Can you help me with a few problems I have with Bible?

Question

I am a card-carrying member of the Gay nation. I am willing to give it all up, and become straight. All I want is for someone to explain two things in/about the Bible without actually quoting it, or reciting what's been drilled into their heads.

1. so what happened with Jesus for 12 years? are you really gonna expect me to believe that he hid out under a rock?

2. why did a group of people need to get together to decide what should/should not be in the Bible? after all, if it is a historical account of those times, why feel the need to leav ecertain things out?

Answer 1

1. some people say that he went to kashmir and studied buddhism.
2. those church people needed to get together to decide what is right and wrong - or what could disprove christianity or over come the church's power. for instance, the gospel of judas was thrown out by the church, because it says jesus wasnt betrayed by judas, which would mean that jesus didnt fulfill all the prophecies in the old testament and is not the messiah.

also, if youre gay, it is a sin to be gay and be christian. dont waste your time, though, a chapter after that it says you should stone to death misbehaving children; christianity isnt worth your time. you cant know anything, really, your senses can fool you. how do you know that what you see as red is what others see as red? you cant! so, you cant know anything, and therefore you cant know christianity. also, since it is irrational to not believe that youre not, for instance, sitting on a chair, you must believe you are sitting on a chair. but, believing in christianity is like believing that there are like a horde of pink zebras staring at you from your window; its complete insanity!

Answer 2

*Is Catholic*

1. It is not central to what the Gospel writers are writing about. Look at the rest of scripture, Moses, (and David, countless others) "disappears" for years and years from the narrative. The Gospel writers are trying to draw a parallel with Moses as Christ is the new Moses, the new Law Giver.

As for where Jesus was, he was in Egypt until sometime after he was 4. Then he lived in Nazareth where he worked as a carpenter and studied the Torah and Talmud. His adopted father Joseph died along the way and he would have worked to support his family.

The reason why you don't have Jesus return to the narrative until he is around 28 is because the Jewish high priests (Aaronite Priesthood) didn't start to serve in the temple until they were 30 (Numbers 4:23), so there is this connectivity that is being shown that Jesus is taken on his role as priest and he offers the sacrifice of atonement when his is 30 (at the crucifixion).

The point of the Gospels, is to show how Jesus is the High Priest and new Moses. That is why the early parts of Jesus' life are left out.

2. First scripture is not a pure historical account. There are many different book and they are different types of literature. For example, Psalms is not history, it is a bunch of liturgical poems and songs. The Church did not decide what was in and what was out of the Bible. If you look at the historical record, it is always very very clear as to what is not scripture. There are a few books that show up now and then as a "possibly" but that is sorted out rather quickly.

You have to remember two things: First that scripture is written by a community and that community knows and always knows what it wrote. Second, just as we know which work are written by Shakespeare, Caesar, Plato, etc. which know which works are written by the Church.

If you have more questions, message me.

Answer 3

1. Herod was after Jesus like a madman. If you had a child that you knew was the Christ, wouldn't you hide him? Also, the events before Jesus' birth were not documented, so obviously nothing happened that was in need of documenting.

2. A group of highly respected Christians got together and decided on what would go into the Bible. The material had to be from an apostle and it had to line up with what was prophesied and told in the Old Testament. (Obviously if the Bible didn't flow well, then the person who wrote the document was leaving something out or putting something in that was not true.

I am assuming that you didn't choose to become gay, so how can you become straight? You can't control that, but what you can control is how you repsond to the temptation. Good luck and God bless you!

Answer 4

1. I'm not really sure what twelve-year period you're referring to. If you're talking about the years between his birth and the Finding in the Temple, he was a child growing up. If you're referring to the years before he began his public ministry at age 30, he was at home in Nazareth, working as a carpenter. Then we all know about the next three years when he went around doing good deeds.
2. The Councils considered the issue of Biblical canon because the books of the Bible needed to be valid historical and spiritual accounts of the times they described. The online encyclopedia at www.newadvent.org has probably got some good historical particulars on the subject; that's the best online reference for Catholicism. I don't know if you have any interest in Catholicism in particular but there you are.

p.s. it isn't a sin to be gay and a Christian. Sex outside marriage is a sin, whether you're gay or straight. You can't help being attracted to someone, but what you do with that attraction is up to you. Actually there's a group for gays who want to support each other in their faith and live well, it's called Courage or something like that.

