I didn't read the article, but a quick Ctrl+F confirmed my suspicions.
I was raised Roman Catholic and to me it was always a head scratcher why would someone insist on a certain translation which is at least two languages away from the original.
It's a whole field of study and there's broad agreement that as language evolves translations need to be updated, otherwise you'd have to become an expert in that old language the work was written in on top of everything else.
From a cultural / literary / symbolic perspective, reading the KJV makes the most sense. Most allusions and quotes are to this specific version. Shakespeare didn't use it, but almost everyone after him did. Getting the most precise original meaning is important for scholars and theologians, but for most people it's more important to read the text that will connect to the most nodes in their cultural canonical graph.
OP specifically indicates he wanted to read it because of its high valency with other texts he had read, so his choice makes sense.
> I finished reading the Bible. It resonated with me in a way nothing else had before.
Having been raised in a Christian tradition as well, I don't get this. I don't get how you can, as an educated, rational, thinking adult, go from 0 religion to learning about Christianity and saying, "yeah, that sounds plausible."
The only reason I stuck to it so long was familial fear mongering and cultural momentum. Once I deprogrammed myself far enough to start being able to ask questions, I realized Christianity's construction is indistinguishable from a scam. If you don't start with the cult programming, how do you get far enough down the religion rabbit hole without first running head-first into the obvious self-protective indoctrination designed specifically to avoid scrutiny?
I was never religious - my mom made an effort to bring me and my siblings to church every Sunday so that at the very least we wouldn't stand out in this deeply conservative environment.
My decisive moment was pretty silly in hindsight, but I stopped going to church after that. I was ten and me and my friend spent the better part of an afternoon after school collecting buckeyes (aka conkers, horse chestnuts). We were headed home with our spoils but when we were passing a church, my friend recalled that there was some kind of holiday that day and he had to attend mass. He gave me everything he had collected and joined the crowd standing there in the cold.
He loves you and only he can truly love you. And if you don't love him first, you're the problem and you're going to end up in a place of eternal torment. Don't make him do this to you. He doesn't want to send you to hell. Oh wait, no, he's not the one sending you to hell, he's just not going to save you from hell. Yeah, that's it. Only his love can save you from yourself, see.
It's a cult. If God were real, he'd be a sociopath.
I'm an agnostic leaning towards atheist and might be wrong but I believe that definition of hell isn't originally accepted, agreed upon, etc and even got some initial backlash at least up until people started iterating a bit much on dante's inferno. But organized religion is a bit of a memetic social phenomenon in many ways.
Rather than eternal torment (and heaven) it was originally a bit more vague and esotheric.
Not a place of fire and demons and a place in the clouds with golden gates and all things nice which the catholic church declines to support regardless of what some church frescos depict.
Supposedly hell is/was more more like eternal absence of god. Eternal nothingness which supposedly is horrifying to some rather than eternally being with god or becoming one with him.
Yes like every other concept in the religion, including the nature and morality of God, the nature of the afterlife and divine punishment and reward has evolved over time. Because it isn't real. It's folklore and mythology.
The ancient Israelites originally believed in Sheol[0,1], an afterlife where everyone went, regardless of their morality. The modern concept of Hell is a political construct meant to answer the problem of evil and the absence of God's justice in times of persecution[2..4].
Also, he loves every human the same, but children still starve, people get genocided and nature gets wasted. He works in mysterious ways, you know. Sometimes that means thousands of people being bombed and killed in tents
I agree in that the literal interpretation is not believable. There are other ways to "believe" it or have it resonate, like symbolically. Maps of Meaning is a great book that touches on this, "We Who Wrestle with God" too, more directly.
As an atheist myself, it took me a long to to realize that a lot of modern conflict between rationality and Christianity stems from the rationalists not understanding that the belief is often beyond the literal, especially when the Christian is of a more intellectual bent. A lot of times the believers don't even realize they only believe symbolically, or can't articulate it. I won't do the ideas justice, so I won't try to explain them.
I think a lot of conflict comes from Christians who claim to literally believe the Bible and then try to use that as justification to pass legislation telling people how to live.
Many aren't reading the bible and thinking it's plausible, or fact driven.
However people read it and find connection to their past/present and somehow brings them peace. No different than any other old philosophical old book.
When I hear these rants against people deciding to choose a reglion, I hear projection. I hear people struggling to come up with their own belief system (maybe a little here as well)
If you start to believe that the Earth is flat, or in aliens, people will judge you harshly. Meanwhile, getting into big name religion satisfies similar urges, but people will either applaud you, or at least stay quiet.
AIUI this was basically deliberate; the KJV was written in language that was a little archaic/faux-archaic even at the time it was written, to sound impressive.
It’s probably not a great thing for a modern English speaker to read if they want to actually understand it; in particular the meaning of certain English words has changed enough that they can give a false impression.
A [reddit post](https://v.redd.it/bmzdeicni7dg1) showing speed reading at various WPM counts, this nice fellow created a tool for exactly this in the thread comments. Enjoy
So many allusions and claims such as your 'yes' in this thread, and yet, not a single actual link/reference to anything actually scientific/verifiable...
Maybe you should actually share a link if you're so sure, instead of crying about being antagonized?
I don't know it well yet.
.......yet.
reply