Anyone reading [or did read] the bible without someone else telling you what it meant?
Would you be leaning towards the JWs or Baptists or Lutherans or what?
Just asking
If you read the bible w/out instruction, what would you think?
by TTWSYF 21 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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schnell
None of those. If I read the Bible, I'm not reading it to believe that it is always right, but rather critically. I don't ignore its issues. I think about a world where this was never written, in which a person tries to tell me the things I'm reading, and I ask myself how many times I would stop him to disagree.
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OneEyedJoe
I'd be leaning towards the idea that its a hodgepodge of stories (some of which based on history) written by men who were trying to explain and control their world with limited knowledge of how the universe worked. I'd find that in doing so, they invented a god full of contradictions and enormous moral flaws that deserves worship from no one. It is only due to someone else telling you that it's inspired (i.e. telling you what it means) that anyone forms a religion based on the bible. If you had someone that was raised completely outside of that influence and you gave them the lord of the rings and the bible, they'd see them as being no different from one another (ok well the lord of the rings is definitely better written). Anyone reading the bible today, free from the imposed influence of others, would regard it as pure fantasy and nothing more.
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Half banana
Why do you need someone else to tell what your reading material means?
The Bible is a mish mash of stories all of them borrowed from earlier sources, it is a depressing read and edited by those who would want a pathetic tribe of desert goat herders to rank alongside the power of Egypt.
A much more refined read is the considerably older moral literature from ancient Egypt, the style of which much of the OT is modeled on. Have a look at The Tale of Sinuhe and other Ancient Egyptian poems 1949-1640 BC, translated by RB Parkinson, Oxford University Press 1997, reissued 2007
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blondie
When I started reading the bible without WTS literature
1) I saw things in context and realized the WTS was not telling the truth
2) That the bible itself is full of contradictions
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neat blue dog
I would see that they've all got it wrong in various areas, with JWs faults being end time speculation, authoritarian leadership, stifling of exercise of conscience, the degree of disfellowshipping, legalism, and first and foremost: the nonexistent hope of a paradise earth.
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carla
I don't think anybody in the world could come to the same conclusions as jw's by reading the Bible itself without jw litter-ature.
I would find it very hard to believe that anybody ever became a jw by reading a Bible.
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pale.emperor
Even as a JW i had trouble marrying up all of Pauls letters with what the Watchtower say about eternal life on earth for most and heaven for some. Paul talks about being transformed, and about a heavenly reward for Christs followers.
Apart from that, i see a collection of books by a bloodthirsty, narcissistic, angry, cruel god (Old testement). Then a charismatic man coming along spreading love and wisdom (New Testement). Then a lot of filler.
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breakfast of champions
About four pages in, there's a talking snake.
Had I not been indoctrinated with this crap since I was 5 or 6, I would have been done right there.
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DesirousOfChange
2) That the bible itself is full of contradictions. ~ Blondie
This, for sure!