Reading religious texts in full

[Mole]

Well there you go cafe, even he's urging you not to pay attention to him.

It's true we live in the attention economy - why, you have just elected your first all celebrity President.

So I am grateful when you pay me attention - it's payday, I say, he's paying attention.

The cruelest most unkind thing you could ever do, Peguy, is press the Ignore Button.

I don't know whether it is Christian charity or whether you dare not take your eyes off me, but I know I can rely on you to pay me a fair day's wages in attention.

You have made me attention rich as indeed has everyone one else here.

And I am grateful for your attention.

 

[Totenkindly]

I read the Bible from cover to cover and found not one joke or even a funny story. And as the Bible is the inspired word of God, I presume God has no sense of humour.

Oh, come on!

You can't begin to tell me that the whole story of Ehud sneaking in the enemy king's bathroom and stabbing him so hard that the knife got lost in the king's sizeable gut, while he was sitting on the toilet of all things, and then Ehud climbing down the wall and escaping into the night... while all the aids were afraid to disturb the king during his bowel-cleansing repast and so didn't find his dead body until the next day wasn't funny.

Or when Jesus clearly says what he's trying to say about the Bread of Life, and all the disciples stand around like guys in a Don Martin MAD Magazine cartoon saying things like, "Wait, is he saying he's hungry? Should one of us fetch food?" and you just SEE Jesus rolling his eyes at their cluelessness, wondering why the hell he hadn't picked up his disciplines at the local school rather than off the fishing dock?

Or Paul saying all of our righteousness is like "shit" (pretty literally... or also the equivalent of used Maxi-pads)? Or, when he's complaining about the Jews who insist on circumcision being essential to salvation, says, "If they're going to say such stupid things, I wish they'd go all the way and cut it ALL off!" Or at another location, where he clearly says the people who oppose him should go to hell... ("And yes, I mean it," he repeats, "they should go to hell!") Comments like that by Paul make me laugh just imagining what the evangelicals would say if they realized the Bible they're following actually isn't nearly as sanitized as they would like to make it.

No kidding. The Bible is full of this, if you actually pay attention to the content. You can't miss it.

Or maybe you just don't find these things funny?

... of course, looking at your goofy "entrancing" pun... maybe this whole post was a ploy to mess with our heads.

 

[Mole]

... of course, looking at your goofy "entrancing" pun...

Of course there is no pun. When you enter a trance, you are entrancing. And when you are in a trance, you are entranced.

Good heavens, that great trance induction, the Mass, begins with the Entrance.

And each of our homes has an entrance. And it is through this entrance, we enter the trance of our home.

Have you noticed that each home is quite different, with different smells and different habits written all over the place. This is why each home needs its own special entrance.

Whereas the Mass introduces us to a home shared by all of us - so the Mass has only one Entrance right across the world.

So you see, there is no pun - it is literally true.

 

[Totenkindly]

Of course there is no pun. When you enter a trance, you are entrancing. And when you are in a trance, you are entranced...

Well, you can't say I didn't give you an out.

 

[cafe]

Do you really want to argue whether the Bible is a funny book or not?

Or do you just want to call me a highbrow?

I remember the, "Know Nothing Party", of which Palin is a member - winking at the Alaskan hillbillies and across the TV, at all of us.

Calling the low brow, the ignorant and the vicious together.

Sneering at the elites and the highbrows - just as you do here.

It's called reverse snobbery.

It was the only explanation I could think of for your inability to see the humor in what, to me, are humorous situations in the Bible. I don't care if you are highbrow or lowbrow or bushy-browed, to be honest. I've noticed that my taste in movies, for instance, is very different from those with real critical expertise and I dislike most jazz, which is held in great esteem by many of the best musicians. I love comedies like The Princess Bride, Pootie Tang, Raising Arizona. I love the music of Weird Al and Jonathan Coultan. One of my greatest blessings in life is my husband's silly sense of humor. I truly love to laugh and can find humor in many things. I do not know why that is untrue of you, but I do not think my sense of humor is the result of my being entranced.

To me, the Bible is full of the tragic, the horrifying, the heartwarming, the mind-numbingly boring, the incomprehensible, and the humorous. You don't feel that way. That's fine. People can have different experiences with literature and the arts, that does not mean that those who have a different experience than ourselves are entranced. Humor is most definitely too subjective to make that kind of broad generalization. It's insulting to do so.

