Why is the bible so open to interpretation?

Honestly, I have read 4 books from the bible already (genesis, exodus, mark and matthew), and I have come across passages that are so fucking hard to understand what the fuck they are actually talking about that I have to research it and then I come across millions of explanations for the same passage.
Is the metaphorical, poetical language actually a legit attempt to make a beautiful book or is it only mechanism for the church to interpret the bible as they see fit (in a way that serves their interests)?

For instance, in the book of Mark we have:
“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
28 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it[b] is near, right at the door. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."

Any normal person, using common sense and basic human logic, would realize that jesus predicted the end of the world within the time of his generation (which didn't happen).
Then christians come up with all sorts of explanations to justify this. They say that the "coming of christ" that jesus said was actually the destruction of jerusalem, or the collapse of the jewish economy or whatever the fuck...
Is the bible just a meme book?

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Read some more and it should become clearer if you understand it.

isn't the point of the bible that hell is basically empty?

The obsession over genealogy seems to signal to me that it was originally a sekrit club that got out of hand desu

Everything is infinitely open to interpretation. Your post for instance. On the surface it seems to concern the Bible. But surely you actually meant Infinite Jest, because on Yea Forums IJ is our Bible.

Consciousness changes from generation to generation and we have different understandings of things

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Because Christians are faced with the arduous task of not only harmonising the contradictions in the texts (there are many) but also of harmonising the contradictions between the Bible and reality. It is patently obvious, for instance, that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who believed that the end times were imminent. We see this with such quotes:

>Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Matthew 16:28

As all cultists do when their eschatological prophecies fall flat on their face, the Christians justify this by saying that he was being metaphorical.

Even more salient are the textual contradictions found within the Bible. Because Christians hold that the Bible was inspired by God, they read each book not as an independent author giving his account, but as a unified body of works with one infallible author, God. It follows then that this singular body can not contradict itself. Here are some examples of contradictions:

>Matthew and Luke give contradictory accounts of Jesus' genealogy
Well, this is clearly not metaphorical, right? Hilariously enough, even Christian scholars like Mike Licona try to argue that the genealogy in Matthew is indeed metaphorical! (Look up his most recent debate with Bart Ehrman -- he says Matthew was using numerology to make an artistic point.)
>Matthew and Acts give contradictory accounts of Judas' suicide
>Matthew and Acts give contradictory accounts of how the Field of Blood got its name
etc.
Because Christians refuse to engage in unbiased exegesis of the texts, considering each author as independent and fallible, they are desperately trying to square this circle by crying, 'muh metaphor' every time it is challenged.

Here I will leave you with two quotes from the Bible that show the dishonesty of the gospel writers and how they used Old Testament passages disingenuously to promote their narrative. This was just one of the passages that troubled me when I was still a Christian.
>14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c] Matthew 2:14-15
What was referenced:
>When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Hosea 11:1

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here's a good example of how Jesus isn't literal user: look up the destroy the temple and rebuilding it in 3 days passage

There's actually lots of controversy around that as well.

My guess is that if you were straight then you would never be able to harmonize between different people.

If the Bible was written by humans, we can assume they wanted to create a tradition that lasts, leaving place for interpretation lets people adapt the ideas to their own context and time. This is a good compromise for a book of history, which holds themes you could identify but not a singular plot line which must not be ever thought of in a more-than-literal sense.

There are 70 faces to the Torah

English was not even a language when the Bible was written. You are reading another person's interpretation of the Bible

“Why can’t I smoothly jump into a two thousand page, non-linear, culturally alien anthology of extremely heterogeneous Iron Age writings?”

Yes i'm sure if we had the original greek manuscripts then all discrepancies and issues with the bible would suddenly vanish. Great post, can't believe it took this long for such an enlightened individual like yourself to figure it out.

Great post, user. What're your metaphysical/spiritual beliefs now, if you have any? Are the scholars of these textual sectors often Christians themselves, and therefore biased in their work? Or is scholarship a zone of neutrality, regardless of the people within it?

I've also read those seeming "failed prophecies" you listed, and do agree they look quite straightforwardly incorrect, but there are also other passages elsewhere that give details of events which have not yet come, that need to before the Second Coming. What are your thoughts on that?

I was also shocked to recently learn that the whole "adulteress story" was a fabrication, given how emblematic it is as an example of Christianity and it's emphasis on forgiveness.

Lastly, any Christians want to respectfully address his points here? His arguments seem very strong to me.

The Bible was written by a collection of pretty stressed out guys who didn't know each other. Finding contradictions is easy, but that doesn't explain why they never falter in supporting the core values and ideas of the previous writers. The flood story is only told once, the prophecies are scattered, the writers aren't even all following the same religion for goodness sake.
But they all agree on the importance of true worship to God, by any man from any background. If you can just humble yourself and try to understand what the Bible is trying to achieve, you'll learn so much more

THREE. SAME. NUMBERS.

