America know your Bible!

[Aka-chan]

I do sort of understand your frustration, ShepherdMoon. I've run into friends, too, who were interested in Christianity and even willing to dialogue about it, but had difficult times because the "Christians" they encountered were fanatical about their beliefs without having a good basic knowledge of the Bible. This is indeed somewhat worrisome. I personally like to know what I'm believing in. ^__^

[Sweet Mercury]

what do you mean? english is a romance language with a lot of german and latin roots... the bible was originally written in hebrew and greek.

This is a bit off. The Romance languages refer to the family of languages directly descended from Latin, such as French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and several others. English is a Germanic languange; the Anglo-Saxons who conquered the Isle of Britain came from the German tribes in northern Europe. The Latin influences are the result of the French being introduced to the island after the Norman conquest in 1066. The near isolation allowed the stew of German, Old French, and Celtic and Gaelic influneces to creat the most complicated language on the planet, with by far the largest known lexicon.

But you are correct, the original languages of the Bible are Hebrew, a tiny bit of Arimaic, and Greek, which are completely unrelated to English. (I'm currently looking in my area for Hebrew lessons so I can better understand the Old Testament, as well as some of the Apocryphal Jewish texts.)

I promise, my next post in this thread will be on topic .

[Sweet Mercury]

Just remember, SheperdMoon, that those statistics also probably include non-Christian Americans, and, you can't well expect them to know the Bible.

Hey now, some of us know the Bible very well thank-you-very-much!

[Puritan]

I think her point was more that non-Christians have less of a reason to know the Bible than Christians as we believe the Bible is the word of God. That's not to say that some non-Christians don't know the Bible well, but that it is more disturbing when a Christian population doesn't know the Bible because knowing the Bible should be a major priority for Christians.

[Sweet Mercury]

I'm aware of that, just being a bit silly I guess. Personally, I think that anyone who cares to understand people should care enough to understand the document that has been the guiding force of western civilization since its inception.

You are correct, though. It is sort of interesting, and I assume disturbing from your perspective, to see that a country where the majority of peoploe consider themselves to be Christian are so unfamiliar with its Holy Texts. I wonder, does this point towards ignorance, simple hypocracy, or an unadmitted apostacy?

[dreamhacker]

People have too little knowledge of the Bible, but that isn't limited to just America
And even I, as a Christian, feels I lack knowledge about it =\ *More Bible-reading for me!*

[shooraijin]

I'm aware of that, just being a bit silly I guess. Personally, I think that anyone who cares to understand people should care enough to understand the document that has been the guiding force of western civilization since its inception.

You are correct, though. It is sort of interesting, and I assume disturbing from your perspective, to see that a country where the majority of peoploe consider themselves to be Christian are so unfamiliar with its Holy Texts. I wonder, does this point towards ignorance, simple hypocracy, or an unadmitted apostacy?

Personally, I think it's ignorance, not willful hypocrisy or anything like that. There has been some sort of disembowelment of the majesty of Christ, such that Jesus tends to get addressed as a "nice guy," however, and I think this makes people less inclined to be aware of what's in the Bible when He's "just another religious figure."

[Sweet Mercury]

Personally, I think it's ignorance, not willful hypocrisy or anything like that. There has been some sort of disembowelment of the majesty of Christ, such that Jesus tends to get addressed as a "nice guy," however, and I think this makes people less inclined to be aware of what's in the Bible when He's "just another religious figure."

Well, all signs point towards ignorance, I wasn't trying to be accusitory or anything by suggesting the latter, what I meant by unadmitted apostacy was what you are saying about the watering down of the religion. People tend to have little to no understanding of the religion which the claim to follow. And quite often, they really don't even believe in it. It's the Kierkegaardian concept of religion as a performance contract, as opposed to a genuine faith.

The idea of Christ as a prophet or moral teacher is one that typically crops up in comparitive religious studies, from a non-Christian point of view. Generally, for an outsider to the religion, it's not all that offensive, and for people who don't understand the basics of the religion many people don't see what the big deal is. However, that's obviously offensive for a Christian, who has faith absolutely that Christ was the Son of God. What I find interesting is that many Christians are taking the view of Christ "as a nice guy." You think that is ignorance as well? Or are people making God in their own image because they are afraid of the more difficult implications of their faith?

edit: put hypocrisy where I meant to say ignorance. Sorry.

[Syreth]

Ignorance is an interesting point to bring up. There's a lot of stories about how people set out to study the Bible to disprove it, but end up finding that it's the truth. Unfortunately, I think there are different levels of ignorance. There are uninformed people who would accept Christ when they hear about Him. There are also uninformed people who have heard a little bit about Christ, but are indifferent to Him.

Personally, I think it's the cares of the world that cause this. America has become a giant Laodicea that needs to buy the right kind of gold. To many, I think, religion has become nothing more than an emotional convenience to help them through rough spots in life. God is a vending machine to too many people. I still have to work hard to keep that selfish thought-process out of my mind. It's kinda like shooraijin said about the majesty of Christ.

[Shepherdmoon]

Just remember, SheperdMoon, that those statistics also probably include non-Christian Americans, and, you can't well expect them to know the Bible.

what! the Bible is a fascinating book no matter what your religion.

[mitsuki lover]

You can't read, for example, the speeches of Lincoln without seeing how thoroughly he knew the Bible.The Bible was central to American literature throughout the 19th century.

[Slater]

right. Part of the reason why the Bible is not heavily known here anymore is because it was removed from public schools and replaced with literature of other false religion, and that which does remain for the Bible portrays a false image of Chritians being closeminded, ignorant, and violent people.

[Mave]

You are correct, though. It is sort of interesting, and I assume disturbing from your perspective, to see that a country where the majority of peoploe consider themselves to be Christian are so unfamiliar with its Holy Texts. I wonder, does this point towards ignorance, simple hypocracy, or an unadmitted apostacy?

Personally, my opinion is best summed up as complacency defined as "self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies." All of us are probably guilty of this spiritual state of mind, where we are tempted to think that all will be fine as along as we believe in God and maybe, attend church/read the bible/pray a little every now and then, without putting further thought into it. I believe the desire to go deeper into the faith and working it out by action on one's personal iniatiative is a result of sincere love for God and His ways.

Perhaps this is what Jesus warned us against being lukewarm.

[Sweet Mercury]

Personally, my opinion is best summed up as complacency defined as "self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies." All of us are probably guilty of this spiritual state of mind, where we are tempted to think that all will be fine as along as we believe in God and maybe, attend church/read the bible/pray a little every now and then, without putting further thought into it. I believe the desire to go deeper into the faith and working it out by action on one's personal iniatiative is a result of sincere love for God and His ways.

Perhaps this is what Jesus warned us against being lukewarm.

Ah, complacency would be a good word to use here. I think I addressed some of what you are saying in this post above.

ps: Nice DeviantArt work!

[Technomancer]

For the sake of curiousity, has anyone seen/read John Romer's book/television series "Testament". It really does a very good job of looking at the history of the bible from a scholarly point of view. It would certainly have been an approach that I would have responded to better in high school.

[mitsuki lover]

No,then again I probably I haven't heard about John Romer before this.