/lit/ - Literature

>>18738157

I don't understand how anyone does it. I've seriously attempted to read it twice in my life and only got a few chapters into Genesis each time. Genesis is so miserably god-damn boring.

I might try to read the gospels someday since they're kind of a big deal, but I've read bits of those too and the whole thing just leaves me cold. Nothing worth liking, whether in the ideas or as literature.

>>18738443
>gives up after literally several pages
>how do people do it?!

>>18738157
Literally a survival manual for sneaky disobeying desert people and people thinks it's the actual word of god. semitic belief systems disgusts me to my core, can't believe I almost converted before reading the greeks

>The problem with the Semitic belief system is that is prescriptive and not descriptive. It tells you a story and if you don’t believe in 100% of that story, then you are burned alive. That is what all three Abrahamic religions are known for, especially Christianity. Indo-European religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Norse, Greco-Roman, etc) seek to define god, to define the best mode of being (which might be different for different peoples). It is more philosophical, more adventurous, more intuitive. While Semitic belief and rigid, fragile, and not oriented towards the truth. Which is why Christianity was killed by the enlightenment, when Christian dogma clashed with the Scientific movement. When Christianity (or other Abrahamic religions) faces a truth that cannot be explained by their dogma, they hack off the infected part of them, and burn it.

>>18738460

It's not a comment on my inability to read. Rather, it's a comment on how dull the book is.

>>18738470
>It's not a comment on my inability to read.

>>18738157
>over halfway through and still not done with the Old Testament
>started over a year ago

I'm using an ebook version of King James from Project Gutenberg. There are no page numbers, but it's numerically represented as a total of about 4350 with each number being how many times you have to scroll down. Each scroll is basically a minute worth of reading and I try to read 50 at a time.
If you read the bible for 50 minutes a day, it should take you 3 months to finish it. My problem is that I don't find the time to do that every single day.

>>18738443
You don't have to read it in order. Genesis wasn't even the oldest book in the Bible. Go read the Gospel of John or Job.

> vanity of vanities!

start with ecclesiastes, it’s the best book

>>18738552
>start with the best one
>everything is downhill from there and there's nothing to look forward to

>>18738157
I finished in the junior group of my church
having a qt girl to talk about it with you really helps

>>18738589
I do have my girlfriend who went to Catholic school. Doesn't actually help much.

>>18738579
There's several books in the bible that are worth reading. If you start with the Pentateuch you will be filtered by the Jewish autism.

>>18738606
that's because she read before you anon
it's the journey together that makes it special

>>18738157

This is why in Orthodoxy the Psalms are chanted, the Gospel is read at the divine liturgy, and the Old Testament is read in Matins service. Since the scriptures are part of the yearly worship cycle, we become familiar with them and their content in the context of active worship.

Personally, I've been able to read the bible by itself more in the context of commentaries that actually help me understand the context and content of it, without being left scratching my head at 2000 year old cultural assumptions that I don't understand 2000 years later.

St John Chrysostom's homilies on Genesis are really good, St Theophylact's commentaries on the four gospels are great, and Archbishop Averky's commentary on the whole New Testament is indispensible.

First set of St John Chrysostom's homilies, ignore the onions academic footnotes: https://au1lib.org/book/5219534/a76e6e

Commentary on Matthew by St Theophylact, you can buy the full set online somewhere like amazon: http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/matthew_theophilactos.htm

Archbishop Averky's commentaries on the gospels, in some autistic intratext form, as usual you can buy the full set online somewhere like in amazon: http://www.intratext.com/X/ENG0819.HTM

So where does one start with the OT, if not at the beginning?

>>18739127
At the beginning

>>18738157
just skip the lists of names.

>>18739133
>doesn't know that the genealogy between Adam and Noah foreshadows Jesus

Read Matthew and John.
Everything else is extraneous or unnecessary.

>>18738443
Nobody said omnipotence extends to being a captivating author, ingrate.

