The Bible is a fascinating book. I have read it.
It contains some of the most sublime utterances and also some of the most patently inhuman. It is believed by many to be literally, word for word, the WORD of God. So, it is strange that it has spawned so many versions of Christianity. Associated with these versions are over 38,000 different denominations and a vast range of interpretations.
It is believed by many, as I say, to be the plain word of God, yet it is the most annotated book in the world. Indeed, commentaries that have been written on the Bible are innumerable.
Perhaps the saddest thing is the literalism that many impose upon the text. This unbridled literalism has in turn spawned a phenomenon called “Creation Science”. However, creation science (whatever you may think of it) fails the one key test of what science is about – the possibility of falsifiability. The point that Karl Popper made so well. True science rests on empricism not authoritarianism. The true spirit of science is to try and prove the hypothesis wrong! This is the thing a so-called "creation scientist" is utterly loathe to do.
I find the first few chapters of Genesis captivating and extremely enlightening on the human condition – all the more so, because I do not take them literally. Most fascinating is the stuff about the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil”. It wasn’t an apple that Eve ate by the way. Nowhere does it mention apple. In Hebrew, apparently, it was also known as the tree of conscience.
Read it sometime. To me, it marks a shift from an undifferentiated unity to a dualism – from a unity to an alienation. It marks a movement from the divine towards the human.
Of course the greatest character of the Bible is the man from Narareth - Yeshua or Jesus - the one in whom the divine and the human are once again unified.
.... that as you turned and smiled at me, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.
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