I keep slogging through the Bible. Just got done with Galatians, in which Paul argues that not being circumcised demonstrates superiority in that Christians are following and made whole by the love of and spirit of Christ rather than by fealty to the law. In some sense, we are getting somewhere. In another, who cares?
At a very high level the biggest problem I'm having with the Bible right about now is that, to borrow one of its metaphors, it builds a castle on a little bit too much sand. So much of Jesus's authority seems to derive from magic he performs: multiplying loaves and fishes, raising the dead, healing the sick, etc. Which is all good and well, save for the fact that it's not replicable. Or, rather, that some portion of it (scaled up food production, medicine augmented by hand-washing, antibiotics, pasteurization, etc) has only become replicable thanks to the Enlightenment and scientific method, thousands of years later after a couple of millennia of very slow technological advances while much of the west was waging silly wars in Christ's name. It might perhaps have been better for humanity to have been more focused on abstracting up from Aristotle, assimilating more math from the near East, other technology from China and appreciating the local wisdom and understanding of native peoples around the world as they were encountered, assuming that exploration and colonialism happened in roughly analogous fashion in the absence of a religion that encouraged conquest.
The rabbinical and monastic communities seem to indicate that if you devote your life to studying the holy texts and cross-referencing them, you can get to a good place, ish. But is that the highest and best use of one's time and are those really the best texts to spend all that time reading? Maybe, maybe not. Right now I'm not feeling it. Not sure if I slog on or take a break.
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