How real is the Bible?

Question

From what I've read of other religions at the time it seems to me that Constantine, the Roman Emprorer, had incorporated some of the important details of these religions into the Bible. At the time there was a power struggle in Rome and the production of the Bible solidified his position. How would this happen? Because he now had a large influx of new followers to the Christian faith.

I am a Christian, but I often wonder how much was imbelished, or maybe left unsaid for political reasons at the time.

Answer 1

First of all Constantine was not a christian he was the high priest of the sun worshippers. He changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday. Christians will claim he was a christian, but the truth is the clergy converted him on his deathbed and he didn't have much to say in the matter.

As part of his attempt to unify the roman empire he invited the higher ups in the christian church to attend a meeting in Greece which is called the 'council of Nicea'. At this meeting most of the original gospels were removed because they made Jesus appear mortal and not a divinity as they wanted. Other things were decided like when Christmas would be, when Easter would be, the holy trinity was invented.
The emperor before Constantine had all documents regarding the Jews and Christianity destroyed. Many were hidden such as the dead sea scrolls. Constantine offered to commission the rewriting of the destroyed documents. The christian clergy must have thought every birthday and Christmas had come at once. The could put in these documents anything they wanted, and did.

Answer 2

The Bible is more about "Truth" than "Fact". The flood story is ancient Sumarian. Psalm 104 is a copy of of Akhenaten's "Hymm to Aten". The Bible hints in many places that there was more than one God ("You shall worship one God, for your God is a jealous God" -- There was more than one?). In Genesis, hebrew text says that the "gods" created the heaven and the earth (http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Bible.show/sVerseID/1/eVerseID/1 ) -- indicating more than one God at work.

Bottom line. Do your own homework. 70 men were tasked with filtering out what went into the bible and what didn't. If you don't think some politics went on there! Some of the Apocrypha I find interesting reading.

Find your own belief. Step back and look at the bible as a whole, pull truths from it that help you in life, but don't go castrating yourself. Because Matthew 19:12 says it is better to make yourself a Eunoch, doesn't mean that is God's true will for you.

The Bible was written as a tool to help Sheep Herders 5000 years ago and astronauts today. Look at it from that aspect and you can't go wrong.

Answer 3

You can read more about the Roman Catholic Church on www.chick.com. You can find out more about the Alexandrian text of the Bible at www.chick.com and www.drdino.com. One elementary answer would therefore be to not be a member of a church where humans decide who may or may not partake of Roman Catholic Eucharist or Protestant Last Supper, and to find and read a non-Alexandrian Bible (e.g. not to read N.I.V., NASB). You can download any of a number of literal versions of the Bible that was there before Westcott and Hort published the Alexandrian-based text in 1881, from www.olivetree.com. All the English Bibles, even the literal ones, that I read does have some translation errors in them, including the King James Version. In the King James Version, for instance, in Matthew 25:32, there is reference to sheep being separated from goats. Actually the Greek here says 'eriphos', which means 'kid' or baby goat, not 'goat' ('trache'). Indeed in the parable of the forgiving father the oldest son speaks of a 'kid', which in that case is correctly translated from 'eriphos'. Therefore I urge you to learn the Greek alphabet (you can find it at the back of the Concise Ocford Dictionary), and look up Greek words in a non-Alexandrian Greek text (try to find a 1524 or earlier Textus Receptus), with a Greek-English-dictionary, and you might be at the same time surprised and sad about how careless and even ruthless the translators of the Bible was and is, the pre-1881-translations less so than the newer ones.

Answer 4

the original bible is real
Christianity is a Semitic religion, which claims to have nearly 1.2 billion adherents all over the world. Christianity owes its name to Jesus Christ (peace be on him). The Holy Bible is the sacred scripture of the Christians:


a) The Bible is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is the Holy Scripture of the Jews and contains records of all the prophets of the Jews that came before Jesus (pbuh).

The New Testament contains records of the life of Jesus (pbuh).


b) The complete Bible, i.e. the Old Testament and the New Testament put together, contains 73 books. However, the Protestant Bible i.e. the King James Version, contains only 66 books as they consider 7 books of the Old Testament to be apocrypha, i.e. of doubtful authority.

Therefore the Old Testament of the Catholics, contains 46 books and that of the Protestants, 39 books. However the New Testament of both these sects contains 27 books.

Answer 5

Read my posting on "Does anyone else believe the fear of a god was created by powerful men to control people in primative times?". The bible was purely created as a tool to control peoples behaviour at the time. A primative law book so to speak. Just as legends are passed down in other cultures to teach morals so was the bible, so a fairy tale isn't to far off the truth since fairytales were also to teach morals and the struggle between good and bad.

Answer 6

The canon of scripture was not completely agreed by the time of the councils, but it was largely so. There's no evidence that I am aware of that specific up or down votes on the books and letters in the early bishops gagtherings. Where the emperor did exert influence was over doctrinal arguments about scripture and about concepts scripture did not contain, such as whether Mary was the mother of God having given birth to Jesus and thus herself in some way divine, and argments over the trinity, adoptionism, etc. There are many good books out on these conclaves and the intrigues, riots, assasinations etc. they provoked.

Answer 7

The bible states that Adam & Eve where the first people yet it is scientifically proven that the pyramids were built before that time .

Cremation was deemed a pagan ritual until the plague made burial impossible because of the sheer numbers of people dying , the bible was altered to allow this .

The bible was written by man as a guide for man's morality and is undoubtedly a good thing , but it is definately not perfect and as with all thing's it must change with the times .

Answer 8

because the given names for hell contained in the greek and hebrew scriptures are Hades and Sheol translated --- the issue-loose GRAVE of mankind. job prayed to bypass there, Jesus went there, others stated of it contained in the Bible as alleviation from this worlds issues and to be remembered in Gods reminiscence from it. Many Bible dictionaries have those translated and defined for you, also once you've a reference Bible, the scriptures said may actually help you. Appendics contained in the back, and Encyclopaedias. it is one of my trendy scriptures about basically the idea of a burning hell that God in no way even meant on such an theory or idea: (Jeremiah 7:31) . . .and they have outfitted the severe places of To?pheth, it is contained in the valley of the son of Hin?nom, with the intention to burn their sons and their daughters contained in the hearth, a ingredient that I had no longer commanded and that had no longer arise into my coronary heart.’

Answer 9

I'm under the impression that there is at least a certain degree of truth to what you're saying here. I tend to believe that there were a lot of ancient books which really should have been included in the Bible, that were not. The two books of Enoch are good examples here.

Answer 10

Constantine incorporated non-christian ideas into the Catholic church, not the Bible.
The 'Dead Sea Scrolls' prove alot about the Bible being un-changed.