i decided to pick up the kings james bible again to read, but this shit...
i'm not sure if i'm supposed to be treating this as a fantasy novel, a gospel of truth and understanding, a fairytale that was passed down to teach traditions and culture important for survival...
it's a fairly abstract text to begin with, and i wonder if i've become stupider and unable to grasp it or if it's just that annoying to understand to begin with
rather than go "god is retarded" for making this situation happen (like i usually do), i want to try and ask better questions, such as that i wonder why eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a sin, and the initial catalyst to the fall of humanity into sin?
wouldn't it be possible to be aware of both yet be free of sin?
i'm also trying to read the commentary to grasp stuff i don't really get, like with cain and abel and god not liking it? but i'm still lost like the first time...
it's hard for me to just accept things as they are, which i'm getting the feeling that i have to if i actually want to make progress into this
wait... abel got the favor of god by doing good work, cain got angry that he didn't, killed his brother, god punished him by, with abel's blood, made the earth no longer "fruitful"
so like, is cain the first commie? >someone else works harder than him >their hard work is rewarded >*anger* >wants his work to be equally rewarded >kills the only hard worker out of anger >effectively also loses the overall "fruitful"ness of the two of them >effectively starves himself because of that
that being said, before noah's ark happened, i don't think it was really clearly stated what sins occurred, just that god looked away for a moment, looked back, and saw everyone sinning (whatever that composed of) and facepalmed, thinking he needed to cleanse the world to repent for his mistake of making man
or maybe i'm not paying hard enough attention or it's too vague to grasp, but the lack of description of the sins that occurred really bother me, as if there was no avoiding what happened if we had known what to do better
but then again, considering it's the fruit of knowledge we ate that led to all this, maybe knowing would've made things worse
i was also thinking about it in the shower, but effectively man was made to care for god's garden
but then we fucked that up
and then we just had to make offerings and shit to repent
but then we fucked that up
and god after we fucked up did shit that removed us from the job he gave us
so... i've heard stuff like we're born to serve god or amuse him, but it kinda feels like we're basically getting fired infinitely and we basically serve no purpose because we kept failing the previous one we were given and god's gotten tired of our shit every time
jesus christ, this is what i mean by annoying worldbuilding
i supposed events go by as quickly as they do the sentences, but it's also because everything is quickly done sentence by sentence, it feels so slow on the parts
like, i didn't need to know the names of noah's family, just noah who was the only one who did anything in the story
i haven't seen cain's sons' names be that important up until noah and haven't seen them ever again ever
>Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
what the fuck was the meaning of THAT
<11:6 And the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language - And if they continue one, much of the earth will be left uninhabited, and these children of men, if thus incorporated, will swallow up the little remnant of God's children, therefore it is decreed they must not be one. And now nothing will be restrained from them - And this is a reason why they must be crossed, in their design.
oh, really?
i feel like it'd be a good thing for some parts of nature to be left uninhabited, but it seems like god wanted earth to be abundant with life, including men, everywhere?