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I'm been a while planning to dive deeper in the Bible context, this time has arrived.

As someone that sees a high atemporal worth in Bible itself, it's hypocrite of my part to get satisfied with interpretations from random people, which is sold to everyone as being the "gold bar that costs a cent".
If it will rule my life, I need to take it seriously, be skeptic and careful. Because a hollow foundation is a tragedy.

I'd like to introduce my mindset, the expected outcomes and the plan towards this project that probably will last until I die.

Skepticism on Religion?

Considering that religion can mean a "pack of beliefs that defines your moral, mainly adopted by external influence and confirmed by emotions and personal experience", makes sense to see it as the opposite of rationality, skepticism and science.

And I agree we shouldn't mix it together, its goals are different and it wouldn't even makes sense.

But, we can apply the pragmatic systems used by science to improve our beliefs. So instead of adopting beliefs as pets because it "makes sense", "it was motivation" or because of any emotional bind, we can dissect it with pragmatism, trying to intentionally reduce fear and emotion attached to it.

Aware Pitfalls

Trust-based Beliefs

There is kinds of beliefs that you need to trust.

Those that there is no reproducible confirmation, except the apparent reliability of the narrative, evaluated by a personal judgement.
But this reasoning is limited to its knowledge and experience, and it can be influenced by emotions.

And given enough bounds, it can lead to a "rabbit hole labyrinth", in which more beliefs are seeked to confirm the initial belief, getting you even deeper inside the labyrinth. And worse, the belief to be protected can also be a lie.

This is like "building a house on top of sand": It's known that it can fall in many unexpected ways, but the fear of discomfort and complacency is louder than rationality. I think this is insane.

And given time, the most shallow belief can become a hard rock in your road. Not because it's true, but because you always tried to confirm it.

Can't Start From Scratch

But there is a counterpoint: We cannot reinvent the wheel all the time. Simply because our limited lifetime doesn't allows.

There is a important prioritizing responsibility here: You might believe in multiple lies, but you don't have enough time to check everything one by one.

Can't Let Go of Everything

In the other side of the insanity of the automatic deny of what's against your beliefs, there is nihilism. And honestly, I don't know which is worse.

We need some beliefs to keep us on track, our character depends on what we believe. An amorphous personality is inconstant, unreliable.

Impossibility to Completely Isolate Beliefs

Our minds was built to trust, and instinctively we don't discern what's illusion and what's real, what's true and what's false. We need to reason in order to try recognize, and only then we can identify the reasoned patterns instinctively.1

It's impossible to "choose trust in nothing", it would be equivalent of "disabling the instinctive system".2

Why Spending Limited Lifetime on This

The conduct that governs my decisions should be reliable. I need strict rules to define my boundaries, setting what is safe and what is not, so I can keep myself secure, and take wise decisions even instinctively. But at same time, I shouldn't sabotage myself with excessive burdens and limiting beliefs.

And, I am still able to apply this plan in my life because:

I'm relatively young
I still have time and flexibility to change structural parts.
Even my strongest beliefs are not that hard
And I shouldn't become the person that denies without reasoning, to "protect" weak beliefs.
I have concerns about beliefs
Some wasn't conclusions reached by myself, but through trust in thirds, generally grounded in a single biased narrative.
I really want to get rid of the lies that was told to me. No matter its cost
There's no reason in living a illusory life and motivated by ignorance, misleading allies by sharing the shit with them.

Priorities

I have some pre-concepts that will guide the prioritizing process. Not everything will be available for the rational obliteration.

Basis Beliefs

I need an angular stone to compare, I don't think that "just thinking in something" will bring a "truthful" conclusion in your mind.
You need more data, you need a reference, a ruler to take measures.

I'd like to choose something wide as a Bible canon with reliable apocryphas, with both "old and new testament".

But as far as I understand, there's a inevitable conflict between both. Most of the modern Christianism defends that "old testament" was abolished. I won't enter in details about this topic point, but basically I consider the foundation is more solid than what's built on top of it.

And considering that the base of all the Tanakh is the Torah, I think it's valid to take it as the ruler. Not coincidently, the word Torah means "to guide", "instruction"3.

