I’ll point out that the “Jesus and the fig tree” story is a parable. It’s made fun of a lot, but it’s a vicious lesson by someone who was very theatrical in their teaching style. The fig tree is Israel, who were expected by their god to always be in season and ready for their messiah. But when Jesus arrived, they were not in season, and so were cursed to never bear fruit again. It wasn’t an agricultural misunderstanding, it was a lesson and everything that surrounds it gives it context.
Not saying you’re wrong in a practical sense, but carrying practical sense into an allegorical story from a culture and time not your own is, if not folly, at least ill-advised.
And if christians were willing to treat the bible as just a product of the culture and time that would be great. Unfortunately it is held up as an everlasting, ever correct guide to moral character. Thatsbwhy pointing out the issues with it is important, lest we get stuck with (at best) a 2000 year outdated moral framework.
That’s sort of the while point of pointing out the silliness of the fig tree story though. We poke fun at it for being ridiculous because, well, it is ridiculous, and religious people are in turn ridiculous for following a supposed holy text with such ridiculous parables in it.
Idk what to tell you man. Trying to achieve a sense of intellectual superiority over a religious person by pointing out how the literal text doesn’t make sense when the entire purpose of an allegory is the SUBtext seems just as silly to me as cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit.
I’ll allow that you’re free to use this tactic to dunk on proponents of Biblical inerrancy, but most mainstream sects of Christianity don’t subscribe to that doctrine.
Take religion out of it for a second. Someone says, “when I was a kid, I had to walk to school for 5 miles, through the snow, uphill, BOTH ways!”. Obviously, this is a statement which doesn’t make much literal sense. However, you probably understand that the person is actually just trying to communicate that they had it hard growing up, and that their words are not meant to be taken literally.
Now, think of the message what you will. I attended a lot of Catholic school, but I’m staunchly irreligious, so if you want to keep dunking on believers, you go girl. I just think you’d be better served (and more likely to get a believer to consider their beliefs more critically) by engaging with the text the way the believer does, lest you wind up just talking past one another.
Engaging with the text the way a believer does means having blind faith, which, as a non-believer, is difficult for me to do.
I think it’s silly for a loving, forgiving God to curse anything, whether that’s a single tree, or an entire country, or whatever else. I think it’s totally valid to point out the hypocrisy of this allegory, regardless of what you think the subtext may be. It’s an easy example to pull up that demonstrates a contradiction in the Bible, that’s all.
Also I’m not dunking on anyone. I rarely talk to anyone about religion because it’s such a sticky subject with so many people. Just trying to give some context and maybe a little justification for using this particular allegory to poke some fun at believers.
One of the many things that christians seem to misunderstand is that almost none of the Bible is about them. It’s about the descendants of Israel who are the descendants of Noah who are the descendants of Adam and Eve, who were uniquely created by their god in its image and given a piece of its divine breath… none of which is about all humanity, but especially gentiles who are literally the same as wild animals as far as scripture is concerned.
Remember the story of the woman who begged Jesus and his disciples for help for days because her daughter was “possessed?” Not only did Jesus go out of his way to ignore and avoid her for days, he then compared her to a dog for not being Israelite. Only when she leaned into the insult did Jesus relent.
Israel was that specific fig tree and Israel was supposed to be special and had unique expectations placed on them since they were literally their god’s children, and other people were not.
I’m not disagreeing really. I’m building on your point.
Their god was a local god, which like all the people’s gods everywhere had a creation myth for their people. Of course the other people weren’t included. If they wanted a creation or a god, they could just come up with their own. Lazy cunts.
Dude, you completely left out Abraham. Which is wild given that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all referred to as Abrahamic faiths. While Abraham was descended from Adam and Eve, it is far more accurate to say Israelites trace their heritage back to Abraham. This is because it is Abraham that makes the first covenant pact with God.
Abraham gives birth to two sons. At first, Abraham’s wife is barren, so to have a kid they all agree Abraham knock up his servant. This gives birth to Ishmael. Fourteen years later, Abraham’s wiife finally manages to miraculously conceive, and Isaac is born. And there’s this whole deal where god puts Abraham to the test and tells Abraham he has to sacrifice Isaac to him. And both of them go along with it only for God to go, “Nevermind, guys, it was a test. But since you’ve pleased me by being so faithful, I’ll grant you a powerful line through Isaac (Israel),” and God then sends them a ram to sacrifice instead.
