blanketforyourshock:

greencarnations:

oldauntamy:

A graphical representation of the contradictions in the bible. Each red line links 2 contradicting statements.

Everyone loves a good novel.

Guys, that is because the Bible is not actually one book. It’s lots of books of legends, laws, letters and stories from the same religion over a span of thousands of years. You’re not meant to read it like it’s one book by one guy.

Each separate book has to be taken in about fifty different contexts. You have to understand the book’s audience, the author’s intent, the translator’s intent, the publisher’s intent, the fact that there are words no one actually knows how to translate and so just guess wildly, your current cultural bias, the past cultural bias…and that’s just all I can think of off the top of my head.

Given all that, yeah, there’s some stuff said at one point that’s irrelevant later and needs changing. Think of a politician going back on positions he had earlier in his career and saying “yeah, some things happened, now I think x.”

One of the reasons the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: the story of Jesus) are so popular is how relatively accessible they are. They’re the easiest to read in a relatively straightforward manner, as Jesus and the apostles were the first guys to really take God to the masses in an approachable way.

He references back to Old Testament stuff pretty often because that’s what his audience knew and related to, but you can read it and understand it anyways. Kind of like reading the second Harry Potter but not the first, you can still understand and appreciate what’s happening without the entire context, though it certainly adds to the experience.

Don’t think of reading the Bible as A Song of Ice and Fire, where it’s one long, continuous story in which everything interconnects. It’s more like…Glee. A less shitty Glee. There’s continuity, but sometimes it gets smudged for the really important main messages. Sometimes those main messages shift and change a little as the audience does, but at its heart it’s still the same thing.

THROWS HANDS UP IN FRUSTRATION

EVERYONE IS GETTING RELIGION WRONG

THANK YOU