Stephanie's books and other things

I’m going to catch Hell for this………..

The Bible is the most boring book ever written. Ever.

This book has some very interesting observations and conclusions, but the author admitted he was delving into the minutia of the Bible but that he just couldn’t help himself, he then stated “I’m going to stop that now.” Soon after a few cogent points, he was right back at it. God love him.

Bart D. Ehrman knows his stuff when it comes to religion and the Bible, in particular. The guy has more degrees on religious studies than a hooker has one night stands, so when he makes a statement about Jesus and/or the Bible, I tend to believe him ‘cause I sure as Hell am not going to read the thing myself. He does, so I don’t have too.

What Ehrman does here is to take all the books of the Bible, Mark, Luke, John, Phil (just checking if you were paying attention.) and lines them up horizontally. Most of the time, when a person reads the Bible (usually when having major insomnia) they read it one book after the other. That makes perfect sense, and when you read it that way you don’t see anything odd. But when you line the books up next to each other you see discrepancies, major ones, like the actual day of Jesus’ death.

Discrepancies should not be a big surprise to most people. The Bible was written a really fricken long time after Jesus died. Decades AFTER the apostles were dust. The only source of information about Jesus’ story was through oral tradition…..ever play the telephone game? Then one day ‘someone’ wrote it all down; but who? The apostles were illiterate (in the Bible) and very, very dead. Mark, Luke, John and Phil did not write their own books.

Other interesting tid bits…..

1. Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, he was born in Nazareth. Why would you travel to birth your son with some cows and chickens and some creepy old wise men just to turn around and go back home? Because, you need to line up a prophecy that the messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. Insert deity here.

2. Jesus never claimed to be God.

3. Homosexuality was not condemned in the Bible as a bad thing simply because the concept of homosexuality did not exist in those times. I know what you’re thinking “But Stephanie, what are you talking about? Gay people have always been around, making the place better.” True. Men slept with men and women with women in those days just as they do now, but it wasn’t vilified. It was not even in their thought bubble that it was wrong. Sexual orientation was not even a concept until the 19th century. It’s true. So it was never thought of as unusual until then.

Isn’t that fascinating?

This book was good, but all the nuts and bolts of the Bible made my head spin. I think this book is for the person who really, really believed(s) in the Bible and now maybe wanting to open their minds a bit to consider the possibility that It isn’t a perfect or infallible book……..just incredibly boring.