Who wrote the bible?

[Vidi]

The Bible was written by men, who never knew Jesus personally. The Apostles were chosen from common men, who were never taught to read and write. They were illiterate and therefore could not have written it.

At no point in the Bible is there an event in which God miraculously gave them the ability to read and write. If He had, that miracle would have been documented.

But, that doesn't invalidate the Bible. In fact, it corrects a misconception we have about it...that it is infallible. That's is simply not true. Only God is infallible and the Bible is NOT God.

In that case, how was it that Matthew was able to document who payed their taxes?

Christ could do anything, in fact, He gave the Apostles the ability to speak in different dialects. He used the Holy Spirit to enable them to speak languages they didn't know before the Holy Spirit enabled them.

Where in the Bible do you see fallibility? Because usually what some see as fallible turns out to be a mere lack of knowledge or understanding on their part. Like you not knowing that fisherman can read or write, or that Matthew cyphered, and John wrote.........

In Hebrew society, at the time of Christ, commoners were not taught to read and write. There was no need. Predominately, it was the scribes and pharases and the children of the wealthier people who were taught such things.

The inconsistencies in the Bible are too numerous to count. But each is evidence of the hand of man.

But I think you're misunderstanding me.

Just because the Bible is not the "Word of God" does not mean it does not have value in our path TO God. Quite the opposite in fact. It is but the first stepping stone on the path.

Unfortunately, many Christians today feel it is the destination.

The Bible is simply pointing us TOWARDS God. It is not infallible, because if it were, it would BE God. And to believe that is to place something between Man and God other than Christ.

Worse, it's idolatry.

 

[The Irish Ram]

The Bible would not be God, if it was correct, just as the time of day would not be God if it is correct.
The Bible does not come between man and God. It reveals God to man. It is not idolatry to have a concrete understanding of the Bible, in fact we are to study to show ourselves approved.
Christ said, "My sheep know my voice". I can't hear Jesus because He is not here right now. The ONLY way I can get to know him is to read what He said while He WAS here.
What inconsistencies?

 

[Vidi]

The Bible would not be God, if it was correct, just as the time of day would not be God if it is correct.
The Bible does not come between man and God. It reveals God to man. It is not idolatry to have a concrete understanding of the Bible, in fact we are to study to show ourselves approved.
Christ said, "My sheep know my voice". I can't hear Jesus because He is not here right now. The ONLY way I can get to know him is to read what He said while He WAS here.
What inconsistencies?

I don't believe that. The God I believe in isn't "somewhere else" He is right here with me at all times.

I have read the autobiographies of Ben Franklin, Malcolm X, Gene Simmons and Howard Stern. I learned a great deal about those men from those books, but I did not gain a personal relationship with them from those books. In my opinion, the same goes for the Bible. I can learn about God from the Bible, but to gain a personal relationship with Him, I must go to Him.

Too many people bury their heads in the book looking for God, when they just need to lift their head, eyes and voice to the Lord. They tell others what the Bible says, not what God says. They place far too much importance on that simple book, and they usually get it wrong as well.

And which Bible is correct? King James? Angelican? New English? Youngs Literal? Check out a logos.com. There you can look at each individual verse side by side with other translations, and see that there are clear differences in meanings depending on the words the translators chose.

Several years ago, I was channel surfing and came across who I now know if Joel Osteen ( is that his name? ) He was preaching to his super church and I paused to listen. Suddenly, he stopped and told everyone it was time to pray. The entire church raised their Bibles in the air and said a prayer TO THEIR BIBLES! Affirming the Book as Divine! Not God, or Jesus, but the Book!

Later, when my wife and I went to be married, we had to spend time with the pastors of churches before hand. We were rejected from four different churches ( Baptist, Assembly of God, and two Pentecostals ) because I told the truth and said that I did not believe the Bible was Divine.

No, I've seen from experience that they in fact DO worship the Bible. And they are idolators.

