With umpteen billion rewrites, retranslations and revisions is it possible that the book responsible for more pain and death world wide is in some way corrupt?
2007-04-05 23:46:30 · 19 answers · asked by michael c 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
It is not the religion, or the texts thereof, that is corrupt.
People choose their own actions, seeing as almost every religion "gives" the "freedom of will" to its followers. A religion is, in essence, a moral code. A text of religion, Bible, Kuran, you name it, is just an outline of that code and the myths, stories, and history that explain it. Neither of these is "corrupt".
What is corrupt is the way people interpret these codes. This can be, and has been, done in many, many ways.
To sum up my views on the subject, people are free to believe what they want, so long as they do not DIRECTLY interfere with another's freedom to do so. Preaching and the like is fine, but harassment or other harmful action is unacceptable, and, really, often discouraged in the moral codes to begin with. "Love thy neighbor" didn't include "unless he's _____".
To further summarize, a quote:
"Good done in the name of evil is still good, and evil done in the name of good is still evil."
~from one of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, which I am not going to bother to specifically site because it's 4am and I have homework to do.
2007-04-06 00:02:43 · answer #1 · answered by Fluffy 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
No, it's not really possible. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls proved that the Old Testament (at least the portions contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls) had been translated correctly. Additionally, the oldest portions of the New Testament that have been discovered proved that the New Testament has ALSO been translated correctly.
There are over 24,000 pieces of the Bible, dating back to the 1st century A.D., and every one of them have proven that the Bible is pretty well error-free. Its accuracy has been placed at 98.5% overall, and 99.5% for the New Testament.
Consider the fact that the only ancient manuscript that comes CLOSE to what we have of the Bible is Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey, and yet there are fewer than five hundred pieces of the ancient manuscripts of THOSE books, and there's a nine hundred year gap between when they were written, and the oldest pieces found. Not even the writings of Plato, Aristotle, or Socrates come close to what we have of the Bible.
And how has the Bible been responsible for pain and death? Wouldn't PEOPLE be responsible for that?
2007-04-06 00:03:28 · answer #2 · answered by The_Cricket: Thinking Pink! 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
More pain and death than what? Mein Kampf? Das Kapital? The Koran?
By "The Christian Bible" do you mean just the New Testament? The Old Testament was around long before Christianity.
The Bible is certainly corrupt in parts (in a textual sense) in the sense that the meaning is sometimes difficult or impossible to establish. If you mean corrupt in the moral sense, there are certainly barbaric bits in the Bible, as might be expected of an ancient text--though I don't think corrupt would be the correct term in those cases.
And "umpteen billion" is an exaggeration.
Whatever about biblical theology, the Bible is the basis of Western morality including (for the large part) atheist morality, including even Communist ideas of equality, justice etc. (However, a minority of atheists subscribe to anti-Christian philosophies like that of Nietzsche, who rejected compassion in favor of domination. Even Nietzsche, though, admired the personality of Jesus, while rejecting institutional Christianity.)
2007-04-05 23:59:32 · answer #3 · answered by 2kool4u 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
You obviously are not aware of the methods used to insure the Old Testament remained true to form. That is the start. Every letter was counted and assigned a number. When copies were made, counts were made to make sure each letter and number matched exactly. As for the new Testament, many like doctrines were collected in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Granted, they were written at different times but the translations co-incided. You sound like a Muslim. That is what they believe. They also believe Muhammad decreed the Bible as corrupt even though he could neither read the Bible or write for that matter. Great source of wisdom don't you think? The Koran is his opinions written via dictation. Gee, did the scribe get the dictation straight or add his own connotations? No matter. Muhammad couldn't proof-read the result. At least Jesus and his disciples were literate.
2007-04-06 00:03:15 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
You seem misinformed.
"With umpteen billion rewrites"
It hasn't been rewritten.Don't have a clue where you got that idea.
"retranslations and revisions"
So a translation means that it's not accurate? Bibles are translated from the original languages.But really,it doesn't matter.Are the works of Shakespeare inaccurate because they have been translated into Dutch or German or French? Of course not.
"that the book responsible for more pain and death world wide"
Another false statement.
You could also say that atheism has been the cause of pain and suffering (Soviet Union-widespread persecution of theists) or the Koran (terrorist attacks,persecution of religous minorities in MIddle Eastern countries today,I could go on)
No,it's not corrupt.
2007-04-05 23:54:21 · answer #5 · answered by Serena 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Hmmm. A tough kind of question. The Bible itself is God's breath to us, His breathing out for us to breathe in, in spirit. His Word is truth ( John 17:17) I would say that some of the Bible has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, misapplied and I think its mainly due to the fact that the bible has been viewed book by book in a separate way rather than a whole book which is related from Genesis to Revelation. There is a central thought throughout the bible and because this has been missed, many things have been pulled out of context and ultimately God's people have been distracted by "things"in the bible and have not taken Christ as our central lane, line and goal. For example, many miss the fact that the bible begins with the central message that God has presented Himself to us as our food, to be partaken of as the Tree of Life, that this Christ Himself is the embodiment of this Tree, we see this Tree even till the end of the Bible in the New Jerusalem. The Bible is a book rich in Life and full of Spirit and Life to us and much of its purity has been corrupted mainly I think sis, because we have not seen the bird's eye view of the bible. Grace be with all the genuine seekers of the Lord Jesus. Your sister sandy
2016-05-18 03:35:21 · answer #6 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's hopelessly corrupt. Toss the thing and go back to the umpteen variants of Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek that comprise the available source material and start over. There is far more information availble now than was available even fifty years ago, to say nothing of the KJV mess.
Pax
2007-04-05 23:55:29 · answer #7 · answered by Babs 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Why are you the one with your corrupt statement trying to say the Bible is corrupt? Isn't that a little presumptuous. What exactly is umpteen billion? Exactly how many is that anyway?
2007-04-05 23:53:29 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
If you dont mind would you please point out these differences for the oldest version we have the Septuagint Greek Old Testament. I keep hearing how corrupt our version is then again it seems to be in agreement with the oldest version.. If it is corrupt please show where thanks so much.. by the way if you cant find a significant difference you might want to reconsider the corrupt idea.
2007-04-06 00:06:40 · answer #9 · answered by djmantx 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The bible is not corrupt. Its the way that people understand it that corrupts the world.
2007-04-05 23:50:56 · answer #10 · answered by DonaF 2 · 3⤊ 0⤋