So we've moved on then from what a narrow focus the OT is?

You're probably right that I should reserve my opinion on how well written the bible is (or perhaps give it some leeway since it was written a very long time ago) as I'm not a literary expert (are you?) and given that I've only read LoTR 5 times and I've never actually managed to get all the way through the bible yet.

I'll admit that even as someone who views the bible as nothing more than a work of fiction, I still can't read it without a rising anger and frustration that so many people have used it to justify so much cruelty, hypocrisy and hatred. It represents, for me, some of the worst of human nature. How do you feel about it?

Well if text is not an option then there is no answer so i dont see the point in you asking.

What do you think? I not only deal with the OT in the original hebrew on a daily basis, to that end I also deal with contemporary texts from the surrounding cultures. That means, that besides my literary assessment of the OT in a vacuum, I can also compare it to the literary level of the surrounding cultures at the time.

Primarily, I'm somewhere between shocked and sorry. Reading the Song of Songs together with the Missus after a bottle of wine is better than watching porn together. You're missing out, plain and simple.

On top of that, your position is highly emotional and in that sense -- irrational. I've read Mein Kampf before and despite me knowing that this book "caused" endless sorrow and death, my response was annoyance because of the truly atrocious style of writing and exceeding tedium of the matter. It seems as if you truly can't distinghish between a book and what some take it to represent (especially if you phrase it as "have used it to", which leads to the obvious question of "why is that the books fault").

Some translations of the Bible contain excellent displays of linguistic skill (the KJV is an excellent example), and some chapters are very good narratives in their own right - but I still think it is a stretch to laud the Bible for excellent literary qualities. It's good here and there.

Compared to something like the Indian Bhagavad Gita, the Icelandic Edda or the German Nibelungensaga I personally think the Bible definitely falls short. This is because the Bible is a hodgepodge of texts, many which fit together less than perfectly. It comes off as a bit of a "work by committee" - Thus the narrative as a whole leaves quite a lot to be desired.

That it is an important book is another and unrelated issue. "Quotations from Chairman Mao" is also important, but it is definitely not a grand literary work (without comparison, just an example). A book doesn't have to be great to become important.

I'm not sure what would be left if I were able to be completely dispassionate about the bible. With no emotional involvement, it's just a collection of words, to be analysed with cold logic for what, literary value? Historical value? Even judged by those criteria, isn't there still an emotional connection for the reader because those things are their passion or interest rather than the religion?

I can't help the specific emotional response that religious texts cause in me, it's how I'm wired, but despite that I have attempted to read the bible, I just haven't succeeded in finishing it, yet. The bible was intended to cause a reaction, it's just that mine isn't the desired reaction.

And nothing is better than porn, blasphemy!

For what it's worth, it is pretty common for people who study literature to focus on a particular period or style of literature, or even a particular author or text. Getting a Ph.D in Old Testament studies doesn't mean that you just read the OT and nothing else--you'll also learn the languages involved and become familiar with other writings and the culture of the era in question. You'll also learn the theology and history of Christianity and Judaism (and maybe Islam) relevant to the text, as well as the history of scholarship and so on.

Also, your analogy with the LOTR is bad for at least two reasons. One is that of course if someone focuses on, say the Wisdom literature of the OT, that doesn't mean they only read that part and ignore the rest. Rather, that just means that is the area of their research. Second, the LOTR was written as just one book, so of course it doesn't make sense to only read one volume without reference to the rest. This is not the case with the Bible, where each book is independent from the rest and so can be, to a certain extent, understood independently.

I'll also chime in to say that the Bible has a pretty good argument for being the most important writings in history, especially on this side of the world, so focusing on it in your studies, even for atheists, doesn't seem strange to me at all. As for its literary qualities, obviously tastes will vary, but I at least find parts of both Testaments moving and beautiful. I would also say that trying to decide on some kind of objective scale its literary quality is fairly pointless since it is so relatively unique.

Back when I read the OT I do so because of its cultural import, but was also motivated by similar comments from others on its alleged beauty and evocative insight into the human condition, and the like. Well I knew going in I was highly unlikely to be persuaded as to the truth of its major claims, and would disagree with the various "worst examples" often tossed around as atheists that I had seen before, but I was determined to hold a neutral position and enjoy it for what it was. Tastes vary, as you say, but for me it certainly did not hold that standard. The "bad" parts were far more extensive and pervasive than I had presumed, and any beautiful or evocative parts seemed very few and far between. Indeed, for me it was the experience that transformed the aesthetic view from being simple one where I saw no reason to believe in this god, to being rather glad there was no reason to believe in this god, and rather recommend actually reading the old testament as a deconversion tool

Aquinas: Old Testament = "Timor" or "Fear" and New Testament = "Love"

Sure, it is one of those old books where you shouldn't read the whole thing if you are interested in its aesthetic quality. But I really do like Ecclesiastes, parts of Job and Psalms and some of the prophets, and I do find the stories fascinating as mythology.

