When did you first realize the bible, for the most part, is ludicrous fiction.?

Question

Didn't it just always make no sense?

I remember when I was young, and a Christian, the story of Noah was especially hard to swallow.

For over 40 years I was able to believe Jesus was the "son" of God and also see the bible as ONLY metaphors and parables.

Answer 1

I never took the bible to be as literally as my folks did. I took this one year bible study course just on the OT and that’s when I found out that the parts I thought were historical facts don’t even line up. Like the wrong prophet with the wrong king at the wrong battle and it was first written down years after the fact. That’s when I learned about historical fiction. The setting maybe a historical fact, but what they said happened is fiction. That really got the doubting started and the next year I took the same course on the NT and found out the same thing, plus more. Like we don’t know who wrote the gospel, The first one Mark was written at least 30 to 60 years after Jesus died. Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark with them when they wrote their books. John was deliberately written to fill in the gaps and the arguments that the new christian faith was having. These are stories passed on for years and years before written down. None of these are first hand accounts even though they are written that way.
Every religion has their spin on it, but try to find the facts. The conclusion I came up with is that there is little in the bible old or new that is fact. It mentions places that are real, but that’s about it. You can walk the streets where Jesus carried his cross, but did he really carry a cross? I try to find sources out side the bible that mention the same thing the bible does. Like the census that was talked and why Joseph went to Bethlehem. No record of it ever happening outside the bible. This is not the stone age. There was all kinds of trading with other countries. Something should have been mention somewhere about this massive disruption of the economy. Anyhow, we base our faith on the stories of Jesus in the gospels. It they can not be proven as fact, even by the Roman empire, then my faith is based on fiction? What is my foundation? Well, I learned that my foundation is not on a book, but in a feeling I have. The love of Jesus Christ, fictional character or not is a real love. It’s a unconditional Divine love. I just decided to let go of the dogma and go with my feeling. Believe what I want to believe on faith. No one can know that mind of God, so why try. The only thing true in the bible is that we should love one another as (fill in the blank with any loving divinity) has loved us.

Shorty after this I embracced the witch within me and the Goddess within the Divine and became Wiccan.

Answer 2

Well, I was 8 when my grandfather died.....he was a priest and after his death I became very interested in religion and I was thinking about becoming a priest (in our religion women are allowed to be priests).....so I started reading the Bible, but I found many aspects that were extremely difficult to believe and understand. There were lots of contradictions which slowly led me to the conclusion that there are many fictional parts in it and that God doesn't really exist..... Anyway, I never felt His presence in my life or a certain connection to Him. Now I'm an Atheist, as well as my parents (it is very strange that although my grandfather was a priest, none of his children believes in God).....For me, one of the most intriguing parts in the Bible is related to Saul, the first king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel..... God told him to kill his enemies who wanted to attack the surrounding region, but he refused..... And then God punished him..... I don't understand..... If it is stipulated in the Decalogue that we shouldn't kill anybody, why did God punish Saul? Nobody could explain this to me....... I have many questions without answer, many aspects that I don't understand. I can't imagine how people can beliebve some things wuth faith, witout any logical explanation. I always search for scientific explanations for biblical events (like the death of Jesus for example).
There are also gospels that are missing from the Bible and the facts contained by the Bible today were decided in 325, by emperor Constantine I, at the first council of Nicaea. So I would prefer to consider the Bible a metaphorical book which contains some true facts which can be explained scientifically.

Answer 3

I always had a problem with studying a religion that originated in another language, then in High School I took Spanish and realized the amount that is/can be lost in translation. Years later I back up my suspicions via other studies.

I also had issues with the attitude adjustment between the testaments, the trinity concept, Jesus being god - yet praying to god/himself, differences between the gospels, etc. It was in HS while studying Greek mythology that I finally put the concept together of universal truths being told in different societies in story form.

Now historians point out different flaws and apply them to the political issues of those times, supporting old hunches from my youth (I love being proven right and having my ideas supported by others with PhDs)
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FYI- the Noah story crosses cultural lines. It is believed by researchers to have originated in the Mediterranean area near the Dead Sea.

Answer 4

I had never wanted to see the possibility that the bible wasn't the 'word of God.' For that matter, I never wanted to consider the possibility that the 'image of God' created by bible writers, is not one of an all supreme, loving being at all, but rather, a judgemental, insecure, egotistical rogue.

I realized it was 'ludicrous fiction' almost as soon as I found the guts to study it without bias, on my own time. Once I did that, slowly but surely, reason began to kick in and I had more questions than I knew what to do with. It took a full year of extensive bible study- studying each book as is, as well as the origins of each 'book' within the bible, before I knew it was a fabricated piece of . . . literary genius comes to mind. The book is full of allegorical stories, metaphors and archetypes, woven as true stories. It's a work of fiction, marketed and passed off as the word of God himself, but once you pick it apart like I did, you realize God can't be that dumb.

Answer 5

Even growing up, I had questions . . . and yes, I too grew up "fundyroller." And *was* one . . . those who say you "have to understand it by the Holy Spirit," well, yeah, and I've been there, done that too.

It's still horrible, horrible stuff---there are some wonderful allegories and fables and poems and metaphors wound all through it, and in books like Hebrews in the NT, some very advanced esoteric/mystical instructions and teachings . . . but the package, as a whole, is wrapped around one central message:

You are not good enough.
You will never BE good enough.
Your loving Creator thinks you are filthy scum.
You're SO bad he took his anger at you out on his own son.
Somebody else had to die horribly and brutally just because of how rotten YOU are.
Even after THAT, nine out of ten people are going to be horribly and brutally tortured *forever* because you're all evil, rotten, filthy scum.

I mean . . . wow. o_O

Who needs that? What kind of "loving god" would put that kind of s*** on people HE made? It's ludicrous.

The godhs of my ancestors are carved from the earth itself, carried in the blood and hearts of their descendants, immanent within the sunshine and summer rains, springing up within the wheat . . . they are not perfect, or even immortal, but they are OUR godhs, and we . . . are good enough for them.

Answer 6

It never made sense for me, no matter how much everyone else told me it did. I think I'm holybook intolerant, because I could swallow it, but never digest it. It would rumble through my bowels and always come out as crap with no nutrional value or substance. No matter how much I read, how much I was talked to, how many other people tried to give me their understanding of it, I could never digest it.

Plain and simple, it didn't jive with my real world experience. I can blame my parents for that, because early on even though they tried to teach me religion, they also taught me that Santa and the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and comic book characters were all fiction. They had no idea that I would be able to think critically about all things and discern fact from fiction from then on. My mom is still a religious christian, but even she is skeptical of some of the things christianity and preachers try to push on her.

Answer 7

I think, deep down, I knew since day one. I mean the things that happen in the bible are barbaric, senseless and cruel. Glossing over to the good parts do not eradicate these things. Realistically, I think I knew the bible was bunk after reading it cover to cover when I was 19.

Answer 8

Just like you... I saw through the BS of the bible as a child - what's more is that every kid can tell the difference between the whoppers told in the bible and the real facts all around them. It is very difficult, is it. So how in the world did so many people learn to be so dumb at such young ages...?

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Answer 9

Most of the Bible makes sense to me as a Christian.

There are some things I don't understand, but I accept them on faith.

The bottom line is this: the whole point of Bible belief is just that -- If you believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, then you have a different viewpoint than if you don't believe that.

I don't think that questions of this nature are going to change anyone's beliefs....they either believe it's the inerrant, inspired Word of God, or they don't.

Answer 10

I find the jesus parts of the bible to be just as unbelieveable as the rest of it.