>>18739425
They repeat it anyways

>>18739133
> just skip a reminder that you're following a kike creed

>>18739582

"ingrate" is an invalid epithet as it implies that there is an entity to whom gratitude is owed, but not given.

>>18738460
> blames the reader instead of the author
The move of every failed writer.

It's the genealogy that always does it for me.

Just skip it, then when you are about to read the New Testament and are invested then read the genealogy as it's pretty cool how it foreshadows Christ (as with many other things in the Old Testament)

>>18739602
>implies that there is an entity to whom gratitude is owed, but not given.
That entity is God, who deserves gratitude for revealing His wisdom to His creation.

>>18739633

Yes, I know that's what you think.

>>18738443
>Genesis is so miserably god-damn boring
Filtered. Genesis is kino when you skip the genealogies

A Chad god doesn't need more than an hour to create the world. This Christian motherfucker is a phony.

>>18738470
>>18739604
Except the Bible is widely considered one of the greatest gems of human civilization so if you don't get YOUr probably the retard.

>>18739707

It's the other way round. The popularity of the bible is not a testament to its quality as literature or as revelation, but instead a proof of the fallibility and innate weakness of man.

>>18739726
Prove it pseud.

>>18739747
the coran is also considered a great work of literatture in the muslim world, so much so that it's perfection is often used as an argument as to why it's divine revelation

>>18738483
How often do you read the bible dude?

>>18739652

>not knowing that the hebrew names of all of the people in the genealogies spell out a prophecy of Christ

You are skipping one of the most kino parts of early Genesis.

https://sites.google.com/site/biblecodestoday/codes-in-the-bible/genesis-5-names

>>18739707
>Except the Bible is widely considered one of the greatest gems of human civilization
Who fucking cares?
Even I consider it a gem because of certain books.
Doesn't change the fact that the overall book is boring as shit -- and intellectually insulting to a 21st-century intelligent reader.

>>18739901
I go for several months before picking it back up again.

>>18739670
>implying he didn't take 6 days just because he wanted to

>>18739670
that's why a lot of the early church fathers argued that genesis 1 was an allegory for an instantaneous creation rather than a 6-day creation - pagan critics were making the same argument as you

>>18740010

>a lot

The only one I know about that made the argument was St Augustine, precisely because he didn't let go of pagan theological baggage before becoming Orthodox, and didn't manage to get correspondence with anyone to correct him. As far as I know, he is the only one who made that claim, precisely because that specific portion of his theology was incorrect.

Can you list any others who made that claim?

>>18740123
origen did as well in against celsus

>>18740154

Origen made the same mistake as St Augustine, and for the same reason - believing in pagan theology. He was condemned as a heretic for this, and other heretical ideas like the eternality of the soul, and he showed no sign at all of wanting to believe the Orthodox faith.

So that's two who made the claim, one of whom is a condemned heretic, and both making the same mistake for the same reason. Is there a third? You said there were "a lot" of early fathers who said this, but there are far far more across all of Church history who confess the literal six day creation.

>>18740177
clement of alexandria would be another
>For the creations on the different days followed in a most important succession; so that all things brought into existence might have honour from priority, created together in thought, but not being of equal worth. Nor was the creation of each signified by the voice, inasmuch as the creative work is said to have made them at once. For something must needs have been named first. Wherefore those things were announced first, from which came those that were second, all things being originated together from one essence by one power. For the will of God was one, in one identity. And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with things which exist.
basil attests to it being a common view in his arguments against it as well.
>He was condemned as a heretic for this
sure, but nowhere in the anathemas against origen is belief in an instantaneous creation even mentioned
>You said there were "a lot" of early fathers who said this, but there are far far more across all of Church history who confess the literal six day creation.
i never disputed this and i have no idea why you're being a douche about it.

>>18740257

>i never disputed this and i have no idea why you're being a douche about it.

I'm not being a douche about it - It's just not honest to portray the view that "a lot" of the early church fathers argued for instantaneous creation, when the overwhelming majority of them stated six day creation. Saying "a few" fathers believed it would be more accurate - saying "a lot" makes it seem like it is somehow not a doctrinally settled issue, and leaves open room for speculation, even though the hellenic theology that leads to the conclusion of instantaneous creation is clearly condemned.

