The most confusing and painfully dull book ever written. Some people (believers and non) make a big stink about having not only read it (all of it!!!) but also understanding it. I think they are either liars or they desperately need to make friends and get a life.

I think the Bible is a collection of stories that are mostly fictitious, although some aspects may have been based on actual events.

For instance, the great flood of Noah. At the end of the last ice age, the ocean levels rose and filled in the areas now known as the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The floods happened several thousand years before writing was invented, so the stories got carried down by word of mouth, and as the stories were told one could imagine a child asking questions, like "how did the animals survive?" After all, in that time period most people did not stray all that far from where they were born. To have such an area flood would seem like the entire world got flooded to them. So, over time the real story of what happened got (mostly) lost.

The story of the tower of Babel was based in the city of Babylon (Babel in the Bible). They built many towers, but there was one tower left unfinished for at least two hundred years. And so, somebody made up a story as to why it was not finished. Most likely to, once again answer the questions of children about the story being told. However, after over two hundred years of being unfinished, the tower actually was finished. (Oops). We also know that languages evolve and change over time. So, it is easily proven that the story of the tower of Babel was made up. (I am assuming people are familiar with the story).

With stories about Jesus.... I think there was a person who wrote fiction who asked, "what if one of our common "miracle workers" came to believe he was the messiah prophesized by the Jews?" So he wrote something close to what became the book of Mark, which had not virgin birth and no resurrection, but just had a guy who became deluded about who he was and got crucified. End of story. But wait, there's more...

As it turned out the book of Mark was popular.

When Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote" which was also popular, there were all kinds of people who wrote additional stories using the same characters to try to "cash in" on a popular story.

So, the same thing happened with the story of Jesus even if a lot earlier. Lots of people told similar stories, incorporating ideas from religions of the time, such as a birth without sex, the three wise men who followed a star, and added in miracles like raising the dead, walking on water and turning water into wine. Most of which were popular story themes of the time period. They also would tell the same story form different points of view. There were more than three dozen versions of the story within a very few years. Later, four of those stories were chosen, because they had the fewest contradictions although there are still quite a few. They were looking to create a consistent narrative, and then banned all other versions and ordered them to be destroyed. They managed to destroy some, but many survived and are known as the Gnostic gospels. One, the gospel of Judas, which was deemed heresy, was only recovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is the only known surviving copy, which tells a very different story from a much different perspective.

Anyway. I think it (the bible) is all fiction with very little truth or wisdom in it.

Like all "holy" books it contains some observations of how people behave and does co9ntain some universal truths, but they are very few and far between. I see religious people latching on to the little nuggets of wisdom convinced there has to be a lot more. Kind of like a person who finds a coin on a dirt path and starts to dig a hole convinced he will find more coins there, until he digs a hole so deep he can no longer get out, and he has very little light coming in through the opening at eh top of the hole to see clearly by.