244

Chapter four
Posted on October 2, 2024 by David M Willis

244 thoughts on “Chapter four”

  1. shadowcell

    Dumbing of Age Book 15: Okay, “Atheist”

    1. AbacusWizard

      I was thinking “Dumbing of Age, Book 15: The Iron Age Was Actually Mostly Real People”

    2. Amós Batista

      Plot twist: by some weird shit, Dorothy suddenly leaves atheism, making the reverse path of Joyce.

      1. Reltzik

        I mean, she does have a strong altruistic impulse, has lost her direction in life, and is definitely in a vulnerable place right now. It wouldn’t be too wild to see her join a progressive version of some religious group for a ministry of helping the poor or something like that.

        1. fridge_logic

          She could get into paganism. I feel like Dorothy would really enjoy some of the fun parts of some pagan traditions.

        2. Michael Steamweed

          That’s what I was thinking. Dorothy could start a W.I.T.C.H. chapter in Indiana (since that org is more political and rational than it is religious and spiritual), or their more socialism-centered spinoff Red W.I.T.C.H.

        3. jflb96

          Isn’t Meridian safe, or are they recruiting for the next time a BBEG turns up just to be prepared?

        4. S.R.

          Something rather funny about someone named Dorothy interacting with anything witch-related.

        5. Charles Phipps

          “I adopted pantheism. It worships nature and doesn’t require the supernatural to believe in spirituality.”

          “THAT’S CHEATING!”

        6. Amelie Wikström

          “I’m a Humanist now. It’s not anything particularly spiritual, I just choose to believe in and support all humanity, defend the human rights, try and value human life and quality of life over short-sighted interests. . .”

          “That does it, I’m gonna worship the Earth Mother!”

  2. Animedingo

    Jesus was probably just a really cool guy

    1. Doctor_Who

      He turned water into wine! Well, he turned grapes into wine, but grapes are mostly water.

      He also multiplied fish! His method involved leaving a bunch of them alone in a pond for a few months.

      1. Mollyscribbles

        I remember one interesting take I came across about the loaves and fishes thing:
        Jesus basically went “Hey, did anyone bring food they’re willing to share with everyone?”
        only one kid came forward and offered everything he’d brought.
        Jesus responded with “Oh, wow, isn’t it awesome how this one kid actually paid attention to the stuff I was saying about generosity?”
        and then everyone awkwardly added the food they’d brought to the baskets without saying anything.

        1. Rolf of Many Doors

          And water turns into really-watered-down wine if you add enough wine

        2. Jeff K!

          For once, the story actually seems to predict that thought process and makes sure there’s some guy that says “Boy howdy, you broke out the stronger stuff that’s better than what you had earlier!”

        3. AMagicalDuck

          I mean are you gonna tell Jesus his wine is shitty? That’s a good way to get him to stop doing miracles for you. You’ve gotta pretend it’s the best wine you’ve ever had

        4. RonF

          Except the people there thought it was wine the host had held back, they didn’t know it was Jesus.

        5. Taffy

          What, you think they hadn’t read the Bible? It’s called “Biblical” times for a reason, and the reason is that everyone was reading the Bible. So of course they knew it was him, because who else was transmuting water into wine?

        6. ktbear

          Funnily enough, a long time ago (like, back in the 80s) a local company used to make wine out of water, alcohol from a still, a bit of added sugar and enough grape juice to give it flavour. Im told it tasted disgusting.

        7. S.R.

          “””wine”””

        8. jflb96

          Back in the day, you used to only drink wine without watered if you were rich and/or wanted to get sloppy drunk

        9. Reltzik

          May he who is without sin cook the first stone soup.

        10. Sarah Lea

          Stone Soup reference!!!

        11. Needfuldoer

          Thus started a two thousand year tradition of guilt-tripping.

        12. Mollyscribbles

          And church potlucks!

        13. Michael Steamweed

          The tale of Stone Soup is so underrated in today’s society.

        14. Librain

          I’ve heard that take before – it sounds really plausible, and very in line with his general teachings. Plus, it doesn’t involve food magically growing as more people take from it through super Jesus woojoo.

          This was the same guy who said that “40 days and 40 nights” was just biblical shorthand for “a long ass time”, the same way Wan Shi Tong, guardian of almost unlimited knowledge, is entitled “He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things”. Ten thousand was not intended to be literal, it was just a number so high that it may as well be infinite.

    2. Yumi

      I have no idea what to think of historical Jesus, but I’d be super curious to met him.

      1. Amós Batista

        This is content to fill an entire Bible.

        Was Jesus just a copy from another similar saviors, found in other religions? Was Jesus just a cool guy, just killed because they wanted to fullfil the prophecies?

        1. Jamie

          Out of morbid curiosity, who are you thinking when you say “similar saviors, found in other religions”? Are we talking Cyrus the Great?

        2. Amós Batista

          No, no Similar saviors in other religions, like Tammuz or Osiris.

        3. Jamie

          Ah. You’re talking about people who died, not people who did any saving. Cool.

        4. Nymph

          lmao

        5. David M Willis

          Osiris does plenty of saving! If you’re a good person he sends you to the good place instead of the bad place — which is a thing he can do because he died and resurrected.

        6. NGPZ

          and it didn’t even take three days XD

        7. ThomasQuinn

          Basically all the figures from so-called ‘mystery religions’ like Mithraism, people like Apollonius of Tyana, Zoroaster, quite possibly Buddha, etc.

        8. insomniac

          Jesus of Nazareth almost certainly would not have been killed to fulfill any prophecies.

          There were no shortage of would-be saviors and messiahs in first-century Judea. Plenty of them were crucified, and for the most part that was the end of their movement because what the messianic groups were expecting was a divinely-appointed savior who would expel the Roman occupier and take his place as king of the Hebrews. If he gets nailed to a tree to die in shame and agony while those followers who aren’t dying beside him watch powerlessly, well, he clearly wasn’t the guy.