>>18740307
well, it clearly wasn't a doctrinally settled issue when even origen wasn't anathematized for his extreme hellenism until centuries after the fact (his anathemas are usually assumed to be from the fifth ecumenical council but they might actually be a fifth-century document). i'd agree that six-day creation appears to have been a majority view but it also seems to have been adiaphora, since it was never addressed in any council at any level to my knowledge.

What are the darkest, most disturbing parts of this thing?

I mean, really bleak and fucked up.

>>18738464
what book is that quote from sounds interesting

>>18740349

Lack of anathematisation is not a proof of a lack of doctrinal settlement. It doesn't have any bearing on what is doctrinally true, either - and it's plainly true, evident in the consensus of all of the Saints over the past 2000 years, corroborated with Christ's account to Moses of his own creation of the world 3500 years ago, and every prophet that has repeated the fact that God has created the world in six days before then, that six day creation is the Orthodox truth.

Besides, doctrines aren't "settled", as if there was no truth prior to their settling, and the truth is a construction of agreement originating in councils. Doctrines are explications of what is true.

>>18740433
LMAO, good one anon. The trinity totally was a thing before the council of nicea

>>18740391
bump

>>18740358
Someone asked him, "LORD, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them, 24"Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.

The trite answer- Job and Ecclesiastes. And a bunch of OT books but you already know that

>>18740422
it's proof that they didn't think that differing beliefs were a big deal at the time even though there were prominent voices advocating them, certainly not compared to arianism, monophysitism, monothelitism, whatever
>>18740433
you were the one who first used the language of doctrinal settling, not me
>>18740358
And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

>>18738157
Can someone do a TLDR of the bible? what is it about? what it is supposed to be about? are there any conflicting stories?

I don't like religious text, it all seems dogmatic and mind closing rather than anything else

>>18740491
>TLDR of the bible
>what is it about?
The Bible is multiple books where each book has a different purpose.
Some parts of the Old Testament are dedicated to recalling important stories, recording the history of Jewish kings, imparting morals through stories, recording the lives of important prophets, and also a literal census and a literal list of ancient laws.
The Gospels are obviously all the story of Jesus. Then you've got the apostles spreading the word of Jesus after the resurrection, and John being a schizo at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-YL-lv3RY&list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyuvTEbD-Ei0JdMUujXfyWi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtQ2TS1CiDY&list=PL279CFA55C51E75E0

>>18740358
Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity.

>>18740177
>the truth can be discerned from what Byzantine emperors decide should be burned

>>18738464
Christianity created the enlightenment and the scientific Revolution. Otherwise the enlightenment would have arisen in pagan countries like Buddha China or Hindu India. The enlightenment was a continuation of the need to topple pagan superstition and pagan Gods that had been ongoing since Christianity first started and which led to the Protestant reformation, which saw Catholicism toppled for superstition with its pagan worship of saints and relics.

Also you have to remember the people from the enlightenment were as much anti-pagan as they were anti-Christian. David Hume praised Islam and Judaism for being more against idolatry than Christianity.

The same thing with Edward Gibbons. He praised Islam for being less pagan than Christianity. People read “decline and fall of the Roman Empire” and think Gibbons is some kind of pro-pagan, but dismiss the parts where he repeatedly calls paganism superstitious nonsense.

Isaac Newton rejected the trinity just because he thought it was a disgusting pagan influence on Christianity. The people from enlightenment and the scientific Revolution were not the pro-pagans that you like to imagine. They were Abrahamic monotheists at heart who wanted to topple idols and superstition just like Christians of the past. This is unfortunately what led to Christianity’s downfall. This need to topple superstition and idols ultimately led to its own toppling with Christianity also being declared a superstition like all others it toppled before it.

