Literature reached its peak here
>>24774861platonism for retards
>>24774861>ESV
>>24774927I'm about to start reading this book but I heard it's a difficult read. I think the most difficult book I read was Divine Comedy, and I had to keep rereading sections of it and have a dictionary next to me to understand it. Hopefully it's not as difficult as Divine Comedy
>>24774861In John more than any other gospel, Jesus just comes across as a typical internet schizo to me. Especially in John 8, where the dialogue makes me more sympathetic to the Jews than Jesus.>"I am the light of the world">"That's nice and all, but it doesn't count for much when you're just saying that about yourself instead of having someone else to say it.">"My father agrees with me.">"Where is he?">"You wouldn't know him.">"I'm leaving, and you'll miss me, but you can't go where I'm going.">"...Is going to kill himself?">"You are from below. I am from above.">"Who exactly do you think you are?">"Why do I even bother to speak to you people?">"You guys are trying to kill me just like your father.">"Our father is Abraham.">"Nope. Your father is the devil. And if you don't believe me it's because I'm telling the truth and you're just innately averse to the truth on account of being children of the devil.">"We're starting to suspect that you're the demon-possessed one here...">"Anyone who listens to me will be immortal.">"Yeah, now we're pretty sure you're possessed. Everyone dies. Do you think you're better than Abraham?">"I'm God lol."
>>24774959Illiad is taught to 12 year olds in our schools
>>24775060He's right though
>>24775124There's also the deal with Jews being forbidden from drinking blood and cannibalism by the Torah, meanwhile in John 6 Jesus is all "Drink my eat blood and eat my flesh to live forever. Gnaw on it!" while talking to the Jews, but when it's just him and his disciples he's like, "Lol I just meant gnaw on me spiritually or something. I'm not actually telling people to eat my literal body and drink my literal blood." (Catholics miss this bit.)Like, if Jesus isn't a schizo in John, then the next best guess is that he's plainly trolling the Jews and the author intended it to be funny.
>>24774861The best book of the bible is Ecclesiastes.https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8021
>>24774861Indeed.John 1 is perfect1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2 He was in the beginning with God.3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.6 A man named John was sent from God.
>>24774861It’s pleasant, but nothing special. The prose is really basic. Have you read anything besides the Bible?
>>24774959Iliad btfos it hardDivine Comedy is only enjoyed by the christcucks who tell you to go to hell on every board
>>24774861i hate that the new wave of Christcucks who, for the first time in their lives, touched a book, immediately come in here to tell us how totally PEAK their bible slop is
>>24775060>>24775157It's because Jesus is God, duh.You just aren't going to wrap your head around Jesus in the Gospels if you don't think of Him as God made flesh. Even Mark features it (Jesus calls himself Lord of the Sabbath, which means He's God).
>>24774861Agreed. I just went through St. John the other day. It's the crown jewel of the four Gospels--which are all amazing.
>>24775060Get off your SSRIs and start enjoying normal nuance. You are interested in literature aren't you? Language is symbols--it has developed in light of the merit of allegory and alliteration. Jesus sounds like a nut to you? Are ideas that seem abstract because they aren't immediately tangible given our limited experience--just off limits; never to be explored because they sound 'schizo;' as if that lack of familiarity were anything other than temporary? Are you willing to say that about Shakespeare too?>"Our father is Abraham.">"Nope. Your father is the devil.You need to understand our father is Adam, and Adam gave over his life to Satan. We are children of a liar named Satan--unless we become truth-lovers once again and let Jesus clean us.You sound like some kind of European-intellectual nitwit, frankly.
>>24775845Moron
>>24775853Get off your meds. You can't be helped unless you stop being a rigid pickled mind. You have a preconceived idea that Jesus must be wrong. Your bias is obvious. You give no logical content in your argument, only pure editorial. You are going off 'vibe.' Use your heart. Jesus is right about everything, and nobody's refutation of Jesus has ever been known to hold water.
>>24775845>You sound like some kind of European-intellectualI'm a thoroughly American college-dropout and I will take this as a compliment, thanks.
