A light in the darkness

I've been reading bits of the bible for sometime now. I do this in a time when all swords seem to be thrown at it. I call these swords the intellectual heavyweights who seem to be stabbing it from all angles.

Anyway, I've been reading it; and I've taken a new angle on it. I see it as the fight of the poor and the oppressed to have hope and to stand alone and fight for what is right against the Kings.

I'm not going to argue the reserection of Christ here or what God is in relation to mind, body and, soul. No; I think thats missing the point for me. I see this book as a real story. Its full of life. Its full of character. Its so lively some of these things simply must have happened. Its full of inspiration.

This got me thinking. Everything is so pessimistic. Everything is left and right; pitch one things against another. Divide and conquer is a phrase that springs to mind. But like the spring, I don't really see this.

Leaders and dictators and so forth come and go. They shine a torch and say this way; come on. However, educators, and Christ is one, as was Buddah, Copernicus and Newton, these people, really movements, shift our whole focus and carve, literally, new ways of seeing things to actualy benefit us. Anyway, with all the anti-Bible stuff going on, its a shame this has got tagged in with right-wing politics at the moment; cause I find it fascinating.

You must not have been brought up in it. I was dropped off at Sunday School from the time I was three until I was eighteen, with several years of parochial school included. Read the authorized version cover to cover, then go digging for the Old & New Testament Apocrypha, Gnostic Gospels and the history of the first few hundred years of this Jewish mystery cult.

If you want to know why Noah really built the ark, hunt down the books of Enoch--there's an eye opener! Angels lusting after mortal women. The Bible is the most-owned and least-read book in America. It's Hebrew folklore, quasi-history, rantings of religious leaders who were morphing to a meld of Judaism/Zoarasterism under Persian rule and on and on.

And the kicker is--in the beginning of Matthew, the author (who WASN'T Matthew, BTW) gives a geneaology of Joseph, who is supposedly not related to Yeshua ben Joseph, hmmm.

But don't you just wonder about the men (and it is all men of course) that wrote the bible? How different their lives were, the things that were important in their lives and the way they lived was just so alien to us now. You have to really get into their mind and travel in time to see what was going on. I love reading the bible for the same reasons as you, just to read it in its socio-economic and religious-time context. I'm not intelectual enough to completely read between the lines, but these people were fascinating, the common men as well as the kings. Sometimes I really try and picture myself there in the heart of it, in a battle in the old testament or on the mount with Jesus in the new, I close my eyes and listen to their words and wonder aout their motivations and can almost hear their hearts beating in excitement or fear... I know I'm weird!