 

[Mole]

Well, you can't say I didn't give you an out.

You don't understand what I have written but don't know it.

 

[TheLastMohican]

Also Paul, when he stands before the Pharisees and Sadducees and declares that is his belief in the resurrection of the dead that has landed him in troubled, knowing full well it was going to start a huge fight between those factions was really funny, too.

I liked Paul a lot more after reading that part.

Or, when he's complaining about the Jews who insist on circumcision being essential to salvation, says, "If they're going to say such stupid things, I wish they'd go all the way and cut it ALL off!"

That part was great too. Yet my Bible study group seemed to pass over it without understanding. Nobody even smirked (except me).

These and many other parts of the Bible are funny because they were not meant to be. Reading about such absurd spectacles in the solemn language typical of scripture can be hilarious. Part of the joke is wondering whether the people thousands of years ago got the joke.

 

[Haight]

Three posts moved to the following location:

http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/graveyard/10611-i-m-insulting-you-you-re-insulting-me.html

Victor, stop derailing threads.

 

[edcoaching]

I read the Bible from cover to cover and found not one joke or even a funny story. And as the Bible is the inspired word of God, I presume God has no sense of humour.

This is a very peculiar conclusion to come to, I think you will agree. So I looked around for anything else that lacks a sense of humour. And guess what, I found it.

Trance has no sense of humour for the very simple reason that by entering a trance, we progressively turn off our cognitive faculties. And to my surprise, I discovered that the sense of humour is a cognitive faculty.

So I was led to the conclusion that the Bible was written in a trance.

And we know that the easiest way to induce a trance in others, is to first induce a trance in oneself - and this is just what the Bible has done.

So we conclude that the Bible was written in a trance and induces a trance in those that read it.

And the purpose of entrancement is simply to suspend disbelief. And of course belief is the essence of Christianity.

And this is why the Bible is entrancing.

I laughed out loud when the servant fell asleep when Paul was preaching and Paul fell out the window.

Adam's "She made me do it" was a rib-cracker too.

James and John competing to be at Jesus' right hand?

Balaam and his donkey?

Moses trying to get out of going before Pharoah?

 

[edcoaching]

To the Op:

Like yes . . . several times.

In our research on type and spirituality, which involved interviews and e-correspondence with people of each type from all over the world, it was mostly the INTPs who said they'd read religious texts cover to cover. Usually it wasn't just the main one from their own cultural faith but the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon and so on. They said, "How can you say you believe anything unless you understand it and also understand the alternatives?"

They also were most likely to pick up on bizarre patterns. Like why the obsession on what we wear on our heads?

INTPs all emailed us their answers. ESFJs all had us over for coffee.

 

[edcoaching]

It's true we live in the attention economy - why, you have just elected your first all celebrity President.

Actually, no. We started the tradition with Washington, moved on with Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhauer, Kennedy...oh, and Reagan was actually an actor, remember?

 

[Mole]

I laughed out loud when the servant fell asleep when Paul was preaching and Paul fell out the window.

Adam's "She made me do it" was a rib-cracker too.

James and John competing to be at Jesus' right hand?

Balaam and his donkey?

Moses trying to get out of going before Pharoah?

I think you might agree with me that the Bible isn't intentionally funny. However I do accept that you interpret parts of the Bible as being funny.

I am very interested in the nature of holy books, the Bible being one of them. And it seems to me that they are all written in a similar way. They are written to evoke a particular response in the listener or reader.

These holy books provide meaning for whole cultures across millennia so they need to reach us at a very deep level. And they do.

If their intention was to amuse us by telling jokes or funny stories, they would fail in their mission.

In fact they induce awe and explain the whole universe. And indeed even how we are to behave.

They couldn't do this at a shallow level so they have to go down deep.

I have an unfamiliar way of talking about this in terms of Dennis Weir's Trance Theory.

So I say, in order to go deep and do their job, they induce deep levels of trance.

And as humour is a cognitive faculty and not a trance faculty, humour does not figure largely in any holy books. Except of course in interpretation.

If this is correct, it throws an interesting light on how religions are transmitted.

It would also throw light on how MBTI is transmitted and how it is so successful.

