I mean I read a book (when I was a questioning Christian losing my faith) by a Jewish author giving a very harsh "review" of the New Testament as part of a biography of Paul Saying that as a work of literature it was obvious that it was the garbage testament
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
That to put it on the same plane as the Tanakh and reduce the latter to "the Old Testament" was part of the violence of Christianity The Tanakh being filled with truly ancient poetic language passed down through a complex oral tradition, guarded by an educated priestly class
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
And was assembled over the course of centuries through an evolutionary process Meanwhile the much shorter "New Testament" is this collection of, basically, letters and essays by a small handful of guys
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
That feel much more "modern" (if 2000 years ago can be said to be modern) Like we know a lot about the historical context in which they were written and in that context, the great writers of the Roman Empire wouldn't have given them the time of day
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
They're written in "newspaper-level" vocabulary, not "college-level" vocabulary The argumentation really isn't nearly as involved as something you'd see from, say, Rabbi Hillel around the same time period They're not *books*, they're *blog posts*
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
And I mean yeah I get that, despite my lack of knowledge of koine Greek -- the *kind of writing* the NT is shows all over it It's very very clunky and practical writing Paul's letters, the foundation of the faith, really read like someone blogging
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
And this is even kind of intentional -- the early Christians had poetry, songs, ritual liturgy (analogous to much of the content of the Tanakh) that they used in services, Paul even quotes one of them at some point But that didn't make it into the canon, the blog posts did
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
And in a way I find that inspiring, even as Jewish writers are very much justified in being appalled that these wackjobs started a movement that ended up shredding hundreds of other religious traditions in its wake That's the scary and powerful narrative of all this
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
Some unwell dude named Paul with a lot of issues about his own Jewish heritage gets some bug up his ass and starts just writing and writing and writing all this shit It's not even *good* writing, but the ideas in it catch on People keep building on it and it keeps growing
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
My favourite thing about Paul: he was lifelong celibate and knew absolutely nothing about sex. He specifically says that his writings on sex aren't God's commands in 1st Corinthians. Fundamentalist Christians HATE it when I point that out.
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There is a surprisingly convincing theory going around that Paul's issues are down to a botched circumcision (Hence his surprising rage at being told Gentile converts are being told they have to get circumcised and calling it "emasculation")
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Replying to @arthur_affect @WenSchw and
No one knows what the "thorn in his flesh" actually is that he mentions elsewhere that he's prayed his whole life for God to heal But it would be very dramatic if it was praying for his dick to grow back
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Vokaalit and
Huh, that makes a surprising amount of sense.
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