          That the Christian movement survived the death of Christ, that they would worship a figure in the process of being humiliated and executed by the state, was profoundly weird to many contemporaries of the early movement.

        9. Amelie Wikström

          It’s likely the first gospels were written just after Rome complteley destroyed Jerusalem in a, for the Roman army, uniquely genocidal aggressive move; a very good time and place for a religion based on peace, forgiveness, humility and being extremely nonthreatening.

        10. jflb96

          If your message is ‘He that was last shall be first’ and ‘God likes it when you keep your head down and leave the justice-inflicting to Him’, turns out that spreads really well amongst people who have fuck all and no way to do much about it

        11. jflb96

          ‘Anaximander Prays to his God’ is a delightful piece of Roman graffiti showing someone kneeling before a donkey-headed figure being crucified, for example

        12. jflb96

          *Alexamenos, my mistake

        13. Michael Steamweed

          Or all of that combined? An inspiring man, whose story got embellished and modified by others (for different reasons) afterward?

    3. JA

      He told the wealthy to give away their worldly possessions if they really were his followers, so I’d agree.

    4. Freezer

      We’ve met him. He was kind of a grouch.

      1. Needfuldoer

        He found modern tables very difficult to flip over.

        1. Michael Steamweed

          Very difficult to flip over data charts, spreadsheets, and tables.

        2. someone

          That’s because he never learned Visual Basic. Flipping data is the next step after Hello World.

        3. Needfuldoer

          If he used Excel, the tables could pivot.

    5. Reltzik

      Maybe? At this point I’m of the view that information about the historical Jesus (if there even was one) has been so obscured by embellishments and later additions that we know basically nothing about him. Even if some real sayings or deeds are mixed in with the fiction (and I think it’s plausible that there are), I’ve got no way of telling them apart, so any characterization of a historical Jesus just gets filed under the heading of “unknowable” in my mind.

      1. Uly

        Historians generally agree that Jesus existed, was baptized, and gave a big sermon.

        1. thejeff

          And most importantly, was crucified. It’s that and the claims of resurrection that drove the new religion.

        2. Reltzik

          Okay, but none of those details strike me as more than trivia. I’d probably delve into the scholarship about them if I cared much about them, but I don’t. To me, the important parts are (1) the supernatural stuff, and (2) the value and consequences of the things he said. I see little evidence beyond testimony for the supernatural stuff (and I very much view the people putting forth that testimony as evidence as being both unreliable and untrustworthy), and (2) is something I can work with regardless of whether those things were said by a historical Jesus or not. I do tend to lean towards the idea that there was a real historical Jesus, but I’m not to the point where I’m going to declare it to be a fact, and I don’t view the question as something that’s worth my time to sort through.

        3. thejeff

          From a historical perspective, the part that scholars consider important is whether or not there was a real person who inspired the new religion of Christianity. The supernatural stuff they consider a matter of faith and not something strongly enough supported by historical evidence for scholarship to address and the values and consequences of what he might have said are more for theologians than historians, though questions of what parts were clearly later developments are often debated.

        4. Uly

          Yeah, well, if there was verifiable evidence for the supernatural stuff then I think wed all convert.

        5. Mark

          I think there would be some holdouts even so. Humans are like that.

          But: how would you verify evidence of the supernatural without relying solely on eyewitness testimony? How would you build a detector for supernatural stuff using only natural forces, materials and components?

        6. thejeff

          It’s an interesting question in the abstract, but it’s not really necessary in the actual Biblical history. The supposed supernatural stuff in the Bible isn’t even well attested by recorded eyewitness testimony. Certainly not more so than supernatural stuff from other ancient sources.

          If miracles had really happened on the scale that many such sources claim, there’d be far more documentary evidence than we actually see and they would have had far more direct visible effect on history.

      2. Yumi

        I agree that it’s hard to feel confident about what Jesus might have been like at all, but I do believe there was a historical Jesus. Honestly, I was biased toward believing that he never existed, but the general expert consensus swayed me. One thing that stood out to me in looking into it was that even among early opponents of Christianity– many of whom were powerful people that there’s decent record of– there didn’t seem to be claims that he never existed. Seems like if that was a reasonably possible conclusion that those who were opposed to the religion could have used, they would have.

    6. Deanatay

      “ And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…”

      -Douglas Adams

      1. Michael Steamweed

        <3 to the mention of the Great Prophet Douglas Adams!

        1. Laura

          42.

        2. NickG

          ‘What do you get if you multiply six by nine’

        3. Taffy

          Laid.

    7. Laura

      Way cool. Just ask King Missile!

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WVJ-Wlacc-E

      (On the hacked church PA system, of course!)

  3. Dave Van Domelen

    Is Dorothy ready for the Maximalist/Minimalist argument yet?

    (Biblical Scholars, MAXIMALIZE!)

  4. Sirksome

    Who made the syllabus? Pretty sure Jason wasn’t the TA by the time Robin needed one ready. She typed it up right? Doesn’t that actually make her the nerd?

    1. Doctor_Who

      Perhaps she inherited the syllabus from whoever previously taught this course. Or there’s just multiple poli-sci professors all teaching off the same one, and it’s department standard.

    2. Thag Simmons

      She might be cribbing notes from the previous Professor.

      She’s probably not actually just doing her job. Probably.

    3. True Survivor

      My guess would be that she got it from whatever Professor last taught the class. I don’t think she is really following it very closely, however.

    4. Yumi

      Made the syllabus using ChatGPT

      1. Needfuldoer

        Halfway through it starts hallucinating things like Grover Cleveland’s policy on the reunification of Germany, and the infamous rivalry between Tip O’Neill and Arnold Vinick.