 

[edcoaching]

On the other hand, if one admits the existence of a creator (which can be a stretch I know) then that being has to have a sense of humor. Have you seen a giraffe eat?

 

[Haight]

In our research on type and spirituality, which involved interviews and e-correspondence with people of each type from all over the world, it was mostly the INTPs who said they'd read religious texts cover to cover. Usually it wasn't just the main one from their own cultural faith but the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon and so on. They said, "How can you say you believe anything unless you understand it and also understand the alternatives?"

They also were most likely to pick up on bizarre patterns. Like why the obsession on what we wear on our heads?

INTPs all emailed us their answers. ESFJs all had us over for coffee.

Well, you got me there.

As a youth, I read the Torah every year because that's part of the tradition within Judaism (The Rabbi's divided it into weekly readings, along with the Talmud, that would culminate with its completion at the end of the Jewish calendar year).

But when I was eighteen, I remember thinking, "Now that I'm outside of my isolated Jewish community, I'm going to be faced with people telling me what's in the Bible over and over for the rest of my life. Therefore, I'm going to read it, study it, and know more about it then those that purport to "follow" it." And as you stated, I thought if there's truth in it, I'll find that along the way.

So I spent about a year or so reading the King James version three times over. At that point, I thought I was competent, so I put it on the bookshelf.

The only time it really came in handy was during my arguments with the Jews for Jesus folks that would proselytize around the LA spots that I'd frequent.

Good times . . . good times.

 

[Mole]

Actually, no. We started the tradition with Washington, moved on with Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhauer, Kennedy...oh, and Reagan was actually an actor, remember?

I don't like to keep on disagreeing with you but Celebrity Culture is only a recent phenomenon.

All your Presidents from about 1946 to 2008 were Cold War Presidents. And your President elect is the first Non-Cold War President. And the first pure celebrity President.

And perhaps because you live in a celebrity culture, you take it for granted and so it becomes invisible to you. So you are able to say, all your Presidents are celebrities - and this is the same as saying none are - and this is because your culture is invisible to you. After all, fish didn't discover water.

But it is plain that Celebrity Culture permeates your whole society, even as we speak - reaching all the way to the White House.

This has enormous implications for how we deal with you, as an economy is based on scarcity. But, in the West, we have overcome the scarcity of goods. But the proliferation of the electronic media has made Attention scarce. So we must economise with attention. And so we say we live in the Attention Economy.

I don't know how this will play out. But we have a Military Treaty with you, and a Land Treaty, and an Economic Treaty. But we do not have an Attention Treaty with you.

This may seem fanciful at the moment - but as we compete for your Attention and the Attention of your government, we will be looking at ways to grow Attention and ensure Attention is fairly distributed.

And the Attention Economy, as you note, is the economy of the Celebrity Culture.

And at the moment, as you also note, the Celebrity Culture is being addressed on moral grounds. But is won't be long before it is addressed on economic grounds. Certainly by us.

 

[Mole]

On the other hand, if one admits the existence of a creator (which can be a stretch I know) then that being has to have a sense of humor. Have you seen a giraffe eat?

Are you suggesting that God created giraffes out of a sense of humour?

Or did giraffes evolve with the same DNA that makes us?

 

[BerberElla]

Has anyone here read in it's entirety, like from cover to cover like a normal book, any religious texts (i.e. Bible, Quran, Talmud, etc.)?

I've only ever met one person who did this with The Bible.

Yes, once through the Quran completely, plus the hadiths (which are an even bigger collection of books than the Quran), now I use them as references alot.

It was tough when I got started because you need to get into the swing of the old style of writing, but once you get your groove going it becomes quite easy to read.

I would like to read the bible next but I haven't found the time to.

 

[edcoaching]

Are you suggesting that God created giraffes out of a sense of humour?

Or did giraffes evolve with the same DNA that makes us?

Really neither. I'm saying that given a look at life on this planet, if there is a Creator than that being must be giggling at at least some of what goes on. Giraffes evolved purposely. But their tongues are pretty funny.

 

[Bella]

Yeah, God must have the best sense of humour, ever.

 

[FFF]

I've read everything in the Bible at least once except Jeremiah and Ezekial. The Bible isn't a book you're going to read one time and understand. I'm still trying to get it figured out, and it's been years.