>>18738464
You can’t compare Christianity with other religions. It’s too superior for that. People only now deprecate Christianity because of the discovery of the indo-european languages so now people like you feel an obligation to talk shit about it and downgrade it for that sole reason. That’s why anytime someone criticises Christianity they can’t help but mention something about it being “Semitic” which tells me all I need to know where that criticism is really coming from.

>>18738443
Imagine having a brain as soft as jello

>>18739127
Id start with gen 1:1

>>18740742
Praise the lord but Talmudic Jews are still going to hell along with their lies about the 6 million

>>18738464
>It tells you a story and if you don’t believe in 100% of that story,

Fuck off, you ignorant idiot. Not even ancient Christians fully believed everything in the bible.

https://historyforatheists.com/2021/03/the-great-myths-11-biblical-literalism/

And stop quoting yourself, you fucking pathetic, annihilistic, Buddhist lover. Now I don’t think a religion that tells me that I should strive to kill my soul is superior to one that tells me that I should aspire to eternal life.

>>18740855
Snow nigs are no different than kikes. Stop acting like you’re superior.

>modern scholarship agrees that the gospels were anonymous accretions and not direct eyewitness accounts

>>18740918
>john 21:24 says "hey that beloved disciple? yeah this is him writing this"
>anonymous

>>18740918
You forgot to put the triple parenthesis around "modern scholarship"

>>18740876
Why do lefties hate white people so much?

>>18740939
Same reason you hate kikes, you subversive snow nig.

>>18740932
>>18740933

Vigorously, sauciliy BTFO, left spitting and sputtering.

>>18740952
>Snow nig

I assume you are referring to Slavs?

>>18738157
I’m doing about a chapter a day now. More when I can, but I’m unlikely to finish it before 2023.

>>18738464
lol just take a look at this typical pseudo-intellectual on /his/. Just say you hate dogma, you idiot.

>>18740973
1189 days works out to a little over three years, assuming a KJV. Closer to 4 with a Catholic bible, or longer with the Orthodox/Ethiopian Undiscovered Worlds Bonus Playable Content.

>>18740977

>the person who hates dogma is the idiot

>>18740987
His pseudo-intellectual criticism makes no sense. As if all Semitic religions were Abrahamic. Semitic paganism was no different to your typical shitty indo-european paganism which he praises so much. In fact all paganism from Amerindians to Africans to Europeans to Arabs is pretty much all the same. All somehow end up typically worshipping the sun and sacrificing animals or humans cause it somehow magically makes you closer to the Gods. Trying to make indo-european paganism into something great and unique and different is hilarious. In fact Gayreek paganism itself is heavily influenced by Semitic near eastern paganism so I don’t know why he’s so heavily praising it. I barely even classify it as an indo-European religion. So Uranus hates his ugly looking children and one of his baby eating sons kills him and then son of the baby-eater also kills his father and then spends all his time raping, committing nicest and being pedo. Yep. Truly enlightening. Very superior. No wonder by the classical age Greek paganism was already criticised and made fun of.

I’m not saying Christianity or Abrahamic religion are superior. Far from it. I’m saying pagan religions are nonsensical shit too. Makes sense to overpraise shit just so you can degenerate other shit.

>>18739633
>non-captivating wisdom
No such thing. You just owned yourself epic style by admitting YHWH is fake

>>18740010
Pagans had already refuted creation hundreds of years before Christianity even arrived at the scene. A week of it or instantaneous is irrelevant.

>>18738464
>>18740987

His pseudo-intellectual criticism makes no sense. As if all Semitic religions were Abrahamic. Semitic paganism was no different to your typical shitty indo-european paganism which he praises so much as superior. In fact all paganism from Amerindians to Africans to Europeans to Arabs is pretty much all the same. All somehow end up typically worshipping the sun and sacrificing animals or humans cause it somehow magically makes you closer to the Gods. Trying to make indo-european paganism into something great and unique and different is hilarious. In fact Gayreek paganism itself is heavily influenced by Semitic near eastern paganism so I don’t know why he’s so heavily praising it. I barely even classify it as an indo-European religion. So Uranus hates his ugly looking children and one of his baby eating sons kills him and then son of the baby-eater also kills his father and then spends all his time raping, committing nicest and being pedo. Yep. Truly enlightening. Very superior. Now I’m really learning through paganism how to define God and seek the best mode of living. No wonder by the classical age Greek paganism was already criticised and made fun of.

