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The Secular Value of Religious Texts
Hachface
Not the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered User regular
Not the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered User regular
Spun off from the academic language thread:
So, what is the value of the Bible -- and other religious texts -- to non-religious people? I think the easy answer is that we live in a world where most people are religious, and this has had a profound impact on the culture. Much of western literature, for example, is incomprehensible (or at least less rich) without an understanding of the Bible. I can only surmise that Arabic literature is even more closely tied to the Quran. Even aside from their use as a way of understanding people and ideas, however, I submit that many religious texts -- Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Mahabharata, the Dhammapada -- have great literary value, and even more than their fair share of wisdom. You don't need to be a Christian to find Ecclesiastes 9:11 (discussed to death in the academic language thread) insightful or beautiful.
INeedNoSalt wrote: »Incenjucar wrote: »Incenjucar wrote: »The value of it is a perspective thing. That large swaths of it are horribly-written from a "get the fucking point across" standpoint remains true regardless.
Poetic language makes for shitty discourse.
I kind of suspect you've never read the Bible. Most of it is not poetic; it is a straight-forward series of narratives. Most of the disputes are over theological significance, not the actual content.
I do not, as a rule, read immense, badly-written works unless I can derive value from it.
Regardless, it's full of poetic crap like "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" and using lovely phrases that can mean either "fuck" or "say hi."
Understanding the ideas and basis of the world's largest religion is not valuable?
Man, we really need to get over this whole "hating Christianity is cool" thing.
So, what is the value of the Bible -- and other religious texts -- to non-religious people? I think the easy answer is that we live in a world where most people are religious, and this has had a profound impact on the culture. Much of western literature, for example, is incomprehensible (or at least less rich) without an understanding of the Bible. I can only surmise that Arabic literature is even more closely tied to the Quran. Even aside from their use as a way of understanding people and ideas, however, I submit that many religious texts -- Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Mahabharata, the Dhammapada -- have great literary value, and even more than their fair share of wisdom. You don't need to be a Christian to find Ecclesiastes 9:11 (discussed to death in the academic language thread) insightful or beautiful.
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As such, it's rather useful to know that the Qur'an advocates turning non-Islams into second-class citizens, and the older Abrahamic texts advocate slavery, genocide, and other fun.
But a ridiculous amount of Western literature after Antiquity does, in fact, allude to the Bible, so...?
of course, I also think every educated person should speak latin, so I might be a bit old-fashioned in this regard
Plenty of them allude to Moby-Dick or Sherlock Holmes, too.
So?
The richer your literary background the more literary references you can catch. This is very nice. It's also mostly a game rather than a vital survival issue, whereas knowing whether someone believes they can treat you like shit because their deity said so is definitely not in the game category.
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Bible? And the religious texts of all other major religions, right? Ramayana? Qur'an? Book of the Dead?
And honestly it's sort of stupid that everyone assumes that they know what you're talking about when they start talking about Christmas and Easter and etc.
Okay, so we've narrowed it down. Literature is only valuable when it does not contain poetic language and also provides insight into vital survival issues.
I am not somebody you should try to feed words to. Do not.
Games are valuable. Knowing whether or not somebody is likely to fuck you over and make your life hell is generally more valuable.
I do plan on re-reading the bible straight through as well as the Koran, Upanishads, some other books Shinto suggested to me for eastern religions &c. I'm actually part way through the list and find myself to be much the better for it. Not the book of the dead, though. It's mostly on how to embalm people and what amulet gets crammed in what orifice. I think I'll pass.
So you're saying that the only real value in reading the Bible is to gain insight into the tactics used by the Christian hordes to wage war and assimilate us into their dark collective?
I'd say that only works half the time. The Bible can be used to justify both captial punishment and banning it. The Quran is even more full of contradictions. As someone who has spent at least 10 years reading the Bible I think it's a waste of time. You don't need to see where someone's coming from on political issues if there are obvious moral codes in a society with logical justification for them. You don't have to be a satanist or a buddhist to abide by something like the law of reciprocity.
/end mini egyptophile tangent
I will answer this when you learn to read and restate your question without lying.
My point is you can usually take things that don't even look like they are alluding to the bible and claim that they are and get praise for your literary prowess.
When so few actually read the thing the influence is going to be fairly indirect.
So true. I've debated so many Christians who seem to have read less of the Bible than I have.
I'm pretty sure John Milton read the Bible. And most of the people writing those sermons did, too, and it is precisely their tendency to misinterpret that makes it all the more important to read the damn thing. For instance, I suspect that if more people were familiar with exactly how many crazy fucking rules Leviticus prescribes, there'd be a lot less power in the religious argument against gay marriage. Knowing the Bible lets you argue with religious folks on their own terms; frankly, it's not usually difficult to be more knowledgeable about their book than they are.
