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Epic Bible Quotes... That Fundies Never Use


MrsKay

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No quotes to add, but judging by what you all have posted, I'm pretty sure most fundies have never read the whole Bible, and just take their pastor's/husband's/father's word as the whole truth. If they have read it, there's either a lot of denial or extremely bad reading comprehension going on.

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That passage from Micah is the Best. Bible. Passage. Ever.

In the pilot for The Waltons TV show, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, the kid's are all gathered near Godsey's store where a missionary is giving out prizes to the children who can recite a Bible verse. Erin runs up and says "Jesus wept". Little Elizabeth doesn't know a verse from memory, but Mary Ellen does. She whispers a good verse to Elizabeth to give to the missionary lady. Her verse: the one from Song of Songs about the breasts being like two young roes feeding among the lilies.

We had the passage from Deuteronomy about marrying your brother's widow taken to heart by one of my great-great grandfathers. My gggf asked his brother to marry his wife and help raise their seven children if he did not return from the Civil War. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Fredricksburg, Virginia. So his brother did as he promised. He married his brother's widow, took care of the kids and fathered his own passel of young'uns.

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We had the passage from Deuteronomy about marrying your brother's widow taken to heart by one of my great-great grandfathers. My gggf asked his brother to marry his wife and help raise their seven children if he did not return from the Civil War. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Fredricksburg, Virginia. So his brother did as he promised. He married his brother's widow, took care of the kids and fathered his own passel of young'uns.

My great grandfather married his brother's widow after his first wife died after childbirth. I always got the impression that his main motivation was to have a mother for his children.

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I forgot my favourite one ever! Jesus and his tantrum at the fig tree.

Mark 11:12-14

Idgi...I mean he is supposed to be god...and he gets angry at the fig tree because it isn't bearing fruit in the off season? He made it do that! Not only that, but shouldn't he be able to make the damn tree sprout fairy floss or turn it into the Magic Faraway Tree if he wanted to?

426245_2875003526922_2068695077_n.jpg

I've always appreciated the verses where god sends bears to maul some kids for making fun of Elisha's baldness. How great is the mercy of the LORD? Not very :roll:

Plus that whole fucked-up story of Lot and his daughters is a train wreck from beginning to end. One more reason not to take any of those laws in Leviticus too seriously, since god apparently has no problem with incest when it suits his purposes.

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A lot of these verses are actually ones that fundies are a lot more likely to embrace than moderate Christians. Normal Christians tend to ignore the incestuous stuff, like where Adam and Eve's grandchildren, or the story of Lot and his daughters. Not fundies, they love to talk about incest. I don't get it. They're also often happy to say that unicorns or dragons must have existed because the Bible mentions them, and they're a lot less likely than moderate Christians to be bothered by stories of God murdering children or any of the millions of other people he murdered in the Bible. I think fundies actually like all the fucked up stuff in the Bible.

"Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." - Ezekiel 23:19-20

I was browsing through my Bible during a Bible study once and found this verse completely by accident. I didn't completely understand it, but I thought it was funny, so I asked the Bible study leader about it. She read it out loud, turned bright red (I can still clearly picture her face), and said she didn't want to talk about it.

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Deuteronomy 28:53-58

53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

Again, this is god discussing a curse he will put on the Hebrews for disobedience. It is not just a historical reporting of events.

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It just freakin' AMAZES me that people believe this crap. It is so clearly written by the political powers-that-be from that time period, for the expressed purpose of scaring them into compliance. Nothing like dangling these horror stories and threats of eternal hell over ignorant people to get them to obey you. It's 100% about control, not love.

And of course, women can't do anything right, and are treated worse than cattle. What a surprise.

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But Rabshakeh said, "Has my master sent me only to your master and to you, to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?" (Isaiah 36:12)
:cry:

If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. (Deutronomy 25:11-12)
:o

Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish. (Proverbs 31:6)
- they surely meant ginger ale and grape juice though.
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H'mmm, I thought this was going to be about verses more along the lines of Micah 6:8:

He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justly,

To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?

Though in the end, it may all be the same.

:romance-heart: I have the gender-inclusive version of this verse on a magnet in an inconspicuous place in my cube at work.

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426245_2875003526922_2068695077_n.jpg

I've always appreciated the verses where god sends bears to maul some kids for making fun of Elisha's baldness. How great is the mercy of the LORD? Not very :roll:

Plus that whole fucked-up story of Lot and his daughters is a train wreck from beginning to end. One more reason not to take any of those laws in Leviticus too seriously, since god apparently has no problem with incest when it suits his purposes.