I’m not saying Christianity or Abrahamic religion are superior. Far from it. I’m saying pagan religions are nonsensical shit too. Makes no sense to overpraise shit just so you can degenerate other shit.

>>18741112
What do you mean by refuted creation? Pagans like emperor Julian didn’t believe in anything more rational. He believed different Gods spilled their blood on earth which made different ethnicities and races. Not exactly creation but not anything superior to it. Strangely enough it was an Abrahamic Muslim who first came up with something that’s evolution, not pagan Greeks. There’s a probably a reason for this.

>>18738464
Based. The final redpill is that Christianity in its incoherence and unfounded prescriptions causes atheism. So the tradlarpers while trying to defeat atheism by returning to Christianity are actually just passing the bucket to the next generation.

>>18738443
I read genesis, exodus and Leviticus over 5 days doing about an hour a night just last week. I tried in the past but had the same trouble but now it's easy since I'm interested in it (not a christfag)

>>18739133
>just skip the lists of names.
skipping the list of names, skipping the numerous retelling of instructions of building the tabernacle and other retelling of the same shit helps a lot....the non dull parts are quite interesting, but holy shit, what awful morals....brb, going to kill my son as sacrifice to god, brb going to have my daughters raped, brb going to let my daughters fuck me, brb, going to let my son fuck me in the ass, brb, going to still my brothers birthright

>>18741157
Yeah all that wacky shit is why Moses is so important.

>>18741134
Paganism was the first recorded religion to cause atheism because of its incoherent mythology.

> Xenophanes' surviving writings display a skepticism that became more commonly expressed during the fourth century BC. He satirized traditional religious views of his time as human projections.[29] He aimed his critique at the polytheistic religious views of earlier Greek poets and of his own contemporaries: "Homer and Hesiod," one fragment states, "have attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft, adultery, and mutual deception."

> Classical Greece was also a time in which scepticism was beginning to undermine the foundations of the ancient popular belief. The trial of those who had broken down the statues of Hermes, the profanation of the mysteries, and the accusation of Alcibiades, are symptoms which show that the unbelief, nourished by the speculations of philosophers and the sophists, began to appear very dangerous to the conservative party at Athens.

> The Pre-Socratic philosophers had increasingly explained natural phenomena in terms of natural laws without the need for divine intervention. In particular, the atomism of Democritus had substituted for a world-governing god the relation of cause and effect as the sources of all things. Democritus explained the widespread belief in gods as the result of fear of unusual and unaccountable phenomena in nature; and, starting from this principle, Diagoras, at a time when the ancient popular belief had already been shaken, especially in the minds of the young, came forward with the doctrine that there were no gods at all. His attacks seem to have been mainly directed against the dogmas of Greek theology and mythology, as well as against the established forms of worship.

No recorded atheism among the ancient Jews though.

>>18741157
>brb, going to kill my son as sacrifice to god
God was testing Abraham's faith
>brb going to have my daughters raped
No one said that Lot was perfect
>brb going to let my daughters fuck me
Lot was drunk. The text literally says he didn't know it was happening to him
>brb, going to let my son fuck me in the ass
I have no idea what this is referencing
>brb, going to still my brothers birthright
Isaac was wrong to want Esau to have his birthright instead of Jacob

>>18741134

Atheism arose in the 16th century from reading atheist pagan texts. There was no such thing as atheism during the entire Middle Ages unlike the ancient world where denial of Gods was quite prevalent.