Plus, my own interest in religion is increasingly focused less on trying to find ways in which it is false or bad, and more on understanding its function and nature, so I try to read holy books like the Bible more sympathetically than it sounds you were attempting.

Indeed, and as I say my goal was to deliberately suspend such criticisms and not worry about things like falseness, and to be sympathetic, searching out for evocative or beautiful parts that people had alluded to. For instance, i had recently gone to see the vatican with a similar attitude and was pleased to discover i found it far more beautiful and magestic than had been described to me on a similar atittude of suspension of disbelief and criticism, if you will. This experience just did not repeat itself in the OT for me, even for the sapiential books you cite (where i presume it is standard to find, say, the histories less evocative). Nonetheless, a worthwhile exercise from the purposes of understanding the cultural significance and the like and I am glad I undertook it.

Would you make such an effort with other books? I'm curious about whether you've read the texts of the other main religions?

What I've read of the bible has seemed no more beautiful to me than the Greek myths, including all the criteria that Fret listed - (among them: myth, etiology, lists, definitions, legal codes, novella, prayers, songs, poems, narratives, historiography, prophecy, drama, debate, monologue). In fact, there was less consistency and narrative thread.

Just as a thought, imagine if I went to people's houses armed with a collection of the Greek myths and used it to try to convert people to believing in Zeus, I wonder how ridiculous that would seem. Perhaps imagining that can help some people understand how I feel about the bible. The fact that it is currently the leading text of the leading religion does not mean that it always was or will be. Perhaps in another thousand years, people will regard it the same way that we regard the Greek myths and chuckle at the idea that someone would study it intensely but excuse it as a behaviour understandable for it's time.

of other religious texts, onlh the Koran, and then only parts of it. And of course the New Testament but I had read most of that the first time when I was a teenager.

To use your LOTR example, there is a ready ability to suspend disbelief in the mystical mythology of that text and read it for its evocative insight into human nature. In principle this is just as possible with any religious text.

I find the use of "criteria" here to be a bit odd... It's almost as if you still don't know what a genre is. And it would be odd that you would even know that you've read etiology given your general lack of knowledge of things that pertain to religion.

I am highly skeptical that your underlined conclusion should be taken as something that resulted from any serious contemplation of what you've read.

If we make knowing the word etiology a prerequisite to comment on ones impression of the bible, this is going to shut down the overwhelming majority of discussion. I think mightyboosh's point was questioning the focus on such a narrow field of study, and the fact that he used "genre" incorrectly to do is a pretty minor nitpick. Of course, as an academic I and others pointing out the silliness of this complaint, but nonetheless I feel worrying too much about his use of genre when his general point is clear (and can be criticized) is a bit silly.

Ok, there were two points of general interest in yesterdays Uke meltdown, and I thought it might be worthwile to adress them somewhat more in detail for the general audience.

For one, he was repeatedly accusing me of finding more charitable readings in order to not have to deal with a plain and simple "literary" reading. Within the context of this thread, supposedly he thinks that the NIV ("for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents") gives the literal reading.

Regarding it's factual implications, that is a rather curious notion. After all, even if we agree for the sake of argument that there exists some clear and unequivokal literal meaning of the verse and that this literal meaning is to be taken at face value and as morally/legally binding, the only text that we can make any reasonable argument for consulting in order to deduce that literary meaning can be the hebrew/greek original. Every english bible version is a translation from hebrew/greek. Uke (as he admitted) "doesn't care" which translation we take, as they are all equally likely to be wrong (something I agree with). However, this means that any individual bible translation has no more claim to just miraculously be perfect and accurate than any other. Hence, looking at some bible translation and relying on it for insisting that I should not skirt around the difficult passages is methodologically absurd. IF there is a difficult passage in a translation, the very first step HAS to be to make sure that this difficulty is not simply the result of a tendentious translation.

I mention this because this sort of argument seems to be rather frequent around here (and religious folk are just as guilty of this): Person A claims some "literal" reading of some passage to have primacy, while basing it on a translation which ALREADY is an interpretation. B objects (potentially citing some evidence). A replies that B just tries to gloss over the difficulties that arise from a literal reading, not realizing that citing a bible translation is no effective argument for presuming that translation X should to be any more accurate than translation Y.