2 Kings 2:23! It is such a great story.

It just freakin' AMAZES me that people believe this crap.

I was talking to my mum about this the other day. My parents are atheists and I wasn't raised religious. I told her that I was in my early teens before I put two and two together and figured out that people actually believe this crap. I thought it was just something people did...like an acting class, or community group. I was pretty much floored when I figured this all out.

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I am in no way defending the atrocities catalogued in the Bible, but I would like to point a few things out.

A note on Levirate Marriage: The preservation of a person's name was important across the Ancient Near East. What's more, there was perhaps no lower social status – excepting those with leprosy and other contagious conditions – than that of a childless widow. The Lervitate Marriage was meant to preserve the name a man who had died childless, and also to ensure that his widow was provided for in a culture with only a limited form of social welfare. The first child born to the remarried widow – usually the first male, but females could also qualify in some circumstances - would inherit the land of the man who had died. Subsequent children would be eligible to inherit from the widow's new husband.

Brothers who failed follow through with their duty to the widow of their kin were subject to something that reads an awful lot like public humiliation (Deut. 25:9-10).

Whole areas of this custom have been lost to time. In the Book of Ruth, the title character – not an Israelite at all, but a native of Moab - ended up marrying Boaz. Boaz was not a brother to Ruth's late husband, but a more distant kinsman. Naomi, also a widow, was taken in by Boaz as well. There is no evidence he married her. There's a hint that Boaz did this out of goodness.

Incest: Lot's daughters, who thought to repopulate the world, were only one example of incest in early Biblical stories. Abraham and Sarai were half-siblings. Moses' parents were aunt and nephew (Ex. 6:20).

It was only later, when the Levitical laws were passed, that incest – among other sexual practices - was forbidden.

The Bible is not a book. It is a collation of different documents written across time for a variety of purposes. There are ancient arguments across its pages (for example between the Book of Ruth and the commands of Nehemiah). Some authors wrote what they considered to be history, without passing any sort of moral judgment on the morality (or lack) concerning what they recorded.

Some people claim to respect the Bible – to love it - who nonetheless know nearly nothing about it.

Some people claim to respect the Bible to such an extent that they will accept anything it says as being right, even if a specific Biblical author made no moral judgment on the subject in question. Extremists will defend the most horrendous practices. (What appears to be Elisha's pride, for example, although he was not taunted by children but rather by older youths – not that this makes much difference when considering how disproportionate the punishment was to the crime.)

Some people reject the Bible completely – a better course than the one taken by those discussed above.

Amy Jill Levine, an Orthodox Jewish scholar who studies the New Testament (in part because she has an in interest in Jewish literature of that period), has chosen what I personally consider the more honorable path: She says, without mincing words, that there are parts of the sacred book – the book she likely venerates as an actual record of God's dealings with her people – that she repudiates utterly. She doesn't gloss over them, apologize for them, or pretend there was ever a time when these behaviors were moral. She shows her respect for the book by condemning the wrong using the very tools she found in that self-same book.

Some people, such as Levine, respect the TANAKH by reading all of it and then looking at the God of creation, the author of compassion, and saying, “I repudiate the savagery I read. I repudiate the slavery, the genocide, the mistreatment of rape victims. I do not merely ignore these outrages, but flatly condemn them. If you are the just God I believe you to be, then you will surely understand.' (One of Levine's lectures – and she is a fascinating person – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOobQiRAa8. I genuinely think many of you would enjoy it.)

I know others here vehemently disagree with me, and I understand that, but I think the Bible is the finest literary work ever undertaken – a document that preserves oral stories perhaps 5000 years old, written and collated over a period of 1500 years. A book filled with questions and arguments – for example, about the existence of an afterlife – as well as metaphor and poetry. (I cannot stress enough that many parts of the Bible are metaphorical. Jesus would divide the Earth? I'd say that's pretty much happened already.)

But ultimately there is a promise - one worth hoping for:

“And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the failing together; And a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox.

“The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.†-- Isaiah 11:6-9

Oh, and Caelem – Micah 6:8 is among my all-time favorite verse.

Ultimately, it does not matter if there is an afterlife. I think there is, but I try to live as if there is not. I admit it; I fail so badly sometimes, but I want to do justly, love mercy, and walk with humility.

Unfortunately, some of the people we discuss here – and in fact some 'religious people' in politics - actually forget that verse (and so many others like it) to the detriment of those around them. (They have been given power, and misused it.)

