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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Which 5 books to omit?
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by VDMA:
What a blasphemous thread this is... I'm sorry, but this is the Word of God. We're not free to take anything out, so this is just an exercise in hubris. God planned these holy scriptures from beyond Eternity, for our edification.
Blasphemous? Pretty strong language there, VDMA. Let me suggest you go back to the opening post of this thread and its twin sister, where you should note the operative word is IF. As in, hypothetical. Goodness, nobody's seriously proposing that we rewrite the canon, much less go around tearing pages out of the Bible willy-nilly.
If scripture was given to us for our edification, it seems that -- unique creatures that we are -- some of us find some bits of scripture more edifying than others. Personally, I find it interesting, even edifying (if you will), to see what elements of God's Word resonate with different posters. Perhaps that's because I've been around here for a while and have gotten to know them and respect their points of view.
And that is a suggestion for you: You've brand-new here. Stick around for a while, read some conversations, get to know the regulars who hang around here, learn the tone of the boards, and keep Matthew 7:1 in mind.
[ 29. September 2013, 01:08: Message edited by: Mamacita ]
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by VDMA:
What a blasphemous thread this is... I'm sorry, but this is the Word of God.
This combination appears to be idolatrous. The Bible is not God.
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
I have to put a plug in for 1 & 2 Chronicles. Vitally important! The retention of both Kings and Chronicles in the scriptures is evidence for hermeneutical method. Same basic story told with different theological emphases reflecting different times and contexts. Midrash eat your heart out.
It's like retaining the two creation stories next to each other without a problem. It tells you about the interpretive functions and hermeneutics of the authors and compilers.
For example: sin and its forgiveness in Chronicles becomes a personal issue rather than one effecting untold generations. Same with Ezekiel (exilic period). Quite the shift in theology because of responses to different circumstances. And the compilers of the bible are cool with that.
So should we be today. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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a theological scrapbook
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by VDMA:
What a blasphemous thread this is... I'm sorry, but this is the Word of God. We're not free to take anything out, so this is just an exercise in hubris. God planned these holy scriptures from beyond Eternity, for our edification.
No it isn't. Jesus is the Word of God - it says so in the bible! Jn. 1
Wherever came the idea that scripture was planned before eternity? In over 50 years of being a Christian, I have never heard this ideas before. It IS, however, what Muslims believe about the Holy Qur'an.
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S. Bacchus
Shipmate
# 17778
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
My 5, in the order in which I'd delete them:
1. Sirach
2. Proverbs
3. Numbers
4. Lamentations
5. Jeremiah
WHAT!? Sirach? Really, you'd get rid of 'But the souls of the faithful' and 'how doth the city sit solitary'? The latter in particular is one that I always find so very moving, and it features in one of the best conversion narratives ever written:
quote:
The place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing. Quomodo sedet sola civitas - vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And yet, I thought, that is not the last word. It is not even an apt word - it is a dead word from ten years back. Something quite remote from anything the builders intended had come out of their work and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played. Something none of us thought about at the time. A small red flame, a beaten copper lamp of deplorable design, re-lit before the beaten copper doors of a tabernacle. This flame, which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out: the flame burns again for other soldiers far from home - farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians.
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'It's not that simple. I won't have it to be that simple'.
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
"But the souls of the faithful" is Wisdom 3.
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
I'm actually with leo, that we need the challenges in the Bible. It's healthy for us to wrangle with the difficult texts, like Jacob with the angel. Similarly, the Scriptures leave us with a limp - and a blessing.
However, I'd cut the Pastorals for the reasons given earlier (I don't believe Paul wrote them). Although if we can accept that someone wrote them a generation after Paul, it gives us interesting insight into the shifting strategies of accommodation v. resistance in the early Church wrt the wider Greco-Roman culture. But we can learn things like that from extrabiblical texts as well, so why not make these 3 books extrabiblical as well?
I'd definitely remove the Greek addition to Daniel that's in the Apocrypha. It ruins the book, IMO. The book of Daniel has a clear chiastic structure. Tacking stuff onto the end ruins that and violates the author's intent. (NB: I'm in the camp that considers it pseudepigraphal, probably written in the Maccabean period.)
I'm torn for my final selection. There have been so many good arguments on this thread! I'd rather just edit or qualify with footnotes some of the troublesome books, like the genocidal rampages in Joshua or the bloodthirst in Revelation (which is otherwise a wonderful book) or a lot of misogyny throughout. I don't mind redundancies, personally, because I think comparisons are instructive when there are differences and divergences. As long as we can make a rule that you can't force it to harmonize if the text doesn't do that on its own. I'm always amused - and often frustrated - by how many people who claim to have a high view of Scripture try to force it to harmonize against its own will.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
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pererin
Shipmate
# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
However, I'd cut the Pastorals for the reasons given earlier (I don't believe Paul wrote them).