Isaac gives birth to two sons, Esau and Jacob, twins, but Esau was born first. Technically, God’s blessing is his by birthright. Isaac favors Esau, Isaac’s wife favors Jacob. Jacob gains the birthright twice over. Once because Esau returns to camp, hungry as hell one day and just casually trades his birthright to Jacob in return for some lentil stew. Second, when Isaac is pretty much on his death bed, and blind, Isaac’s wife and Jacob trick Isaac into blessing Jacob instead of Esau. Initially, Esau is pissed and Jacob flees. But he eventually comes back and reconciles with his brother and wrestles God (I’m not kidding.) Then his name gets changed from Jacob to Israel. Dude marries two wives, one of which is his sister, and gives birth to twelve sons, which become the twelve tribes of Israel. There’s also a daughter, but this is a patriarchal religion so women don’t matter. This is basically where the Jew as Jews start.
Now, rewinding back a bit, remember that Ishmael guy, born of the servant Abraham knocked up? Yeah, so he and the servant got sent away. But God also promises this servant and Ishmael that Ishmael too, will give birth to a great nation, and that he will have 12 sons himself that will become princes. And it is Islam, specifically, the prophet Muhammed, who traces their roots back to Ishmael. That’s how fucking old the whole Jew/Muslim conflict is.
And then there’s Christianity, which is when some Jew named Jesus was born the son of Virgin Mary and went on to preach love and kindness and got himself sacrificed in a story which really illustrates, once you remove the falsehoods of heaven, hell, and God, that humanity is so crooked they’ll basically kill a man for being too good while praising and pardoning a criminal (Barabbas. He and Christ both get the chance to be pardoned by the people, but they can only choose one. Barabbas is chosen, and Christ gets crucified.) But also yes, as you said, Jesus totally favored the Jews, and did the whole thing with comparing the woman to a dog versus the childeren he was meant to lead (Israelites.)
humanity is so crooked they’ll basically kill a man for being too good while praising and pardoning a criminal
That’s also something of an allegory, in so far as Jesus’s great offense involved claiming to be “King of Kings” in defiance of the secular laws (which the Pharisees and Romans had co-mingled with the regional religious faith). This was all taking place during a historic armed and militant uprising of Jews against Roman occupation - one that failed shortly after the crucifixion.
So then you have Peter and Paul effectively reconciling with the Roman government and creating a kind-of religious third-way for the Jewish state. One in which you could be both a good Jew and a loyal Roman citizen, because you just tell yourself things look like shit now but when you die everything gets reversed.
Eventually, the cult of Christianity becomes so pervasive that even Romans start believing in the post-death reversal of fortune. And this climaxes in the Roman Civil War in which a general paints all his shields with the crucifix to prove how he’s God’s Favorite Underdog and wins. And then Constantine says “Why wait until you’re dead? What if Christianity gets its heyday on Earth starting now?” Kicks off the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. And effectively forms the bedrock of modern Catholicism as a globe-spanning 1700 year old organized church.
Makes sense, especially when you consider that John the Baptist was an Apocalyptic Jew who played a foundational role in The Christ’s contemporary education.
The parts about feeding poor people are parables. Those stories are metaphors for spiritual poverty. What Jesus fed the hungry was the bread of life, ie, the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t want you to actually feed people, he wants you to preach to them.
Everything else is literal, especially the parts where God created the Earth in its current form in six 24-hour days and decreed there were only two immutable biological genders.
(The prosperity gospel is a hell of a drug. It’s no wonder Trump follows it.)
Almost everything in there is a parable. It’s a cultural thing, because stories were only worth preserving as a lesson. The concept of preserving objective reality for its own sake is a very modern and recent ideology. It would have been seen as madness by ancient peoples.
I’ll point out that the “Jesus and the fig tree” story is a parable. It’s made fun of a lot, but it’s a vicious lesson by someone who was very theatrical in their teaching style. The fig tree is Israel, who were expected by their god to always be in season and ready for their messiah. But when Jesus arrived, they were not in season, and so were cursed to never bear fruit again. It wasn’t an agricultural misunderstanding, it was a lesson and everything that surrounds it gives it context.