>>24775060Most of the bible reads like schizo babble.
>>24775867Never been on meds, retard. You are a gullible, pretentious fool that has devoted his life to a simple illusion. Superstitious stories of men with superpowers saving humanity do not need "refutations", only repudiation and dismissal. Seek help
>>24775802>>24775826Jesus acts nothing like Yahweh and talks nothing like Yahweh, so that would not be anyone’s expectation, reasonably speaking
>>24775845>You sound like some kind of European-intellectual nitwit, frankly.Being an intellectual isn't a bad thing. Christcucks and conservacucks just get mad when people point out the flaws in their ideology.
>>24776128Kamala will never be president
>>24775987You're the type to think all reality is illusory, relative, subject to what is perceived -- truth hindered at every step. Modernist angst and delusion in a nutshell. Because it's words on a page, or remarks in a sermon, and not dangled in front of your face -- you choose to doubt the fabric of reality. Enjoy your "quintessence of dust;" you are pretentious contrarian in mind -- but a conformist you are in actuality. In this secular hegemony you can be safe, be a coward, and still be regarded as the cunning wit.You've nothing to show. Praying for you.
>>24776169No one cares about Kamala Harris
>>24775987NTA, but I just had a thought. reading a Buddhist thread earlier, a poster said something about keeping the Buddha's teachings of liberation from suffering (by realizing that you have no control over your aggregates, which are all conditioned) and doing away with all the "supernatural" ideas of 'Buddha-nature', Pure Land, heaven and hell realms, etc, and I had the idea of seeing what you'd get if you do the same with Christianity. well, the message is John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." everything boils down to this, the paramount virtue of self-sacrifice for the ones you love. If you want to get rid of Christianity, you're gonna have to convince people that giving up everything for your friends is stupid and ignoble. because it's not just the supernatural that people are drawn to in religion, but the message that's immediate and apparent that speaks to their higher ideals. Well, good luck.
>>24775980>I'm a thoroughly American college-dropout and I will take this as a compliment, thanks.I'm a Canadian Christ-believer but basically a NEET and a dropout just the same. If this is contest is a 'humility-off' I am availed just as well. -- But to be an intellectual without a classical-mind is to be a tormented person. You have a modern-nihilist mind. No whimsy, no guise with respect to expecting finding what you pursue like Socrates, no 'mind of Christ.' -- Skepticism of any kind is a self-refuting 'philosophy' and you cannot ever in good faith make a truth claim. Jesus is a proven fact.
>>24775802>God made fleshWhy would he do that?
>>24776211>Skepticism of any kind is a self-refuting 'philosophy'That seems like a bizarre position. Are you advocating being totally credulous or am I misreading you?>No whimsyI think I have whimsy. I actually like Jesus as a character, I like the new testament,, and to a certain extent I respect Christian morals in the basic sense of "love fulfills the law," though the total pacifism and voluntary poverty that might be discerned as Jesus' teachings seem impractical. None of that stops me from saying that Jesus in John is very reminiscent of a classic internet schizo in some places and seems like he's outright trolling the Jews in others. I would say that not being able to acknowledge this could be an indicator of whimsy-deficiency.
>>24776261I'm almost certain that John is intended to be funny in places. Even in the dramatic opening, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." — the word translated overcome has a double-meaning, so it can also mean "understood," as some translations have it. In fact its most literal meaning seems to be "grasp," and grasp in English also has a double-meaning, one of which is intellectual. And what happens in John? Jesus gets misunderstood a lot. He even seems to want to be misunderstood.
