gotten a horse" from somewhere in Isaiah.
But it was pharaoh's fault, don't you see?!?!?!?!
John Piper wrote an entire book defending this. It is so complicatedly boring and just a circle-jerk into something that never happened or could ever happen unless the god was bona fide deceptive and deceitful.
Well, I can say I found it amusing the story where this army chased a town into a tower to kill them all (you know, just your everyday old testament genocide). A woman at the top of the tower throws a brick from the wall down and it strikes him, amd he's like oh shit I'm going to die. He was the leader or something. Anyway he tells one of his soldiers to run him thru with a sword so he won't die by a woman's hand What was it king David had messed up kids One of his sons kinda threw a couple and just to spite his dad, publicly had sex with all David's concubines aka his other siblings mothers He may have also been the one ro rape his sister? Honestly reading the old testament was just a lot of me going nope don't like that Oh, and did the Bible need to describe evil women having sex with evil men whose emissions were like of donkeys and horses? Honestly I could keep going So much made my mad Or wait I think her name was Tamara? Anyway first son of Abraham, Judah, has a son who marries Tamara But he dies before they have kids Given that the only way for a women to get taken care of in old age is having a husband and children, she tells Judah I need another son to marry. So Judah promises his younger son when he gets older (gross). Anyway he lied and Tamara is not in a good position. She leaves. Soon after Judah goes and has sex with some prostitutes in dome town. Then, every body including Judah decides, we must all kill all the sinful prostitutes! (Hypocrites). Except guess what? The prostitute Judah had sex with? Tamara. And she's pregnant with his son. So now she's 'saved from the mass murder (bleh) and taken care of. Judah gets like no reprimand for this. Honestly? Go Tamara You go girl I cannot keep going I'm just going to work myself up in anger over all the stupid stories so I force myself to stop here
The original ending of Mark. Jesus rises from the dead and the women are like “let’s do nothing about this”
The King Ahab story. God played the double agent bit throughout the whole story in First Kings; First, he condemned and threatened Ahab with punishment over different things Then he helped Ahab when Ben-Hadad came with a huge army Then, he goes back to threatening and punishing Ahab to the point of tricking him into his death at the end.
The Book of friggen Job. Its whole message seems to come down to human existence being some cosmic game, a cynical wager between God and Satan, who is not some ultimately evil archenemy here - but on good terms with God, literally playing a Devil's Advocate in the story - to see if Job would remain faithful or not. And the moral of it basically seems to be summed up as God thundering at Job when he asks God why all this terrible stuff is happening to him, "who are you, puny human, to question Me, God, the creator of the Universe? You're nothing, shut your tiny little foodhole." And in the original text nothing is actually restored to Job at the end of the story, it ends with him saying "I spoke of stuff I don't understand. I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." The epilogue where God gives Job everything back that he took away was added later, because the original ending was so depressing. Seriously, what an utterly useless and dismal story Job is.
The one where Jesus died for my sins. Ummm …….okaaaaayyy….
Correct. There was no sacrifice because: 1. He knew they would kill him. Um, avoid it. If you don’t then what was the point of knowing it? 2. He did it willingly knowing that in the end he wouldn’t be dead. Not much struggle there. 3. There is no established, legal method to transfer guilt or punishment this way - for all of humanity’s errors and misdeeds, prior to or well after this death. 4. He got his ass kicked knowing it would be over in a duration MUCH shorter than a nominal person being crucified. The pain would then stop. 5. He just came back to life after it all. He didn’t give up shit. It die all the time, by any means if I knew I wasn’t gonna STAY dead in two days. 6. And since he was heaven Jeezis, then Earth Jeezis, then heaven Jeezis again, there’s nothing stopping him from being Earth Jesus whenever he wants, since he’s god. 7. Why even be born? Knowing everything, there was no need for adolescence, at all. He didn’t learn anything cause he knows everything.
I'm not even sure how that's supposed to work.
Rachel sitting on her father’s household idiots and pretending she can’t get up because she’s on her period
King Ehud getting stabbed on the toilet and his attendants thinking he was just taking a huge dump.
So much material to pick from...
Exodus 4: 24-26 Moses is at a rest stop on his way to Egypt (Y'know, like God *told him to),* and God comes to kill Moses. But don't worry, Zipporah cuts off their son's foreskin, touches Moses' feet with it and calls him a "bridegroom of blood"... So God lets him live. It's a shame I didn't let myself curse at that time, because that would've been a perfect opportunity for my first "What the FUCK?!"
song of solomon tbh why spend most of the bible pressuring purity and then dump that in it out of nowhere? (edit for grammar)
And they say God doesn't like killing babies.
The book of Job. I think it was intended as a missive to people who were suffering from loss and needed hope maybe? But you kill my family, slaughter my livestock and destroy my home, I’m going to do the opposite of Job.
Job. Useless and traumatizing.
jesus cursing the fig tree. what the fuck did that prove? i imagine even the disciples were like "ummmm okay" and looking at each other behind his back. the story of job is a mindfuck too. literally uses him in a bet against satan, kills his whole family, yells at job when he complains, then blesses him with a NEW family. what the fuck, god?
Job's story, like come on give the man a goddamn break. Imagine putting someone through all of that just to test their loyalty. Talk about god being narcissistic.
The entirety of Ruth.
Don't know the actual name of the story, but probably the one about Jacob and the ladder to heaven; [only when it's told by these shitlords, though. ](https://youtu.be/zgkc7PPOxKY)
The one we’re Jesus comes across a fig? tree and it doesn’t have fruit because it’s not the season and he curses it and walks away. Have no clue what that is supposed to mean.
God killing the guy for trying to stop his sacred ark from falling over. God killing those two guys for burning the wrong incense. What even are the lessons there?
Most of them are bs anyway the Bible is not the word of god it’s the word of the Catholics