Jesus: curses random tree
Followers: Jesus, is there a problem? You can tell us directly.
Jesus: No, everything is fine *sulks*
Sure, but even as a parable it shows jesus expects something that is not possible, and punishes living things for being as he created them to be.
well, first of all…
Not saying you’re wrong in a practical sense, but carrying practical sense into an allegorical story from a culture and time not your own is, if not folly, at least ill-advised.
And if christians were willing to treat the bible as just a product of the culture and time that would be great. Unfortunately it is held up as an everlasting, ever correct guide to moral character. Thatsbwhy pointing out the issues with it is important, lest we get stuck with (at best) a 2000 year outdated moral framework.
That’s sort of the while point of pointing out the silliness of the fig tree story though. We poke fun at it for being ridiculous because, well, it is ridiculous, and religious people are in turn ridiculous for following a supposed holy text with such ridiculous parables in it.
Idk what to tell you man. Trying to achieve a sense of intellectual superiority over a religious person by pointing out how the literal text doesn’t make sense when the entire purpose of an allegory is the SUBtext seems just as silly to me as cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit.
I’ll allow that you’re free to use this tactic to dunk on proponents of Biblical inerrancy, but most mainstream sects of Christianity don’t subscribe to that doctrine.
Take religion out of it for a second. Someone says, “when I was a kid, I had to walk to school for 5 miles, through the snow, uphill, BOTH ways!”. Obviously, this is a statement which doesn’t make much literal sense. However, you probably understand that the person is actually just trying to communicate that they had it hard growing up, and that their words are not meant to be taken literally.
this video comes to mind. It’s not about the figs, it’s about Israel.
Now, think of the message what you will. I attended a lot of Catholic school, but I’m staunchly irreligious, so if you want to keep dunking on believers, you go girl. I just think you’d be better served (and more likely to get a believer to consider their beliefs more critically) by engaging with the text the way the believer does, lest you wind up just talking past one another.
Engaging with the text the way a believer does means having blind faith, which, as a non-believer, is difficult for me to do.
I think it’s silly for a loving, forgiving God to curse anything, whether that’s a single tree, or an entire country, or whatever else. I think it’s totally valid to point out the hypocrisy of this allegory, regardless of what you think the subtext may be. It’s an easy example to pull up that demonstrates a contradiction in the Bible, that’s all.
Also I’m not dunking on anyone. I rarely talk to anyone about religion because it’s such a sticky subject with so many people. Just trying to give some context and maybe a little justification for using this particular allegory to poke some fun at believers.
One of the many things that christians seem to misunderstand is that almost none of the Bible is about them. It’s about the descendants of Israel who are the descendants of Noah who are the descendants of Adam and Eve, who were uniquely created by their god in its image and given a piece of its divine breath… none of which is about all humanity, but especially gentiles who are literally the same as wild animals as far as scripture is concerned.
Remember the story of the woman who begged Jesus and his disciples for help for days because her daughter was “possessed?” Not only did Jesus go out of his way to ignore and avoid her for days, he then compared her to a dog for not being Israelite. Only when she leaned into the insult did Jesus relent.
Israel was that specific fig tree and Israel was supposed to be special and had unique expectations placed on them since they were literally their god’s children, and other people were not.
I’m not disagreeing really. I’m building on your point.
Their god was a local god, which like all the people’s gods everywhere had a creation myth for their people. Of course the other people weren’t included. If they wanted a creation or a god, they could just come up with their own. Lazy cunts.
I mean, they did. And then Joshua showed up with his horn and his seven day parade march.
Dude, you completely left out Abraham. Which is wild given that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all referred to as Abrahamic faiths. While Abraham was descended from Adam and Eve, it is far more accurate to say Israelites trace their heritage back to Abraham. This is because it is Abraham that makes the first covenant pact with God.
Abraham gives birth to two sons. At first, Abraham’s wife is barren, so to have a kid they all agree Abraham knock up his servant. This gives birth to Ishmael. Fourteen years later, Abraham’s wiife finally manages to miraculously conceive, and Isaac is born. And there’s this whole deal where god puts Abraham to the test and tells Abraham he has to sacrifice Isaac to him. And both of them go along with it only for God to go, “Nevermind, guys, it was a test. But since you’ve pleased me by being so faithful, I’ll grant you a powerful line through Isaac (Israel),” and God then sends them a ram to sacrifice instead.