      2. NGPZ

        a teacher at my old school did that fairly recently
        thankfully they were fired for it almost immediately

        1. Da Boy

          I get students being lazy and using it to write their essays. But a teacher using the “Let me pull this info out of my digital ass” to prepare teaching material? That’s terrifying. Humanity will not end because AIs will murder us in rebellion, it will end because of sheer incompetence brought about by blindly trusting AI bullshit.

        2. NGPZ

          Bruh, here’s a rather helpful readin link:

          https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

          the whole AI speculation shit is MUCH WORSE than you think

    5. Shade

      Well typically it’s not JUST the teacher but other faculty members as well, with consultation from other faculty members and the department chair. I could see Robin just letting them do all the work.

  5. NGPZ

    LOL Joyce, so that’s your deal
    TBF maybe like 10% of it happened for realz XD

    1. Uly

      A significant portion of the Bible is not at all intended to be read as a history. It’s stuff like Proverbs or Psalms or the Song of Solomon and it’s not a story and really should not be read as one.

      The remaining can be divided into histories and mythology. If you’re looking at the Bible from a perspective that says that the mythology parts are not intended to be understood as a literal recounting of historical events (or from a secular perspective that simply doesn’t care if they are intended that way) then, honestly, a lot of the mythology is fairly obviously mythology. The creation, the flood, Jonah – these are clearly stories and not histories.

      So that leaves the historical portions, which… well, here’s the thing. The ancients were real people, and they didn’t know you, and every single one of them had better things to do with their time than write a perfectly accurate historical record for your benefit.

      If we’re going to say “LOL, maybe 10% of that happened for realz” about the historical portions of the Bible because they’re subject to bias and a little bit of truth-shaping on the side then we may as well apply that same standard to everything everybody has written and toss out 90% or more of the historical record of all time.

      Personally, I’m not willing to do that, but you do you!

      1. adam Black

        None of that is the problem.
        There are hundreds of missing years in the “historical” section of the Bible.

        It’s not about mere bias.

        ( Completely aside from it’s founding events are thoroughly fiction, falsified by archeological records , the Exodus and conquering of Judea )

        1. Charles Phipps

          The problem is that a lot of people don’t understand parables exist.

          In a book full of parables.

          Some asshole decided that the history and fables section were the same.

      2. HueSatLight

        you should toss out “history” that’s made up. And of course apply that to everything. if “you doing you” is taking like Pliny for his word, then you’re making a foolish mistake. It wasn’t just them having other things to do, so they got the details wrong. They made shit up, and making shit up was the important thing they were doing.
        teh aNcIeNtS knew it too. Lucian’s “A True History” shows that.

        1. Uly

          Nobody in the world is a video camera with nothing better to do than to record events exactly as they happened. We don’t throw out their records because they had an agenda, we look at the agenda to understand their world.

        2. thejeff

          Define “made up”? And how much “made up” gets an ancient text tossed out?

          Ancient writers got a lot of stuff wrong. They passed on stories without strong evidence, they believed supernatural events, they exaggerated, they slanted events in their favor. “History is written by the winners.”
          Not just the Biblical texts, but we see it throughout the ancient world. And far more recently, but for more recent periods we generally have more and better records.

          If we throw out the Hebrew Bible wholesale, using the same standards, we’d have to throw out most ancient texts. That doesn’t mean we should take them at their word, that means scholars analyze them critically, trying to tease the historical bits out from the myths and legends. And from the politically or theologically motivated distortions. Cross reference a document with texts from other cultures and with what can be gleaned from archeology.

      3. Jamie

        Eh, I think you’re underestimating how much is mythology, assuming that we can agree that “mythology” refers to stories that form the narrative core of a culture. Like, the primary purpose of the various canonical Christian Bibles as a historical document is first to unify Israel and Judah into a single nation; then to unify Jews as a coherent people during the Babylonian exile; and then third to evangelize and set doctrine for Christians.

        There are certainly figures in the Bible that we have archaeological evidence for, like Jeremiah, but they’re extremely uncommon, and it’s hard to actually link up Biblically historical events with confirmed historical events. Like, not even talking about the obviously-fantastical stuff. The Book of Esther probably didn’t happen, for example, even though there’s nothing unrealistic about its events. That’s not “truth-shaping”; that’s “modern casual readers don’t have the context to know this isn’t intended as a historical account”.

        It’s really much, much easier to regard the entire Bible as not-intended-as-a-factual-history. It’s a history in the same sense that Americans care weirdly a lot about the origins of Thanksgiving despite some really questionable historicity: it’s much more important for contemporary identity formation than accurate historical understanding.

        1. thejeff

          But that’s not really the relevant definition of mythology, since that definition doesn’t distinguish between stories that are completely made up and ones with a core of truth, which when you’re talking about the Bible and historical events is the relevant question.

      4. Aquila

        I’d say the flood does have some historical basis, exaggerated to hell, of course.
        We’re talking about the fertile crescent, here, the rivers would flood on a yearly basis.
        So let’s say one year the flood’s a lot worse than usual. There’s this one guy who notices: “Hey, isn’t the water level rising a lot sooner and faster than last year?” Guy’s a bit paranoid, so he prepares a big raft for his livestock and family. After the waters recede, suddenly this guy’s the only one who’s got any breeding stock. Meaning a couple of years later, any sheep or cattle in the crescent are probably descended from that guy’s herds.

        Pretty good story, especially once you add in all the God bits. So in this one story, I’d say those percentages are probably pretty accurate, in that it maybe happened 10% for real.

        1. Jamie

          Oh, hey, someone who gets to learn about Utnapishtim today.

          Did Noah exist? Actually, probably yes. We think he ruled as king in Shuruppak for ten years. And we think his name was originally recorded as Ziusudra before it became Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh and eventually Noah in the Bible.

        2. ThomasQuinn

          @Aquila:

          It’s a nice thought, but it ignores that flood myths were already well-established in mythology long before the authors of what we know as the Old Testament incorporated it – they can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, for instance, where it is disturbingly similar to the Biblical version. But it also features in Chinese mythology, in Indian mythology, in Cheyenne mythology. I don’t think you can pin it to one historical occurrence, it’s more like an archetypal motif if you ask me: not grounded in ancient history, but in ancient psychology.

        3. thejeff

          Or flood myths are common because ancient civilizations tended to develop around fertile river valleys that flooded a lot. Different historical origins rather than psychological ones.

          The Biblical story definitely developed directly from older Mesopotamian versions though.

  6. Sirksome

    I feel like if the Bible were treated as a piece of historical fantasy or something like that instead of a greatly misinterpreted roadmap on how people should live their lives it would be kind of cool.

    1. NGPZ

      Like, if the bible were JUST a piece of literature, yay
      but just about no reviewer would give it a passin’ grade
      at least as far as the Torah, the OT
      i guess to be fair there’s tons of vivid imagery?
      but there’s tons of filler and needless kills
      it’s clear lotz the authors ain’t got no chillz X-X

      1. Uly

        1. The Torah and the OT are not exactly the same.

        2. The Bible is not “a piece of literature” but several different books, written by many people in many time periods, every one of whom had their own agenda and their own viewpoints.

        1. NGPZ

          yee I was just listin them in that bar
          the Torah be very first part
          of the Tanakh, the OG Hebrew OT
          Original Text you see
          translated and sold as the Old Testament™ for centuries

          of course it ain’t “just” literature in societies
          it’s seen as this whole thing intertangled with piety
          in so much the world, the words written within
          often play a role in major decisions!
          in this comic, we dare not forget
          themz also used as an instrument of the establishment!
          multivalent is the art of bible quoting
          religious or not, remember to stay woke an’
          to say the very least,
          if ya gotta take a chance, give it to peace

        2. Michael Steamweed

          Let’s not forget the political convention with its own discrete committees that took all of the loudest and most wide-spread oral and written works, put them all together, tossed out (and criminalized) the parts the over-committee didn’t like, put all the accepted stuff into a specific order, and published that.

          And also let’s not forget when some far-away king did the same thing for his own purposes too.

      2. HueSatLight

        some of what reads like filler is different styles in literature than today. The Tain and Mabinogion have stuff like that too. I figure some of it is shout-outs, some of it is story hooks for oral story tellers. some of it is the editors needing it to say something different than their source material. And some of it is just different tastes. Stories like Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Last of the Mohicans you have to trudge through if you want to finish.

      3. morleuca

        Took a course in college called “The Bible as Litwrature”. It was fantastic the second time I took it. The first time through i had to drop it because we essentially got brigaded. The members of the multi-denominational Christian club on campus (which itself had become homogenized by a core group of religious conservative extremists who drove anyone else out) all decided to take the class and forced it into being a religious Bible studies class. It was moserable.

        1. Michael Steamweed

          I feel sorry for the poor professor who had to put up with that. And I sympathize with the poor students who had to leave (yourself included). 🙁

        2. morleuca

          It was a fun course. Got to bring in my copy of Isaac Asimov’s guide for the professor to borrow

    2. Jerach

      More works of fiction should crib from the Bible and use it as a basis for wild fantasy fiction in the way people pull from Greek and Norse mythology.

      1. Jamie

        What, you want more Left Behind?

        1. Nymph

          Or Supernatural?

        2. morleuca

          Or Job

        3. Taffy

          No. Fuck that. I watched all 15 seasons of that show so you don’t have to, and I will say this with my entire chest. After Season 5 and the whole Lucifer/Michael pit fight, you do not ever need to watch an entire season of Supernatural Seasons 6-9 are NOT nice, they’re a single protracted argument and nobody likes each other, and the only episode I remember from Season 13 is the Scooby-Doo! crossover, because it’s the only one that’s trying to have any fucking fun. The finale is worthless.

          Rowena is still the best character, though.

      2. Mark

        There is a sizable business dealing in just that. My wife is reading an entire novel about the Woman at the Well, a story that was originally told in, maybe, six column inches. (Jn 4:4-42) There are a lot of these. I kid her about all the padding and downright invention.

        Check your local Christian bookstore — the racks are full of ’em.

      3. Michael Steamweed

        Well, the Narnia stories ain’t too bad. Definitely better than Left Behind. And of course the Middle Earth stories are best of all.

    3. Jeff K!

      You might enjoy the Apocrypals podcast then, a couple of comic nerds (one of whom is very knowledgeable about the context and historicity of each book) read books from the Bible and apocrypha as literature and discuss them.

    4. Reltzik

      “Come on, the draft’s already long, you don’t have to further pad your word count with entire pages of begats and census numbers. I’m telling you this as your editor. Kill your darlings and slim it down.”

      1. Taffy

        But what about my blorbo, Shoish from Pelp?

        1. Clif

          Nothing compared to my blurbo, Taffy.

      2. Michael Steamweed

        “Look, I’m telling you, for the last time, if you don’t condense this stuff down, I’m going to have to convene a beta-readers council up here in my home town of Nicea, to do that for you.”

    5. C.T. Phipps

      I mean a lot of people who claim the Bible is their guide don’t give a shit about any of its contents.

      What part of the Sermon of the Mount do Republicans love most?

  7. Nono

    Joyce has never really pushed her religious stuff onto Sarah as much. I know Liz shared Christian memes and such but I feel like Sarah would be atheist or agnostic at most.