 

[The Irish Ram]

No, they weren't worshiping the Bible, they were worshiping the author of the Bible.
If you don't accept the knowledge in the Bible, you are left to your own understanding of who you are worshiping. That is where we get into trouble. Without knowledge, God becomes a figment of your imagination. You end up giving him the attributes that you think he should have. You worship him the way you determine he should be worshiped. You customize God to suit your taste.
For instance, you may pray all the time, but if you don't repent of your sins first, God won't hear one word of what you say. Not one word. That is Biblical.
So, if your God isn't the one that authored the Bible, tell me about your God, and how you know you are worshiping God, and not some idea of a God that Satan has planted in your head.

 

[ABikerSailor]

No, they weren't worshiping the Bible, they were worshiping the author of the Bible.
If you don't accept the knowledge in the Bible, you are left to your own understanding of who you are worshiping. That is where we get into trouble. Without knowledge, God becomes a figment of your imagination. You end up giving him the attributes that you think he should have. You worship him the way you determine he should be worshiped. You customize God to suit your taste.
For instance, you may pray all the time, but if you don't repent of your sins first, God won't hear one word of what you say. Not one word. That is Biblical.
So, if your God isn't the one that authored the Bible, tell me about your God, and how you know you are worshiping God, and not some idea of a God that Satan has planted in your head.

Actually, a lot of Christians don't really have a good idea about what the OT is really about, because most of them refuse to either learn Hebrew, or get a direct from Hebrew to English translation of the OT.

Lots of stuff you can miss if you just use the KJV or later texts.

 

[koshergrl]

Yes, from the guy who thought it was Noah who got drunk and knocked up his daughters.

 

[Youwerecreated]

yes, from the guy who thought it was noah who got drunk and knocked up his daughters.

That is funny.

 

[Ariux]

Actually, a lot of Christians don't really have a good idea about what the OT is really about, because most of them refuse to either learn Hebrew, or get a direct from Hebrew to English translation of the OT.

A lot of Christians don't have a good idea about what the NT is really about, either. Someone recently asked why Christians don't study the Bible more. Because they want to feel good, without really giving themselves to God. They want to hear that God doesn't judge them, also maybe that God wants them to be rich and healthy. They got Church to socialize and to have their ears tickled.

Forget Hebrew. It's Greek a [male] Christian should learn. At least biblical Greek, no need to become fluent. They don't bother because they don't really believe it's the Word of God.

 

[JoeB131]

Yes, from the guy who thought it was Noah who got drunk and knocked up his daughters.

Well, no, it was Lot who got drunk and knocked up his daughters...

You know, Lot, who was such a righteous man that God had to dispatch two angels to save him before he vaporized every man, woman and child in Sodom.

Noah was the guy who got drunk and naked in front of his sons. And his son Ham laughed at him and got condemned to slavery. (Which is what bible thumping racists used to justify slavery in this country, and the Mormons used to justify racism until 1978.)

So I guess it is easy to get confused sometimes, with such righteous men in the bible. In addition to Lot and Noah, we have Jephthah who butchered his virgin daughter as a sacrifice to God and Elijah who ordered bears to slaughter children who made fun of his bald head... So many "righteous" guys in the bible, it is hard to keep track.

And harder to really claim it's a book about "morality".

 

[Vidi]

No, they weren't worshiping the Bible, they were worshiping the author of the Bible.
If you don't accept the knowledge in the Bible, you are left to your own understanding of who you are worshiping. That is where we get into trouble. Without knowledge, God becomes a figment of your imagination. You end up giving him the attributes that you think he should have. You worship him the way you determine he should be worshiped. You customize God to suit your taste.
For instance, you may pray all the time, but if you don't repent of your sins first, God won't hear one word of what you say. Not one word. That is Biblical.
So, if your God isn't the one that authored the Bible, tell me about your God, and how you know you are worshiping God, and not some idea of a God that Satan has planted in your head.

If you equate an object to the God behind it, you are worshipping the object.

Your entire second paragraph is not biblically supported. Not one word. It's the ravings of a fear based selective fire and brimstone religion, mere steps away from Westboro Baptist Church crap. God is all inclusive. He doesn't discriminate. God listens to EVERYONE. He answers EVERY prayer. He just sometimes says no and we fragile humans interpret that as not listening.

The Bible is, as I said before, merely the first small step in understanding God. Read it, learn it, then move on. Raise your head from the book and turn directly to God. Let His Will, not the book, guide your life. If me truly believes that God has a plan for their life, then trusting God, not some book, is an essential part of faith.

