The Bible and why do you believe it

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The bible exists..language exists..

There are always more than one meaning for most words...

Anyone who thinks different simply does not understand metaphors or the true way the language works..

ALL LANGUAGE IS ABSTRACT..ALL LANGUAGE IS METAPHOR..AND ALL LANGUAGE IS SUBJECT TO INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION...ERGO LAWYERS..DEFINING LAWS THAT WERE DESIGNED TO BE AS CLOSE TO WITHOUT EMOTIONAL BIAS AS POSSIBLE...

People have a choice to either pursue greater understandings of TRUTH..or stop at the point of what those who they may respect tell them...

I chose the FORMER..but it does not diminish..my belief in GOD or the imperfection that is HUman's OVERALL weak effort to use metaphors to describe the true essence..that MAY not change..regardless of what metaphorical tags..HUmanS may apply to it...

But that truth is always an individual truth that can be distinctly different among any two human beings..as every universe of experience..is literally another Universe..in perception of illusion of the reality..that we feed ourselves everyday...to adapt and navigate..the essence TH@IS...!

Would you prefer the New Testament or Old?

I know many people who consider the OT as parable with historical basis, but the NT as factual history. Are you in this camp, or are you in the "everything in the Bible is 100% literal and factual" crowd?

Funny enough, the way the Bible is written with its seeming inaccuracies and contradictions actually increase my faith in it for it is not written as a purely historic document, it is written in a way that separates the "Sheep from the Goats, or those that want to serve God, from the anti-Christs.

Daniel 12 8 Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, “My lord, what shall be the end of these things?”

9 And he said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. 10 Many shall be purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.

Its the same reason God doesn't fly across the sky and reveal himself to all, if he would do that then even the wicked would pretend to be God-fearing.

Besides which, imagine for instance if the 4 Gospels all described events exactly the same, folk like Mr Dent would be posting how this proves the Bible is a fraud and was written by one man or was collaborated, for every one knows that if 4 people witness something they will all record it slightly differently, if they all read the same, it proves the witnesses got together to make sure their "Story" matched, asked any detective.

Ok so you are acknowledging that Jesus was not born during the time of Herod, now can you give any substantiating evidence that the Quirinius census required that males return to their place of birth for it, and if this was so why would Mary have taken the journey when there would have been no need.

But can you not see the absurdity of this proposal. If the BIble is the true word of god, how can such an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing, being be so incompetent as to allow such a vital document to be so badly distorted, why did he have first editions of the stories written or spoken only in a language of a tiny majority of the words population, why did he not send it to all nations and tribes on the earth, why was such a document not made indestructible and immutable . Your correct reasoning points directly to a man made and not divine, script.

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

John 18:37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

John 15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

There is no way to convince anyone of the truth of the Bible.

Luke 16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

One might think that the ability to respond to truth has to be imparted by God.

John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

While many go to seminary and feel they have mastered the subject of God, there are many of us who like Peter who can only cling to that which we know is true.

John 6:67-68 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

You may not like the Bible. You may not like the people who believe in the Bible. You may think there are all sorts of contradictions in the Bible. You may wish that the Bible had been written differently. All I can say like Luther, "Here I stand". This is both my profession and confession.

If anyone has any questions, you can PM me. I prefer not to be drawn into public "tar baby" type arguments that never accomplish anything.

God promised to protect His divine Word, not our earthly languages. Every translation of Scripture has minor differences, but none of them have any devastating effect on doctrine when viewed in the proper context.

I said no such thing; the article suggests Quirinius hadn't yet risen to full governor status when Jesus was born. Herod was still very much in power.

Men had far more respect than women in olden times, and since Mary was betrothed to Joseph at that point, she'd have needed to accompany him as proof of that arrangement.

There is no way to make good sense of The Logos. It is philosophical balderdash

ruveyn

Ah the argument from fideism. "I believe because it is absurd". You really are lost to reason


No, the reason I think the bible is man made is because of the contradictions, because it gives the reader the distinct impression of being man made, if it were consistent, historically accurate, included knowledge from all points on the earth and this knowledge was irrefutable, was contemporaneously written in all the languages of the earth and translations between the languages matched to a high degree, and the message contained was clear and concise. Then I would be given reason to grant it a higher probability of divine causation.