Of course, one could object that bible translations are done by experts. However, I suspect that most posters have no real idea to what extend translations are results of a particular theology and scholarly tradition and how often they differ and occasionally factually alter the text. Three trivial examples:

• In Ps 46, the Einheitsübersetzung adds in V4 "The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah". The Hebrew text does not contain that refrain. It has been added as it can be found in V8 and 12 and the translators (coming from a historic-classical school of exegesis) found this to be sufficient reason to suspect that it once was present there and had just been lost. The EÜ gives no hint at all that the addition in V4 is (just) their suggestion.
• In Ijob 28, the so-called Song about Wisdom, some german Versions inject V20 before V1, again suggesting it serves as some form of refrain.
• Neither of these examples results in a massive change of meaning one way or the other, but it does show that indeed bible translations are interpreting the text and therefore must not be taken as simply "given". How bible translations differ in emphasizing different notions and making the text stronger or weaker can be shown itt and in the Mt 5 thread that was referenced above. In both cases, emphasizing different notions in the verbs used alters the meaning of the text in a non-trivial way.

So, regardless of whether we think there is a literal meaning and whether it's normative, the relevant meaning (unless we just succumb to complete arbitrariness) needs to be always the one expressed by the hebrew/greek original.

The second charge was that my approach towards difficult/outrageous passages is to go back to the original text in order to find a less offensive interpretation than a literal reading would provide. That this claim - in light of the above - sounds somewhat absurd when it is made while accusingly thumping the NIV translation should be clear. But there's a further point.

For one, it borders on a personal attack. As we've just seen, bible translations are - inasfar as they are made under certain theological preconceptions - interpretations. It's easy to imagine how a rather restrictive and punitive version of christianity will come to harsh translations, while the text may not exhibit the same harshness at all. It's also, I think, rather incontroversial that there are some fairly harsh christian denominations alongside more lenient ones. If, now, one is to give the original text justice, this will inevitably result in arguing for more lenient translations. Charging this fellow with dishonesty BECAUSE he is toning down the harsher portions of the text is absurd. A claim like this needs to be substantiated not on grounds of observed patterns or presumed disingeniuity or whatnot but on grounds of actual tendentious translations.

For two, I find this entire argumentative approach somewhat curious. On the one hand one frequently hears as an argument against christianity that the biblical God is brutal and vicious and so on. However, once one attempts to explain that and how these qualities are to be interpreted in context, one gets attacked for explaining away the brutality and viciousness of the text. It's almost as if the atheist wants to retain the viciousness of the text in order to preserve a seemingly potent argument against christianity. What I don't understand is how atheists who level this kind of argument can't see what terrible corner they argue themselves into. If, at the end of the day, the atheists "argumentum ex horrore scripturae" can only be maintained by accusing theists of smoothing over the text, that is a really sad state of affairs indeed.

Would you say there are any parts of the bible that appear to show god as being brutal and vicious, or any other less than pleasant trait, that you would agree that it was indeed the case and no further interpretation was required?

Ah after storming off after losing a big pot the fish is back for more action (okay I couldn't help myself).

First, I thought I had made this point clear in the past but let me repeat that I am absolutely NOT claiming the primacy of one or another translation. I readily accept that of the two of us you are the only one who has paid the money to get translations of the original Hebrew and I shall generally not make any point about what should or should not be the best translation. I just have no basis for such claims. Perhaps NIV is entirely wrong to use the word punish. Perhaps KJ means "visit" in a sense entirely different form punish.

Just for the purposes of having a discussion that isn't entirely blasting the other as a drooling fish (erm...okay....I really can't help myself sometimes), lets side aside the idea of whether you personally are doing this. Let me just identify a particular bad way to defend the bible and see if you agree, in general, that those doing this are being problematic even if you don't think it is true that you yourself are doing it.

What I identified in this thread (rather generally, not you specifically until later) was what I think is a common tendency among theists. A particular passage is quoted from a common mainstream version of the bible which, on its face, seems to give a meaning that is troubling. For instance, I would think that today the idea of punishing four generations back is troubling and I kinda suspect many theists do to (given the tendency to try and lesson the implications of this claim). When faced with such a claim, there is a tendency to try and "soften" it, to make it seem less bad. In this thread we saw many many different attempts from different people all attempting to minimize the impact of this quote in diffent ways. For instance, you postured three "before breakfast" type points all three of which I thought were rather silly but seemed as if they were aiming to try and make the quote seem less bad. Maybe that wasn't your goal.