So now with some ground to step, I can take rational decisions on top beliefs I cannot attest. Obviously, without suppressing sincere thinking, but as a ruler to measure.

What's the Risks?

There's many, indeed.

If my presupposition be wrong and Torah be not meant to be followed, at least I will feel that I did the best possible on top of what I had.

But either being right or wrong, taking Torah as angular stone brings changes in the daily life, for example:

  • Food restrictions.
  • Uncleanness laws.
  • Separation from the "nations" to avoid negative influences.

And more. In general, to not sin, no matter what.

In pratical words, this could mean:

  • A certain feeling disconnection if not together with people that shares these values.
  • Sociability a little compromised.
  • Rigidity in daily life.
  • Certain limitations due to prohibitions.
  • …

But, it also has its advantages:

  • Increased discipline.
  • Solid moral.
  • Extra meaning to motivate in tough times.
    • Hope for something more after death.
  • Increased ambitions specifically in the moral axis.
  • Brings wisdom and reduces regret, in general.
  • Builds up your "safe area", fenced with strict and well defined rules.
    • Creativity requires limitation.
  • Avoids common regrets from unwise decisions.

Main Scopes

  • Locate issues in the texts.
  • Reduce canned perspectives of religious systems, unneeded burdens and possible misdirections.
  • Rationally justify all remained solid beliefs. To myself and to my sons.
    • Because telling your son "believe in me, you should do this way" might work if he's still young, but until he hears someone telling different with a built narrative that "Makes Sense™".
  • Really understand the intrinsic extension of texts, study deeply.
  • Discern what is tradiction and what is law. The difference between MUST from SHOULD4

The Plan

Ah fine, the best part.

Issue I'm facing: Bible is extremely complex.

Different culture
Its ancient culture was mostly lost nowadays.
Interpretation
Is it literal or figurative?
Missing context
Books not included in the canon, content possibly removed by translators and scribes, …
Many translations
Losses in adaption, translator biases, …
…

Conclusion: If I want depth, I need to understand their culture, language, traditions and obviously, read in its original languages.

So the plan:

  1. Learn Hebrew language, mainly Paleo Hebrew.
    • Find ways to motivate myself. Ideas:
      • Manually write a Strong database in plain text, learning the words and meaning. And later I can use it.
      • Write weekly/monthly digests in the blog to keep me on track.
      • Change the language of all computer UIs
      • Write a "beginner tutorial" with the things I will be learning.
  2. Study the Tanakh.
    • Aggregate versions in machine readable format, if possible.
    • Read side-by-side with English to reduce possible overwhelm.5
    • Keep the digest idea above.
      • No shame for doing something dumb like "today I've read chapter X of Bereshit, and it was hard".
      • Maybe set a "hidden" post type in the blog, to not bloat the index.
  3. Learn Greek language.
    • Need to think. It might take a lot of time until reach this step. I'd like to do in parallel, if possible. (oh man)
  4. Study "new testament". Also Septuagint, because despite being a greek translation of hebrew texts, it's useful to understand the citations made in the "new testament".6

This is not exactly linear, things would be made in a improvised parallelism. But the outline is that.

I think it got pretty simple, but not easy. I'm excited.

Outro

[…] If God created an error-free book, then the book should be without errors. If what we have is not an error-free book, then it is not a book that God has delivered to us without errors.

— Chapter 4: Alternatives to Lies and Deceptions, Forged, Bart D. Ehrman

My goal is be pragmatic and rational as possible here. But expect extra amount of opinion seasoning the content. Not because I'm certain of these opinions, but because it's hard to isolate everything out.

Thanks for your attention, and I hope I wouldn't disappoint you in a next one.

Footnotes:

1

Note: My knowledge in this topic is shallow.

2

Perspective based on the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" from Daniel Kahneman

3

Kiwix Wikipedia (2025/08) - Torah - Meaning and names

4

According this RFC.

5

It's funny because I got how read bible in English a couple weeks ago, and now it'll be a fallback LOL

6

See Forged, from Bart D. Ehrman. (e4ee4a367e874062247de07875968a9f MD5 at Anna's Archive).