Or "foresight into achievements of contemporary science" at best

no I'm talking about all the theological fluff behind Catholicism

The stuff that pope is defending against the assault of the layman and his immediate experience

I certainly agree that Bible is best read without Catholic dogma in mind

But not from the same reason that Atheists do

Atheists read it literally not figuratively as intended

Even if they read it figuratively they still don't get it, but neverind

Yeah it's besides the point

That exactly is the point, that every story can be read from many different angles and with many different ambitions in mind

Reading and discussing the Bible is best done with somebody who isn't a complete normie

You can take a Bible story and contemplate on it from political perspective, from perspective of symbols, from historical perspective, from all these combined

From ritual perspective etc

I disagree the Bible is written the way normies think about the world, as figuration

the bible is written the way constantine wanted it to be so he could make a cancerously expanding dalit empire

and the new testament is probably 75% outright forgery

Hmmm I'm always in dilemma about the worth of NT myself

Revelations for example

Esoteric symbolism in disguise of prophecy

Or deranged phantasmagoria of the type of personality which Nietzdche has described as "man of resentment"

Saying that you are 100% certain on it's worth wouldn't be appropriate atm

I mean, some people are certain and decisive in what they will take from a certain work and what they will dismiss

Varg has a simple answer

Archaeologically and culturally, Bible isn't *us* hence screw everything written there

for some reason I was always quite drawn to the bible

I don't know if it's because my family was catholic for generations and generations and it had become congenital, or what

It has to draw you to it

Think about it

It's was written in the era, in the hotspot of mixed cultures and societies, and above all, mixed worldviews and spiritual proportions

It describes conflicts, agitation, breakdowns and rises of groups and ideas

It gives pages and pages of testimony in politics, religion, society, war

It deals with some of the most important societies to have existed, namely, Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian

And forces you to read between lines, since you are aware that narrator is being subjective

And forces you to take every symbol and study it, since it has got to have had both a significance, and a different meaning than a modern man, due to his separation from such a mode of thinking and speaking, cannot comprehend

Even if the worldview of the Bible is to be completely rejected

You still have to read it in preciselly in order to study it, and it's participants and their modus operandi

that is not even what draws me

what draws me in are two books, genesis and revelation

if you threw out all of the bible except those, I would not feel personally that I lost much

Personally i find the story of Hebrews in Egypt quite intriguing

What a great political and social drama, so misread by the general population eager for bedtime stories

most of that is garnish not the meat and potatoes of the story which everyone gets