Last I heard the #1 reason for people leaving Christianity is reading the Bible. :P
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It's certainly important to read the text you're arguing based on, at least regarding the part pertaining to your point.
The thing is that people tend to be spoon-fed certain passages, while the rest are ignored. If you want to argue within the Bible itself, rather than just noting major points of silliness, the best way to do so is to simply present everything that a beloved passage is surrounded by.
The amount of cherry-picking is frankly incredible.
Yup. Anybody who says the Bible is inerrant either a) hasn't read the Bible past the first chapter of Genesis or b) is an intellectually dishonest piece of shit.
Somebody tried this at work. I just threw up my hands and said "Not a work conversation."
I mean this is something you can learn about just watching the Discovery channel.
So, whereas I am taking a more literary standpoint and believe that the Bible is incredibly important for the understanding of the vast majority of Western literature, you are taking a more societal point of view; you find the literary aspect trivial and believe we should read the Bible to understand how to better defend ourselves from brain-washed Christians, right?
I'm just basing this on
I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm just rather overwhelmed by the fact that you seem to be dismissing the historical and literary importance of the Bible as a "game".
The historical importance of the Bible is akin to the historical importance of any other tool. You do not need to know the life story of Remington to know that guns>swords, or to understand the way it shaped modern life.
And, again, the content of the bible isn't nearly as important in a historical sense as the people who spoke of it, interpreted it, and told people what they decided it meant.
The actual text of the thing is often barely related to what people assume is in it, based on the statements of their leaders.
I suppose that it's true on one level that you can interpret a text without having any biblical understanding, but at the same time I guess the question is whether you want to merely scratch the surface of the work, or would you prefer to deepen your understanding of it. I guess I would choose to understand the work better, but then again I am studying French and Italian literature. No doubt this will mean to several people that I am in an unimportant and ultimately worthless field.
That being said, I feel that for anyone to outright refuse or condemn a philosophy simply because people who follow it may or may not being "doing it rightly" in anyone's eyes is a bit shallow. The bible is an interesting read, especially with commentary books to explain some of the more...misinterpreted verses.
As I'm sure it's already been said, it's certainly one of if not the most influential sources of inspiration throughout all of civilization and its history - art, music, literature - history itself, basically.
Whether you like it or not, the very world in which you live was shaped by Christianity, one way or another, so I don't see the harm in learning something, (God forbid.)
I have a degree in English, yes, but I'm a writer, not a literature fanboi. If I can't make use of information, whether for work or emotional value, I don't bother.
I derive a great deal of pleasure from mythology in general, but the Abrahmic texts bore the crap out of me, and are too cliche for me to bother incorporating directly into my work.
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There's nothing BAD about reading religious texts. Useful information is useful information. Certain aspects of it are incredibly valuable due to the sugarcoating thing that religions due for PR purposes.
Cinderella didn't exactly lead to a major socio-political upheaval of the entirety of central Europe, if my sources are correct.
Though I could be wrong.
Those happen like every few years.
It wasn't the book that drove those changes nearly as much as the people who used the book as a symbol to hide the fact that they were the actual people in charge.
Of course you do.
Religion is essentially a social commentary on the motives, values, and traits of its followers as a whole. That is, after all, why they are following that religion. Because they share something with it or agree with it, even if this sharing or agreement is only partial.
Just like any other man-made entity, at the end of the day its a reflection of the characteristics of its maker and user.
Alas, we are still waiting for a find of similar importance to shine new light on Christianity (any pre-70 AD source would be absolutely revolutionary) but still the improvements in translational skills and the vast amount of new data compiled do bring a new view, backed by actual evidence, to early Christian documents.
It's very important to distinguish here between the Tanakh and the Christian New Testament. Completely different cases as far as how and when they were written and why.
Starting with the Christian NT (because it can be summed up easier): With the exception of some of Paul's letters which are probably authentic (several almost certainly are not and some are debatable) which were written between 30-60 AD or so all of the NT was written after the destruction of Jerusalem during the war that had begun in 63 AD. All of the gospels were very likely written down prior to widespread Jewish revolts of 115 . Other bits trickeled in later with Revalation of St. John being by far the latest (note: Not the same John which one of the gospels was named after. Just as a quick aside, none of the gospels were written by the person for which they were named; they are pseudoepigraphical. A very common practice where a book is ascribed to an earlier author of greater importance to lend it credence or honor the person. It should not be looked at as forgery as such would be called today as at the time the practice was not a dishonest one.
