A New Perspective
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
I realized earlier this week that I haven’t touched the Bible (except to look up a few random verses here and there) since I became an atheist. When I read a thread about Lot that made me realize how horrendous the Bible can actually be, I decided to read it again without the rose colored glasses and write what I think about it now that I am no longer a Christian. It will take me awhile, but I will post thoughts as I have them. I kept all of my old Bibles (as in, different versions, not all my old Bibles since childhood), some of which are annotated by thoughts I had while reading it through as a Christian (though not many as I had just gotten a new one not too long before it all came crashing down). Should be interesting!
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May 10th, 2010 at 8:23 am
Hey, found your site through the Friendly Atheist blog. Good stuff!
I think this is a great idea! I did much the same thing a few years ago after I had undergone a deconversion from conservative Christianity to a more emergent/progressive version of faith. Reading the Bible without those fundamentalist lenses was very eye-opening to me.
However, I wonder whether with this project you will attempt to read the Bible entirely on your own, or whether you will still consult some actual critical scholarship on the text (i.e. actual historical critical commentary, not faith based stuff). Not that you need someone else to tell you what to think about it, but just in the interest of responsible intellectual inquiry. After all, I don’t think I could just pick up some other old text from an ancient near eastern culture (say the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bhagadvadgita, or even the Iliad) and think that I, as a 21st century American, was necessarily equipped to understand what it was talking about without some help from historians and other experts on that time period and culture. I’d recommend approaching the Bible the same way – get some help with the context so you can understand what it’s actually about. Otherwise you’re just replacing your former Southern Baptist lenses with 21st century American atheist lenses.
In the interest of full-disclosure I should admit that I am a currently in a PhD program to become a historian, so I guess I have a bias toward seeing people engage in academically solid readings of ancient texts, and not just personalistic and impressionistic readings based on their own cultural presuppositions. I apologize in advance if that’s too nerdy or too much work