Showing posts with label storytelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storytelling. Show all posts

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Stories as Dogma

The very best stories in the collected wisdom of the human race have several important things in common:
  • They always deal with important tribal mores, values and customs.
  • They are frequently told as "children's stories" although the target is the parents and mentors in the audience. 
  • Irony and frequently hyperbole are integral to the mnemonic.
The problem with these stories after they are collected into Holy Writ is that the irony and hyperbole is regarded as TRUTH™ and used by self-serving preachers to manipulate their followers in ways that would be abhorrent to the originators of the stories.   

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Torah Myth as Allegory

beliefnet
Which do you imagine are 'critical stories' in the Torah texts?

As you are well aware, JC, one of the Jewish principles of Biblical interpretation is that the farther back in time the narrative covers, the less 'historical' and the more allegorical the account is seen as being. JewOne
I am an atheist.  I see nothing in any fable religious or secular that is anything but allegorical or occasionally ironic.  Allegory must teach something of value that bears some relationship to the details of the story or it would not persist as a part of the lore of at least a tribe or subset of humanity.  It is not necessary to believe that the wolf in Little Red Riding hood was anything but allegorical to understand that young women should be wary of strangers.  Even strange women.  Female wolves are as predatory as the males. 

The critical stories in the Torah texts are the ones everybody remembers. Most were written by the Yahwist as hesh was by far the best storyteller in the Torah, and herm stories translate well as they deal with universal human issues in any language.  Whether they are translated by a Jew, an unknown Aramaic scholar, or various Roman and Christian translators.  They all say about the same thing.  Believe in and do what God tells you to do or else.  We can argue about the details of "what else" other than the fact that it isn't good.

Some of the later stories incorporate the mediators for God as authoritative interpreters of the Bb drone of "Believe in and do what God tells you to do or else."  

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

J as storyteller.

Fundy:  Donald Duck has CREATED nothing!  The Walt Disney Corporation created the animated Donald Duck out of human imagination and human-developed technologies!


 If the Jahwist had not been the Disney of her time it is likely we wouldn't even have a Bible, or Torah.  Can you imagine worshiping a book compiled from P, E, and R if you left out J?  It is hard enough to wade through all that crap with the leavening of J.  All that would be left is a soggy matzoh.

If J wasn't a great storyteller we probably would all be using a different book.  All the good stories you remember from the Bible were J's.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Stories as Lore

beliefnet
Should atheists be against these types of creations which spread religious ideas?

No more than I am against the 8 Bibles on my bookshelf.  Good ideas and even new truth can come from anywhere.  Good stories, music, even video if one can resist the temptation to believe.  (Video is so immersive it is hard to be intelligently critical.) 

Humans live and die by the stories we listen to.  Choose them wisely.