What's the reason for the drop in the number of people reading the Word of God? Is it just phones and social media frying people's brains and putting their souls at risk? A culture of hedonism? The two bookstores near my apartment don't even sell the Bible anymore.
If you didnt grow up with it none of it makes any sense.
Even if you do grow up with it, when you read it as an adult, it makes no sense.
There are literally millions of Christians who didn't grow up with it. There always have been.
Not true at all. I was raised without a religion.
They let others dictate where their loyalties lie. There is nothing wrong with being a sheep, just make sure you have chosen the right Shepard. God please you brother anon
How am I supposed to read this book anyways? I don't even understand wtf I'm reading and I don't say that as
Start with the old testament
So all I have to do to get a cutie pie wife is offer her father a hundred foreskins?
Nah I would say start with the gospels, if you're brand new to the Bible the Old Testament will put you off.
I wonder why
Acts and the letters are the worst part of the New Testament. They are boring and too long.
Acts is cool and full of memorable scenes.
>Pentecost
>the confrontation with Simon Magus
>the debating with Greek philosophers at the Acropolis
>the bars of Peter's prison supernaturally rattling open
>the curse and death of Herod Agrippa
>Paul's shipwreck adventures in Malta
The letters are supposed to be theological and didactic; they aren't meant to be "entertaining."
>Acts is cool and full of memorable scenes.
Ripped-off from Odysseus. Start with the Greeks.
Outlandish bullshit with no actual backing in the field of biblical studies.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_MacDonald#Homeric_epics_and_the_Gospel_of_Mark
>MacDonald's thesis has not found acceptance and has received strong criticism by other scholars.[5][6][7][8][9] Karl Olav Sandnes notes the vague nature of alleged parallels as the "Achilles' heel" of the "slippery" project. He has also questioned the nature of the alleged paralleled motifs, seeing MacDonald's interpretations of common motives. He states, "His [MacDonald's] reading is fascinating and contributes to a reader-orientated exegesis. But he fails to demonstrate authorial intention while he, in fact, neglects the OT intertextuality that is broadcast in this literature."
>Daniel Gullotta from Stanford similarly writes "MacDonald’s list of unconvincing comparisons goes on and has been noted by numerous critics. Despite MacDonald’s worthy call for scholars to reexamine the educational practices of the ancient world, all of the evidence renders his position of Homeric influential dominance untenable."[10]
And my post is about Acts which has nothing to do with Mark other than it being a sequel to Luke, which was another synoptic along with Mark.
Nothing but cope from "believers" whose whole world would fall apart around them if they accepted what was in front of their faces.
Noah is a retelling of Gilgamesh, Job is from the Hindu Veda, and large parts of Jesus' life are taken from the Egyptian god Horus. The Bible is just a remix, and we're not impressed.
luke's writings have onomastic congruence with the regions of the time period, they contain too many semetics for him to have made it up, and he details certain things(like his ship ride, location of an island, etc) that authentically put him there. he didn't rip off anything.
You're the kind of guy who believes Genesis plagiarized the Epic of Gilgamesh just because the flood myths in both are thematically similar.
The Elpenor story in the Odyssey isn't found in earlier manuscripts of Homer. Some believe it was a relatively recent insertion by Hilaire Belloc intended to warn readers of the consequence of [sic] drinkin, others believe it was surreptitiously inserted into the text at the behest of an obscure poet in Chapman's circle known only as "the Grebe". The insertion of moral lessons in place of vulgarities was a common practice in England up until the United States of America took the reigns of the Anglo-American one world government. Scholars and archaeologists have come to believe the original verse, if there was indeed an original verse, was more bawdy and involved a rude act of expurgation from the roof by the drunken Elpenor and then falling into his own shit.
Well, the New Testament is clearly very Hellenistic compared to the Old. If you wanted to find congruency across authors in story telling semantics then it should be discoverable. Acts especially is pretty forgettable for that reason and we see that Christians have trouble with its generic nature to begin with.
Acts is fun but I really can't find Paul's letters interesting. He's both long winded and constantly jumps between different subjects, so he's boring and difficult to follow.
>Is it just phones and social media frying people's brains and putting their souls at risk?
This may be the main reason and answer why Bibles don't usually sell anymore because most bookstores sell nonsense, depending on whether they are really good books or not, as well as most mainstream books that came from BookTok or so. I see many people don't take the Bible too seriously or as a joke because "muh religion." To be honest, this book is one of the greatest and most influential, but still. You may see it higher in the top 100 of IQfy. I don't know if Reddit takes this book as a joke too or finds it really boring.
I actually think the Word of God is one of the few books people are still reading. Reading, in general, is in decline. It's only in Church or academic circles I meet people who read regularly—and the churchy types usually read more.
No one cares about the word of god. Even the people who read The Bibe come up with bullshit interpretations to justify their non-Christian beliefs. The Bible is pretty cut and dry about homosexuality but now even the Pope is pro LGBTQ. The Bible is clear about tattoos but you'd be hard pressed to find a Christian without one today. If no one is going to follow what it says anyway, what's the point of reading it?
You are talking about the pact of the old testament though, which, according to Paul, is obsolete. Jesus only had 2 commandments.
>What's the reason for the drop in the number of people reading the Word of God?
Coffee
tldr
>What's the reason for the drop in the number of people reading the Word of God?
A long time ago, books were expensive and hard to craft. So you were effectively stuck with the damn book.
Now, one does not have the time to learn how a dude kept killing people with a donkey jaw, or re-read several times the same fricking story of how a dude lied to a pharaoh that his wife is his sister.
One spends those hours on instead, say, reading "Higher Engineering Mathematics. 8th edition" (2017) or "Linear Algebra and Optimization for Machine Learning. A Textbook" (2020). Work, science and such.
bach/luther is nice
One Piece is catching up to it as the most sold piece of fiction ever.
proof that Pirates > israelites
American Christianity decided to go all in on partisan politics, the average person knows Christianity as "no sex allowed and we hate gay people, also it's okay that Trump raped that girl and wants to bang his daughter" rather than "be humble, kind, and forgiving." Even in this thread, someone will respond to this by saying "have a nice day troony," and that "being Christian isn't about being a redditor who turns the other cheek like a cuck." Wow, such a great community to be a part of. Combine this with the Catholic Church child abuse scandals and you have a lot of people leaving Christianity in general for a) atheism b) other religions and c) personal belief in God/Jesus without organized religion.
As for the Bible specifically, large portions of it are dry for casual readers. Many people assume that it is like any other book meant to be read from beginning to end and get burnt out by things like Leviticus and Numbers, which are not exactly the height of spiritual reading experience.
The Bible is primarily read by a) the extremely devout, b) academics religiousor otherwise, and c) atheists who want to look for ways to "own" Christians in arguments.
repent
if a pleddit, fedora-wearing neckbeard can see through christBlack person lies, so can the average normie