am i trusting in God or am i trusting in the human writers of the bible ?
2006-09-12 03:48:28 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
The "humans" that wrote the Bible were under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit which is God.
2006-09-12 03:50:57 · answer #1 · answered by heresyhunter@sbcglobal.net 4 · 3⤊ 1⤋
God warns you not to trust false prophets or blidnly follow man.
Always question and think.
Translators can get things wrong. Scribes can make errors or be forced to change things.
Let's take an example pointed out to me by a religious spokesperson at a religious conference.
Most Bibles capitalize or otherwise empheses the phrase
Mystery Babylon
The spokesperson had a Greek side by side translation and told us that phrase didn't not have the proper object in Greek for such an emphises, therefore it should be written and read as
...mystery Babylon
This can put a different meaning on the phrase or leave the concept intact. It's to the reader, now armed with some new information, to decide what impact this new information has.
A recently discovered Codex shows the number of the mark of the beast as being 616 not 666.
This could indicate one or even both could be in error.
When you have two Codex and one translates from the ancient Greek as 666 and the other as 616 you have to wonder, which is right, which is false, who screwed up, etc.
The Bible is a document that fased HUMAN (most Male) bias and prejudice along the road to reach us today. One group of Jewish spirtual leaders said only the written document is valid, while another group said the verbal teachings and stories should also be a part of the Torah/Tanakh.
The ones in favor of the written only were the Pharasees, this was the group of leaders who petititoned to have JEsus crucified.
It's obvious from their actions that they do a lot of arm twisting and are extremeists.
The New Testitment that all Catholics and Most Protestants read came as a result of a conference lead by Constantine, and this conference decided what went into the Christian Bible and what didn't. Between 50 and 100 books are not deemed proper.
I've read some of these books and can see why they deemed them not proper, they don't, for example, keep the same cadance as the rest of the books.
It's like putting some Charles Dickens chapters into a book of Shakespeare. All of a sudden you go from rhyming to pure prose then back to rhyming.
King James had a version of the Bible commissoned and 10 years later a new King James commission purged about 10 or 20 books.
I've read some of these books and they, forexample, extensively deal with Soothsayers, astrologers and fortune tellers in a negative tone
Remember that Three Wisemen were Arabic or PErsian Astrologers and they came to Jesus and brought gifts at his birth.
Remember that Royalty had a house astrologer.
Remember that in Britian and America there were witch trials and witch burnings.
So, purging these books may have severed from political purpose or moral purpose by limiting the amount of negativity towards those who see.
Also remember John had a vision and Revelations, basically, is a fore-seeing.
Perhaps it was felt this presented too much of a paradox or conflict of interest.
I've sat down with 7 bibles and read from page one to the point where I stopped and found only slight differences between the bibles, except for the Living Bible which I totally discount as being way to biased and predjudice.
The Living Bible takes FAR too many liberties with semantics.
Get six anceint Greek linguistic scholars together in a room with a Greek manuscript from 1 AD and you'll get six different views on selected phrases.
From my standpoint the Bible is probably 95% accurate of the ancient word, but the compliation varies from being 90% to 50% complete based on the various texts out there.
There were, for example, other letters to the Romans from Paul and these were not included. Only ONE of the Romans was included.
Most experts tend to agree that the first few books of the Old Testament (Torah elements) are pretty faithful to what was handed down over the years.
It should be pointed out that, currently, there is absolutely NO archaological evidence (artifics, buildings, scrolls, inscriptions) to indicate the facts of the Exodus chapter, but this could easily change as it could be buried under hundreds of feet of sand.
Geological evidence does not seem to fully support the story of Noah, however science can't seem to find the evidence to decide IF Pluto IS or IS NOT a planet!
Geologists get water and oil well locations wrong all the time.
These phemonenons do not necessarily invalidate either Science or Religion, it simply means there is an unexplained quandary.
Most Experts agree a lot of the accounting of Jesus in the NEw Testiment is accurate, however we do get different points of view.
This is often termed the "Elephant Parts" sydrome in which three blind men located at a different part of the elephant try to descibe the animal based on their limited senses.
Go talk with 9/11 observers and you will get a dozen different stories about how the planes hit the building.
NORAD was under the impression one flight was a 757, when Air Traffic control clearly knew it was a 767.
Lines of communication break down, errors occur, personal prejudice is mixed with facts.
This is how a document, any document from the History of the Unted States to the Bible can get distorted.
AP and Reuters publish a news story that happens TODAY differently from one another, we are supposed to get a pure view of a document written over 5,000 years ago!
I think not.
That's your Bible Study lesson for the day.
Want to know more of the truth, study reading Acient Greek, Latin and HEbrew then go out and read the elements of the Bible that are Extant. You may have a completely different view.
And remember, you're learning this dead languages will come from men of bias and prejudice who never lived in the times and spoke, wrote or read these languages when they were living and fluent!
2006-09-12 11:25:29 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
The Bible is a compilation of diaries written by men and women of ancient history compiled and edited and re-edited by various religious groups. It cannot be taken by "book value" because the stories have been told, retold, some things added, some things left out, etc. What would God think of the Bible today? There is much more than what today's physical Bible is.
2006-09-12 11:01:47 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You are trusting that God knew how to pick the right people.
You are trusting the fact that God would not be so careless as to allow errors to creep in -- not if he was serious about leting us know what he expected of us.
Of course, God could find a way to convey his meaning accurately even if he had to work with idiots, so ultimately you are trusting the fact that God knew what he was doing, and that he could correct or prevent any errors, even if he was working with fallible & imperfect humans.
2006-09-12 10:59:07 · answer #4 · answered by Randy G 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
2 Timothy 3:16 says " All Scripture is inspired of God...." but "to err is human" it might be a good idea to keep in mind the level of society at the point when all of these books of various religions were written. These were times when sacrificing animals (in tame societies) were regular. Trust what feels right and good but do not follow blindly. There are some things which are clearly outdated in the bible, owning slaves, stoning people to death, incest. Trust the goodness in your heart to lead you.
2006-09-12 11:12:15 · answer #5 · answered by howboutthatlocalweather 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The Bible was given error free. There have been some minor changes when looking at all of the manuscripts. Scribes were to make exact copies and did well.
But lets say there are 10,000 copies out there. When you look at them, you can figure that the majority rules, and what the 9,999 say would be more accurate than the 1 that is different.
2006-09-12 10:53:12 · answer #6 · answered by RB 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You have hit the nail on the head: you are TRUSTING IN THE HUMAN WRITERS of the bible since you have to rely 100% on their reliability in correctly recording & transmitting what they CLAIMED they heard from god, if he/she/it exists. You are not even certain if they did INDEED hear from any god or whether that god exists. It's worse than playing lottery; at least with lottery you can buy a valid ticket & know there is a jackpot. But with the bible there is no certainity that your ticket is valid & no certainty whether there is a jackpot.
2006-09-12 11:00:35 · answer #7 · answered by ? 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋
2 Timothy 3:16 says " All Scripture is inspired of God...." That's where your trust should lie. Have faith that he would not allow false doctrines or man's imperfection ruin his Word.
2006-09-12 10:54:30 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Well obviously it is the word of man, changed many times over the years and possibly unrecognizable from the original version. Most of us assume that the morality issues are basically the same however.
2006-09-12 10:59:24 · answer #9 · answered by dano 4 · 0⤊ 2⤋
You are trusting the Holy Spirit in which was sent down to comfort us....
2006-09-12 10:54:39 · answer #10 · answered by Toya J 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