In any case, the core of the NT was written just a couple generations after the events it was talking about and over a fairly short period of time. There is no way to tell at this time how much editing they went through between their authorship and the mid 200s because of how very few fragments of text exist from this early period. But by the time we have good existing artifacts (from the late 300s) to the present it seems the text has been very well preserved. With the notable exception of the King James bible which bears some unfortunate editing in its translation. Any major editing was done via the choice over which documents (from the much larger pool available) were chosen for canonization rather than through textual editing.
The Tanakh is a far more complicated (and, to my mind, interesting) collection of books. It came to be over the course of several hundred years and blends several fairly distinct religios traditions together (which explains a lot of the apparent contradictions or weird repetitions of events). It is a story of a people who for the grand majority of history were clients or vassals of the more powerful nations surrounding them (Egypt to the west and whoever was ruling in Mesopotamia in any given century in the east). A few brief times in their history they became independent and even powerful thanks to both their neighbors happening to be in the midst of civil war or other disasters at the same time. These period of a generation or two became the stuff of legend in the bible (eg: the reigns of David, Solomon, Josiah etc...). Once one neighbor or another recovered under a strong leader conquest usually followed.
One very important fact to bear in mind when reading is that the modern book names the divisions between books and chapters were created during translations by Greeks working for the Ptolemys. The book titles, as with many books in antiquity were originally the first word or phrase of each volume (not "Genesis", "Kings" etc...). The order of the books has very little bearing onto when it was written or even good sense. The prophets, for example, are all arranged by the length of material ascribed to each (eg: Isiah is put first as his book is the longest etc...).
The content itself combines (probably) the epics, probably written, of the countries of Ephraim (also called Israel) and Judah. In general the views of Ephraim were that the covenant with god was a conditional one (eg: god only kept up his side if people kept up theirs), that the divine name Yahweh was only revealed by Moses and not before and that Kings are really not a good idea and when they are necessary (eg: to repel an invasion) they need to be kept in check by Prophets.
Judah was generally of the opposite opinions, in that they felt gods covenant was not conditional (he would look out for the chosen people no matter what), that the divine name was known to the chosen from Creation and were very pro-monarchy. It is important to note that Ephraim was a much more rural region and Judah was home to the city of Jerusalem thus this can be viewed as much as a rural / urban divide as north / south.
Combining, editing and adding to the above is two layers of work by a priestly class working first in the reign of Josiah and later after the Babylonian Exile. More material in the Tanakh is devoted to the Exile in than any other event. This priestly class, much as other priests of the ancient near east, were very into cataloging, genealogies and legal details. They are responsible for a lot of the religiously important but, to a modern eye, incredibly dull bits that drag down some otherwise quite gripping narrative. This class of priests is also interesting in that they were writing in Jerusalem but had a distinctly Northerm / Ephraimite way of looking at things. The northern kingdom had been permanently destroyed some short years previously and it seems likely this group represents the priests who had fled south at the time.
They were very much of the opinion that the covenant was conditional (and all of those writing after the Exile were generally going on, and on, about how it had been violated by the Hebrews) and suspicious of Monarchy. With the one exception of King Josiah who conveniently enough seems to be their great patron and gets more positive press than any other King in Hebrew history (seriously, compare his section of Chronicles to any other king).
Anyway, what I am getting at here is that the Tanakh is a collection of books writing about events that span from the late bronze age on down for a thousand years and were written down over a period of at least half that time. They combine the histories of two nations and most of all were treated with a surprising amount of reverence and honestly by the compilers. There are many, many places where inconsistencies could have been smoothed over or removed (example: who killed Goliath? Elhanan according to 2 Samuel wheras David in 1 Samuel). A lots of the bits that just don't make sense or seem a direct contradiction of the previous verse / chapter / book are a result of these internal fault lines that, alas, generally disappear in translation. In English you see a single document that seems to have been written by a gibbering madman. Looking more closely at the text reveals a collection of writings by many hands over several hundred years each of which sends to generally make sense. Unfortunately those hands can differ even from verse to verse and do not follow the modern divisions of books, chapters and verse.
Just studying the Quran will not explain to you the disconnect that occurs in the minds of suicide bombers. However, reading more than just the Quran, also delving into intifadahs and writings of Islamic scholars that form the foundation of the modern Islamist justification for suicide bombing will help you understand how these people can bring themselves to do these things. This should not be studied in exclusion of socioeconomic and historical factors (in fact those are more important) but it is definitely a more helpful food for thought on the subject.
While that is important, studying the religious values of these people and the origins of those values gives insight into why they are doing it. It doesn't give you any real predictability scenarios, but it lets you understand in part why it is happening, and that understanding can be part of helping you end it.