>>24776261>Are you advocating being totally credulous?You are obfuscating. Let's say I hear a lie, what do I do? -- I go straightway to digging for the truth. Often in life we get to the bottom of the dilemma in short order, and have the truth of the matter.I am not denying the reality of untruth. Above a post of mine calls the devil 'a liar.' I believe lies are real. But they are not illusions to me -- they are not impenetrable. Lies, and any instance of 'seeing through a glass darkly,' -- and any instance of unknowing -- makes clear to me the fact that the truth is always with us.>WhimsyIf you have it, humour the poor Man. Extend an olive branch to Him by walking in His footsteps. See what transpires! -- Do it like a sportsman, play to win, winner takes all.>Voluntary povertyBe poor in spirit first. -- Jesus didn't give us exhaustive criteria. He gave us the aspect of the endeavor, the spiritual ethos of it. Never a rubric like the legalism He established in The Old Testament.The fulfillment of the Old lets us see a contrast -- makes us nimble now that we know what the 'training wheels' are for -- what they do. For if we know what it is to be 'with' legalism, we better understand what it is to live by conscience (which is the baptism of The Spirit). -- Where instincts are minute and evade describing, but prove reconcilable to the good -- not only as the Law of Moses is good -- but even better. Our fidelity to 'the good' and love of 'the good' proving greater-and-greater -- this is sanctification."Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."(We are built to seek justice. So press on with the endeavour)
>>24776286Darkness can't 'comprehend' light because light is what's comprehensive. Darkness is the privation of light. Like how what is *not* The Logos -- for instance -- is but the privation of The Word/The Truth -- i.e. a lie.Which is to say evil and lies are contingent, temporal, and transitory. They will be rectified in flames.St. John Ch. 1 is an exultation of the immutable and peers into the eternity of Gen. Ch. 1
>>24776118Because Jesus is God the Son and Yahweh is God the Father duh
>>24776211>I'm a Canadian Christ-believer but basically a NEET and a dropout just the same.Hey me too
>>24776324Le epic
>>24776324*my disc is "cammmden" if you'd like, brother
>>24776321All three persons of the Trinity are Yahweh according to Trinitarian sects. It’s just weird that you have God so dissatisfied with the world he annihilates it in a flood, and then later so loves it that he offers his son up as a sacrifice for it
>>24776261Jesus is definitely making fun of people in a few places. “Render unto Caesar” is sharp and clever repartee. There are parts of the Gospels where he makes actively bad choices. The story of the fig tree and the moneylenders is a great example. Christ was God incarnated as Man. That meant death, but not only death. Man has other faults, but also other charms. I think the Gospels are best read in part as a biography in parts of a strange and passionate man well-loved by his friends.More controversial: Genesis is best read as the character development of God as the Father, full of love but also confusion for how to handle his mortal charges.
>>24776118It’s almost like the Old and New Testament were written in different times in different languages…
>>24775242as i said see >>24774905
>>24775060Jesus sounds a little based there. Think I'll pick up my Holy Bible.
>>24775167this. then psalms. it's not even close
>>24774959I have two advices: 1-Look up the story of the golden apple of discord. It's basically the cause of the war. The Iliad starts in the 9th year of the war and assumes you already know the conflict. 2-The book is very repetitive. You will either need patience or the critical eye to know when to skip specific sentences. For example, in book 2 there is an infamous section of 10 entire pages dedicated to numbering the soldiers and their ships.
>>24777299Do NOT skip the catalogue of ships. Each captain listed there, and each soldier underneath him, has lived a greater life than you and generations upon generations of your ancestors combined. Do them honour.
>>24777305>Do them honour.Why should I care about a bunch of faggy sweaty Greeks
>>24775242>6 A man named John was sent from God.This line is beauty beyond beauty
>>24775157>(Catholics miss this bit.)No, Catholics do NOT miss this bit, we've always recognized that the Flesh and Blood of Christ are literal but also deeply metaphysical. That's the whole thing of the Eucharist. Which of course Jesus Himself established at the Last Supper.
>>24775157>Lol I just meant gnaw on me spiritually or something. I'm not actually telling people to eat my literal body and drink my literal blood."He never says this. He obviously literally means it and repeats it several times. Protestants ate just completely ahistorical and interpret everything through their Zwinglian lens, despite the early Churches (who compiled the New Testament) all practicing the Eucharist.t. Orthodox
>>24779462>and interpret everything through their Zwinglian lens,But what if I'm Anglican / Lutheran / Calvinist
