Still changing.
What I have seen and what I have experienced is otherworldly. I am in a new place as it seems. Sad is it may seem I still fight for my beliefs, not that they be heard, but be respected just as I respect any person who does no harm.
There is new life, there is more pupose than I could have possibly thought. Surely I am here for some purpose. I won't ask, I won't question whatever is The Lord's will. I'm going to paste a favorite piece from Ecclesiastes (or The Preacher) Chapter 11, Verses 9 - 10;
9. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment."
10. "Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity."
One of my favorite bits out of the book. This of course has nothing to do with the next few paragraphs to come.
It seems that the book (the Holy Bible), as well as the whole book in its entirety is a great work of man. What I find very interesting is that we can find very many different meanings on just on subject. People will interpret the piece literally, figuratively or metaphorically. However it's not about what someone chooses to find in the book. It's actually about finding the truth in the book, hence bible scholars and theologians come in.
Now that we (the ones who study the text) are going back and studying the ancient "old testament" Hebrew scrolls, we are finding that a single word in Hebrew unlike it's English counterpart can mean almost 15 different things in English. Leaving almost no truth in, say an Authorized King James bible.
A well know English translation used for 4 centuries (also tends to be my favorite due to it's English historicity).
The Bible even interpreted properly can still be slightly incorrect. Although we can and do get a good meaning from translated English scripture it could be even more of a great book translated correctly. This applies also to recent English translations as well, which are really more of a modern English translation from the Middle English translation (KJV).
Just working on my bible studies. :)
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Comments
Yeah...
I really do need to find the time to read the Bible. If nothing else (and I'm far from ruling out 'else,' now) it's a great work of literature. That's a beautiful passage you just pasted, too.
Oh,
well if you do decide when to read it what I would recommend is a system of how much to read in a day in order to finish it in a predetermined amount of time. Like how some people actually manage to read it in a year and so forth.
I do think that it's a very interesting work of man.
Thanks for the advice -
Thanks for the advice - that's how I'll do it. And I like that you call it a 'work of man,' especially. A lot of people forget that that's what it is, or think that the fact that it is a work of man makes it worthless.
I think if I had a couple
I think if I had a couple hundred year's time on my hands, I'd learn old hebrew, middle english, greek, and a few other languages that the bible was translated into over time, and read them, compare them, and make connections between the differences in meaning and the cultures preceding and following those translations.
Translations say so much about a language and a culture, as does the bible's beauty.
oops,
I forgot about the new testament there... I guess I got ahead of myself when writing this. Had you not included "...greek..." in your post, this may have gone unnoticed.
I Agree about how you say translations can illustrate past cultures and languages.
weren't both translated to
weren't both translated to greek? I remember from my Jewish history class learning about this whole controversy in the first temple period (Israel under greek rule) where they ended up translating the Torah into the vernacular, which would've been greek at the time....
Might be wrong though.
Yes,
you are the one who is right! Afterall I've just jumped into studying the bible. You are the one with the schooling whereas I've had no proper teaching.
I'll learn though. :)
my schooling is barely
my schooling is barely proper and not at all complete.
I took a semester abroad in israel last spring, junior year of highschool. they taught us a lot, but there were gaps. the more modern we got the more biased it was. but it's nice to have a jumping-off point for the learning.
i hope you'll still linger in here and share what you study. Bible study is great.
Oh,
well that's still more than I could ever say. Gosh, I'd love to see Israel.
And I will still stay here, this is the only place I really know where I can write journals and know some people. :)
it's beautiful. it's a hard
it's beautiful. it's a hard place to love, but I love it anyway.
Hmmm
I've read a bunch of books from the Bible, but all of them, I have a hard time.
I mean some of them are good, like Genesis is a pretty good read, but it's a lot better mostly when I look back.
Because when you're actually reading the thing, there is a lot of filler there.
I used to have a hard time reading the Lord of the Rings, because the 1st book was so hard to get through for me. I tried 3 times over about 4 years, then succeeded about a year ago, as my reading stamina improved.
But trying to just read the Bible for extended periods of time is just too hard for me. There are pages and pages of things just talking about genealogical and then X took a wife Y, and was 300 years old when he had his son Z, and lived 268 years after his Z's birth, making the total years of X 568.
And then it would talk about Z and his children, and so forth, for paragraphs and pages.
So I just had to make it habit to skip past whenever I saw it going into genealogical refernces, otherwise I'd never even have gotten through Genesis.
And the filler extends to other areas and other books of course, but if you can read the entire Bible, in less than a year, I will give you my admiration.
ANYWAY, basically, the Bible is VERY hard to read, over a thousand pages, and lots of filler that's not exactly exciting, but if you can get yourself to read the whole thing, I think the general sense you'll have of it afterwards looking back will be something amazing.
No one escapes from life alive
Well,
it's not "filler". The books in the old testament altogether form a history book of sorts. The areas of genealogy are very important to scholars and theologians as it provides a family tree of sorts.
I can admit that I am guilty of "speed reading" through many of the "family trees". And also I admit skipping MANY parts in Leviticus, geez talk about pages of proper offerings and so many laws. lol!
As for the Bible in a year, not going to happen with me. I have far too many things going on, someday I'll see the ending of the Bible . :)