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Originally posted by L'organist:
I'd remove everything by St Paul.
He is anti-female, legalistic, and provides too much justification for today's bigots and nasties.

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Also I'd put the book of Tobit back into all editions because I really like the bit with the dog.

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
There are of course differences already between bibles. Catholic bibles have more old testament books and we have various different translations.

The Message contains the following unfortunate verse "A dozen yards or so down the beach, he saw the brothers James and John, Zebedee’s sons. They were in the boat, mending their fishnets" which if you are English paints a very different picture of our first apostles.

In another thread I suggested removing a problematic story. Which of course is not going to happen. But that got me thinking...what if we did?

Anyone can publish a bible. Although the guys at the Conservative Bible Project have stalled in their quest to "remove Liberal Bias" and " avoid unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other feminist distortions".

But what would happen if enough bibles were published with books removed and taken up by enough churches?

What books if any would you remove or add?

Personally I'd strip out any story's where God commits murder or orders his followers to commit murder.

Also I'd put the book of Tobit back into all editions because I really like the bit with the dog.

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Originally posted by Stejjie:
Lose Paul? And lose one of the most beautiful poems about love ever written (especially as it was written to a church doing the exact opposite)? Or Romans 8, one of my very favourite chapters of the Bible?

And legalistic? Isn't he the one people quote when they want to make a point about the OT Law no longer applying (not saying they're right to do so)? Given some of the crap he had to deal with in his churches, I'm surprised he didn't lay down the law more often.

And I'm not sure about the anti-woman bit, either: I think he can be used in that way, but whether that's how he meant it or not is another matter (bearing in mind he wasn't writing to 21st century westerners). He seemed to have no problems with Priscilla teaching Apollos along with Aquila, and doesn't he list a woman as an apostle in Romans?

This may be a double-edged sword, but I don't think Christianity would like anything like it does now (the good bits and the bad bits) without Paul.

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
Hmmm. What if we took out 1 Timothy 2, verse 12 but left in the bits about love?

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Originally posted by Felafool:

Rather than chop and change the Bible, perhaps we ought to treat it properly - not as a series of propositional proof texts, but as an unfolding revelation of God and creation, written in a variety of genres, by inspired (?) but fallible humans who tried to express what they experienced and understood in the forms, language and culture they were familiar with, but perhaps we are not? This might explain why some forms of Judao-Christian faith (even Muslim faith) accept/reject different possibilities.

(This of course begs the question of whether the revelation is continuing, and if so, how?)

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
In another thread I suggested removing a problematic story. Which of course is not going to happen. But that got me thinking...what if we did?

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• All the "begats" to go in a pull-out family tree as an appendix at the back.
• Leviticus to be pruned of spurious medical advice and made readable, or possibly produced as a small standalone easy-reference pamphlet.
• The Song of Songs to be dropped.
• The Apocrypha to be in, in their entirety.
• Mark’s prose to be polished, and if he can’t supply an ending it may be necessary to put a disclaimer in.
• Paul’s letters to be issued as a separate supplement.
• John’s Gospel not to be included – it was written a century after the event and doesn’t read like a genuine account of what actually happened.
• A review of the remaining Gospels to be made – is it really necessary to have all three? The solution may be to have one merged Gospel.
• The non-canonical Gospels to be looked at again.
• Revelations also to be dropped.

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
@Ariel

I love this but drop Song of Songs!

I kind of like navels.

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Originally posted by George Spigot:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
I'd remove everything by St Paul.
He is anti-female, legalistic, and provides too much justification for today's bigots and nasties.

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Ohh good call. I remember Paul being quoted during my old church days when arguments for men having dominion over women were being made.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
I'd remove everything by St Paul.
He is anti-female, legalistic, and provides too much justification for today's bigots and nasties.

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Originally posted by George Spigot:

The Message contains the following unfortunate verse "A dozen yards or so down the beach, he saw the brothers James and John, Zebedee’s sons. They were in the boat, mending their fishnets" which if you are English paints a very different picture of our first apostles.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
You would gain, and you would lose. Would the gains balance the losses?

Gain: No bits that require thought to understand
Loss: No bits that require thought to understand

Gain: A nice, safe book with nothing dangerous
Loss: A nice, safe book with nothing dangerous

Gain: A good source of sound bites to support your views
Loss: A good source of sound bites to support your views

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This



[ 09. September 2015, 15:22: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Fishnets are what you might wear if you're a hardcore fan to a performance of the Rocky Horror Show.

