Do I have to read the christian Bible. Is it stupid?
The religious book of christianity, the Bible.
The Bible is very much associated with Jesus in our thinking. But Jesus only fills some pages of a giant book called the christian Bible. so what is the Bible about? do I have to read the Bible to come to God or reach Dao? Is the Bible holy or not? What parts does the Bible consist of? Well to get closer to understanding the Bible at first we have to know that this book was not written in one part. The christian Bible is a collection of religios texts. The first texts of what was later sumarized in this big book the Bible where written 1200 years before Jesus so that is 3200 years before today. And you have to imagine a long tradition of orally just telling the texts and so passing them on from generation to generation, so the first texts to the Bible are even older then 1200 years before Jesus, lets say 1800 years before Jesus was born. The last religious texts that landed in this compilation where written no later than roughly about 100 years after Jesus Christ. So at first we see that the Bible is not at all a book about Jesus. The Bible is a religios book containing the collected religious writings from a certain group of people. that where written over the course of about 2000 years and all ended up being in this big religious compendium. So the first texts that are in the bible have really nothing to do with Jesus because Jesus appeared about 2000 years later after these first biblical texts about God or Allah or Ishvara where told. So Jesus only fills the last pages of a very big religious book. And there is not one author to the Bible. People wrote down texts about what they believed about God or Dao and that over the course of 1300 years. Of course there is not one author to this book. the Bible is a collection.
Jesus Christ (middle) talking to someone.
Why does one think the bible would be a book about Jesus if he only fills the last pages of this collection. The texts of the Bible are religious ideas that are very old and to put it pointedly many of them are very stupid. The texts are about what the people believed 1000 years before Jesus Christ while Jesus himself already lived 2000 years ago that makes the religious texts in the beginning of the Bible 3000 or even 4000 year old religious texts. So how much knowledge about Ishvara or Brahma would you expect from people that lived 4000 years ago. Of course their believe in God comes down to myth like stories of God for example God forming the first men from clay. Or the first men living in a garden until God expelled them for some reason. You know the bible is this collection of very old stories. A christian priest will not tell you that this is a truth that has to be believed. Man we are over these myth stories. It is a believe about God or Allah and creation that is 4000 years old. And so there is even more stuff in the Bible that does not count as holy anymore. Ideas on things like how to properly treat slaves. A lot of stories about kings historical wars and much of fiction like the destruction of cities with fire from the sky. We can easily imagine some true core to the story of the fire from the sky with a meteorit striking a city, but it is also very obvious that some thousand or even more years ago people did know nothing of metorits and would have described such an event as God or Allah striking a city with fire from the sky and of course we can easily imagine how people might use another city for this story at some point in time and tell the story that this city wanted to rise against God or Ishvara before it was destroyed.
And there are a lot of legends in the Bible, for example there seems to have been a salt stone that looked like a person and in the Bible you find the story that a woman was allowed to leave the destroyed city but was told not to turn around and when she did she was turned to stone. We do not believe in such stories from our modern point of view this is pure fiction and from a modern religious point of view it is stupid nonsense. But to the people thousands of years ago those where stories about God or Jehovah and they wrote them down. Not everything in the older parts of the Bible is stupid. There are well some texts that apply still today. Texts that tell of the greatness of God, that everything is in Gods or Allahs hand and that you have to be caring if you want to come to this God. So the older parts of the bible contain some more modern thinking texts but really a lot of the older parts of the bible consists of just mystical stories that made up the believe of thousands of years ago. It is a window to the past of our religion.
As you can see the christian Bible is a big book.
But back to the question why do we believe so often that the Bible is a book about Jesus. Imagine that when Jesus appeard he talked about God or Allah or Ishvara. And the people knew that this is topically bound to the same topic that their collection of religious texts the Bible was talking about. It was considered new and better information about Allah or Ishvara. so they did what they did since 1200 years, they wrote the things Jesus said down and added them to their collection of holy texts. They added what Jesus Christ said to their collection of religious texts. And this collection of texts written over a long period of time nowadays is called the Bible and looks like one book. And since about 100 years after Jesus they stopped adding more texts to this collection The Bible very much ends on the writings about Jesus and his religious pupils. Christianity is very much the religion Jesus told the people. Because Jesus in Islam is called Isa you could call Cristianity “Isaism” from an Islamic point of view. From a Buddhistic point of view Jesus to Christianity is the same as Buddha to Buddhism. So how does Christianity deal with the fact that they still carry along a lot of very old myth stories in the christian Bible. They declared officially that the older myth stories like fire from the sky, men made of clay by Jehova and then given life and people turning to stone for disobeying God, they officially declared that these stories are not to be believed. So to official christian thinking the most of the older parts of the Bible are officially not to be believed. And with officially here I am talking of the highest christian priest, who decide stuff like that over the course of time and make rules for how the religion has to be lived. So in modern christianity there are rules on what to believe in the Bible and what not and the very old myth stories are not to be believed.
As you can see in this image, the book Bible is of high regard in the christian religion.
Also this image shows the way how worthy the Bible is sometimes considered. If you want to know what you should read in the Bible start with the Gospels.
sometimes the Bible is objectified as a “holy object”. That won’t help you on your way to perfection. Rather read in the Bible. if you ask what can I read or what should I read in the bible. The Gospels, the preachings of Jesus are the way best thing to read in the Bible.
Jesus in the Bible
Typical christian church. Churches are the temples of christianity.