There are all sorts of books in the Bible that make dubious authorial claims. Why are the Pastorals any worse than, say, Ecclesiastes?
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
I'd definitely remove the Greek addition to Daniel that's in the Apocrypha. It ruins the book, IMO. The book of Daniel has a clear chiastic structure. Tacking stuff onto the end ruins that and violates the author's intent. (NB: I'm in the camp that considers it pseudepigraphal, probably written in the Maccabean period.)
I'd be tempted to flip the canonical status of Daniel and its additions. The main book of Daniel consists of relatively shallow tall stories, followed by a load of apocalyptic weirdness. The Prayer/Song/Excessively Long Title gives us a couple of canticles; Susanna is wisdom literature of a particularly nice kind; and Bel and the Dragon is an interesting development on the tall stories, and moreover seems to attest to Daniel 7-12 being a later addition.
And I'm sceptical of large-scale chiasms to say the least...
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"They go to and fro in the evening, they grin like a dog, and run about through the city." (Psalm 59.6)
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
You can't get rid of the writing on the wall!
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
You can't get rid of the writing on the wall!
Certainly not!
Also, Jesus referred to Daniel. Especially in terms of "The Son of Man". Without Daniel we wouldn't know what "the coming of the son of man" referred to.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
This thread derives originally from a casual remark of mine in another thread. I certainly did not intend any blasphemy. The other thread asks which 5 books one would save, which suggests discarding all but those 5.
By the way, when Bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila?) had the Bible translated into Gothic, he omitted the book of Judges, allegedly because it was full of violence and he felt his people were violent enough already.
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Dinghy Sailor
Ship's Jibsheet
# 8507
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Posted
Numbers - Stats are boring enough at the best of times
1 & 2 Chronicles - Yeah I've read Kings already
Jeremiah - Every time I try reading this, I get bored and depressed and my faith suffers
Proverbs - Banal
I can't believe someone said Daniel! It's the action movie of the OT, which crams a lion's den, a fiery furnace, a beastly king and a siege of Bablylon into twelve short chapters. What more could you want in a book?
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
My vote is to axe 2 Kings on the basis of it being the most soul-destroyingly depressing book in the Bible:
Executive summary:
quote:
A was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and B became king. B was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and C became king. C was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and D became king (etc. etc. etc.)
So in the end the LORD decided He'd had enough and carted the whole filthy lot of them off into exile. The End.
I wouldn't mind doing away with Lamentations either. Sheer unmitigated doom and woe with a couple of encouraging verses in the middle.
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
Romans 8 is my favourite chapter in the bible, so you can keep your hands off that.
The interpretation of a certain verse in Levicitus has brought misery, so on the fire it goes.
Jeremiah's alright, though it gets depressing to read it more or less every bloody day in Lent.
Yes, Joshua's got some dodgy genocidal stuff, so that could go for me.
I'd only get rid of Psalm 78 to spare choirs who have to sing the BCP order of psalms on the 15th of the month (and vergers wanting to get home).
Matthew's got a lot of Jewish stuff there, so that's got to stay.
Revelations is ace. It also gave the title to an Iron Maiden song.
I mix up the books of Kings and Chronicles. Basically, the stories that end with "as for the rest of the stuff about king wotisname, isn't there a load of other stuff in the book of whateverit'scalled?" get a bit tiring after a while.
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The Disability and Jesus "Locked out for Lent" project
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
la vie en rouge: My vote is to axe 2 Kings on the basis of it being the most soul-destroyingly depressing book in the Bible:
Executive summary:
quote:
A was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and B became king. B was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and C became king. C was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and D became king (etc. etc. etc.)
What I find interesting: it seems that most peoples have a tendency to embellish their own history, greatly exaggerating how good and noble their kings were. I wonder if there exists an example of another people that puts their own kings in such a negative light in their most important book.
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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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I don't think they would agree that 2 Kings is their most important book.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
Despite the name Kings, both are strongly anti-monarchist. Non-hereditary rulers were seen as a much better form of government. This dislike extended as late as the Herods.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mousethief: I don't think they would agree that 2 Kings is their most important book.
I was using the term in a sloppy way; I was talking about the Tanakh as a whole.
quote:
Gee D: Despite the name Kings, both are strongly anti-monarchist. Non-hereditary rulers were seen as a much better form of government. This dislike extended as late as the Herods.
