Should the Bible be taught in Public Schools? READ COMPLETELY

YES. 100%. As unbiased as possible, meaning NOT FROM A RELIGIOUS VIEWPOINT.

BUT...... the answer to this question isn’t even that simple.

To even remotely try to accurately teach the bible, you need context!

The political, social and cultural and religious history of Canaanites, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks & Romans, etc. need to be understood at some basic level at least. Pretty much a study of world civilizations and cultures.

Why do you need to know something about all these other cultures to study the bible? Well, Judaism, which the bible and Christianity is based off of, DID NOT COME OUT OF A VACUUM. Religious syncretism happened with all cultures. EVERY culture has taken things from other cultures and put their own spin on it. Cultures influence each other. The bible goes through quite a few people before anyone is called a Hebrew... even longer before anyone is called an Israelite and even longer before Judah comes along, which is where the words Judaism and Jew come from.

It is also imperative that there is a basic understanding of how beliefs were transmitted orally for a very long time before ever being written down and once those beliefs finally became written down, they were redacted (compiled & edited). There are NO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS currently in existence. Scholars make guesses based on when they think manuscripts were written using linguistics information and they test them using radiocarbon dating. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest of the Hebrew (Old Testament) scriptures found, only dating back to around the 200’s BCE. The Babylonian exile is believed to occur around the 500’s BCE, so we do not have any Hebrew scriptures dating back even that far. The oldest New Testament manuscript found is P52 which is a fragment of the book of John which is the size of a business card. It is dated as early as 125 CE, but possibly later. Manuscripts that have been found DO have variations. Some would be considered insignificant, others are not insignificant as they relate to key verses regarding commonly held beliefs/dogmas of Christianity.

The Documentary (JEPD) Hypothesis describes how some scholars believe the old testament texts were redacted and an Israeli Artificial Intelligence linguistics program was used on the texts as well which had similar results. https://www.haaretz.com/1.5024378
So, imagine an ancient scribe/priest who is compiling all the beliefs and laws together. This person may be working with multiple versions of something, trying to figure out which is correct. Let’s say there’s something that the scribe/priest thinks isn’t correct or relevant anymore. They would re-write the manuscript, changing, adding, deleting the information as they believed was correct, or how they were instructed to do, and then either put the old copy in storage somewhere or just destroy it. Manuscripts were shared by communities and mostly kept by the priests. Most of the laypeople couldn’t even read or write. Even if they could, it was up to the priesthood, which was tied in directly with the government, to write, interpret and enforce the laws and religion.

Political, cultural, social and religious history of the Hebrew/Jewish culture needs to be studied as well. Things evolved over time. There were splits among them. The influence by and upon other cultures has never stopped.

The time leading up to the first century CE and following is especially important. The Herodian Dynasty and their ties to the Roman Empire, the various sects of Judaism, the various sects of “Jewish Christians” of which there were MANY, all with differing views... (they didn’t call themselves Christians)... Gnostic beliefs and mystery religions should be studied. The conflict between Paul and the other apostles needs to be understood. Paul’s version of “Christianity” won out, which became the state religion of the Roman Empire. The New Testament manuscripts came down through the Roman Empire/Roman Catholic Church and was under their control for 1500 years. There were manuscripts they didn’t want people to read and groups that disagreed with them, whom they persecuted. There have been a few finds where people hid stuff in the ground or in caves to keep them from being destroyed, such as the Nag Hammadi Texts or the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So that brings us to the history of the Roman Catholic Church, when most of the doctrines of Christianity were hammered out and brutally enforced, the Council of Nicea, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, how the British Empire then took up Christianity as THEIR state religion, which they also brutally enforced. So not one, but two world empires used Christianity as their state religion, for empire control and expansion.

You need to know the history of bible translation and the politics, conflicts and persecution that went along with that for people who wanted to get the bible out of the Roman Catholic Church’s dominion and into the hands of the lay people. You need to know how translators have BIASES based on their beliefs, which determine how they translate the texts. Things also get “lost in translation.” Various types of literature and literary devices need to be understood. The bible is a compilation of many different works written at various times and for various reasons.

Then you really should have some understanding of Greek and Hebrew language or at least be able to use a concordance or interlinear to be able to look up the original words. For example, just the word “God” in English can be a myriad of different words in the original languages and they are not as simple as just “God.”

You should be able to CRITICALLY read and scrutinize the texts. Look for contradictions, because contrary to the beliefs of some, there are MANY.

Here’s a couple examples:

1. Most everyone knows the story of the Exodus and how it is said that God told them to do the lamb sacrifice and then afterward it is said that God told them a lot of other sacrifices they needed to do... Jeremiah 7:21-28 says God didn’t tell them to do sacrifices when he brought them out of Egypt. In verse 22, if your bible has “I did not JUST give you commands about sacrifices” or something to that effect, the word JUST has been added by the bible translators. http://biblehub.com/interlinear/jeremiah/7-22.htm There are many other verses in the bible against the sacrificial system as well.

2. 1st Chronicles 21:1 versus 2 Samuel 24:1... so was it Yahweh or Satan??

So, in conclusion, the bible is a loaded book. It should be studied because the beliefs surrounding it have caused utter PSYCHOSIS in the world by people who only know what they have been told to believe by their pastors. Most pastors don’t even know these things, and most Christians do not look into things for themselves, because they are so conditioned by fear. Many have never even read the whole bible in it’s entirety for themselves! If you think I am tearing down your faith by making this post, you need to ask yourself if people really need a book to know God. The Bible is not even that old in terms of human existence and apparently people described in the bible, DID NOT HAVE A BIBLE and it was said they knew God. If you want to try to say it’s the “Word of God” and He preserved it, it’s perfect, etc... WHO made you believe that? The church. Because it’s obviously not perfect if you open your eyes. There are contradictory and horrific things in that book ascribed to God that are never uttered in a church. Also, in the bible, it says the Word of the Lord came to the prophets and that was before the bible existed! God gave us a brain, the capacity to think and reason, and a heart (conscience), which we need to use to discern what is right and what is wrong.... it’s pretty simple. Psychology of beliefs, and all religions and religious texts need to be studied and scrutinized.