Answer 5

I'm not sure what happened for the 18 years between him being 12 and 30. I would think that he probably learned to be a Carpenter, had crushes, hung out with friends, prayed, learned....probably did everything a normal guy would do back then.
I think that the bible has a lot of good messages, even if it isn't exactly what the original was. I'm catholic so we don't use the King James version, but there's no way any thing can be translated so many times without losing some of the original text. It like the game telephone.
I'm sure they left the stuff out that they didn't want the people to know about.

Answer 6

I'll give it a try:

1) We don't know. I would imagine that since it wasn't recorded, nothing important happened. I don't know what He was doing during that time; perhaps He was just growing up.

2) Are you referring to the Council of Nicea? It's pretty simple, really. By the end of the second century, HUNDREDS of heretical teachings had popped up, and Christians were finding it hard to agree on certain things. So, in order for Christians to be able to unite, some things had to be decided once and for all.
As a sidenote, I've read many of the books that are considered apocryphal, and I completely understand why they were left out of the canon.

I hope this helps!

Answer 7

I hope I can answer you questions.

For quesitons #1-- the 4 Gospels of Jesus were not written to be a biography but to simply proclaim the importance of what Jesus did and what His life and death means to us. John's Gospel starts out when Jesus was around 30 years old but it is considered on the the best books of the Bible.

#2 -- There were a lot of fake writtings out there. The were a lot of cults also such as the Gnostics. The people that formulated the books of the Bible wanted to make sure they weeded out the false doctrines.

Answer 8

The 12 years. Not eveerything is told us in scripture. That is a fact. We can only go on what IS written about. We can only speculate about the things NOT mentioned, and being such, we can no way say for certain. We go on the evidence presented, not what is not there.
This group of people. I am guessing you are referring to the church councils? They were not "creating" their version of Christianity, they went by criteria. The books had to be clearly inspired, of course non-contradictory(a sign of One author-God) in use and recognized by the churches, Total glory to God,(it's common to man to praise himself) and having Apostolic authority, or have been from someone related to the Apostles. (this does not mean blood relation).
There are other criteria...the point I am trying to make is, it was not hastily, nor arbitrarily done.
The need was there because of the existence of phony epistles, forged by people that, for whatever reason, wanted to draw people away. Some were gnostic (our times have seen a resurgence of it) which led people into sexual sin.
Some of the epistles were written as a polemic against that heresy.
Further evidence from the Bible itself is the fact that Paul saw the need to write in his own handwriting- so that (obviously) the people would KNOW if a letter had truly been written by him because of the handwriting.
If a writing was not doctrinally pure, it had to be left out.

Answer 9

1. I really don't understand what this question has to do with anything. I don't know where Jesus was for 12 years. What 12 years are you referring to anyway? After he was born, he lived in Egypt for maybe two years. Then he moved to Nazareth. As far as I can tell, he lived there for most of his life.

2. During the 2nd century, there were a whole lot of new books and letters being written that claimed to be by people who were long since dead. Because of them, the need arose to establish firmly which books and letters were authentic or that should be normative for the church.

Answer 10

1) Lol..seriously doubt he was hiding under a rock. We simply have no record of that period of his life, but if you want a general idea maybe you should study up on the Jewish norms for children of that time period and occupation(carpenter) and it was customary in that time that people didn't begin ministry until age 30

2) Why was there a Council of Nicaea? The sources are clear that the Emperor Constantine called the council in order to bring an end to dissension within the church. In particular, he was concerned about two specific issues which were causing disagreement: Arianism and the date of Easter. [8] Other matters were settled at the council, but these were the two that prompted the calling of the council.
http://debate.org.uk/topics/theo/council_nicaea.html