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Ariel: Yes, it would be possible to radically change the Bible:

• All the "begats" to go in a pull-out family tree as an appendix at the back.
• Leviticus to be pruned of spurious medical advice and made readable, or possibly produced as a small standalone easy-reference pamphlet.
• The Song of Songs to be dropped.
• The Apocrypha to be in, in their entirety.
• Mark’s prose to be polished, and if he can’t supply an ending it may be necessary to put a disclaimer in.
• Paul’s letters to be issued as a separate supplement.
• John’s Gospel not to be included – it was written a century after the event and doesn’t read like a genuine account of what actually happened.
• A review of the remaining Gospels to be made – is it really necessary to have all three? The solution may be to have one merged Gospel.
• The non-canonical Gospels to be looked at again.
• Revelations also to be dropped.

You did say "radical".

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Rick Warren or some other heretic

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“There are good reasons for not reading it. Its format is almost supernaturally forbidding: the binding rusty black like an undertaker’s cutaway, the double columns of a timetable, the print of a phone book, cluttered margins, and a text so overloaded with guides to pronunciation… and so befouled with inexplicable italics… that reading it is like listening to somebody with a bad stutter… The often fanatical nationalism… The self-righteousness and self-pity of many of the Psalms, plus their frequent vindictiveness. The way the sublime and the unspeakable are always jostling each other…

In short, one way to describe the Bible, written by many different people over a period of three thousand years and more, would be to say that it is a disorderly collection of sixty-odd books which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teem with contradictions and inconsistencies… And yet—

And yet just becuz it is a book re both the sublime & the unspeakable, it is a book also re life the way it really is…& it is also a book about God. If it is not about the God we believe in, then it is about the God we do not believe in. One way or another, the story we find in the Bible is our own story…
If you look at a window, you see flyspecks, dust, the crack where Junior’s Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond.

Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore and those who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.”

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Originally posted by George Spigot:
@Ariel

I love this but drop Song of Songs!

I kind of like navels.

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Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
Start out by making a list of the books of the Bible you want to keep. Throw the remaining 3/4 of the book into the dustbin. Then, start taking a razor to the portions of the new canon you find offensive.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
What's wrong with navels in the Song of Songs? or vaginas/vulvas, if you take that view? Being compared to a cup full of good wine is if anything a compliment--and possibly a prelude to a Really.Good.Time.

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Jack o' the Green: The breasts like towers sounds erm... interesting.

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Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
The breasts like towers sounds erm... interesting.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Jack o' the Green: The breasts like towers sounds erm... interesting.

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Didn't Madonna do that once?

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Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:

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Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
The breasts like towers sounds erm... interesting.

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That's Total Recall not the Bible.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
No.

If people don't like the Bible and want to read something a bit less challenging they wouldn't have to bother bowdlerising the Bible, they could just get something by Rick Warren or some other heretic. Alternately if they want something that doesn't even pretend to be Christian they could just go down to their local bookshop and browse the shelves full of New Age rubbish in the 'Spirituality' section of the shop.

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Jack o' the Green: Two or three towers?!

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:

quote:

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Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:

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Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
The breasts like towers sounds erm... interesting.

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That's Total Recall not the Bible.

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Two or three towers?!

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Yeah, I read three for some reason.

Shows where my mind is, huh.

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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I am very much in the Felafool camp here. The problem is not with the Bible as such, it is with the way that people [mis]interpret and [mis]use it. Whatever you did to the bible, some people would take it and abuse the context to prove their point. The problem does not lie in the source material as such, but in the people.

So maybe we should leave the bible, and change people?

The bible as we have it is the story of people struggling to find and engage with God. That should be a wonderful, powerful story to inspire us, help us, encourage us. The fact that people get is wrong sometimes (often) is encouraging. The fact that people express this struggle in a variety of forms is encouraging.

The fact that some people treat it as is being suggested, cutting away all of the bits we don't like, retaining the bits that we do because they condemn others whom we don't like, that is just a sad reflection on the paupacy of their imagination.

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Originally posted by Chapelhead:
Couldn't we stick to the first five books? It would be much shorter and easier to understand. I know there are a bunch of rules in there, but not that many.

After that it goes downhill, like one of the those movie franchises that goes on way too long. Any when they get a different person playing the 'God' character two-thirds of the way through - that just nuts.

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