Talking About the Bible (with more italics than ever!)

  It's weird talking to people about the bible. They don't really treat it as a book.  It sells far more copies than a normal book.  And a MUCH smaller percentage of people who purchase it read the whole thing from cover to cover than any other book (including 50 Shades of Grey).  And people will feel quite comfortable, having not read much of it, to tell you (even if you've read all of it) that things are in there (three wise men, with their names, the Lord helps them that help themselves etc. etc. etc.) or are not (taking women as sex slaves, hills of foreskins, cooking bread over a dung fire) like there's no real way to prove that a thing is in there or not.  Because of "interpretation" and "translation" making it impossible to prove some fact is or isn't in there.

  When I was about 20, I really, really longed to have an open discussion about the bible. This was not allowed.  We got lectured on the bible many times weekly, but there were o discussions.  We didn't get to wonder, or talk, or make distinctions or draw connections.  I suggested to a 21 year old peer that maybe we should have one, he, I and some others. He was all religious and stuff, so I thought he'd be into the idea.  He was terrified.  He would only agree that it was anything other than a really bad idea if we made sure we did it with an older person there to tell us about the bible instead of us discussing it. In other words, what he was used to.  Another lecture. Not a discussion.  Listening to someone tell us how awesome it was, rather than talking about what's in there and what's going on.

  Jehovah's Witnesses will give you The Watchtower, but if you want a free copy of the bible, no one wants to give you one without a study guide, or else they want to give you an expurgated (only certain books included) version, with a bunch of additional interpretative, categorizing and study guide material in it.  It is artificially divided into chapters and has headings and summaries that simply don't belong in it.  They don't want to allow you to just read it, like it were a book.  They'd rather give you a book or pamphlet or thingie written about the book itself.  People are weird about the bible.

  And I've tried going to bible discussions groups.  They haven't gone well.  So I had this odd idea flash, pretty much fully formed, and then had to spend two days making it into the YouTube cartoon that I have now made: