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What is your favorite story arc?
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Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 16 2017, @05:25PM
The Bible's a pretty good work of fiction.
Clearly this is false!
Just consider the mind-boggling complexity of the eye. How does something like that evolve, anyway?
Then, use those miraculous eyes of yours to actually read the bible.
Thusly, it becomes self evident that the Bible is actually a completely terrible work of fiction.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 17 2017, @03:33AM
I want to read the books that the church left OUT of the Bible because they didn't jibe with what the church wanted people to hear.
We've only been allowed to read part of the story arc, cause we only got part of the story.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 17 2017, @10:26PM
Well that's complicated because technically by your definition something like Plutarch or Xenophon qualifies. There's a lot of paganism out there that never made the biblical cut.
Usually "Apocrypha" is defined as stuff that was in and then they yanked it out, or stuff that a substantial subset of the population really liked but the majority didn't dig it (like the Mormon literature)
A couple decades before the internet I obtained a copy of the Christian Apocrypha that claimed to have all the stuff that was biblical-ish but got the axe, and every chapter began with the story of how the Catholic church gave this particular book the axe in such and such year by such and such pope or bishop having a cow over the topic. I read thru it thinking it would be all magical and enlightening and stuff and it ... wasn't. I would imagine all that stuff is freely available online today.
Honestly you're probably better off reading some Plutarch.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:05PM
The Gnostic Gospels are pretty interesting because it gives a different view on the events of Jesus's ministry. There's a lot more eastern mysticism reflected in them. To me it's an interesting window into the philosophical foment before the canon was developed.
In the West our view of Christianity is much more monolithic than it really was. There was the Catholic Church, then the Reformation, and that's pretty much it. Maybe some people are aware of the schism between Rome and Eastern Orthodox churches. A handful know that even centuries later in southern France there was a major splinter movement called Catharism that persisted for a very long time before Rome managed to hang all of them as heretics.
But if you go to Turkey (where the early church took root) and the Middle East and visit holy sites it's quite clear how much disagreement there was on the exact message and form of Christian worship. In Cappadocia you can walk from one cave church with its iconography to another 50 yards away and see a completely different set.
For me, somehow, seeing things through that rawer, more unrefined, less codified form was much more spiritual than walking through St. Peter's.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 17 2017, @02:48PM
For an example of how mindbogglingly boring it is, try reading 1 Chronicles - it's the perfect bedtime reading, because it will put you straight to sleep from boredom. The nearest equivalent is the second book of the Iliad, in which Homer lists out in painstaking detail how many ships each of the Greek city-states sent and who was leading the contingent.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:09PM
Really? The Iliad put me in stitches at points. Spending half a page going on and on about how awesome this dude was, how shiny and strong his shield was, how like a son of Zeus he was, and...he's abruptly cut in half by a spear. We turned it into a drinking game.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 20 2017, @01:01PM
Most of the Iliad is fantastic writing - there's a reason it's stuck around for about 2700 years.
The section I'm talking about, though, is often called the catalogue of ships [poetryintranslation.com], and it's a long list of how many ships each city-state brought and who was leading the contingent. It's almost as boring as the begats in the Bible.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Jerry Smith on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:44PM
We had to learn some of the begats by heart ._.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.