A bit of Sunday fun that I saw: The Holy Bible: the tl;dr version (too long, didn't read). GENESIS God: Alright, you two, don't do the one thing. Other than that have fun. Adam & Eve: Okay. Satan: You should do the thing. Adam & Eve: Okay. God: What happened? Adam & Eve: We did the thing. God: Guys... THE REST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT God: You are my people, and you should not do the things. People: We won't do the things. God: Good. People: We did the things. God: Guys... THE GOSPELS Jesus: I am the Son of God, and even though you have done the things, the Father and I still love you. Don't do the things anymore. Healed People: Okay! Thank you! Some Other People: We've never seen him do the things, but he probably does the thing when nobody is looking. Jesus: I have never done the things. Some Other People: We're going to put you on trial for doing the things. Pilate: Did you do the things? Jesus: No. Pilate: He didn't do the things. Some Other People: Kill him anyway. Pilate: Okay. Jesus: Guys... PAUL'S LETTERS (AKA: A man who needs introducing to a good woman). People: We did the things. Paul: Jesus still loves you, and because you love Him, you have to stop doing the things. People: Okay. PAUL'S LETTERS: PART II People: We did the things. Paul: Guys... REVELATION (AKA: The Mushroom Dream). John: When Jesus comes back, there will be no more people to do the things. In the meantime,stop doing the things.
You should probably give a credit for this, right? I don't know if http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/2mpv2r/the_stories_of_the_bible_in_tldr_form/ is the original source, or if you'd have to hunt back further to find it, but the way it reads now it looks like YOU wrote it.
Well, I think you just "cut and pasted" it as it is, rather than "wrote" it. I don't know the standards of this site, but usually sites for writers are pretty careful about making sure work is properly attributed. Maybe you could at least post a link to one of the sites where you saw it? ETA: I did a quick search, and it looks like the redit version is the oldest, so I assume it's the original? The guy there is claiming it is, at least.
There are rules about copyrighted material (in which case you have to credit the original author), though I'm not sure whether this passes as such... I do, however, still agree with you that there ought to be a reference to the site from where the text was taken in order to make it absolutely clear that this was written by someone else. I assume that this falls under the same rules as posting threads about articles, where you always have to link to the original text. As for the actual text itself, I must say that I find it quite amusing (and damn weird...).
I couldn't stop thinking of Varrick's "Do the thing!" from Legend of Korra. Varrick as God/Jesus/Paul and Zhu-Li as the people. Basically: Varrick: Don't do that thing! Zhu-Li: OK. *later* Zhu-Li: ...Varrick? Varrick: Yes? Zhu-Li: I did the thing. Varrick: <facepalms>
It first came to my attention Facebook. The name was blacked out. I wasn't aware it was on /r christianity on account of never visiting /r christianity.
@James Random made it clear he didn't write it. Cabbagetroll at Reddit seems to be credited on some sites that copied it. Maybe Cabbagetroll is the author, but who is that? A lot of things passed around FB and the blogosphere don't cite an author. One can cite "anonymous" or "going around FB" or wherever it was copied from.
*************Social media sourced items can be hard to attribute, but as already mentioned, we are a writing forum. Copyright and fair use are things with which we do concern ourselves. @James Random, please add a citation or link to your original post to at least attest a source. We do not typically allow the reprinting of entire works within the forum and require citation on even small excerpts of published works. *************
Yeah, James Random added the "that I saw" after I commented; I think it was a step in the right direction. And I agree, it's often hard to find the original author of things on the internet. I still think it's important to try.
This is what I do when I can't find an author right away, I type: "I don't know who wrote this, but I found it on Facebook/Twitter/a site [insert URL link]." That way I can make it clear that this isn't mine, I just can't find the exact author who wrote this. Now, what if I knew the name of the author who wrote it, but it was something like Pink_Llama89? Well, I still give credit to that person because they wrote it under that name. So I would write something like, "Here's something I found on a site [URL link may be optional] that was written by a user under the name Pink_Llama89." It's obviously not the person's real name, but they wrote it, so credit should be given to them regardless. In this case, however, it seems that we honestly have no idea who wrote it, so the closest we can do is cite the site it was taken from. EDIT: OK, I think I found the site. [http://kottke.org/14/11/the-tldr-version-of-the-bible] EDIT II: OK, so Cabbagetroll did this on Reddit. That's all we needed to know as far as citations, correct?
