You know what, we're really off topic, but this shit is actually really cool to me, so I'm just going to go. Nothing to do with furry or the alt-right or anything, but maybe somebody'll find this interesting. Not even arguing anymore, just cool stuff about the Bible as an historical document and shit.
Because that's the really neat thing about both the Old and New Testaments; they really did a good job keeping up with their history, and keeping it written down and preserved. I mean, that's why we still know about Jesus and the old-school Israel. Because, Jesus, as I pointed out earlier, came at a time when Jewish Messiahs were about a dime a dozen. I mean, the reason he doesn't show up in a lot of non-Christian historical records is because the Zealots were right down the road holed up in an impregnable fortress and killing the shit out of any Romans that came their way until they finally all committed mass suicide, so, like, who gives a shit about the guy who surrendered peacefully and was executed without a hitch and specifically told his followers not to avenge him.
But this care for historical accuracy comes from the Jewish priests; much like Jesus was a dime a dozener who, depending on you beliefs, either got lucky or was the real deal, Israel (and Judah) was, like, a tiny little shitsplat of a kingdom in the middle of nowhere that we all remember today because they made sure to write their history down, even when they didn't even technically have a kingdom. So, now we can all read it. Keeping records of what happened is ingrained into Christianity via Judaism.
There are contradictions in the Old and New Testaments, but the interesting thing is that the Bible at one point even acknowledges that an error has been made in the transcribing of earlier texts, and that pains have been made to fix them. In the Old Testament books 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, during the reign of King Josiah, a old text is found in the temple, and this causes a great deal of disturbance in the kingdom (the general consensus is this found text is part of or the basis of most or at least some of the the book of Deuteronomy, though there is some debate about what this actually means).
The Jewish priests were also perfectly aware that their texts had contradictions; they were often the ones that put them in there, after all, when they originally wrote them down. The Genesis story of the Noah flood, and its constantly changing number of animals on the arc, is an easy way to see this. The book of Genesis, as a whole, is thought of to be a mashing together of at least two, possibly as many as four, different traditions. The two tradition version is that of a priest version versus a non-priest understanding of the stories (so, for instance, the priest version sees the a more complicated stance, differentiating between the number "clean" and "unclean" animals on the arc while the "lay" version is the simple two of each), while the more complicated versions see the priest sections divided into rival priests of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, plus possibly a bit of that "new" text from 2 Kings/2 Chronicles.
Another example of a contradiction in Genesis is the opening; the first part, the "In the beginning" stuff, is very "priest". It's more mysterious, you know? "Let there be light" and all that stuff movies like to quote when they want you to think they're being serious and shit. Then, when you get to about the second chapter, you get a story, about Adam and Eve, but really, it's a whole new creation story, because this the "lay" version. You get less of God as a force of creation, more, well, anthropomorphic, and you also get stuff like talking snakes. If you don't know the gap is there, you can read it and not see it, but if someone points it out you, you can see the gap. They read differently, if you're paying attention.
Point out here that this is one of the earliest contradictions in the Bible with the priests saying man and woman were created at the same time while the lay version has Adam decidedly first, Eve second. This gave rise to the legend of Lilith, the first woman before Eve who went bad and is some kind of demon vampire succubus now, but that was way later when people stopped remembering that this was really two versions of a story and not meant to be read as one.
But let's talk about people who actually believe in the Bible as the Word of God, and how they square not just the contradictions of fact, but ethical and moral lapses and contradictions that maybe God should be above (and also occasional descriptions of horse jizm out of nowhere). And, yeah, fundamentalists just kind of bulldoze over it all, history and morality be damned, but Christians who aren't stupid have to deal with this, and religions, it turns out, get to have theories, too.
One way of dealing with the nasty bits of the Bible is a Biblical theory called the "tape recorder theory", which uses a tape recorder to kind of explain the process of how the Word of God gets obscured. Okay, so, like, the Bible is a tape recorder, and God is recording his Word, and for some reason isn't making an MP3 but a cassette tape. Okay, so to make a copy of this tape, you have to record it on another tape, because in this metaphor MP3s haven't been invented yet. Anyway, while you're copying the tape, if you sneeze or fart or someone walks into the room and doesn't realize you're recording, well, that sneeze or fart or random asshole talking about what he wants to talk about is now part of your recording. Now someone else wants a copy of God's Word, but you've given God back the original copy or something, anyway, it's no longer available, so you have to copy your copy with the farts and sneezes and ramblings, so this new copy is going to have all that plus any new farts and sneezes and ramblings that accidentally get recorded, and so on and so forth, until, after so many recordings, there are entire sections of "God's Word" that are obscured or completely erased by all the accidentally recorded farts and sneezes and ramblings.
So, in this metaphor, the Bible is a recording of a recording ad infinitum that also unfortunately has a lot of stuff, though not random farts and sneezes, but the cultural baggage of its transcribers and translators. You can hear the Word, but some of it is farts, is what I'm saying.
(Interrupting my own off topic ramble with an off topic ramble to say my favorite joke in Christopher Moore's Lamb is when Biff tells Jesus his anticipation is like a mustard seed, and Jesus is like I don't know what that means, and Biff tells Jesus, "See, that's what that's like.")