    1. BBCC

      IIRC, Sarah is one of the few atheists that Willis has confirmed, along with Dorothy and Ruth.

  8. BBCC

    I relate to reading ahead in class. I did that a lot in my history classes in high school because I was so fascinated. And of course with my world history book I did it because we were barely gonna touch Asia and we weren’t gonna with Africa (time constraints, phooey).

  9. RassilonTDavros

    Nice to know I wasn’t the only kid who read random bits of the Bible in church during the sermons instead of actually listening to them. Although I didn’t really focus on actually committing it to memory.

    1. Jamie

      I listened to the sermons, and then realized that this was a mistake when it became apparent that no one else had.

      1. Mark

        I worry that one day people will realize that I am thinking about what the preacher is telling us, rather than swallowing it whole.

  10. BarerMender

    Joyce, you can be a real asshole, sometimes.

    1. Coatl

      She is a challenge to patience.

    2. Taffy

      You’ve got a pretty low bar if this clears it.

    3. Nymph

      I’m genuinely baffled what part of this you think is “being an asshole” tbh. It’s called playing around? Being silly? Having any amount of fun with friends who know you well?

      Sorry you can’t relate, I guess.

      1. Mark

        Perhaps. Perhaps it’s Joyce feeling comfortable enough with Dorothy to imply “let’s have an argument about this.” She’s in the must-reject-it-all phase and needs to argue.

      2. Daibhid C

        No such thing. Every interaction between two people in this comic is deeply toxic, and the only question is figuring out why and deciding who the asshole is. Them’s the rules.

  11. Cassie

    Someone introduce Joyce to Reddit. I think she’d have fun.

    1. morleuca

      I can picture her stumbling across traaaaaaaaans2 and getting lost for hours

  12. Amós Batista

    No way Christians skipped a LOT of content inside bible at Sunday School. That’s why I used to read Bible during sermon.
    Sis, there’s witchcraft there.
    There’s porn there.
    Kings? I would say Game of Thrones .

    1. Laura

      Not to mention, poop jokes galore!

      1. Reltzik

        Bloody piles of them!

        1. NGPZ

          literally
          in this Liturgy
          the stories within about the Divine,
          acts that ain’t always kind,
          much condemning the One Who Shines
          who would probably think it’d be real fine
          to mention him in comment number #69!

  13. Mr. Random

    Oh cool.
    I… was never very strongly into my church stuff (despite being raised in a Catholic school. And attending church regularly every week until I was 18).

    Never knew there was actual historical records to that.

    1. Uly

      Oh, yeah, the Bible is actually a fairly important historical document, and while some of it is obviously straight-up mythology or poetry, some of it can be fairly reliably corroborated with outside sources.

      1. Bryy

        The Bible very clearly is not interested in being anything more than fairy tale. Suggesting otherwise is foolish.

        1. Uly

          The Bible is a collection of writings. It’s not interested in anything because it’s… not… alive?

        2. C.T. Phipps

          The mythology element is actually fairly minor.

          It’s genealogy and laws and proverbs.

        3. Taffy

          Says the one with a Cthulhu avatar.

        4. Bryy

          I mean, yes?

        5. Taffy

          Yeah, so your icon is from a story that’s ~50% racist tirade by volume > I assume you under that and can identify the racism > Racist beliefs are pretty much fairy tales they tell themselves > Therefore, you’re at least partially qualified to identify a fairy tale.

          It’s flawless logic.

        6. NGPZ

          hey hey, keep it chill
          ain’t no need to go up that hill
          HP Lovecraft was racist and rather daft
          but we can easily reclaim eldritch icons from that crap

        7. Taffy

          I’m the chillest person in this comments section, no worries.

      2. NGPZ

        “important historical document”
        important to who and when?
        the cast students astute and cute don’t assume
        them texts ever play out in some social vacuum XD

        1. Uly

          Important to anybody who thinks that it’s a good idea to understand the past and the people who came before us.

        2. NGPZ

          well of course, but that’s not my point
          bible stories and evidence-based history are real different jointz

        3. Uly

          One thing historians do is look at historical writings. That provides evidence for what the people they’re studying believed and what they thought it was important to record and transmit.

        4. Nymph

          Nothing ever written in all of human history happened “in a social vacuum”.

      3. ThomasQuinn

        @Uly:

        “some of it can be fairly reliably corroborated with outside sources.”

        Yes, but “some” is a bit of a weasel word here: *some* can be corroborated with outside sources, but that “some” is very little, and most of what can be corroborated is stuff that most people would regard as…underwhelming. The bible is an important historical document because of what it tells us about the people who wrote it and the people who read it. Not because of its own proto-historiographical content.

        1. Mark

          Is that not history? History is not all battles and soporific lists of kings.

        2. thejeff

          Sure. Christians especially tend to focus on the mythological world creation/flood maybe up to exodus stuff, then move straight on to Jesus. Skipping over the boring parts about Israel and Judah and all their kings and wars and things.
          But that’s where the history is found. Like Joyce says the Iron Age stuff is mostly real people. It’s often exaggerated, with the role Judah played in regional affairs out of proportion, but it’s an absolutely key source for understanding the history of the region.
          Plenty of parts of the world where historians would be ecstatic to discover an ancient text with as much information as the Hebrew Bible has, even accepting that it would be biased and filled with distortions.

  14. HueSatLight

    Even if they were mostly real people, that doesn’t really make it worth learning. Unless the iron age person is Cú Chulainn, he’s worth learning about because he’s like iron age Irish Goku.

    1. Coatl

      Indeed

    2. Uly

      It may be worth learning. It depends on where your interest lies.

