• kromem@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    There’s actually a lot of interesting stuff in the text when you learn how to spot it between the lines of the revisionism. Both OT and NT.

    The problem is you basically only have two camps.

    One, that thinks the text as it exists today represents an unadulterated divine transmission.

    And the other, that thinks anything to do with it is worthless nonsense.

    So there’s very few people actually looking at it in between those two extremes, with most engaged with the material clustering around the former, or at very least with an anchoring and survivorship bias around the former cluster.

    We’re left with audiences for the text that on both sides would be incredulous at the idea that, say, the Exodus narrative was in part an appropriation of the LBA/Early Iron Age sea peoples history when they were forcibly relocated into cohabitation with the Israelites, or say, that Jesus was taking about evolution with the sower parable.

    Even though both those things have very compelling cases that can be made given emerging available evidence, the discussion is all about the acceptance or wholesale rejection of canon with little to no discussion of what actually exists in the absence of the BS.

    It’s most disappointing for the latter group though. While I kind of get the way the trauma of proselytizing and indoctrination turns minds off to anything connected with the material, it’s very frustrating that what should be the healthy opposition cedes so many claims of authenticity to the faithfully blind.