You know what, we're really off topic, but this shit is actually really cool to me, so I'm just going to go. Nothing to do with furry or the alt-right or anything, but maybe somebody'll find this interesting. Not even arguing anymore, just cool stuff about the Bible as an historical document and shit.
Because that's the really neat thing about both the Old and New Testaments; they really did a good job keeping up with their history, and keeping it written down and preserved. I mean, that's why we still know about Jesus and the old-school Israel. Because, Jesus, as I pointed out earlier, came at a time when Jewish Messiahs were about a dime a dozen. I mean, the reason he doesn't show up in a lot of non-Christian historical records is because the Zealots were right down the road holed up in an impregnable fortress and killing the shit out of any Romans that came their way until they finally all committed mass suicide, so, like, who gives a shit about the guy who surrendered peacefully and was executed without a hitch and specifically told his followers not to avenge him.
But this care for historical accuracy comes from the Jewish priests; much like Jesus was a dime a dozener who, depending on you beliefs, either got lucky or was the real deal, Israel (and Judah) was, like, a tiny little shitsplat of a kingdom in the middle of nowhere that we all remember today because they made sure to write their history down, even when they didn't even technically have a kingdom. So, now we can all read it. Keeping records of what happened is ingrained into Christianity via Judaism.
There are contradictions in the Old and New Testaments, but the interesting thing is that the Bible at one point even acknowledges that an error has been made in the transcribing of earlier texts, and that pains have been made to fix them. In the Old Testament books 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, during the reign of King Josiah, a old text is found in the temple, and this causes a great deal of disturbance in the kingdom (the general consensus is this found text is part of or the basis of most or at least some of the the book of Deuteronomy, though there is some debate about what this actually means).
The Jewish priests were also perfectly aware that their texts had contradictions; they were often the ones that put them in there, after all, when they originally wrote them down. The Genesis story of the Noah flood, and its constantly changing number of animals on the arc, is an easy way to see this. The book of Genesis, as a whole, is thought of to be a mashing together of at least two, possibly as many as four, different traditions. The two tradition version is that of a priest version versus a non-priest understanding of the stories (so, for instance, the priest version sees the a more complicated stance, differentiating between the number "clean" and "unclean" animals on the arc while the "lay" version is the simple two of each), while the more complicated versions see the priest sections divided into rival priests of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, plus possibly a bit of that "new" text from 2 Kings/2 Chronicles.
Another example of a contradiction in Genesis is the opening; the first part, the "In the beginning" stuff, is very "priest". It's more mysterious, you know? "Let there be light" and all that stuff movies like to quote when they want you to think they're being serious and shit. Then, when you get to about the second chapter, you get a story, about Adam and Eve, but really, it's a whole new creation story, because this the "lay" version. You get less of God as a force of creation, more, well, anthropomorphic, and you also get stuff like talking snakes. If you don't know the gap is there, you can read it and not see it, but if someone points it out you, you can see the gap. They read differently, if you're paying attention.
Point out here that this is one of the earliest contradictions in the Bible with the priests saying man and woman were created at the same time while the lay version has Adam decidedly first, Eve second. This gave rise to the legend of Lilith, the first woman before Eve who went bad and is some kind of demon vampire succubus now, but that was way later when people stopped remembering that this was really two versions of a story and not meant to be read as one.
But let's talk about people who actually believe in the Bible as the Word of God, and how they square not just the contradictions of fact, but ethical and moral lapses and contradictions that maybe God should be above (and also occasional descriptions of horse jizm out of nowhere). And, yeah, fundamentalists just kind of bulldoze over it all, history and morality be damned, but Christians who aren't stupid have to deal with this, and religions, it turns out, get to have theories, too.
One way of dealing with the nasty bits of the Bible is a Biblical theory called the "tape recorder theory", which uses a tape recorder to kind of explain the process of how the Word of God gets obscured. Okay, so, like, the Bible is a tape recorder, and God is recording his Word, and for some reason isn't making an MP3 but a cassette tape. Okay, so to make a copy of this tape, you have to record it on another tape, because in this metaphor MP3s haven't been invented yet. Anyway, while you're copying the tape, if you sneeze or fart or someone walks into the room and doesn't realize you're recording, well, that sneeze or fart or random asshole talking about what he wants to talk about is now part of your recording. Now someone else wants a copy of God's Word, but you've given God back the original copy or something, anyway, it's no longer available, so you have to copy your copy with the farts and sneezes and ramblings, so this new copy is going to have all that plus any new farts and sneezes and ramblings that accidentally get recorded, and so on and so forth, until, after so many recordings, there are entire sections of "God's Word" that are obscured or completely erased by all the accidentally recorded farts and sneezes and ramblings.
So, in this metaphor, the Bible is a recording of a recording ad infinitum that also unfortunately has a lot of stuff, though not random farts and sneezes, but the cultural baggage of its transcribers and translators. You can hear the Word, but some of it is farts, is what I'm saying.
(Interrupting my own off topic ramble with an off topic ramble to say my favorite joke in Christopher Moore's Lamb is when Biff tells Jesus his anticipation is like a mustard seed, and Jesus is like I don't know what that means, and Biff tells Jesus, "See, that's what that's like.")
I guess I'm done.