Quote:
Originally Posted by Jel
I think he was way ahead of his time, used analogies to illustrate some pretty deep thinking, and basically got *extremely* misinterpreted by a mixture of idiots/simpletons/geniuses who wanted to control the masses, over a period of xyz years
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This is pretty much the truth, the writers of the Bible wrote metaphorically, it didn't matter to them what was fact or fiction, they weren't trying to delude people. People were not sceptical of anything two thousand years ago, this made it easy for religious/political leaders to persuade people that the scriptures were factual. The Old Testament is more a political manifesto than anything else, its purpose was to give the Israelites an identity, to bond together to create and defend a nation in a part of the world where they were surrounded by much bigger, older,stronger nations/tribes continually at war for more land and riches. What could be more inspirational than learning that your small rather insignificant tribe of people's god was THE GOD, the Creator of everything above and below the stars and you had been hand picked for a special mission, to save the world from wickedness. The Old Testament reads to me like The Bad News Bears Go To Canaan.
I read an interesting thing not long ago, that until a culture has a written multi-syllabic language where the eyes/brain can follow sequentially that people are unable to discern fantasy from reality.