Ah, that's interesting.
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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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
mousethief: I don't think they would agree that 2 Kings is their most important book.
I was using the term in a sloppy way; I was talking about the Tanakh as a whole.
I think that's highly anachronistic. I doubt very much the people who wrote 2 Kings were thinking that it was going to go into a collection of scrolls called "Tanakh" which comprised the definitive (and defining) literature of the Hebrew people.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mousethief: I think that's highly anachronistic. I doubt very much the people who wrote 2 Kings were thinking that it was going to go into a collection of scrolls called "Tanakh" which comprised the definitive (and defining) literature of the Hebrew people.
The term 'book' I used was wrong. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
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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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
mousethief: I think that's highly anachronistic. I doubt very much the people who wrote 2 Kings were thinking that it was going to go into a collection of scrolls called "Tanakh" which comprised the definitive (and defining) literature of the Hebrew people.
The term 'book' I used was wrong. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
I don't think that covers it. Take the word "book" out entirely. They still didn't think what they were writing was going to be all that important, or be collected in any way with the Pentateuch.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
mousethief: They still didn't think what they were writing was going to be all that important, or be collected in any way with the Pentateuch.
I'm not sure about that. Not everyone could write at that time, and writing the Chronicles of your people is slightly different from writing tomorrow's shopping list.
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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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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
A was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and B became king. B was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and C became king. C was a bad king who led Israel into sin. He died and D became king (etc. etc. etc.)
Surely that should be "B was such a bad king that he made A look positively benign by comparison. He led Israel into even more sin..." and so on?
[ 21. October 2013, 11:19: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
I think there were four "good" kings: David, Solomon, Hezekiah and Josiah (from memory).
Kings is part of the Duetoronomic history. The main theology of that being if you follow God - all will be well. If you do not - shit happens.
And Job comes along to nicely say "WTF? That's so not true".
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
mousethief: They still didn't think what they were writing was going to be all that important, or be collected in any way with the Pentateuch.
I'm not sure about that. Not everyone could write at that time, and writing the Chronicles of your people is slightly different from writing tomorrow's shopping list.
Granted. Although it certainly isn't the chronicles of their people -- it's more like the greatest hits. The constant refrain is, "As for the other things that King Iornaimheerah did, are they not written in the chronicles of the kings of Israel?" The writer(s) of the Kings/Chronicles seem to know that the chronicles of their people are somewhere else, and they're just giving the highlights.
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
One way to look at the long sad history of the kings is that it is the fulfillment of the statement in Second Samuel of the disadvantages of having a king. This is in contrast to the last sentence of the book of Judges.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
One way to look at the long sad history of the kings is that it is the fulfillment of the statement in Second Samuel of the disadvantages of having a king. This is in contrast to the last sentence of the book of Judges.
Yes, the people were well and truly warned about having a king, and having insisted upon one, had their hopes dashed. Indeed, there were very few "good" kings and many who were "bad". By contrast, the Judges come out of it well. One could scarcely say that the ancient Jewish people were democrats, but they were most certainly anti-monarchist.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
but they were most certainly anti-monarchist.
Wouldn't go that far.
The Davidic covenant is a major theme in the OT and it carries over into the NT with Jesus as messiah (anointed son of God) - King of the Jews in the Davidic line.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
The covenant with David was with him personally, not as king, at least as I see it. His House certainly was important, and Jesus's membership of that house is stressed. And remember that David did not inherit the throne as Jonathan would have.
The closest analogy I can see to the Judges were the Doges of the Venetian Republic. Chosen/elected from a limited group, they held office for a short but renewable time. As with the Doge (and most monarchs until recent times) they carried out administrative, military and judicial roles, not simply the last of these.
There are very few good kings in the 2 books, but most of the judges come out well. Perhaps there was some later editing to enhance the status of the judges and demean the kings. That's beyond my ability to discuss in any detail. If we move forward in time, the early Hasmoneans get a good press, but not so for the later ones, nor for the Herodians who followed.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
The covenant with David was with him personally, not as king, at least as I see it. His House certainly was important, and Jesus's membership of that house is stressed. And remember that David did not inherit the throne as Jonathan would have.
The davidic covenant is one of the five (?) major ones in the OT.
2 Samuel 7 stresses the eternal nature of this covenant. It may have begun with David personally but it certainly doesn't end there and it certainly has to do with the Kingship stuff.
Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.
Psalm 89 is another important reiteration of this covenant.
The monarchy of David and Solomon was the Golden Age of Israel that Jesus was hoped to restore.
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