 

[koshergrl]

God is in the Word. The Word is God.

You don't *move on* from the bible to other things. You use the bible to maintain your closeness to God.

 

[Vidi]

God is in the Word. The Word is God.

You don't *move on* from the bible to other things. You use the bible to maintain your closeness to God.

You're making the mistake of interpreting John 1:1 as speaking about the Bible. It's not.

And by doing so, you're placing a book as God.

 

[koshergrl]

I disagree, though who knows, you might be arguing against me thinking I think something other than what I do.

Christ is the Word made flesh. The Bible is the written Word. The Holy Spirit dwells within the bible, within the words of the bible.

So while it is good and right to commune with God via prayer..it is also good and right to immerse youself in the Word that is the bible as well.

I think people who are saved but view the bible as errant are going to be taken very severely to task at some point...if in fact they can actually be saved and be dismissive of the Bible.

 

[Dragon]

A lot of the arguments in favor of Biblical inerrancy are circular.

If you look at the Old Testament in particular without the preconception that it is God dictating to a scribe, much of it becomes much clearer and a lot of the mysteries are no mysteries at all. For example, the God of the Old Testament often comes across as petty, vindictive, violent, fickle, and just plain not up to the standards we think of for a Supreme Being.

For example, consider the passage in Exodus when Moses was up on Mt. Sinai getting the Ten Commandments, and some of the Israelites doubted he would return and got Aaron to make a golden calf idol for them to use in rituals. When Moses finds out what goes on, apparently God does too and he's royally pissed off and wants to stomp all the Israelites flat in a fit of temper, but Moses talks to him and calms him down and he says, in effect, "All right, go talk some sense into those idiots, I'll give you one chance!" Does that sound like God to you? Someone who flies into an impulsive temper, but can change his mind when his prophet gives him a dose of cool-headed talk? It does not to me.

But this and many other passages from the Old Testament make perfect sense if you just accept the fact that, for these early Hebrews, "God" was not "God" as He exists in modern Judaism, but rather THEIR God, THEIR tribal deity, one of many gods in the world, but the one that was particularly concerned with THEM. The First Commandment does not say, "I am the only God that exists, maker of heaven and earth," does it? No, it says, "I am the Lord YOUR God, who brought YOU out of the Land of Egypt." And it does not say, "You will worship only me, because all other gods are false," does it? No, it says, "You will have no other Gods BEFORE ME" -- implying that other gods DO exist, but dammit, I'm YOUR God, and you'd best not forget it!

All through the Torah and the Histories, the same theme is played out. It becomes less so in the Book of Job, but Job is a philosophical prose poem exploring the question of why the righteous suffer, and deeper by design. Many of the Psalms rise above the tribal conception of God as well, but not all of them.

By the time of Jesus, Judaism had evolved away from worship of a tribal deity to something more like the religion today, with a universal God that had been equated with the earlier, cruder tribal conception but clearly transcended him. At some point in the evolution of Jewish society, their God ceased to be a crude tribal deity and became a cosmic deity on the same level as the Hindu Brahman or the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda. When did this happen? Probably at the time of the Babylonian captivity, when the captives were denied Jerusalem and the Temple, and so (in the earlier thinking) denied God. God had to become a spiritual being who could be worshiped anywhere, or else the Jews would have ceased to be Jews, as the earlier tribes, transported by the Assyrians, probably did.

But we can still see this crude, early conception of the Jewish God in the Old Testament, particularly the Torah and the Histories. If, that is, we free ourselves from the requirement to see the whole of the Bible as one story and as divinely written without error.

 

[koshergrl]

Dragon you should know by now that I don't read your crap. You never cite, you refuse to support anything you say with supporting documentation, you don't even reference outside sources in a vague way.

You just blather..on and on about what you think and your views and the way you see it.

Unfortunately, your thoughts and views reflect your uninformed and ignorant state of being. If I want to read mindless blather, I'll pick up a Harlequin romance. At least there's a plot and occasional references to outside sources in those...I'm not interested in your opinions about things when you can't be bothered to support your own views. You've proven adequately that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, so why waste time with it?

