u/Greedy_Fortune_6683

There are different ways of reading the Bible. A valid way of reading it would be understanding what its authors intentions are, who their intended audience is, and how they came to be. Ancient Hebrews used to believe that the world was flat and the sun moves across the sky, in agreement with the ancient Babylonian cosmology. Based on this understanding of nature, the Church found the heliocentric theory to be suspect. Science also proved that a literal interpretation of the stories of creation in Genesis is wrong. In the New Testament, the author(s)of Mark and the apostle Paul believed that the return of the Messiah would be imminent, to coincide with the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. This prophecy never came to pass. There are numerous other passages in the Bible that contradict the idea of a loving and merciful God if they are read as they are, and not in a metaphorical sense. Some Mosaic laws are interpreted literally while others are only understood “in spirit of the law”. What then are the criteria of theologians when making decisions on whether a metaphorical and not a literal sense are to be used when understanding Biblical passages?

I’m an adult cradle Catholic who took Catholicism seriously at a younger age. I took the truth of the religion for granted and dismissed atheïsm and other non-Christian religions as false. As I was growing up I got more exposure to other religions and atheist points of view, but these did not stop my faith.

More recently I read up on modern Bible scholarship especially on early Christianity and ancient Hebrew religion. I learned that the Gospels were actually not written by the evangelists they were named after and no one knows who the actual authors were.

Mark, the oldest Gospel was written around the destruction of the Second Temple 40 years after the crucifixion. St Paul was not familiar with the ministry of Jesus. He actually clashed with the apostles because he was spreading a different doctrine to the Gentiles. The only authority we have is the Church.

Moreover there is no proof to the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon. Their stories were written in the 2nd century BC in the Hellenistic era. The only authority is the Jewish priestly and scribal class who were themselves created by instigation of the Persian overlords (this is recounted in the book of Ezra)

This got me thinking. Why are gentiles required to believe in this Jewish God? Imagine you were born in a culture that worships nature. You have a concept of an afterlife, but for you it’s just a place that your ancestors go to when they die. Then all of a sudden Christian missionaries start to appear claiming that your ancestors are actually in hell, demanding that you have to eat the meat and drink the blood of their diety so that you will avoid ending up in the same place as your ancestors. Why would you believe in this foreign religion?