If thou shalt not covet, isn't 'thou shalt not steal' a redundant commandment

[sealchan]

Yeah, I dunno. For me personally, and no offense to all the bible followers of whatever religion, I find the whole thing pretty dry overall. I read it cover to cover once. There aren't a whole lot of metaphors in the bible that interest me, it kind of sucks the magic out of everything. For me, religion needs magic, but the bible ends up outlawing all of that. Most physical things in the world get reduced to not having much of a story, god didn't create the things you see for them to be worshiped or wondered at. Other spiritual tales might have long passages about what clouds are, or seas, or trees and rainbows, but not so with the bible. In place of that, you get a thousand pages about the people or cities under god's purview as a metaphorical lover he is angry with, which becomes distasteful. Law creation and infractions against god simply accrete to a fever pitch, somewhere in there.

I'd much rather post about pagan myth, but that's not going generate nearly as much interest or debate. Most people are going to want to talk about the bible, and so I do what I can with that

I have been working on an intense study of Genesis off and on for a couple of years now. It is actually a far better story than initial impressions would have you realize. It wasn't until I read Robert Alter's translation of 1 and 2 Samuel which he titled The David Story that I realized just what a literary masterpiece the Old Testament is (or parts of it anyway).

Actually what got me to read that was watching Bill Moyers' Genesis: A Living Conversation. That opened up Genesis for me as deep spiritual literary work and made the Bible "great again" in my own understanding. I highly recommend the Moyers' show as it has many different sincere students of the Bible, believers and non, weighing in on the meaning and value of the stories.

My own posts on the matter are on the old forum site that is shut down with a few on this one.