Non of which is the case.

Actually, that's not quite accurate. Most often then Bible has not been translated "from language to language." There are quite a number of ancient manuscripts out there from the original Hebrew, and the oldest surviving copies of individual books from the New Testament (in Greek) date back as early as the 100s. Most translations that I'm aware of didn't follow some labyrinthine progression from Hebrew-Greek-Latin-German-English-modern English. The most reliable translations are from the oldest known manuscripts directly into modern language.


This much is true. Each language is uniquely idiomatic, and such was not less so in the ancient world. Current Bible translations will have an approximation of the meaning of a phrase, but will include in a footnote what the LITERAL interpretation was to help present a clearer picture.

I was using Babelfish once to try to communicate with someone who only speaks cajun French. I explained that I might do better trying to communicate in French than he would in English and apologized for butchering the French language. He responded by saying that I didn't sound like a cement truck. I had to double check to make sure I translated that correctly, and I figured out it was an expression that would have made more sense to someone more like him.

English expressions are super-weird, too. If I'm getting ready to leave and say good-bye, I'll say, "Well, I'm gonna make like a baby." Most people don't ask me what that means, but it makes me laugh when people do ask me: It means I'm going to "head out first."

Semitic languages, even in the ancient world, are rich in hyperbole, figurative speech, and euphemism. There's a reference to killing all who urinate up a wall (euphemism for "men"). Don't muzzle an ox as it treads the grain (don't deny someone the benefits of his own work). Every now and then there's an expression so obscure it defies translation, as do some words. The Bible translations I've read will often just put the unknown word transliterated right into the text along with a footnote explaining that the word couldn't be translated. I've seen translations in which the best scholarly guess was substituted for an obscure word, along with a footnote indicating the exact word and that the translation is unknown with the guesses being interpolated from context clues as to the possible meaning. The translation I use will sometimes include footnotes indicating disagreements among multiple manuscripts and then show how various manuscripts render it.

So, to say that the Bible has been lost through multiple translations is inaccurate. And to really get inside modern Bible translations, it helps to understand idiomatic language features in use at the time of original writing. For me, a good modern translation provides a balance between word-for-word literalism and capturing the meaning of the ancient text in modern terms. You can't do too much of meaning-based translation or you risk losing the richness of the original language as well as losing the intended meaning entirely over a series of translations. But you can't go exactly word-for-word either and have any hope of really understanding the meaning, either.

Didn't the Dead Sea Scrolls or some other cache of documents yield a copy of a lot of the Old Testament books from 2nd century BC? I remember it being noted that they had a copy of Isaiah from that period, held it up against the current, and it checked out so close that they didn't need to update or append the newer versions.

Then by all accounts you have been lied to. Herod died no later than 4 bce there was NO census around 1bce to 1 CE and the next census was carried out by Quirinius around 6/7 CE. This census was most likely for taxation purposes and would have 1. Not required Joseph let alone Mary to travel to Bethlehem 2. Probably not have included Joseph at all.

So the gospel of Luke is completely erroneous, it manufactures a non Devine reason to place Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem so as to fulfil the prophecy of Micah. Taking the birth out of the lifespan of Herod and thereby contradicting the gospel of Mathew. And this is just the start of the contradictions, we have talk of magi, Herod and massacre in Mathew, shepherds and angelic starshows in Luke

So for the next historical point. Can you provide evidence that supports the existence of the United Kingdom of David.

Don't worry genesis will come with time. Saving that gem of a chestnut.

From that source of all knowledge Wikipedia

According to The Oxford Companion to Archaeology:
The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.[110]

Bingo. I mean, there are always going to be SOME variants--which prompts me to ask why the variations were written (agenda driven? An ancient heretical cult?). But for the most part the Old Testament remains the best attested ancient text.

There's evidence, of course, of different versions of Hebrew texts in use even in the 1st century based on New Testament writings. Those versions, I'm assuming possibly a Hebrew-Greek translation LIKE the LXX but perhaps not the LXX we have, seem to have disappeared over time, and we're very fortunate that the Masoretic and LXX were copied as meticulously as they were prior to modern printing methods.

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