Okay, is jesus being god not an important concept that they try to convey? if so then how come John is radically different than Mark Luke and Matthew?

This. Thinking you’re going to pop the book open and grasp it cover to cover is retarded. It’s too alien.

>The obsession over genealogy seems to signal to me that it was originally a sekrit club that got out of hand desu
It literally was - Jewish

I find this stuff quite interesting. It's basically like reading any other work of literature, with all of its problems, pitfalls, autistic discussions of word choices - but this time with the highest stakes imaginable.

Maybe YHWH shouldn't have communicated with people through this single specific culture that is now so alien to the world that its writing is on the most literal semantic level apparently completely divorced from reality.

because christians are fucking stupid

It's only the KJV that's open to interpretation because it's obscurantist the same as the Torah and the Quran. That way the book can be made to say whatever you want it to say.

>Why is the bible so open to interpretation?
Why does the tree of life have so many branches?

>Christian
>Old Testament

Bruh

Because Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written to persuade nonbelievers to convert to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Also teaching that he was God would have scared people away. John does it since he’s writing for Christians already.

>Any normal person, using common sense and basic human logic, would realize

The eternal Anglo.

Good, informative post. It seems to me that the most intellectually rigorous Christians have to admit that a bunch of their religion is wrong, but they come up with justifications for it.

The Old Testament is scripture for Christians, I don't know what point you're trying to make.

It's 80% of your Bible, you don't get to brush it away.

>christianity

fuck off back to /pol/ you alt-right incel

Just curious, what do you believe in now - since leaving Christianity?

>Maybe YHWH shouldn't have communicated with people through this single specific culture that is now so alien to the world that its writing is on the most literal semantic level apparently completely divorced from reality.
Maybe brainlets shouldn't have "translated" it.

>Saint Hieronymus is a brainlet
interesting

OP this is exactly why the Church exists, and why Sola Scriptura and the Priesthood of All Believers are really, really dumb ideas. The Bible can, indeed, be interpreted in a myriad of different ways; any book that's read by lots of people can be. Look at all the ways people interpret Ulysses or The Sound and The Fury, for example, and those are books whose writers actually discussed what they actually meant. The problem is compounded in a book like the Bible, which is both old and is actually composed of different books by different writers collected and composed throughout centuries.

This is why Jesus, rather than writing a book of his own, founded the Church. The Church alone has the divinely-given authority to correctly interpret Scripture and to accurately spread the Gospel to the far corners of the Earth. When you stray from the Church's interpretive authority, you wind up with weird shit like Pentecostalism and the Prosperity Gospel.

tl;dr: fuck Protestants.

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Papist cuck heretic

Why should I believe in the Church's interpretive authority when they have aiding and abetting rapists and child molesters? That makes me believe them to be fallible, and no better at interpreting scripture than I am

Because though the men of the Church are fallible, the Church itself is not; through the actions of perfect men, through the power of the Holy Spirit, perfection is maintained. The continued presence of God's Spirit within the Church manifests itself in numerous ways, including the fact that the Church itself has survived destruction numerous times when it ought to have been wiped out, and including the continuous stream of miracles, direct evidence of God's power, that flow from the Church's operations.

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That old man literally has the "evil pedophile face" which all convicted pedophiles have. I can spot them quite easily at this point. Anyway, no. Catholic Church is evil. So are most churches.

*through the actions of imperfect men, through the power of the Holy Spirit,

>Any normal person, using common sense and basic human logic, would realize that jesus predicted the end of the world within the time of his generation (which didn't happen).
Into the trash it goes.

Give this user a try, if you're so confident in yourself.

That last one is easily explained by Christ being the genesis of the New Israel, since the Church, the Body of Christ, is the New Israel, the new People of God.

How particular Christian sects interprets the Bible is a completely different question.
>It is patently obvious, for instance, that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who believed that the end times were imminent
Begging the question. Your quotation suggest no such thing.
>Even more salient are the textual contradictions
There can be contradictions on certain accounts due to the limitations of the time as they relied on eye witness and word of mouth accounts. This is not controversial.
>Here I will leave you with two quotes from the Bible that show the dishonesty of the gospel writers and how they used Old Testament passages disingenuously to promote their narrative. This was just one of the passages that troubled me when I was still a Christian.
Parallels within the Bible are not controversial. There's nothing dishonest here.

I do not doubt that there are valid critiques but the following:
>Any normal person, using common sense and basic human logic...
Is a fallacious and incoherent one.

>Your quotation suggested no such thing

>Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Matthew 16:28

What is your interpretation of this?

Okay, sure. OP could've worded his argument better.