    3. Jamie

      I like that this implies that Irish mythology is basically discount Chinese mythology.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Well, you know, those mythologists loved to copy each others’ tropes over the millennia. Even our modern mythologists keep it up.

  15. Marsh Maryrose

    I want to hear Joyce’s take on Pekahiah and Pekah

  16. Amós Batista

    Stop, Joyce! You’re killing Roz with this amount of boredom.

    1. Jeremiah

      She is already dead inside for having Robin as a teacher.

  17. Juanoku

    Joyce. You know Jesus was a real guy right. Like, he existed. This is a dumb argument

    1. HueSatLight

      o rly

      1. HueSatLight

        Jesus ??‍?? Socrates
        characters that are so fictionalized that its moot if there were actual historical versions they were based on, and which no evidence exists of today

        1. adam Black

          There’s over a 500 year difference. There’s no historical doubts that his students Plato, his Aristotle and his Alexander the Great were all real people.

          There’s no historical records of Jesus student outside Steven. John the Baptist made history, but there’s no record their meeting wasn’t apocryphal.

        2. Clif

          Additionally, Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle all gave accounts of Socrates. In addition, Plato and Xenophon extensively documented Socrates’ life, philosophy, and trials, including detailed accounts of his conversations and interactions with other Athenian citizens. Aristophanes satirized him in his plays. All together, his historic existence seems pretty solid.

        3. ThomasQuinn

          @Adam Black:

          His students were real, but Aristotle was born after Socrates died, so he just had second-hand traditions at best to go by. Xenophon knew Socrates, but what he writes about him can, one passage aside, not be considered reliable: he writes extensively about Socrates’ trial, giving direct quotes and the likes, but at the time, he was far away on campaign. And he didn’t make a secret of the fact that he was writing a defense of Socrates’ character and his teachings – a hagiography more than a history, if you will.

          Plato is the closest source to Socrates, but there is pretty much no way to corroborate anything he said, and every reason to assume he would ascribe to Socrates any insights that might land him in hot water with the authorities, as it would give him an easier defense if he were to get into legal difficulties over his teachings, as Socrates seems to have done.

        4. thejeff

          John the Baptist didn’t make history any more than Jesus did. If he didn’t appear in the Bible, he’d be a minor footnote that only scholars of that period of Jewish history had ever heard of.

        5. thejeff

          Also, Steven?

          I don’t think there’s any non-Christian historical reference to Steven? Later Christian sources based on his appearance in Acts, but nothing else. (Nor was he a student of Jesus there)

          Paul’s letters don’t even mention Steven by name, as he does Peter, John and James.

        6. Jamie

          Also Siddhartha Gautama and Guru Nanak.

      2. Uly

        That is the consensus of historians who study that period, yes.

        1. NGPZ

          But like before we consider any corresponding historical thesis,
          there still a question to be begged: Which Jesus?

        2. Nymph

          Willis – if you ever think about adding another feature to this website, I am genuinely begging for a block feature.

        3. Bryy

          Out of all the comments/users that could possibly be block worthy, this ain’t one of them.

        4. Nymph

          I disagree. I find this user INCREDIBLY block-worthy.

          From the constant shilling of their own business, the sob stories with a donation link attached, and the constant cries for attention – I would be happier not having to see their comments. And it’s unavoidable because every day they comment repeatedly about whatever their latest “look at me” is.

          You don’t find that annoying, that’s fine. I didn’t say anyone else had to, just that I would like the option to never see it again.

        5. Deanatay

          Witch Jesus?

          *imagines Storybook Jesus with pointy felt hat, riding a broomstick*

          Yaaaassss….!

        6. morleuca

          Isn’t that like asking “which Loki?”

        7. NGPZ

          “The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.“

          — Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus

        8. Taffy

          At least everyone seems to agree he was a caster of some kind.

  18. Raven

    Oooh, I took a whole class in college about the Bible and how well it does (and doesn’t) line up with the historical record, and what the discrepencies can tell us about the people who wrote it.

    1. Bash

      That sounds incredibly interesting. Care to share any highlights?

  19. AGV/Ruby

    It’s interesting seeing how the bible interprets verifiable history. E.g. Herod killed his entire family out of paranoia rather than everyone else’s babies, but you can see how one is transformed into the other when written after the fact.

  20. Dday

    Chapter 3: George Santos, and how to be Gay in Politics (so Long as it Owns the Libs)

  21. Marvelman

    I’m a big fan of the GREAT BOOKS. The original aim of a university as opposed to a trade school is that it is not just supposed to prepare you for a profession but to make the student more enlightened. So, no Joyce, reading the Bible is definitively not a waste of time. It is the central text of Western Civilization!

  22. Cimorene

    My first semester of college I tried extra hard to get into Catholicism and joined the Newman Center.

    By the end of first semester I had fallen into a deep spiral of studying Gnosticism I’m still low-key obsessed with.

    And also read ahead in scripture and classes compulsively.

    1. Michael Steamweed

      I had a brief gnosticism period when I read the His Dark Materials trilogy, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and its dramatization The Da Vinci Code.

    2. Twitcher

      Cimorene! My sister loves the Dragons series! Was it formative for you as well?

  23. IntangibleMatter

    Happy Sarah jumpscare (I’m still not used to it)

  24. Francoinblanco

    so you are one of those who believes there was a Temple in Jerusalem or some Roman Empire

    1. Clif

      The ruins still exist, so yeah. Do I infer you don’t believe in the Roman Empire?

      1. Clif

        Specifically the evidence for the second temple is extensive. The first temple or Solomon’s temple, you could argue about. But there’s some independent evidence there as well.

        1. thejeff

          Whether Solomon built it or it was anything like as glorious as described is very much open to question, but it would have been a weird capital city of the time that didn’t have a temple to the kingdom’s gods.

      2. Regret

        That is indeed the joke.

