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this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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It's not necessarily something that I 'love explaining to others'. However, academic biblical scholarship has been an interest and endeavor of mine for about thirty years. Luckily and thankfully, I've found my self in the center of this unique niche of interested parties with /r/AcademicBiblical and /r/AskBibleScholars.
Think about this for a moment. The biblical texts have had the most influence on western society, and arguably all other societies, for hundreds of years.
Wouldn't you want to know what these texts are saying?
They aren't saying what you think they are saying.
If you've had no experience with these texts, then you have many years of reading ahead of you.
It is incredibly daunting to know how little most people do not know about this subject. And, at the same time, shape our world based on misinterpretations and/or misunderstandings of this vast library of literature.
Can you give an example? This sounds intriguing.
Over the years we've collected our FAQ and our Hall of Fame. Many examples in those.
A Catholic friend of mine studied classics at uni, so learned Greek and Latin, and they've been jazzed at how much nuance or alternative interpretations they've found when reading the Bible in Koine Greek.
Are you a Christian? I'm guessing probably yeah, but like you say, the biblical texts have had a huge influence on Western society, so understanding them is useful context for anyone. What got you started on this kind of biblical study - most people I know who do this kind of study are in training for an eventual position within their church
My parents tried to raise me to become one, but that failed. No, I am not a Christian.
Many years of spiritual abuse and indoctrination.
It's kind of wild how much more Dante and Milton seem to have influenced the sort of now fairly standard apocryphal interpretations of the general shape of Abrahamic cosmology than the actual canon. Or like, maybe even Islam, honestly, or like Zoroastrianism. The hellfire and brimstone stuff really seems to come from somewhere else.
Also I'd like to give Christians who gripe about plural they a lesson on the etymology of Elohim.
Out of someone's ass is my guess.
Yeah maybe, but whose ass? Zoroaster's? Hinduism's? Ideas that match hell and an evil opponent for a good god are all over the place.
I'm inclined to lean in the direction of some sort of proto-Hindu-Zoroastrian cosmology in the long run. Ahura Mazda looks a lot like the kind of fighty version of YHVH that modern Christians seem to like, with a nice clear villain and a power struggle in place of a confusing omnipotent being with a combative frenemy pushing its boundaries.
But like, maybe by way of some mostly suppressed gnostic tradition that leaks out through late medieval writings? It's not hard to see the lower emanations in the 2nd and 3rd century gnostic stuff turning into the more kind of blunt angels and devils motif we associate with Christianity. Especially in the context of traditions like Mancheanism popping up around the same time and drawing parallels.
But like really who in America who votes based on the one particular line in Leviticus that they latch onto knows any of that? I'm guessing basically nobody.
Someone (or some group) who wanted control over people. All religious literature is rife with politics.
I've read everything else that you've stated, and I'm aware of these theories, but in the end I lean toward the simpler explanation above.
Just look at the world today. Same type of shit. Most billionaires make their fortunes off the backs of the populace. And they use all of the well-known tactics to do so. Coming up with stories (propaganda) to influence minds across the board.
However, when you take the effort to drill down into the subject matter at hand you'll find a 'small still voice' which points at the ineffable.
The ineffable is what I embrace.
I agree! There's some potentially useful stuff in some aspects of various religions, but for me the value is in looking at the moon rather than the finger that points at it. The rest are just tools to bring me where I'm trying to get, which is just basically to chill out and be at peace with where I am.
But I definitely do find that the parts that helped point that out were more in tune with zen than the more ritualistic and mythological approach. Also psychedelics, in a sort of roundabout way.
I do have a big soft spot for some of the Greek pantheon, though.