Here's a version of the Bible that you can print out on one side of an A4 in small print or two sides in large print. The author is A. N. Wilson and it was published in the Observer newspaper on 24th May 1998 In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and every living thing, and Man and Woman, whom He called Adam and Eve. God told them all: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’ God told the Man and the Woman that they could eat anything in the Garden of Eden except the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. But they did eat it and they knew Good and Evil. They could still speak to God, but He punished them by bringing death into the world. Human beings were now mortal. They were also shy of their nakedness. They had two sons. The elder, Cain, killed the younger, Abel. Thereafter, men and women, who know Good from Evil, have chosen evil. God repented of creating humans and decided to wipe them out. He warned his one human friend Noah, to fill a large Ark with every available species, and with three sons and their wives, then God destroyed humanity. and all land creatures, in a great flood. God saved only his chosen few. As generation turned to generation, the inheritance of Adam and Eve - mortality - began to take effect. Methuselah lived 969 years, but his grandson, Noah, lived a mere 950yers. Pass a number of generations and Abraham lived only 175 years, and was by then considered an old man. With Abraham, God made a special covenant. In exchange for giving God his exclusive worship, and for circumcising all his male descendants, Abraham would receive a special blessing from God. Before these days, God accepted human sacrifices but when Abraham offered to kill his son Isaac, God sent an angel to tell him to sacrifice a ram instead. With Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, God renewed his covenant. This meant tricking Jacob’s elder brother, a hairy, stupid man called Esau who lost his inheritance. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, or Power-with-God. Henceforward, although He would take an interest in the whole earth, God was mainly interested in the children of Israel. The favourite of these children was Joseph; so the other children pretended to kill him. They dipped his coat in the Blood of a goat and sold him into slavery in Egypt. Years later, when famine came to their land they all had to go to Egypt to beg food. They found Joseph was the most powerful man in Pharaoh’s court. The Israelites settled in Egypt, but in a few generations they had become slaves. So God spoke to Moses. He spoke out of a bush, which seemed to burn but was never consumed. God told Moses and his brother Aaron that he would send plague into Egypt and kill the first born of every Egyptian male. During the terrible night of carnage, the Israelites could escape, led by Moses, out into the desert and return to the land of Canaan, which God had promised to Abraham. The journey from Egypt to Canaan, which could be accomplished in a week, took the children of Israel 40 years. In the course of their wilderness years, the Israelites displeased God many times, but He continued to reveal to them how he wanted to be worshipped. At the top of Mount Sinai, Moses was taken into God’s presence and saw, not His face, but his hind parts. As a result, Moses’ face shone so brightly that he had to wear a veil to prevent the Israelites from being dazzled. This was one of the last occasions on which God made a direct appearance to a human. God revealed to Moses not only His 10 commandments - Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal etc etc - but also all the minute dietary requirements, the forbidden foods (no hare, prawns or lobster) and sexual and medical customs (no sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman). Moses displeased God by striking a rock with a stick so that water gushed forth, So God punished Moses by not allowing him to enter the Promised Land. Joshua (whose name means Saviour) led the Israelite armies into Canaan The inhabitants of the land were killed in large numbers. Their cities - were despoiled. God was very pleased. The Israelites came into the land. At first, they were ruled over by judges. They often disobeyed God, worshipped other gods, and were punished. After many years, God called Samuel, a holy man, to call the children of Israel back to true worship. The people were murmuring that they wanted a king. Samuel told them that God was their king. They still clamoured after a human king, so that they could be like everyone else, So Samuel anointed Saul as king over Israel but God was very angry, especially when, in a war against the Amalekites, Saul spared their King Agag and did not, as God had commanded, destroy every living Amaleldte, all their oxen, cattle and sheep. God caused