  25. Bash

    Roz’s face in the middle panel is priceles.

  26. DJTsurugi

    does… does Joyce think that’s a burn? ~<3

    1. Deanatay

      She’s basically “OK Boomer”ing Dotty, except with religion instead of age.

  27. darkoneko

    Joyce, Sarah just want to hang out with you.

  28. DashWallkick

    Joyce might not think she’s a moral supremacist now that she doesn’t believe in God anymore, but she’s still grappling with “the Bible *isn’t* true, ever, at all.”

    1. Bryy

      Well, it’s not. Even if some of these people actually existed, the Bible itself is a religious text that is not concerned with anything except spreading “the word of the Lord”. It’s not concerned with history or historical value.

      1. Daibhid C

        Okay, but I feel like there’s a difference between “not concerned with truth” and “not true”. Like, if ChatGTP says the sky is blue, that doesn’t mean the sky isn’t blue. ChatGTP doesn’t care if the sky’s blue or not (or even have any idea what “the sky”, “blue”, and “truth” are), but “the sky is blue” is still true.

        I haven’t looked into whether Joyce’s list of kings is true, because I don’t really care, but if it is, it doesn’t stop being true just because it’s in the Bible, and therefore it’s in the Bible, and it’s true.

        1. Daibhid C

          I think people who were raised atheist, like me and Dorothy, get to have a more ambivalent view of the Bible than those who came to atheism later, which is probably some kind of privilege. I never believed the Bible was the infallible Word of God, so I never had to renounce it.

      2. PedanticJerkass

        It’s kind of like the story about George Washington and the cherry tree. George Washington absolutely was a real person who existed, but the cherry tree myth is just that, a fictional myth. It was a fiction made up by Mason Locke Weems, in a biography written a year after Washington died.

        Similar goes for most of the stuff in the Bible about (ostensibly) real people. Anything that may happen to be literally true in the Bible is purely coincidental.

        1. thejeff

          Otoh you get things like histories of kings and their reigns, some but not all of which can be verified in other sources. If the ones that can be verified are correct, it gets a lot more reasonable to accept the others near them in the lists are also real. Like, if the Bible says that Ahaz ruled and was succeeded by his son Ammon and he by his son Josiah, and you can show from other sources that Ahaz ruled about the right time and Josiah some decades later, it’s not a great stretch to accept that Ammon ruled in between.

          How much you accept about what it says happened to them during their reigns is a different question, but it’s addressed by the same kind of method, just more complicated.

  29. Charles Phipps

    I confess, knowing this is autobiographical for Willis makes me think he would have been a fascinating friend to have in college.

    1. Bryy

      By the very timeline of his comics (i.e. Mary being the ideal woman), I think he was still fairly indoctrinated?

      1. Joy

        He’s literally described Joyce as a delight and that himself instead of being a delight just has male entitlement

  30. Michael Steamweed

    “Joyce, you should come to church with me this Sunday.”
    “I knew it!”

  31. Yeet

    is it not normal to read your textbook? I never understood people who don’t do that
    it has the things in it you need to learn for the course!

    1. Michael Steamweed

      Well, some people are lazy, some don’t have time, some find it too boring, some aren’t there in college to learn but only to get a degree, and so on.

      1. Jeremiah

        But how do you get a degree if you don’t learn what you need for it?

        1. Yumi

          At times, easily.
          Especially see people take this approach with the courses outside their major.

        2. Daibhid C

          Time for another True Story of Daibhid’s Uni Disaster. Since nobody specifically said that it would be best if my secondary courses were related to my physics degree, I decided Celtic Civilisations looked fun. The “textbook” was a photocopied affair available from the Celtic Studies office for … a couple of quid, maybe? Not the massive sums actual textbooks go for because the publisher has you over a barrel, anyway.

          And for several months, I just … never got round to it. I seemed to be doing the course fine without it, so I continued not to get around to it. I finally bought the damn thing after I’d bought a reasonably pricey book of Celtic poetry to select a poem from, and the tutor pointed out that the one I’d chosen was in the textbook.

          And yet, I did much better at Celtic Civ. than I did at anything relating to physics, where I did have all the textbooks and factsheets, but also had undiagnosed dyscalculia.

    2. thejeff

      It’s less common to read ahead of the assigned chapters.

    3. Regret

      When I’m burnt out I cannot focus on books with knowledge I need to struggle with. If it slots right into place: No problem. I can read stuff like that all day long, but if it conflicts with my worldview and I need to think about it then I need mental fortitude, which I don’t always have.

    4. yak

      Honestly for a class like this I wouldn’t bother doing more reading than I absolutely have to. You can usually kind of find your way to a B+ based solely on the lectures.

  32. C.T. Phipps

    Speaking as a neuroatypical the idea of “something is either 100% true or 100% false” is a very common belief. The idea of some parts being accurate and another is a thing that still sometimes drives me crazy.

  33. Vulcanodon

    Atheist who studied the bible extensively in college, can so relate to this.

    1. Bryy

      Yup.

      Feeling Dorothy’s feelings in my bones.

  34. JohnnyO

    If you’re looking for when the Old Testament becomes partially historical look for when people stop living to be 510 years old.

    1. Da Boy

      Well there is a theory that those are Moon cycle years.

      1. Yondrose

        At no time was 42 considered particularly old, so how does that work?

        1. Daibhid C

          T’internet doesn’t seem to be entirely sure what a “Moon cycle year” is, but my own assumption would be a lunar year of 13 lunar cycles, not one lunar cycle.

          Which is close enough to a solar year to make no odds; a 510 year old in lunar years is a just shy of his 495th birthday in Gregorian years, according to this converter.

          I’m kind of reminded of the claim I read somewhere that the first chapter of Genesis is absolutely, literally true … if you assume that “day” means “an arbitrary amount of time, possibly millions of years”.

