Someone threw out a bible down the road...

[skids]

...I'm not a particularly traditional person but when I found a rain-soaked bible in a box of books someone had left on the curb with a "free" sign I was a little irked. I took it and will give it to a church, as soon as I figure out where one of those is nearby, for whatever ritual they use to properly dispose of them.

And I would have done the same to a copy of the Koran or Talmud or any other text I happenned to realize was sacred to someone else.

It seems a bit silly to fuss over a hunk of wet paper, but I think that's a level of respect I can afford to excercise for such an object. Obviously the owners didn't think so. However I got a nice lawn table from them so I suppose I should just shut my mouth.

What say you -- what would you have done?

[NC_Nurse]

1. It's a book.

I guess I think the sacredness of books lies in the meaning and not the physical object.
People are so touchy about the objects of their religionthese days. I don't think that's a good thing personally.
Just my .02...

[soothsayer]

2. I have trouble throwing out photographs, too. I'm sure they didn't

mean for the bible to get all wet like that, and it's nice of you to care so much.

[maxsolomon]

3. left it

most published book in history - there are plenty of copies.

its JUST A BOOK.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. it is just a collection of fairy tales. Period.

[Warpy]

4. A box of rain soaked books would have made me sad

and I wouldn't hold one book above any of the others.

I might take them home and dry them in a low oven, then turn them in to the local library if they were still in readable condition.

[nam78_two]

15. Bingo

:thumbsup:

Completely agree...:)

People in this (currently) affluent country don't realize how much stuff means in very poor countries where selling that book could be the difference between having a meal or not.

[Iwasthere]

5. nothin

Don't respect a lot of the writers views in that book. Just a book.

[valerief]

7. I would have walked on by. I don't like to touch dirty wet paper. nt

[Book Lover]

8. What about the rest of the books in that box?

This bookbinder's perspective is that every volume, no matter the content, is up to the point of irrepairability worthy of preservation. On the other hand, there are so many copies of some books that saving one particular copy may not make sense.

Also, I am unaware of any specific ritual used to dispose of bibles. If anyone knows of them, please post for our edification!

[skids]

14. I don't know what constitutes irreparability.

The bible itself as you might guess was on sturdy fiber paper and it's pretty trashed. The other books were pulp paperbacks.

[Book Lover]

17. Hmmm...

I personally might have kept the bible as a curiosity piece, or as a found object for an art piece, or as a study of the effect of a certain amount of rain on the bible paper (yes, that is what it is called in the trade), but if it held no interest in that manner, I probably would have walked on by. Same goes for any of the other books in the box, fwiw. Keep in mind, though, that I see on my bench about a dozen books that need repair on a weekly basis, so I am a little jaded...

[Poll_Blind]

9. Probably just tossed it. It's a book. It's not holy, it's just ideas.

What's holy or not holy is what people do with those ideas, and which ideas they focus on (*COUGH* Leviticus *COUGH*). Same with the Quran, Talmud. They'ze just books. Now, if I were a believer of those religions I'd probably bring it to Church/Synagogue/Mosque and tell a little story about how this wonderful book survived all of nature's elements but merely swelled with water. Maybe riff a bit about how we should follow (the holy book)'s example and not just sit on a shelf but grow (literally) with adversity (figuratively) as the holy book did.

Now, if I found a copy of Salughterhouse Five in the same condition, I might behave differently. It doesn't advocate killing anyone.

But then again, nobody throws out their copies of Slaughterhouse Five. 8^) Probably for the same reason.

PB

[MADem]

10. I wouldn't have worried about it. It's a THING. The words in it

were written by guys who stumbled around hundreds of years after Jesus was dead. And to make matters more interesting, it's been translated ten ways to Sunday AND extra words have been added, words have been taken away, and words have been changed. Big chunks that were inconvenient to the points that powers wanted to make were cut out, or not included. It's a STORY BOOK and the clowns who wrote it never laid eyes on Jesus.

I don't buy the concept of "Sacred Books" anyway. What's sacred is life. What's important is being good to your fellow travellers on this curious road, not words on a page that are spouted by clowns in shiny suits and are used to separate you from the cash in your wallet. And if Invisible Men in the sky don't like that approach, I'll hope my fellow travellers save me a seat by the fire.

[nam78_two]

11. I am usually sorry to see any book tossed aside

Or anything that has a production value really...Its a concept even many environmentally-minded people sadly don't fully grasp.
Specially in this country where most things are so cheap and waste is the order of the day.

Anything that was produced, required a certain amount of energy to go into its production. If possible things that would have value for someone should be saved and recycled.

The amount of waste that routinely goes on in this country scares me. Being frugal is good for the planet.

But, I think I went on a tangent from your original point :).
I feel very strongly about senseless waste and I wasn't even around during the depression :).

