[Uucf-bible] Smiting/Killing/Nasty Things

[Rosemary Amico]

Gil - I'm reading two nooks right now that touch on the issues you've brought up:
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

Anyone else read these books? I'm finding reading them at the same time to be rather fascinating. :)

-Rosemary
http://sophy.livejournal.com/
"The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine."
Indigo Girls


--- On Mon, 9/29/08, Gilbert Guerrero <gilster at mac.com> wrote:

> From: Gilbert Guerrero <gilster at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [Uucf-bible] Smiting/Killing/Nasty Things
> To: uucf-bible at lists.uua.org
> Date: Monday, September 29, 2008, 8:52 PM
> Hello Rosemary,
> 
> I, too, have been reconnecting with my past Christianity. I
> don't know 
> if I missed any attempts to offer any thoughts on your
> question, but I 
> will take a whirl based on my personal studies of the last
> couple of years.
> 
> It seems to me that a common problem that we see these days
> is people 
> looking at the Bible as a book. It looks like a book; it
> comes sold 
> wrapped up in a nice solid package with terrific bindings;
> but it's not 
> a book. It's a library of different
> "books"/scrolls that were written 
> over hundreds of years apart.
> 
> While there are some in the world who feel that all of
> these words are 
> pearls straight from God's mouth, that fell onto the
> page (in Olde 
> English,)  scholarship has led us to understand that while
> God may have 
> provided the papyrus and the pen, these words were written
> by many 
> different human authors at many different times for many
> different 
> (sometimes conflicting) reasons. This collection of
> writings includes 
> history (after a fashion,) poetry, law, creation
> narratives, gospels, 
> genealogies, apocalyptic literature - to name a few: a
> cornucopia of 
> different stuff.
> 
> It is problematic, at best, to assume that we as 21st
> century readers 
> can pick up the Bible and read it as if we were reading a
> modern book. 
> It's our tendency to think that books start at page one
> and read through 
> to the final page and typically describe some narrative. It
> was hundreds 
> of years after Jesus' life before there was any
> "official" consensus of 
> what constituted accepted scripture. And it continued to be
> 
> controversial and fought over for hundreds of years after.
> The 
> Protestant Bible has been assembled from all these parts in
> a particular 
> way to try to make a more coherent story path; the Catholic
> Bible has 
> EXTRA books that it considers of value that don't
> appear in the 
> Protestant Bible. Who gets to pick? And why did they pick
> what they did? 
> What are they trying to accomplish in their culture?
> 
> So what CAN we do?
> 
> I believe we have to try to understand the situation of the
> author in 
> his historical and cultural place; trying to understand the
> matrix of 
> time, place,  culture, author, and audience he was trying
> to write for. 
> It's difficult for many(most) of us to imagine
> ourselves in a 
> pre-scientific world, but we have to accept that these are
> writings of 
> an ancient people trying to understand and record their
> world, and their 
> relationship with God. This is one thing I find so
> painfully willfully 
> ignorant in the current creationism debates; Genesis is a
> fabulous 
> attempt at describing the origin of the world in a coherent
> fashion 
> (borrowing from  other cultures that were in place at the
> time), but 
> let's not pretend it is what it's not. It was
> written more than 2500 
> years ago, in an ancient culture: it's not science. Can
> it be 
> poetically/metaphorically/philosophically true? Sure. Does
> that make it 
> literally true? Of course not. It does not have to be
> literally true to 
> be sacred and valuable.
> 
> While there are many amazing and universal truths to be
> found throughout 
> the Bible, there are also things that, through the advance
> of 
> civilization, the ongoing revelation of our universe, and
> our desire to 
> grow as humans, we now hold as hopelessly archaic,
> uncivilized, and 
> barbaric. Thankfully many of these things have been
> (rightly) cast off, 
> though we still have a long way to go on others. I
> don't know about you, 
> but shrimp are NOT an abomination, thank you very much.
> They're a little 
> bit of Heaven in a nice garlic butter sauce!
> 
> Mostly, I try to focus on the elements that I believe call
> us together 
> into the Body of Christ: those things that will help us
> manifest love 
> and acceptance of one another. I believe that this is what
> Christ was 
> calling us to in the (earthly) Kingdom of God. Knowing that
> King 
> So-and-So raped and pillaged his way through his enemies is
> less useful, 
> although if we find something that can warn us off of our
> own baser 
> instincts, perhaps even those stories can be instructive.
> But sometimes 
> you may have to tease away a lot of chaff to get to the
> kernel of truth.
> 
> Hope this makes some bit of sense.
> 
> Peace be with you,
> 
> Gil Guerrero
> 
> uucf-bible-request at lists.uua.org wrote:
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:38:07 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: Rosemary Amico <sophygurl at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Uucf-bible] this Sunday's lectionary
> study readings
> > To: "biblical conversation, study, and
> spirituality"
> > 	<uucf-bible at lists.uua.org>
> > Message-ID:
> <644722.3351.qm at web50302.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> >
> >
> >
> > I do have a lot of trouble with bible passages that
> are all about "oh, look how great and mighty the Lord
> is smiting and killing people and doing all kinds of nasty
> damage." Why are these parts necessary? Can anyone help
> me reconcile that, or give me some insight into it? 
> >
> > -Rosemary
> > http://sophy.livejournal.com/
> > "The less I seek my source for some definitive
> > The closer I am to fine."
> > Indigo Girls
> >
> >
> > ---
> >   
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