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Matthew 6

6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Prayer

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

How many fundies take notice of that?

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Thanks. I'm going to look into her work. It sounds very interesting.

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I'm not too fond of random out-of-context snippets, but would suggest:

Song of Songs. The whole book. It's frankly erotic, and it celebrates an inter-racial romance to boot.

All of Chapters 4 and 5 of Judges. Deborah is clearly celebrated as a judge, prophetess, great political leader (saying that she led for 40 years with peace is about the highest form of praise that she could get) and military commander. She and Yael, who ultimately killed the enemy commander, were the ultimate in Girl Power.

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I was talking to my mum about this the other day. My parents are atheists and I wasn't raised religious. I told her that I was in my early teens before I put two and two together and figured out that people actually believe this crap. I thought it was just something people did...like an acting class, or community group. I was pretty much floored when I figured this all out.

We used to sing christmas songs in school, about half of which were present/santa/reindeer/kangaroo themed, and half of which were Jesus/three-kings etc themed. I assumed they were all fun stories people told each other to make winter seem less crap. I too was pretty floored when I realized that, no, people really *do* believe it, and take it literally at that! (But not, for some baffling reason to my little brain, in Santa, who at least had the evidence of presents on his side!). To be honest, I still find it a bit hard to fathom.

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Numbers 5:14-15, 17, 22, 24 (God's Word Translation)

14 “A husband may have a fit of jealousy and suspect his wife, whether she was actually unfaithful or not. 15 He must then take his wife to the priest... 17 Then the priest will take holy water in a piece of pottery and put some dust from the floor of the tent into the water.

22 ‘May this water that can bring a curse go into your body and make your stomach swell and your uterus drop!’

“Then the woman will say, ‘Amen, amen!’ 24 Then he will have the woman drink the bitter water that can bring the curse. This water will go into her and become bitter.

So according to this the best way to find out whether your wife has cheated or not is to take her to a priest who will then make her drink water with dust in and if it makes her belly swell or her uterus drop then you were right to be suspicious.

The part that really makes me stabby is when the woman is told to say Amen! after hearing that she has to drink dusty water.

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So according to this the best way to find out whether your wife has cheated or not is to take her to a priest who will then make her drink water with dust in and if it makes her belly swell or her uterus drop then you were right to be suspicious.

The part that really makes me stabby is when the woman is told to say Amen! after hearing that she has to drink dusty water.

The Sotah.

You may find it interesting to learn that the rabbis themselves actually abolished this practice in about 50 CE. They discussed not only the ritual, but the need for its discontinuation, in the Mishnah (although I don't recall where except that it was in the Sotah tractate itself).

Some of the rabbis saw the practice as unfair and cruel. This also demonstrates that they saw Biblical law as capable of evolving.

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I always thought they were inducing an abortion so that there is no chance of the seed of another man to enter the home.

It certainly might have been.

When I looked for information about it before, I couldn't find documentation of an actual case where the ritual was inflicted on a specific woman.

The full extent of the ritual, and the reason for it - well, those are questions best left to a rabbi. I honestly don't know.

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Me Vs 6

it rocks my world. This thread.

I had quite an interesting discussion with my Father. He can like this quote Bible..verse. He was brought up in the 1940's. In a very Catholic way. He was sent to the Jesuits.

I am his daughter but yet unlike him I cannot reference any bible verse at all. It was a cultural thing as he said...'Mam thought it was a good thing I was accepted.'

It was a free education. He used it well.

He is 80 next year. He reckons what it taught him is 2 things ...His words.

If God made us in his own image. I admire him. But he knew by doing that he gave us free will.

The only sin is to impose in any way your will on another. That covers everything. You do not do it, that is all. AND remember (my name) Men made law. Always question that...always. Interpretation, It will be what people desire. Question that too.

I do admire him.. But he could reference any verse, passage in the bible. Sorry to be a bit Dad worship :)

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We used to sing christmas songs in school, about half of which were present/santa/reindeer/kangaroo themed, and half of which were Jesus/three-kings etc themed. I assumed they were all fun stories people told each other to make winter seem less crap. I too was pretty floored when I realized that, no, people really *do* believe it, and take it literally at that! (But not, for some baffling reason to my little brain, in Santa, who at least had the evidence of presents on his side!). To be honest, I still find it a bit hard to fathom.

That is pretty much how I saw it as well. Also, Santa is awesome. :)

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