Have you ever thought that the truth was the most obvious reality? Christianity began as something seemingly insignificant, but it changed the world and set off a chain reaction from the crucifixion to the end of time. Christianity we see unfolds through history, reaching higher levels of complexity and order, and the invisible world reveals itself as man finds his way back to God.

Argumentum ad populum, is what you're basically doing here. Religions come and go. Ancient Hellenistic religion was probably immensely popular once - where is it today? Replaced by Christianity. Europe was once extremely Christian - where has it gone today? Replaced by secularism and even Eastern beliefs to some degree. Christianity is not more popular today than it was before, and the trend only seems to be on the decline. Who is to say that it will be here at all, 2000 years from now? It may become the equivalent of the Hellenistic religion, by then. Studied in museums and written about by scholars, but not seriously followed by anyone.

Don't be fucking stupid. There's a world of difference between every single preceding religion, and all religions since, and Catholicism.
If you took your head out of your arse and actually studied what makes it different you would see why it survives, sometimes despite itself, the way that Hellenism never could.

Plus, Rene Girard destroyed this whole fucking argument in, like, the 70s. Stop being a pleb.

Its literally the Logos of Heraclitus (EVERYONE ELSE) vs the Logos of John.

If you don't understand how the Christian "myth" differs from all other myths (part from the fact that the Passion actually happened), then you're just as stupid as Daniel Dennett and his cum drinking buddies.

Honestly, the problem isn't that you people are too smart for Christianity, it's that Christianity is far too intellectual for you to grasp, in every sense of the word.

10/10 post

Something like 80% of Americans believe angels are real while probably less than a tenth of those have likely even read half of the bible.

Angels, in some shape or form, have got to be real.

They are very powerful entities, who are extremely close to an immortal being. I mean, one fell and simply put wreaked havoc on society.

The Quran and The Holy Bible both speak of an angel, Satan or Iblis, who fell and corrupted humanity. We are simply experiencing the shockwaves of that whenever we experience doubt or corruption.

That's partly by design, partly for the same reason that horoscopes are. In clear and accurate writing about anything, how incisive or nuanced the approach is depends on the subject being treated, or what aspect of it, even if it's an imaginary one in fiction meant to be taken as such. The human animal is really stupefyingly complicated whether or not especially cultured, and can't be so much as broadly characterized without subtlety. But ambiguous language in an operating manual or forecast is a disaster whenever it creeps in, by intent or accident. The Book is a mess on the whole, but not completely useless. Some men who are prone to violence and addiction could use a dose of Paul, and Ecclesiastes has a few black pills that almost anyone can benefit from taking in.

It survives moreso because it skillfully employs a tremendous deal of psychological trappings designed to keep people within its fold, in a manner previously unmatched. The concept of Hell, which certainly wasn't employed to such practical effect in the religions before it, is a fine example of this. Much of it is also sourced from Zoroastrianism, so it's not really that distinct from previous religions either, though it utilized those concepts more effectively to its ends. And like them, it will likely become extinct itself someday. Less and less people follow it each year. This trajectory doesn't seem likely to change, either, given how much of the culture's truth have been eroded by scientific discovery. Unless the End Times occurs within this millenium at maximum, I don't believe Christianity will be extant any longer. There's no pretense of intellect here either, I'm making very simple observations, and projecting from them. I think you're the one who can't see outside the worldview you've been conditioned to, and accept possibilities contrary to it.

>buy your salvation

no ones asking you to be a paedophile though.

>Why is the bible so open to interpretation?

It's not

Retarded Catholics, then Protestants and later US Neo-Protestants made it out so it could be that way.

Also

>Bothering to read the Tanakh which are just Post-Exilic Judaic fairy tales

>Because Jews hold that the Bible was inspired by God, they read each book not as an independent author giving his account, but as a unified body of works with one infallible author, God.

FTFY

What the hell are you talking about?

>He thinks religions are based on literary criticism
What a deluded arrogant moron.

It's a good thing you're no longer polluting our faith with your primitive understanding of things. Go convert to Islam, you'll like it there better.

>I was also shocked to recently learn that the whole "adulteress story" was a fabrication, given how emblematic it is as an example of Christianity and it's emphasis on forgiveness.

Still buttblasted from the last thread huh

Don't smear the bible with your filthy peasant eyes. And stay out, pleb.

Judaic =/= Jewish

Fuck off jew enabling scum.

Except the bible is very clear in saying that the catholic ''church'' is the synagogue of satan and the pope the antichrist, one just has to look at the criminal deeds of the catholic ''church''. Only people that seek jesus will understand the bible thus there's no need for a tyrannical organisation that tells you what to believe.

>still zero argument

Can Christians really do no better than calling unbelievers names? (or burning them at the stake for that matter)

Stale memes with no basis in reality