My younger daughter Molly is currently reading the Bible - reading it as a convinced atheist, for information and literary instruction - and I'm trying to keep up with her.
Molly reads much faster than me, so I'm still in Kings while she has finished the Old Testament and is about to start on the New. (Her plan after that is to read the Quran).
But it seems worth noting a few of our findings so far.
The Old Testament is "religious" in a very different way from that in which religion presents itself today.
There is no real talk of an afterlife. The various figures mentioned live for longer and shorter, and then they die, and that's an end of it.
If they are favoured by God, they have lots of land and cattle and slaves and wives and male children; if they're not, they don't.
And being favoured by God is only to a marginal degree anything to do with being "good". God, in the Old Testament, is a gang chief. He looks after those loyal to him, and smites the other gangs. You should worship him because he is the most powerful gang chief, and you'll do better with him than with the others.
For example, God helps the people of Israel to smite the Canaanites, and is very insistent that they should massacre the defeated people down to the last child, but there is no strong suggestion that the Canaanites are morally inferior to the people of Israel (less generous, considerate, truthful, that sort of thing). They are just the rival gang: that's all.
As a gang chief, God appears "supernatural" in only a very limited way. He is vicious, nasty, violent, vindictive, bad-tempered, petulant, but sometimes open to reason - a figure very different from the ethereal God of later religion.
Even the rudiments of moral codes appear only after a while, when the wandering tribes are beginning to settle down to a more organised collective life. Then, the codes are not really about people being "good" to each other. They are about the upkeep of the community - thus the very long passages stipulating the material upkeep of the priests - and maintaining its solidarity against other gangs. "Thou shalt not kill" means "thou shalt not kill people on your own side".
The patriarchal attitudes are very crude. The moral code, such as it is, is essentially only for men. Men should not covet their neighbour's wife (nor his ox, ass, etc.); a woman coveting her neighbour's husband may be in danger of retribution from her husband, but there is no moral rule covering the question.
Comments
Property Not Morals
The codes in the Old testament are about property not morals. They are the rules set down by a society that is changing from communal to private property. That is what the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh is about. How people become slaves from being free. Its actually "Thou shall't Not Commit Murder", not "kill". Even here the rules are about property and class relations. If one free man kills another deliberately, he foreits his own life. If he kills the slave/servant of another he only forfeits the cost of a replacement.
Where morals are spoken of they are very dubious. Abraham goes to another kingdom with his wife Sarah - the Bible can't decide whether Sarah actually is his Sister or not it gives different accounts in different places - and fears for his life. He encourages the King to beleive that Sarah is his Sister, and available. The King has it away with Sarah. Whodoes God eventually punish, Abraham for acting as a pimp for Sarah, or the King? Of course, its the King.
You could probably write a book on all of the inconsistencies, lunacies, and bad morals in the Bible a Book that would be even bigger than the Bible itself. And why do Catholics retain the Old Testament? It clearly has nothing to do with Christianity. Other than the God spoken of there was the God of the Jews, the rest of us were screwed. Jesus himself had the same attitude. He considered all Gentiles as inferior species. There is a story of a Gentile woman going to see him to ask him to cure her dying child. He told her to go away, and called her a gentile pig. Granted he did evetually relent in sympathy with the woman's plight, but that hardly justifies the origina attitude. And that part was probably written in later by the Romans when they wrote the New Testament to fit their needs under Constantine so as to make Chritianity a faith for Romans as well as Jews. UNfortunately, they forgot about that when they included the last section. There when John (this is not St. John, no one knows who John actually was) talks about the Apocalypse, he talks only about Jews being found a place in the Golden City.
"You could probably write a
"You could probably write a book on all of the inconsistencies, lunacies, and bad morals in the Bible"
Try "Asimov's Guide to the Bible" by none other than the late great Dr. Isaac Asimov, the man with the killer muttonchops.
It offers a comprehensive historical perspective on the influential scripture.
Ancient Metaphors?
It is with trepidation I post this comment. As a newbie to the Workers' Liberty site I hope I am not out of line with my comments. As a Quaker I have had to reconcile what I see as the good in the Bible with the many questionable things. To me I feel that much of the Bible is the work of ancient people trying to put into words concepts that cannot be bound up in words; i.e explaining the inexplicable. So they use metaphor and unfortunately the only metaphors they have are those from their own experiences. Hence they now feel very cold and at times fundamentally wrong. This is why Biblical literalism to me is bankrupt.
I don't feel it is appropriate for me to explain my faith in depth, but to me mainstream Christianity and any other faith relying on a written source from times past are set to become ossified and either fail, or worse become a power that can be corrosive in people's lives. That is the failure of a literal reading of the Bible. Similarly I feel when atheists lampoon the Bible for it's literal reading they are falling into the trap that fundamentalists do. The question is can a fable embody a truth? If it can then many of the fables and parables of the Bible embody some eternal truths.
I personally feel it is sad more Christians don't live the life Jesus set forth, instead they revel in the message of Paul and John that ultimately no matter what they do they will be saved if they believe and to live the life is to rely on salvation by works. Ultimately for me Jesus' message for me comes down to love God and love thy neighbour. And in the parable of the Good Samaritan we see that that your neighbour is everyone. I can't see how a true Christian can exploit others, oppress them or reject them, unless they let that central theme be lost in literalism by picking and choosing the passages that suit them the most.
Anyhow I am sorry if that is a little disjointed. I felt I needed to comment because I am really interested in socialism but much of the militant atheism, verging on anger at religion on this site and other socialist sites, makes me as a believer wonder if there is a place for a committed Quaker who also believes in socialism.
Best wishes,
Paul
Love Your Neighbour was
Love Your Neighbour was indeed about other Jews - and the Christians adopted this attitude, prevalent until the 1920's. The Catholic Church keeps the Old Testament because Christ said that he was not 'here' to abolish the (OT) law. (Matt. 5:17). So the death penalty for murder, bestiality, sodomy, adultery etc. are still 'valid' for Christians, (the 'Church' through the crucifixion of Christ (a once and for all atoning for sin as opposed to ritual sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple) having replaced the 'Jews') and were the RC's to regain control would surely be reinstated, along with the Inquisition, no doubt. It's why most trinitarian Christians (as opposed to the Quakers, Unitarians etc) see no conflict - the Bible runs from beginning to end, on a linear timeline, Christ being the fulfillment of creation, and operating at the final Judgment. See?
No religion makes sense to those who don't believe it. It's why Richard Dawkins sounds so silly when he talks about evolution. He has no 'faith' that evolution exists as a 'fact', only scientific theorization. The Christian (and Moslem and Jew) has faith, and thus sound far more plausible and realistic to the average Joe Soap on the street.