Violence in the Bible, would you rather the Bible authors had lied to you?

Question

Were all the folks in the Bible inspired by God? Or, were the authors inspired by God to write what had happended?

Answer 1

Tricky question because there is a host of beliefs about the authorship of the Bible. My personal opinion is that the authors were inspired by G-d and the true meaning of scripture much be searched for.

Answer 2

Quantrill's answer is "right on the money," as they say. The reader MUST search for God's purpose behind the inclusion of a passage on any subject, whether it be violence, prophecy, etc. It's when readers fail to do this that they miss the true message. In the case of violence, God usually wishes to point out several factors: 1) that the transgressor(s) had the opportunity to choose to do the right thing, but did not; and 2) that there are consequences to this decision.

Many readers also fail to properly consider God's reason for committing acts of what we would refer to as violence. If a person reads without the understanding that God is infinitely perfect and CANNOT commit sin, then the reader will naturally conclude God is a sinner -- and therefore, the passage(s) will seem contradictory to those that extol His perfection. When God passes judgment on anyone, he or she receives the deserved punishment -- no more and no less. If these passages were absent from the Bible, how could anyone truly understand God's nature? It would be impossible.

And yes, I believe that all of the humans God used to write the Bible were inspired by Him. With the exception of Moses (who wrote the first five books of the Bible), God inspired the writers, giving them some "lee-way" on how the message was presented. However, by tradition, we are told that Moses wrote God's exact words, so there was no human component to these books.

Answer 3

No, I can deal with. Unfortunately violence is sometimes necessary. Obviously not all of the people in the Bible were inspired by God but men of God were inspired by God to write what occurred; the Bible is a mystery, designed for study & meditation.

Answer 4

It's not so much that there is violence in the Bible, but that so much of it is commanded and condoned by the God that the violent people worship. Numbers 31 is a good example of this, when Moses has all the Midianites killed except the virgin girls, who are taken captive. Imagine being a young girl and watching your family get slaughtered, then being forced into sexual slavery with your captors, all because their God decreed it to be so. Is this a lesson you would teach to your own daughters--that God sat by and let other little girls, just like themselves, be taken into slavery?

Read Ezek. 23:20 and tell me if this is something you would want your children to read. It is so graphic and disgusting that I can't even post it here, because it would be reported as vulgar.

Lam. 4 describes the misery God is said to have inflicted upon his own people, which includes desperate, starving women eating their own children in an attempt to survive the famine. Deut. 58:53-57 describes the punishment God will give to the Israelites if they disobey him; again, it includes being forced to eat their children. Is this the kind of God you want to worship? What could possibly make God so angry that he would punish people in such a horrifying fashion? If the Bible is to be taken literally, then you must believe that such things are actually true, and God would inflict upon you a famine so great that you would eat your own kids to avoid starvation--all because you did something that made him angry. People do not need such teachings in their lives.

Answer 5

Good question! :)

We need to see it all....How else do we learn? We learn not only from our own experiences, but of those we know...If seeing and learning from an experience or witness from within the Bible can keep us from making the same mistake, even if it keeps ONE person from doing so, then, the Bible was not written in error.

Also, when we have testimonials throughout the Bible of their past/present and what they had become through the trials and error, we gain hope that there is hope for everyone for salvation.....and this is why today we still give testimony of what we were and what Jesus and God had done to help us get passed that and what we are "Now". :)

Answer 6

People say that Bible is word of God. So I believe they do believe author didn't lie.

I would prefer ( as outsider ), authors of Bible lie. So there are still respect to the God of Genesis.

If not , then we won't find any loving God in Bible.

Answer 7

According to the Bible, God was behind a lot of the violence that went on.

Answer 8

The Bible all a lie? Nah...in all reality if anyone to were look up the details of biblical archeology they would see that all of the history in the Bible is incredibly accurate. All the violence is there because it's just reality and they were just being honest.

Joe, in order for your sins to be "wiped clean" you must own up to them first in order to repent. You have to take responsiblity.

Answer 9

Neither. I'm actually glad the bible includes a record of some of the most twisted, insane, horrendous sh*t ever perpetrated by human beings, gives you something to think about before converting. Well, if you're smart anyway.

Answer 10

It's probably about the only thing accurate in the bible.

People are violent by nature and full of fear and hate - the only problem is, there is noone to save us but ourselves.

The idea that Jesus can wipe the slate clean is nothing more than wishful thinking done by people who made stupid decisions, and don't want to have to be responsible for them.