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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.19197003 [Reply] [Original]

Why is that both atheists and fundamentalist evangelicals are unable to read the Bible as literature? Everything must be literal and to the letter; if an author hundreds of years prior to the new testament has once depicted God as wrathful, it must mean the Christian God is always wrathful and cruel.
The only difference is that when authors contradict each other or modern scientific data, the atheist will see it as a reason to disregard the texts in their entirety; he sees no value in them, philosophical, ethical or literary, ignoring the context as well as when and why it was written, due to irrelevant technicalities. Meanwhile the fundamentalist kind will rationalize those things away and treat it like a scientific treatise, contaminated by modern ideas of logic and truth, which is not how the ancients interpreted these texts.

>> No.19197098

>>19197003
Because the literary value is negligible. It’s only worth analyzing from a religious perspective.

>> No.19197107

>>19197003
>Why is that both atheists and fundamentalist evangelicals
They are from the same families and are equally retarded. I wish Luther was drawn and quartered.

>> No.19197130

>>19197003
Anon, you need to read better quality commentators; and there are a lot of them out there. Of course, there is a great deal of mediocre, dumb commentary as well.

>> No.19197557

>>19197107
unfathomable based

>> No.19197589

The bible is poorly written, it's not fun to read.

>> No.19197607
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>>19197589
The Bible is not a single book. It's a collection of books written hundreds of years apart from each other, many of them drawing from much older written material and oral tradition. Have you read all of them?

>> No.19197622

>>19197607
No, I have better things to do. I've read a few complete chapters from each of the major sections, which is more than most christians can say.

>> No.19197658

>>19197622
I personally think Ecclesiastes, Job, Daniel and the Gospel of John are all beautifully written or at least worth reading.

>> No.19197851

>>19197107
Haha just do it then? Wtf your "holy see" controled the entire West and couldn't deal with one random heretical priest? Get cucked.

>> No.19197875

>>19197003
Because neither of those two groups have two millenia of sacred tradition and thinkers to help guide them.

>> No.19197933

>>19197658
>Job
Divine command cope
>Daniel
Apocalypticist rambling
>John
Platonism hijacking Judaism

Ecclesiastes is great, I'll grant you that. Even if it's spoiled by a redactor trying to tack on a conventional homiletic message to it.

>> No.19197949

>>19197933
You're doing the exact same thing that were just talked about in the OP. None of those are relevant and don't invalidate the literary or philosophical message of the texts.

>> No.19197968

>>19197003
You have destroyed both atheists and fundamentalist evangelics. How will they ever recover?

>> No.19197991

>>19197851
don’t care about that shit, luther inadvertently fucked Renaissance humanism. The church ended up coming down hard on neoplatonists

>> No.19197997

>>19197949
No one cares what you think, faggot.

>> No.19198005

>>19197933
>Apocalypticist rambling
Daily reminder that the prophecy of Daniel 9 posits the exact date that Jesus comes

>> No.19198018

>>19197949
You all can make the change you want to happen right now. What philosophical or literary value do Job, Daniel and John have such that people should read it?

>> No.19198108

>>19197997
You clearly do, or you would not be replying to me.
>>19198018
Job was written as much to answer a theological question (why does evil exist?) as to show that misfortune happens to moral as well as immoral people alike. The dialogues between Job and his group of "friends" are also beautifully written, even if you dislike the answers that the book itself gives you. Nobody particularly likes the message that Oedipus the king gives to the reader (you cannot change fate), but it doesn't stop anyone from appreciating it as literature.
John contains some of the best that the NT has to offer. It's theological message and poetic language is on a different level altogether when compared to the other gospels, who read like a patchwork of accounts and sayings of Jesus.
>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There's also historical and intertextual value for reading these books. How can you understand Milton and Dante if you don't understand his allusions to Biblical literature and theology? These books are also alluded to more than most.

>> No.19199731

>>19197003
Gooood down moses

>> No.19199737

>>19199731
Oops * Gooo down moses

>> No.19199798

>>19197003
This is a repeat of the nonsensical view that pre-modern people had no sense of historicity. Read the early church fathers, they insult pagan philosophers for thinking the world is more than a fee thousand years old because for them the Bible was obviously historical truth. Of course they read allegory and prophecy in the Old Testament, but those were read parallel to the literal meaning, not instead of it.

>> No.19199822

>>19199798
This. There's an obvious difference between pieces of information stated in a boring laundry-list style parts and 'Jesus tells a cute story to make a point to a bunch of illiterate morons who live in a place and time where no one speaks literally' parts.

Claiming the second means you can throw away the first without abandoning the basic premise that the bible is the source of your truth is pure cope.

>> No.19199855
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>>19197003
I'm an atheist. I appreciate the literary merit in the KJV - I love the language. I find the development of ideas and such as the changing nature of God fascinating. It also allows me an insight to the mind of ancient peoples, including their ethics and (derived) philosophical positions. Further, without an understanding of the major events in the Bible the meaning of much European art and literature up to the modern era is inaccessible.

However, I'll concede that most posts here fall into the categories you've described.

>> No.19199857

Nigga you don’t understand.

>> No.19200160

based formalist

>> No.19200166

>>19197003
Low iq

>> No.19200190

there are atheists who can read the bible as literature. they just tend not to be the type of people who post in r/atheism, or who vocally describe themselves as atheists. Likewise I'm sure a lot of evangelical fundamentalists think of the bible as a great literary work, they just do that in addition to thinking it's factually accurate.

>> No.19200201

>>19197003
"Philosophical" understanding is a fucking spook. All metaphysical nonsense is a pile of shit.

>B-B-BUT TO SAY THAT YOU NEED TO RELY ON A UNIVERSAL CLAIM!!!!
Doesn't that just speak to my point even more though? The world is fundamentally irrational, beating your head against a wall trying to undo a fundamental contradiction is a waste of time. As soon as you accept that, you can move onto more productive stuff.

>> No.19200868

>>19197098
>influenced the vast majority of western writers
>"no literary value"
okay