What do people actually do when they are Bible studying?

Read mythology, outdated laws, some poetry and a lot of
murder, lies, sexism, rape and stories stolen from earlier
cultures. Actually reading the Bible has caused a lot of
theists to become atheists.

"Niels van der Linden" <n.f.l.vanderlinden@student.utwente.nl> wrote in
message news:d97fhb$a17$1@netlx020.civ.utwente.nl...

What do people actually do when they are Bible studying?

Most christians rarely crack a Bible outside of Sunday school, so that's
the
only place where they actually sit down and read it. They might do a
little
interpretation, but also they do a lot of clarifying what was actually
going
on in the stories. Everything in the Bible has a particular cutural
reference, so the meaning of a verse or a story benefits from explaining
the
historical and cultural context.

It isn't that weird, really. I mean, if you heard people were going to a
class to study Roman history from sources such as Livy, it wouldn't strike
you as strange, would it?

The main difference is that it IS an important part of the inculcation,
because while the students of a Roman history class are required to listen
to a lecture, that lecture is intended to get the students thinking.
Whereas
the sermon that the students from the Bible study class will listen is
intended to get the students following. But in either case, prior
familiarity with the course material is a great help in understanding what
is being spoken.

"Niels van der Linden" <n.f.l.vanderlinden@student.utwente.nl> wrote in
message news:d97fhb$a17$1@netlx020.civ.utwente.nl...

What do people actually do when they are Bible studying?

The mental version of how I used to "study" when I locked myself in the bath
room for long periods of time when I was a teenager!

"Niels van der Linden" <n.f.l.vanderlinden@student.utwente.nl> wrote in
message news:d97fhb$a17$1@netlx020.civ.utwente.nl...

What do people actually do when they are Bible studying?

----------
By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of
litter - one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions
against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or
at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to
press. The Central Committee published it. In accordance with a growing
habit, it was richly bound.
Sitting up in the bed, she took it reverently in her hands. She glanced
round the glowing room as if some one might be watching her. Then, half
ashamed, half joyful, she murmured 'O Machine! O Machine!' and raised the
volume to her lips. Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head, thrice
she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual performed, she turned to
page 1367, which gave the times of the departure of the air-ships from the
island in the southern hemisphere, under whose soil she lived, to the island
in the northern hemisphere, whereunder lived her son.
----------
The second great development was the re-establishment of religion.
This, too, had been voiced in the celebrated lecture. No one could mistake
the reverent tone in which the peroration had concluded, and it awakened a
responsive echo in the heart of each. Those who had long worshipped
silently, now began to talk. They described the strange feeling of peace
that came over them when they handled the Book of the Machine, the pleasure
that it was to repeat certain numerals out of it, however little meaning
those numerals conveyed to the outward ear, the ecstasy of touching a
button, however unimportant, or of ringing an electric bell, however
superfluously.
'The Machine,' they exclaimed, 'feeds us and clothes us and houses us;
through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we
have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of
superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.'
And before long this allocution was printed on the first page of the Book,
and in subsequent editions the ritual swelled into a complicated system of
praise and prayer. The word 'religion' was sedulously avoided, and in theory
the Machine was still the creation and the implement of man. But in practice
all, save a few retrogrades, worshipped it as divine. Nor was it worshipped
in unity. One believer would be chiefly impressed by the blue optic plates,
through which he saw other believers; another by the mending apparatus,
which sinful Kuno had compared to worms; another by the lifts, another by
the Book. And each would pray to this or to that, and ask it to intercede
for him with the Machine as a whole. Persecution - that also was present. It
did not break out, for reasons that will be set forward shortly. But it was
latent, and all who did not accept the minimum known as 'undenominational
Mechanism' lived in danger of Homelessness, which means death, as we know.
----------

Katt.

"Niels van der Linden" <n.f.l.vanderlinden@student.utwente.nl> wrote in
message news:d97fhb$a17$1@netlx020.civ.utwente.nl...

What do people actually do when they are Bible studying?

----------
By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of
litter - one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions
against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or
at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to
press. The Central Committee published it. In accordance with a growing
habit, it was richly bound.
Sitting up in the bed, she took it reverently in her hands. She glanced
round the glowing room as if some one might be watching her. Then, half
ashamed, half joyful, she murmured 'O Machine! O Machine!' and raised the
volume to her lips. Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head, thrice
she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual performed, she turned to
page 1367, which gave the times of the departure of the air-ships from the
island in the southern hemisphere, under whose soil she lived, to the island
in the northern hemisphere, whereunder lived her son.
----------
The second great development was the re-establishment of religion.
This, too, had been voiced in the celebrated lecture. No one could mistake
the reverent tone in which the peroration had concluded, and it awakened a
responsive echo in the heart of each. Those who had long worshipped
silently, now began to talk. They described the strange feeling of peace
that came over them when they handled the Book of the Machine, the pleasure
that it was to repeat certain numerals out of it, however little meaning
those numerals conveyed to the outward ear, the ecstasy of touching a
button, however unimportant, or of ringing an electric bell, however
superfluously.
'The Machine,' they exclaimed, 'feeds us and clothes us and houses us;
through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we
have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of
superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.'
And before long this allocution was printed on the first page of the Book,
and in subsequent editions the ritual swelled into a complicated system of
praise and prayer. The word 'religion' was sedulously avoided, and in theory
the Machine was still the creation and the implement of man. But in practice
all, save a few retrogrades, worshipped it as divine. Nor was it worshipped
in unity. One believer would be chiefly impressed by the blue optic plates,
through which he saw other believers; another by the mending apparatus,
which sinful Kuno had compared to worms; another by the lifts, another by
the Book. And each would pray to this or to that, and ask it to intercede
for him with the Machine as a whole. Persecution - that also was present. It
did not break out, for reasons that will be set forward shortly. But it was
latent, and all who did not accept the minimum known as 'undenominational
Mechanism' lived in danger of Homelessness, which means death, as we know.

----------

Katt.

Niels van der Linden wrote:

What do people actually do when they are Bible studying?

Practicing doublethink.

You know, figuring out how the God of Peace can tell Joshua to
murder, rape, and pillage in Jericho after making the walls
tumble. Or how the God of Love can have a supposedly-innocent man
tortured and murdered as a symbol of the end of suffering and
death. That sort of thing.