Genesis

[Pete]

Here is a book I suggest everyone read. Not only is it funny, but it is full of polygamy, incest, and death. It also contridicts its self over and over and displays God not as a loving father, but as a diety trying to limit the minds of its creation.

Read and enjoy.

While your at it try reading the Enuma Elish and think about all the similarities.

Welcome to comparitive religion.

[Rastafari]

the Enuma Elish-now theres literature!
Read some Mercia Eliade, he loves that shit

As for the Bible, I have *ahem* read it G to R three times, just so I'd have some arguing points to turn against fundamental right-wingers

[Alejandro C]

my favorite part so far, (i've read up to 11) is when noah's son ham sodomizes his father.
that's some fucked up shit.

we were just talking about this yesterday in my theology class, so imagine my surprise at seeing it here.

genesis is definatley a good read, also try revelations! wow and holy shit; its just crazy.

[Alejandro C]

i just read 34. that is some seriously fucked up shit

[Pete]

Ham doesn't sodomize his father, he only points out to others that his father is passed out naked on the floor betraying Noah's honour. For that reason his son is cursed to slavery.

Have you got to the part where two daughters get their father drunk and sleep with him?

[Rastafari]

"Noah had three sons, Ham, Shem and Japhet
And in Ham is known to be the Prophet"

[Pete]

One of may favourite stories is when God tells Abraham to offer up Iaasc, "Your only son, the son that you love", as a sacrafice, and then has to persaude Abraham not too.

It is both a story of the dangers of blind faith and how God is evil! Oh the Gnosism!

[Anastacia]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2003, 04:57 PM
One of may favourite stories is when God tells Abraham to offer up Iaasc, "Your only son, the son that you love", as a sacrafice, and then has to persaude Abraham not too.

It is both a story of the dangers of blind faith and how God is evil! Oh the Gnosism!
God tested Abraham's faith on him. And he did stop it early. It doesn't prove that God is evil. I think it is a great story of how we have to trust on God in evry situation. It seemed that Abraham was about to lose his only son but God did save him.

[truthaddict11]

didnt some lawyers in britian try to ban the bible because of its explicit sex and violence?

[Pete]

There is a lot of sex and violence, so I don't doubt it..


Anastacia... yes God's angel did stop Abraham, but that was after he was ordered to kill his son. And this is a literary discussion, not a religious one so please leave your preconceptions at the door.

In the story of Adam and Eve (GEN 3 or so) the snake convinces Eve that God was lying (in one of the translations I have read) because she touched and ate the fig without dying that very day. God, the father figure, purposely tried to keep his children naive and stupid by disallowing them from indulging in the Knowledge of Good and Evil which would make them "Too much like us" (or osmething to that effect).

The snake can be seen as Christ and Eve as the Hero figure. Adam can be viewed as the blind follower of the patriarch, and God as teh patriarch. Since free thought is punished, this story can be used to support the patriarchy and blind faith.

I enjoy how the world is created one (1.1-2.4) and then again because the first time wasn't good enough or something (2.5-3 [or so]).

[harely]

I know a lot of people have tried to stop the publication of the bible for various reasons.

CP it seems to me that you too are including your perceptions about what is being said. Like Anastacia said God didn't ask Abraham to offer his only son in sacrifice because he is evil, but because he was testing his faith, Abraham because of that and many other things came to be known as "God's Friend," because he was truely faithful. You can't really become friends w/ "someone" who has asked you to kill your son, because that "person" is evil.

And the whole Adam & Eve yeah the serpent convinced Eve and she later convinced Adam to eat the fruit, becuse he promissed that they would become to the likeliness of God knowing Good and Evil, and although the didn't die that same day the truely did begin to die. Because they had the promise of everlasting life, and obviously becuase of what they did that didn't happen.

[Pete]

She included the word "we" in her arguement which takes it from the literary to the religious...

In the Bible it does not mention that they would become Godlike until God came about and said something like "you are too much like us" (which I take as the royal WE not suggesting the story teller included multiple gods). Adding in that one assumption is just the base that our civilization attached to the story, but regardless isn't that trying to say that Joe and Sally cannot be 'powerful'

[redstar2000]

As I understand it, Genesis is actually three documents more or less poorly crammed together.

When some unknown group of Jewish high priests gathered their legends together (in Babylon or in Jerusalem, c.600BCE), they were faced with two accounts of many "events"...thought to be of "southern" and "northern" origins, respectively.

Being poor editors (or perhaps political reasons were involved), they did not weave them together into a "seamless" account but instead just sort of jammed them together with their own inserted comments.

Imagine if the first three "gospels" were all one book and you get an idea of what happened.

Thus scholars today refer to the "Y" version (for "Yahveh"...the name of "God"), the "E" version (for "Elohim", "God"), and the "P" version (priestly additions of c.600BCE).

Untangling the separate threads is not a task for the faint of heart. But reading about it is fascinating.

As is the barbaric "morality" revealed therein. Consider Lot, a "righteous man". When two "important visitors" (actually angels) show up at his house in Sodom, a crowd of "sodomites" gather outside and want to party with the new faces. Lot offers his two young (virgin) daughters to the crowd to "do with as they please" if the crowd will just go away and leave him and his visitors in peace.

Nice guy, eh?

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Pete]

RS2000. Let me correct you, their are 4 supposive redactors of the oral traditions, the one you left out was the Deutrominal (or something very similar-notes at school) Historian who wrote around the times that the Deutromony was written.

[truthaddict11]

doesnt the bible also have other stories of "god" testing his believers "faith" by killing thier entire families?

[Rastafari]

haha. Whole books about it, in fact.

[Alejandro C]

my theology proffesor wrote a book with the thesis that there were only two sources for the old testament. he took the original source (yahwist) and then thought that all other sources could be combined as what he calls the priestly tradition. this priest source he tells is was something like an editor, which is why there appears to be other sources as well. i don't really give a rats ass though. the whole fucking class blows goats.