[RufusEarl]

12. You're a very thoughtful person.

[Teaser]

13. Offered its remnants to a real god..

like Baal, or Moloch.

[Big Kahuna]

16. I'm not a christian, or particularly patriotic..

but what irks me, is that symbols like the flag and the bible are shoved down our throat 24/7... and both symbols are so cheap to these zombies that they wind up in the gutter on the side of the road.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. Apparently, Episcopalians do nothing special; a Methodist has written

a service: http://experts.about.com/q/Episcopalians-944/Bible-physical-object.htm

I'd advise you to recycle it. It's the most responsible thing to do (which may mean removing the cover, I suppose).

[BurtWorm]

19. Why be irked at that?

I'm a little irked at your being irked.

I personally don't think Bibles, Korans or "holy scripture" of any kind are any different from any other book. This is the first I've heard that they warrant a different kind of disposal (except for Torahs that belong to particular synagogues, which I know are specially made and are disposed of ritualistically when they're replaced).

[skids]

20. Personally I don't either...

I don't really consider a paper bible to be anything special myself. I'm irked because of a lack of even the most minimal level of courtesy surrounding other people's belief systems. Now if it were a major inconvenience, or even a minor inconvenience, I'd be like sure screw that I'm not letting anyone's religious beliefs run my life or cause me stress.

But this isn't that. It's a tiny, tiny thing to ask of one to revere other people's holy books, not as holy books but as objects which have meaning to some of your fellow humans.

I'm sure if my friend threw out his girlfriend's hummel collection, that would be considered a very unfriendly act. I'm also sure there are quite a few people that would regard what the more scholarly consider a historical object as pure junk, and arguably they are right, but if they were to damage it they'd catch hell from the social police. Just because people are strangers doesn't mean they shouldn't be afforded some courtesy.

[BurtWorm]

23. It's not a little thing to expect everyone to act the same way

in a given situation. You're essentially expecting a lot of people to feign a belief (that these books are more special than other books) that they don't have. Some people simply do not view the bible as anything other than a book, deserving of no more or no less respect than any other book.

Would you get upset if you saw a cheap paperback edition of the bible in the trash? Or a Gideon's bible?

If I saw a Bible or any other book in the trash, my one impulse would be to wonder if it shouldn't be in the recycling bin instead. But that's just me.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Are you saying that the Bible didn't belong to the person who threw it out

and therefore they were disrespecting someon else's property? Or that you think they should have some special reverence for their own religion's book?

It seems to me that, as long as they were the rightful owner (either they bought it, inherited it or someone gave it to them), they have the right to treat it as any other book. Do you know the reason why they were giving away books?

[skids]

26. Of course they have that right.

They have the right to walk up to me and say "you dress like crap" too. That doesn't make it polite.

That so few here can draw that distinction...

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. But it appears to have been *their* book

If they left someone else's Bible in the rain, that would be bad; but if they don't have a special belief in the inviolability of a phyisical book that they own, why can't they treat it as they treat other books? It would like saying we should all write "G_d" rather than "God", just because some people in the world have a belief that throwing away a piece of paper with "God" on is wrong. You can't force everyone's traditions on everyone; when it's a tradition so rare that no-one seems to have been able to specify it here, it seems particularly pointless.

[Silent3]

21. Bible, Koran, Talmud...

And I would have done the same to a copy of the Koran or Talmud or any other text I happenned to realize was sacred to someone else.

What about a copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins? Would that be considered worthy of the same special treatment?

Or is believing always more "special" than not believing?

[skids]

25. I don't know...

...is that something people hold sacred?

It would have to be something, book or not, that I recognized as a sacred object.

[Igel]

22. I would have left it.

I've picked up abandoned copies of the Bible and Tanach from time to time, but only when they were in a translation I hadn't seen.

I treat my Bibles with more care than I treat my copy of the Qur'aan, however. They get read a bit, from time to time; the Qur'aan is more of a reference book, but used rather less often than, say, my dictionary of sea-fish names in 6 languages.

[Evoman]

28. I would have thrown it in the garbage, unless it was in a box

left on the curb for the garbage man to pick up. Actually, I may have very well thrown the bible to the side while I looked for some good books in the box...you never know when you will find a jewel in the rough.

I also may have chuckled at the bible and made the comment. "Ha...at least the owner of the book knows where it really belongs" if there had been someone hanging around. I enjoy being sacriligious.

[immoderate]

29. I was taught a reverence for all books.

It's something that stuck with me from my (very liberal) Jewish upbringing. I'm a nonbeliever, but I have a special feeling for books. My years of classroom teaching reinforced that. Sometimes their time is up, like it is for all of us, and I feel a bit of grief. but it is just a book. I'd wince, and then pass it by.

--IMM