 

[sealybobo]

And what do Mormon's read if not the Bible? They claim that our connection died with Jesus' apostles when they died. They never passed down his authority and so we are not following the true lord Jesus.

But they are. God visited Joseph Smith in the 1400's in America, and his authority has been passed down. They have apostles that are alive today. God's authority has been passed down generation to generation. They are following the true Lord.

But when Jesus's deciples dies, so did his teachings. His deciples never passed on the authority from generation to generation where today it lies in the Pope or Jerry Falwell's hands. So we/you traditional christians are following a false God or Cult. And they do have a point. The popes were corrupt for over 1000 years and they did manipulate the bible. Some saints were pure evil. I agree with Mormons. They are a cult too but they sure do have Born agains and Catholics pegged.

 

[koshergrl]

Why are we talking about Mormons and popes?

 

[sealybobo]

A lot of the arguments in favor of Biblical inerrancy are circular.

If you look at the Old Testament in particular without the preconception that it is God dictating to a scribe, much of it becomes much clearer and a lot of the mysteries are no mysteries at all. For example, the God of the Old Testament often comes across as petty, vindictive, violent, fickle, and just plain not up to the standards we think of for a Supreme Being.

For example, consider the passage in Exodus when Moses was up on Mt. Sinai getting the Ten Commandments, and some of the Israelites doubted he would return and got Aaron to make a golden calf idol for them to use in rituals. When Moses finds out what goes on, apparently God does too and he's royally pissed off and wants to stomp all the Israelites flat in a fit of temper, but Moses talks to him and calms him down and he says, in effect, "All right, go talk some sense into those idiots, I'll give you one chance!" Does that sound like God to you? Someone who flies into an impulsive temper, but can change his mind when his prophet gives him a dose of cool-headed talk? It does not to me.

But this and many other passages from the Old Testament make perfect sense if you just accept the fact that, for these early Hebrews, "God" was not "God" as He exists in modern Judaism, but rather THEIR God, THEIR tribal deity, one of many gods in the world, but the one that was particularly concerned with THEM. The First Commandment does not say, "I am the only God that exists, maker of heaven and earth," does it? No, it says, "I am the Lord YOUR God, who brought YOU out of the Land of Egypt." And it does not say, "You will worship only me, because all other gods are false," does it? No, it says, "You will have no other Gods BEFORE ME" -- implying that other gods DO exist, but dammit, I'm YOUR God, and you'd best not forget it!

All through the Torah and the Histories, the same theme is played out. It becomes less so in the Book of Job, but Job is a philosophical prose poem exploring the question of why the righteous suffer, and deeper by design. Many of the Psalms rise above the tribal conception of God as well, but not all of them.

By the time of Jesus, Judaism had evolved away from worship of a tribal deity to something more like the religion today, with a universal God that had been equated with the earlier, cruder tribal conception but clearly transcended him. At some point in the evolution of Jewish society, their God ceased to be a crude tribal deity and became a cosmic deity on the same level as the Hindu Brahman or the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda. When did this happen? Probably at the time of the Babylonian captivity, when the captives were denied Jerusalem and the Temple, and so (in the earlier thinking) denied God. God had to become a spiritual being who could be worshiped anywhere, or else the Jews would have ceased to be Jews, as the earlier tribes, transported by the Assyrians, probably did.

But we can still see this crude, early conception of the Jewish God in the Old Testament, particularly the Torah and the Histories. If, that is, we free ourselves from the requirement to see the whole of the Bible as one story and as divinely written without error.

You blew her away. She couldn't even respond. If I was religious and you said that, I'd be all over you as to why you are wrong. Thank God for the Enlightenment huh?

 

[sealybobo]

Why are we talking about Mormons and popes?

Just want to make sure Christians know the difference between them and Mormons. And I'm wondering. If they don't follow our history of God, they must not read the bible. They must read whatever Joseph Smith wrote. I think Christians need to know this about Romney.

 

[sealybobo]

Why are we talking about Mormons and popes?

You aren't doiog any talking really. You might as well be the canned laugher on a tv sitcom. That's about all you provide to the conversation. Its like you are the student and we are teachers and you don't retain anything.