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Comment by mattigames | Hacker News Reader

I was going to post some parts of the old testament that could be deemed the opposite of wisdom, but here we try to avoid flame-wars so I ask for the same level of self-restrain from you when using adjetives about such controversial topics.

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I ask for the same level of self-restrain from you when using adjetives about the quality of the bible and similar kind of opinions.

Note that the person you're replying to did not say that the bible was ALL timeless wisdom, or really say much at all about the overall quality of the bible.

There's no contradiction between the bible containing lots of timeless wisdom AND containing lots of utter nonsense and complete bollocks.

Even as somebody who is an atheist and who generally finds religion to be a blight on our society, I think one can find "timeless wisdom" in the bible mixed in with the other stuff. Whether that, on balance, makes it worth investing time in or not is another question.

Yeah, New Testament is a fair bit nicer.

Much of the Old Testament can be read as a collection of stories about a small tribe becoming a nation and fighting for their survival over hundreds of years. The stories are interesting not always because they are nice but also often because they are not. Not everyone portrayed there is a hero.

Then again, that is probably how it was and when I read the old viking stories they are equally - if not more violent.

I have also enjoyed reading both the Viking age Håvamål as well as the ancient Proverbs (as well as a number of other sources).

Though as I recall the old testament has more quotably poetic one-liners.

That is kind of a myth. For example the concept of Hell and eternal punishment is from the NT.

Can you point out where it mentions eternal punishment? AIR from my reading I see absolute destruction vs living with God, but not Dante's inferno by a long shot.

Well Dante is a completely different thing, but the NT describes eternal suffering in fire e.g. in the story of Lazarus and the rich man. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+16%3A19-31...

The New Testament surely mentions that even Jesus "descended into hell" before his resurrection (practically spending some days there):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell

Catholic church takes care explain that officially (1):

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122...

Some people find that inconvenient.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism

https://www.christianity.com/wiki/heaven-and-hell/what-is-he... has a good overview with references in the bible to how Hell is described; in short, it's dark, gnashing of teeth, fire, and separation from God.

It's not a myth. It's the opinion of most people who have read them (including me).

However, many would say the entire compilation is a myth.

so, uh, you probably weren't aware of this (I know I wasn't until fairly recently when I made a similar comment and a jewish friend pointed this out) but many jewish people consider speaking casually about how the new testament is good/ the old testament is bad to be pretty offensive. The gist I think of what my friend was telling me was that if I took the time to understand the jewish scripture, all of the stuff about loving your neighbor, feeding the poor, etc... is already in those jewish scriptures that prefigured the new testament- I mean, that's just scriptural interpretation, which I am not really qualified to get into - but the offensive bit is that casually dismissing the old testament as bad while praising the new testament as good can come off like saying "the religion my ancestors had has a more moral holy book than the religion your ancestors had" and it's pretty easy to see how that could give offense.

(I mean, I'm not a bible scholar; just... it was, you know, one of those times when I unintentionally gave offense, and seems like something you should be aware of if you are trying to avoid flame wars.)

>"like saying "the religion my ancestors had has a more moral holy book than the religion your ancestors had" and it's pretty easy to see how that could give offense."

What if it's true though?

The problem you have is that the converse would be objectionable to Christians as you'd be saying God's new covenant achieved nothing.

Eh, it sounded like the person I was responding to was trying to avoid flames? I mean, if you are trying to get into it about religion, that's a different thing.

I'm just saying this was something I stepped in by accident and that you should be aware of it.

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