Is it me, or is it hard to find people who have a healthy reverence or scepticism for the bible?

Is it you? It may be...There are quite a few people, at varying degrees that dont believe the Bible the way presented by Evangelical Christians, but look at it from a scholary point of view.

Now based on comments in ATS, it may appear that it is more polarized...but even then, it may not be as polarized as you may think. Evangelicals come across harsh, so the come back to some comments are typically as immature and harsh.

The Bible is an excellent book...but it is a compilation of books, and by no means exhaustive of the thinking in the time periods from which they are written...so you can even go outside the "canonized" version to help put together pieces of the canonized Bible. (If your an evangelical, this wont set well with you, but it is as it is. And if you Jewish you have even more canonized books, such as Zohar...a nice lofty volume sitting on my shelf as I type collecting dust. )
The book of Enoch, though not canonized in either Christianity or Judaism is interesting as it pulls out concept from "Beresheet"/Genesis and further expounds on it for further thought and speculation.

In general, I have posted my thoughts on this throughout ATS, but the Bible is a launching pad...allegorical. And as I have mentioned, and Judaism there are 4 levels of understanding of the Creation as is layed out in Genesis...it is not believed for one moment in Judaism that Adam and Eve eating from the tree is literal.

so, yes, there are people out there that are not religous (as I am not religious in the normal sense of the word, but have come out of extreme "orthodox" views), and who also see the Bible for what it is...got some cool thoughts in it, and some hints as to whats going on in the world.

Peace

Dalen

You bring up some good points.

although our beliefs may outwardly appear to be different, i do
not believe this to be entirely true.

the main difference between your stance on the "translating"
arguement is that i don't believe a true god would have permitted
the splintering of the languages. i believe even languages today
are very similiar, and not that distant from eachother as the leaders
would have us believe. But, although i have many examples of what
i am trying to convey, i concede the theory is a work in progress.

personally i am a christian, but a christian who openly accepts my own
truth, and my truth tells me that there is, was, and will be truth in all
faiths and all religions, because the god i worship would not permit it
to be any other way. My god is the god of truth. in fact, i don't really
even prefer the word "god". Why? Because it means so many different
things to so many different people. So, i often consider taking the word
"god" out of the sentence altogether, and replacing it with the word "truth", and by truth i don't mean just anyones truth, but what the
truth is to the individual. Maybe you'll like this:

What is the opposite of "applause" ?
Boo
What do stupid and ignorant people say?
Duh
Maybe there is a little truth in the Booduh?

When someone accepts that "truth" is in ALL then
perhaps a little light will go off in their head an they will
say to themselves: AH!.

perhaps their is a little truth in the Allah?

just some thoughts. Ya, way = yawhey

jesus [mirror] sue siege ?

take the 2 "s"es of the pluratlity (god was displeased with plurals
ever since someone asked god what the highest number was)
at any rate...... take the two "s" of the hiss of the snake out of
the word "jesus", and you have: jeu (pronounced: jew).