So the christian Bible is devided into two parts called the Old Testament and the New Testament. And he Old Testament the biggest part of the Bible are all religious texts that where written before Jesus appeard. And so the Old Testament is this stuff that is of minor importance to christianity. And then there is the New Testament which is the much smaller part of the bible which consists of the texts written after Jesus Christ appeared. And this is the important part of the Bible in Christianity. Science believes that Jesus did not write anything down himself. Other than his pupils, who wrote texts themselves. So about 40 years after Jesus died a man made a journey to collect knowledge about Jesus and wrote down the story of Jesus life and teachings. following every approximatly every ten years 3 other people did the same thing, they made ajourny to collect information and wrote down the life and teachings of Jesus. They also copied some things from each others information and some seemed to have some other written information about the teachings of Jesus they could draw from. This results in four stories of the life and teachings of Jesus which are quite similar to each other. Those 4 similar core texts are called the Gospels. After Jesus lived many people wanted to follow his ideas of religion and spirituality and so the formed groups of followers throughout the lands. Jesus had told his pupils to watch over these groups. And so 2 of these 12 direct pupils of Jesus who where of a high rank in the group wrote letters to the new groups of Jesus followers mainly answering to the questions about belief and religion these groups had. So the rest of the more modern part of the Bible is made up of these letters to the new groups of followers of Jesus. From these groups Cristianity arouse. So the New Testament, the more modern part of the bible consists of two things: The 4 quite similar stories about the life and teachings of Jesus and the second part are the letters that the direct pupils of Jesus wrote to the new groups of followers in different countries explaining the new ways of believe as Jesus had taught them to the pupils.
A famous statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro.
So if you want to read in the Bible either to understand the religion you are in or to understand christianity then you do not start with the old part of the Bible, the Old Testament because this is the collected of very old religious texts. If you want to read the Bible to understand christianity start with the New Testament namely with teh Gospels, the story of the life and teaching of Jesus by the four people who made a journey to gather information to write this down. The 4 stories are named by the names of the authors who made these journeys: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So you will find 4 times nearly the same story and this stories are surprisingly short. So you can read the complete officially story of Jesus written in the christian Bible easily in 4 evenings..
Her is a depiction in the glass windows of a church of the four people who made a journey to gather information and write down the life and teachings of Jesus. They have nothing to do with the pupils of Jesus.
So even though the Bible is a very big book the main part for Christianity the life of Jesus the founder of Christianity is very short. It is well worth reading. And the rest of the New Testament only the letters of the pupils to the new groups of followers. Even though these people did an incredible job of spreading the words of Jesus this is not to much necessary to read. So if you are interested in the Bible, with reading the Gospels which can be done in 4 evenings because they are surprisingly short you can read the absolute main part of the Bible in Christian understanding. 4 times a similar story about the life of this man Jesus always mixed with the most important teachings. And if then you want to read more then you can start with the letters of Jesus pupils they wrote after Jesus had died to the new groups of followers. But take some care because there are some discussable points in these letters like you should not be homosexual for example so you may not take the words of Jesus pupils somehow as direct laws given by Jehova. But the words of Jesus given in the 4 stories called the Gospels are very intelligent even today. Jesus is a very famous religious teacher in the world and you can read what was written about him in the Bible in a very short time. I mean there are millions of books about Jesus of course but this is the only source of writing about Jesus from the past that exists. So if you have read the Gospels you have actually read everything there is.
Typical painting of Jesus in a church.
But take some care, the stories about Jesus are full of incredible things like Jesus coming and healing people with his magic powers. The 4 Gospels are full of stuff like this. Modern christian church is somewhat undecided about these incredible stories. On the one hand the official opinion of the bigger christian groups which are the Catholics, the Protestant and the Orthodox states that we have to be carefull with these miracle stories and that shurely the one ore the other thing might have been added in a “mood of jubilation”, but on the other hand you may not forget that for Christianity Jesus is not just a teacher but that in the official believe of Christianity Jesus is a direct part of Jehova. So Jesus is thought of as being so much conected to God that you can not understand where the one thing ends and the other thing starts. And Jesus is cited in the Bible with sentences like: The one who sees me sees the father, while “the father” is Jesus word for God or Dao or sentences like: No one is coming to the father without me. So in christian believe Jesus is a part of Jehova or Allah.
And therefore if you believe that Jesus is a part of God then you do not necessarily have to object that he could do some “magic”. So the bigger christian groups have a modern thinking and let the believer decide for himself if Jesus could do magic or if this is all just invented and put to the real stories of Jesus life. For that Jesus lived is undoubted by science. If he could do magic is left somehow left undecided by modern Christianity. What is not undecided in christianity is that for being a christian you have to believe in Jesus Christ, what is left undecided is that the stories about his life that we have could be exaggerated. But the teachings of Jesus that are in these stories, the Gospels are not doubted in christian church. There might be doubt that Jesus was able to walk on water as the Gospels state, but everytime Jesus says something about what you have to believe then this is absolutely undoubted in Christianity. So much to how modern Christianity deals with these texts. So if somebody tells you that the Bible is a terrible book, or somebody comes up with some bullshit and says this is from the Bible, the reason for that is that the Bible is a big compilation of texts which are partly very old and stupid. And If you want to be informed about Jesus and Christianity then it is enough to read the 4 short stories of Jesus life, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and you will know the absolute most important parts of the Bible from a christian view and that is the teachings of Jesus. And the rest is very much a thing carried on because it was the religion to which the founder of christianity Jesus grew up to. And in christianity they decided that the old texts and traditions should at least be part of the religious book. But the old Testament the much bigger older part of the bible does not at all play an important role in todays christian believe.
Is the revelation / apocalypse true or stupid?