Saul to be deposed. He chose as the new king a young lad called David, who had killed a Philistine giant called Goliath. David was a serial adulterer. He sent the husband of one of His mistresses into the front line of battle so that he would be killed. He cheated on all his women. God loved David. David established himself in Mount Sion and founded the city of Jerusalem, which would be a special home for God. David promised to build a temple to God there. He died before the work was begun. It was David’s son, Solomon, who built the temple. The Lord spoke to Solomon, promising not to forsake him for as long as the Jews worshipped Him correctly. This was the last time in the Hebrew scriptures that God spoke to a human directly. After the temple was built, Solomon sacrificed 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep as a sign to God that he accepted the covenant. But after Solomon’s reign, the land was divided into two kingdomes - Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Both the Israelites and the Judaeans forsook God’s Law and in the year 597 the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and lad the Judaeans into exile. They did not return until 539BC. After the exile, Ezra and Nehemiah laid the foundations of Judaism, discouraging the Jews from marrying Gentiles and strictly reinforcing the dietary laws and circumcision. They also rebuilt the temple. But there were no more appearances of God. The Hebrew poets and prophets spoke of God’s actual disappearance, his hiddnness. Some thought that it was human sinfulness, which made him hide his face. At some time, probably after the exile, a poet wrote a story, always acknowledged as a fiction, about a blameless man called Job whom God afflicted with boils, poverty and all manner of disaster. Job challenged God at the injustice of this, and asked Him to explain the mystery of human suffering. Job is totally subservient to God but God did not answer any of his difficult questions about innocent suffering. Perhaps 500, perhaps 200 years after this story was told, the Romans invaded Palestine. Thirty years after the reign of King Herod, a prophet arose called John. He preached that God would indeed return to the world to judge it and to bring all things to an end. Jesus came from Nazareth to be baptised by John in Jordan. John wanted to know if Jesus was the chosen one of God, the Messiah who would bring about the Divine Consummation, but he was beheaded before he learnt the answer. Jesus was killed by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate in or around the year 30. He was crucified. A few years later, a Jew named Paul saw a vision of Jesus risen from the dead. As Adam’s disobedience had brought death into the world, so the death of Jesus would bring life to everyone who believed in him. Jesus had indeed been the Messiah. His followers remembered that during his lifetime Jesus had healed the sick and driven out demons and preached of the coming of the kingdom of God. They remembered that he spoke of God as his Heavenly Father. Paul told his Gentile followers in cities such as Ephesus, Coairnth and Thessalonika that when the Gentiles worshipped the God of Israel, this was a sign that the Messianic prophecies were fulfilled. So they could be followers of the Messiah (or Christ) without keeping the Jewish dietary laws and without being circumcised. They were the New Israel. The Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem were horrified. But following an unsuccessful rebellion against the Romans by the Jewish people, all those who remembered Jesus were killed in AD70. Only those who followed Paul, and the descendants of those who followed Paul, survived to tell the tale. They blamed the Jews for killing their Christ. A Jewish convert to the new religion of Christ sat on a Greek island, Patmos, and had a vision. The Jews in this vision were the Synagogue of Satan. Rome was a Great Whore. God still loved the faithful few, but now they were the Christians and not the Jews. Most of the human race was to be consigned to perdition in a fiery lake. Their destruction was to be more horrible than the punishments meted out by God in the past to the Amalekites or the Canaanites. Jesus revealed himself to John as a sacrificial Lamb sitting on a Throne. John heard a voice from the throne, which said that the tabernacle of God is with men. The voice said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. I was dead and behold, I am alive for evermore”.
oh my word, the guy just wanted to share something fun... It's true he should attribute the text, but I think people on the thread might be just being a tad too serious... Relax. It was meant to be funny. I think he's got the message by now. Why don't people comment on the content and I dunno... have fun? I, for one, really enjoyed it