> In the late fifth century BCE, the Greek lyric poet Diagoras of Melos was sentenced to death in Athens under the charge of being a "godless person" (ἄθεος) after he made fun of the Eleusinian Mysteries,[32][28][33][34] but he fled the city to escape punishment.[32][28][33] Later writers have cited Diagoras as the "first atheist",[35][36] but he was probably not an atheist in the modern sense of the word.[28]

> Euripides (480–406 BCE), in his play Bellerophon, had the eponymous main character say: “Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.”[37]

> Euhemerus (c. 330–260 BCE) published his view that the gods were only the deified rulers, conquerors, and founders of the past, and that their cults and religions were in essence the continuation of vanished kingdoms and earlier political structures.[42] Although Euhemerus was later criticized for having "spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods",[43] his worldview was not atheist in a strict and theoretical sense, because he differentiated them from the primordial deities, holding that they were "eternal and imperishable

>>18741217
>I have no idea what this is referencing
i THINK he's probably trying to get at ham seeing noah naked and how some have interpreted that to be a euphemistic reference to buttrape, but it's certainly not plain from the text itself

>>18741221
> The roots of Western philosophy began in the Greek world in the sixth century BCE. The first Hellenic philosophers were not atheists, but they attempted to explain the world in terms of the processes of nature instead of by mythological accounts. Thus lightning was the result of "wind breaking out and parting the clouds",[48] and earthquakes occurred when "the earth is considerably altered by heating and cooling".[49] The early philosophers often criticized traditional religious notions. Xenophanes (6th century BCE) famously said that if cows and horses had hands, "then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cows like cows".[50] Another philosopher, Anaxagoras (5th century BCE), claimed that the Sun was "a fiery mass, larger than the Peloponnese"; a charge of impiety was brought against him, and he was forced to flee Athens.

> While only a few of the ancient Greco-Roman schools of philosophy were subject to accusations of atheism, there were some individual philosophers who espoused atheist views. The Peripatetic philosopher Strato of Lampsacus did not believe in the existence of gods.[54] The Cyrenaic philosopher Theodorus the Atheist (c. 300 BCE) is supposed to have denied that gods exist and wrote a book On the Gods expounding his views.

> In the fifth century BCE the Sophists began to question many of the traditional assumptions of Greek culture. Prodicus of Ceos was said to have believed that "it was the things which were serviceable to human life that had been regarded as gods",[55] and Protagoras stated at the beginning of a book that "With regard to the gods I am unable to say either that they exist or do not exist".[56] Diagoras of Melos allegedly chopped up a wooden statue of Heracles and used it to roast his lentils and revealed the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Athenians accused him of impiety and banished him from their city. Critias was said to deny that the gods existed.[57]

>>18741221

Atheism has been with human beings throughout their existence, by dint of the continual production of newborn infants. And no, they don't have an in-born spirit of god or anything else along those lines, so don't bother trying that nonsense. They are philosophical subjects incapable of forming complex, coherent thoughts and consequently incapable of belief in god, hence atheists by definition.

>>18741566

>incapable of coherent thought
>atheists by definition

Based?

>>18741186
>No recorded atheism among the ancient Jews though.
Because they recorded nothing but religious literature.

>>18741605
esther? ruth?

Christianity destroyed all other traditions in the West and when people began reading they realized the retardation that is the biblical god but since there is nothing else they have no other choice but to turn to atheism.
>tl;dr Christianity leads to atheism

>>18741649

What happened was that West invented a heretical version of Christianity after the great schism of 1054, now called Roman Catholicism, which then fractured off into a billion other Protestant sects. The Orthodox East never degenerated into rank atheism, until the Enlightenment started, and started intellectually invading Orthodox countries. The collapse of civilisation is not because of Christianity, but because of a departure from true Christianity.

>>18741701
God willed it.

>>18741701
these are words that cannot push forward. the obvious filter remains unbroken

>>18740963
Not that anon. No, snow niggers (n*rdics) aren't human, you were considered subhuman 300 years ago, and thankfully you will be extinct in another 300 years.

>>18741701
>if only people hadn't intellectually "invaded" Orthodox countries!
If reason is your enemy then you're doomed.