today's pet peeve:

[deird1]

I really hate people calling the Bible "the world's greatest instruction manual".


The Bible is many things – instruction manual it ain't. If you must compare it to a modern publishing genre to make a quasi-theological point, a better option would be "travel journal". (Which, yes, would be metaphorical. But not nearly so metaphorical as trying to claim that the Book of Joshua is a list of instructions for we the reader to follow.)

Comments

[velvetwhip]

Instruction manual????


Gabrielle

[lonespark]

Buh? That's...but...noooooo...

I don't know what genre I would pick. When I was in confirmation class our pastor talked about it being a story/document that was kind of a...dialogue?(but not, because more than two voices? or maybe, colloquially, yes?) among people in relationship to God, and trying to understand/define/celebrate/redefine/experience that relationship...

It makes sense that way to me, although I can't express it well.

Which isn't to say you can't use something like that as source material to kind of work out an instruction manual, especially in community...but that's different.

[next_to_normal]

If the Bible is an instruction manual, it'd be one of the ones that come with IKEA furniture - i.e. what you need to know is in there somewhere, but it's full of ambiguous symbols whose meaning you have to decipher first, and you'll probably have to take it apart and put it back together again a few times before you get it right. But if you're really diligent and keep at it, eventually you might build something that won't collapse the first time you put weight on it.

[lliira]

Claiming the Bible is an instruction manual is incredibly common in the U.S. Even more common than the claim that the Bible is a science textbook. Not only is it totally incorrect, but it feels demeaning. Even without thinking the Bible is a sacred text, it is an important historical and religious text, and people who spout such ignorance about it irk me.

[vass]

It's an anthology!

But not nearly so metaphorical as trying to claim that the Book of Joshua is a list of instructions for we the reader to follow.

Or Jonah! First disobey God, then get eaten by a whale...

Small Peculiar is doing a series of webcomics on Jonah at the moment. It's a lot of fun.