And among the many such tactics to lessen the blow of these seemingly incriminating statements, is the "it's just a mistranslation" tactic whereby people say "look there are all these other nicer meanings of the words in the statement". Now maybe you don't mean this in any pernicious way (I readily admitted my data set was small). Maybe you are doing nothing but investigating the original meaning of a quote and are not meaning to consistently apologize for the more egregious statements.

Incidentally if you said something like "yes, the NIV translation taken literally would seem to be very barbaric, however I think this is mistranslated" I would probably give you a lot of credit. Maybe you don't think it is, I don't know.

At the risk of being accused of explaining away, I would say this:

0) There are numerous instances in which god is referred to as being vicious, angry, perhaps brutal etc. Sure.
1) However, the biblical concept of a vicious and angry god needs to be evaluated in the context of the surrounding cultures.
2) There are three general ways of gods "displeasentness" to materialize: occasional - that's basically some vicious event being interpreted as gods action (think: Job/some catastrophic natural event); historical - an entire historical period is interpreted as being the result of gods wrath (think: the babylonian exile); apocalyptical - this is getting close to the notion that mankind needs redemption because of its inherently sinful nature
3) The biblical concept of gods anger/scorn is at its core a political concept (I didn't mention that with regard to Ex 20 as it would require more than just me "doing my Bibleworks thing" before I could confidently suggested a link between the notion of a jealous god and an angry/vicious god; it doesn't seem entirely implausible though): A god has a specific function (to protect a city/people). It can do that only insofar he is protective. that protectiveness has vicious elements - both regarding outside aggressors and rebelling insiders.
4) In ancient cosmology, other nations are equally protected by equally protective gods. So if gods scorn is directed against other nations, and they wither, it's basically the result of the divine struggle projected onto earth.
5) To the extend that divine scorn is adressed NOT in this political way, there are only very few (iirc five total) mentionings of gods anger/wrath being directed towards an individual. In these cases, the individuals express very clear objections about gods viciousness, i.e. the text makes it clear that god is committing essentially a categorial mistake. These texts, however are almost exclusively Pslams, i.e. the praying person interprets his fate as being the result of gods unjust scorn.

So, overall, yeah, there are a few cases in which gods anger/viciousness is mentioned and where events are interpreted as being the result of it. And, where it's quite clear that gods both unjust and overly vicious is made the main point of the text. One of these cases is Lam 2:20-22, in which the personified city refers (in a somewhat ambiguous wording) to god as her enemy.

That is a rather obscure passage though (even more reason for me to write my thesis about it). At the risk of overgeneralizing, most of the more commonly known passages deal with gods anger/scorn/viciousness etc. in a context where that scorn/anger/viciousness is seen as part of the political dimension of god.

It is rather clear, though, that in biblical cosmology, the subjugation of bordering nations (think: land seizure in Jos etc.) is not the result of the israelites being the better warriors (which would be the modern way of interpreting a military victory) but the result of this (ultimately) politically motivated scorn/anger of god.



Sorry, this turned out considerably less clear than I would've liked like it to be, but the issue of divine violence in the OT is a very diverse and extensive one, so it's hard to put this in a few coherent pointers that are at least somewhat comprehensive and balanced.

This seems to be a very different tone that earlier, where you were very willing to speculate before breakfast about how we could consider the passage to be illustrating restraint and the like, and to suggest links with mere "visiting" and not punishing connotations. Now it seems like you accept that it may indeed be "viscious" against rebelling insiders.

Apparently you also don't see the point in reading: I hinted at the point of asking in the very quote you answered to: "If anything that suggests that the question was one imposing too strict conditions on what a divine message should or shouldn't be."

I dont understand half your posts. They are confusing. But fine i didn't read it...zing.


Never mind either which way. God could only communicate 2000 years ago with an odd (also confusing) book. Ok got it.

Such are the limitations of omnipotence.

Though admittedly, the biblical God doesn't really seem very omnipotent. So that could just be embellishment.

Perhaps you should invest some time in reading up on how biblical inspiration is commonly conceived and what the relationship is between "God communicating" and "preserving his communication as text". I trust wikipedia is less confusing than I am.

But this is getting very far away from Ex 20,5.

Who knows for sure, but given the evidence of embellishment in the bible, could we say that it's likely or at least should be strongly considered in any judgment of biblical content?

Nah.