Isaac gives birth to two sons, Esau and Jacob, twins, but Esau was born first. Technically, God’s blessing is his by birthright. Isaac favors Esau, Isaac’s wife favors Jacob. Jacob gains the birthright twice over. Once because Esau returns to camp, hungry as hell one day and just casually trades his birthright to Jacob in return for some lentil stew. Second, when Isaac is pretty much on his death bed, and blind, Isaac’s wife and Jacob trick Isaac into blessing Jacob instead of Esau. Initially, Esau is pissed and Jacob flees. But he eventually comes back and reconciles with his brother and wrestles God (I’m not kidding.) Then his name gets changed from Jacob to Israel. Dude marries two wives, one of which is his sister, and gives birth to twelve sons, which become the twelve tribes of Israel. There’s also a daughter, but this is a patriarchal religion so women don’t matter. This is basically where the Jew as Jews start.
Now, rewinding back a bit, remember that Ishmael guy, born of the servant Abraham knocked up? Yeah, so he and the servant got sent away. But God also promises this servant and Ishmael that Ishmael too, will give birth to a great nation, and that he will have 12 sons himself that will become princes. And it is Islam, specifically, the prophet Muhammed, who traces their roots back to Ishmael. That’s how fucking old the whole Jew/Muslim conflict is.
And then there’s Christianity, which is when some Jew named Jesus was born the son of Virgin Mary and went on to preach love and kindness and got himself sacrificed in a story which really illustrates, once you remove the falsehoods of heaven, hell, and God, that humanity is so crooked they’ll basically kill a man for being too good while praising and pardoning a criminal (Barabbas. He and Christ both get the chance to be pardoned by the people, but they can only choose one. Barabbas is chosen, and Christ gets crucified.) But also yes, as you said, Jesus totally favored the Jews, and did the whole thing with comparing the woman to a dog versus the childeren he was meant to lead (Israelites.)
That’s also something of an allegory, in so far as Jesus’s great offense involved claiming to be “King of Kings” in defiance of the secular laws (which the Pharisees and Romans had co-mingled with the regional religious faith). This was all taking place during a historic armed and militant uprising of Jews against Roman occupation - one that failed shortly after the crucifixion.
So then you have Peter and Paul effectively reconciling with the Roman government and creating a kind-of religious third-way for the Jewish state. One in which you could be both a good Jew and a loyal Roman citizen, because you just tell yourself things look like shit now but when you die everything gets reversed.
Eventually, the cult of Christianity becomes so pervasive that even Romans start believing in the post-death reversal of fortune. And this climaxes in the Roman Civil War in which a general paints all his shields with the crucifix to prove how he’s God’s Favorite Underdog and wins. And then Constantine says “Why wait until you’re dead? What if Christianity gets its heyday on Earth starting now?” Kicks off the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. And effectively forms the bedrock of modern Catholicism as a globe-spanning 1700 year old organized church.
Makes sense, especially when you consider that John the Baptist was an Apocalyptic Jew who played a foundational role in The Christ’s contemporary education.
Asked one of those “Bible is all literal truth” guys one day, “How did Jesus teach?”
“?”
“He taught in parables, right? Stories that aren’t true, meant to illustrate a point.”
“Ok.”
“Is it possible other Bible stories are parables?”
“?”
The parts about feeding poor people are parables. Those stories are metaphors for spiritual poverty. What Jesus fed the hungry was the bread of life, ie, the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t want you to actually feed people, he wants you to preach to them.
Everything else is literal, especially the parts where God created the Earth in its current form in six 24-hour days and decreed there were only two immutable biological genders.
(The prosperity gospel is a hell of a drug. It’s no wonder Trump follows it.)
Almost everything in there is a parable. It’s a cultural thing, because stories were only worth preserving as a lesson. The concept of preserving objective reality for its own sake is a very modern and recent ideology. It would have been seen as madness by ancient peoples.
Also, in the Apocrypha, childhood Jesus turned a kid he didn’t like into a tree. Quite possibly… a fig tree.
Jesus was a little asshole. It’s pretty funny those works survived.
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