        2. Daibhid C

          Oops, I was sure I closed the tags…

        3. Da Boy

          Well I’ve got nothing then

  35. Hof1991

    For those who care, I’d recommend the Data over Dogma podcast or the associated ticktock account. It looks at the Bible dispassionately, as a topic we can study and understand. Deep understanding of the language families. Archaeology. It dispels a lot of pro and con myths. There was no long line of suffering and reborn saviors as a model for Jesus. Most Christian beliefs developed long after the apostles. Looks at the data and academic consensus and isn’t particularly interested in dogma or pop culture takes.

    1. Hof1991

      https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan?_t=8qD2Hmc7pb1&_r=1

      Or @maklelan
      Will give you an idea of his content and style.

    2. thejeff

      Definitely second the recommendation for maklelan. I usually just catch his tiktok shorts, though sometimes the full podcast if it’s something I’m into

  36. Jeremiah

    Really wish we didn’t start arguments about what parts of the bibble are legitimate or worthwhile as historical records. This is a very complex topic that none of us are qualified to tackle.

    1. Regret

      Also, not at all interesting, at least not to me.

    2. Bryy

      I feel like it’s the exact opposite determinism of “the Bible is 100% real or all of it is false!”, but with the added wrinkle of the fact that the Bible’s primary goal is *not* to be a historical account of real events.

      1. Jess

        Honestly with how the bible has been translated, retranslated, and even more rewording on top of the retranslation, I don’t have any faith that it’s accurate. I like the parables that tell people to just be fucking decent to others, though.

        1. thejeff

          Scholars doing actual work on it go back to the oldest sources in the original languages: Or at least to modern translations based on those sources. Translation and retranslation don’t affect that, though they do affect popular opinion of course.

        2. Jess

          Wasn’t it a thing that when new kings came into power they’d commission new translations. Thus the King James Bible? At that point it became more of a political document than a historical one.

        3. thejeff

          Sure, occasionally. But we’re not really relying on some long chain of such translations for our current understanding of the Bible.

          And it wasn’t that common either. Which is why we still talk about the KJV, rather than the King Charles.

      2. NGPZ

        the contents of the Bible being central to many events in history’s course
        don’t mean that the Bible itself was supposed to be a historical source

        1. thejeff

          It doesn’t, but it also doesn’t mean that it isn’t a historical source.

    3. Needfuldoer

      It’s relevant in the context of Joyce learning nuance.

      1. Needfuldoer

        We don’t need to pick it apart, just acknowledge that it’s a 2000-year-old compilation of oral tradition, folklore, historic accounts, and embellishment, and that Joyce is learning how to not lunge from one extreme to the other.

      2. Jeremiah

        Doesn’t mean we need to start arguing about it when really, most of us probably don’t really know much about the topic beyond surface level common knowledge and personal opinion.

  37. Devin

    The bible can be true sometimes, as a treat

  38. Rabid Rabbit

    Joyce, you need to discover History for Atheists, and you need to do it now, before you become not merely the intolerant kind of atheist but the deliberately ignorant kind.

    For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a website by an atheist who’s also a trained historian, who explains in great detail how many “gotchas” used by atheists are nonsense, and how none of them know how history works.

    1. Uly

      It’s because we all love science so much, at least in principle, and the way scientists assess truth about scientific precepts is more familiar to us than the way historians assess truth about historical concepts.

      It doesn’t help that out culture tends to devalue the liberal arts, either.

  39. nothri

    Feh. Whatever Joyce. Next you’ll try telling me that Julius Caesar guy from the new testament was an actual dude.

    1. David M Willis

      Julius Caesar isn’t in the Bible: he died 40 years before Jesus was born. There’s Augustus, Tiberius, and Nero, though.

      1. Jeremiah

        Damn you got sunday schooled by the Willis himself.

        1. Amós Batista

          Gotta confess I loved all comments of today.

      2. C.T. Phipps

        I mean, Pilate is real! MIND BLOWN!

        1. Reltzik

          There are multiple Pilates!

  40. Chris Phoenix

    I recently learned that, according to some medieval Rabbi commentator, the “Prince of Peace” phrase in Isaiah(?) was actually talking about the son of a really bad king of Israel – everyone hoped the son would be a good king. So, probably real people, and not prophetic at all.

  41. mneme

    Interestingly, the whole “I am atheist and NOTHING in the (Christian, particularly) bible is based on history it is all pure myth” stuff is a whole -thing-. Look at the wiki page for “Christ Myth Theory”.

    The funniest thing there is that you’ll have theological scholars on one side, who are actual academics who look at primary texts and actually know the field and surrounding history on one side–and on the other are all kooks and amateurs who are fundamentally acting on faith, backed up by bad history, logical jumps, and flawed sources (oh, and I guess those people are often atheists).

    …

    Actually, while that doesn’t seem like the direction things are going (good!) Joyce jumping from blind faith in evangelicism to blind faith in Jesus Myth nonsense wouldn’t be that far of a stretch.

    1. thejeff

      There are a couple of accredited scholars doing published work on the idea (Carrier and Price prominently), but their work is heavily critiqued by mainstream scholars and very prominent among those kooks and amateurs.

  42. Felian

    Unlike what christian apologists would like you to believe, atheists aren’t going around believing and doing the complete of what the bible says.
    Although that *would* be fun.
    Alright, i’m gonna ruin my google algorithm by looking up a bible verse randomizer:
    “I cried out to him with my mouth;
    his praise was on my tongue.“
    Psalm 66:17

    Now, that’s fun! I’m pretty sure i know the opposite body part of the mouth.
    “I fart and insult God“ sound exactly what christian apologists think i do all day.

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