To start this discussion, I need to make one distiction, then I'll list what I think are the different points of view. First, the distiction. Some feel any translation from the original hebrew and greek text is faulty while others feel all bibles are faulty regardless of version since they was created from the hand of men. Still others feel only certain translations of the original hebrew and greek text such as the king james version are inspired. A few people feel all versions based on the hebrew/greek texts are in some way divinely inspired texts. In this thread please include the all or translated disclaimer when making your opinion. Please also defend your opinion with the evidence you feel has relevence. Here is my opinion. I feel any bible based on the original hebrew and greek texts are divinely inspired, though I think some versions are obviously better than others. I prefer the "modern" king james version over any other modern version such as the new international version, etc. However, I just purchased an exact replica of the cambridge geneva 1591 bible, so my taste may switch. My main support for this position is that though the words may vary from version to version the main message remains the same. Jesus Christ is in all versions. I dismiss the notion that a translation - because it is translated - can never be accurate totally. The message hasn't changed the words slightly, and if a slight wording can alter a whole book worth of meaning then I think corruption has crept in. You don't need to breakdown the words like a modern-day socrates to valid a translation is true to the original.
1. Contradiction exists in the original. Do a search on the web for Biblical errancy. Even Catholic theologians acknowledge this (a Jesuit priest introduced me to the contradictions in Genesis). Does this prove it isn't divinely inspired? Nope. Just that it's not inerrant. 2. Who the hell knows? We know it's not perfectly accurate. We know that some of it's metaphorical (well, those of us who give any credit to science). But that doesn't mean it's not true in the more important sense. Is the message expressed valid? Possible. It's a matter of belief. Personally, I believe that one should use Ockham's razor in deciding what to think. That is to say, the simplest explanation is usually best. I could believe that the Bible is the word of God, but I do not as a sheer matter of probability. With all the religious texts in this world that people have sincerely believed in... why should this be the one? Of course, there's a good response to that... which is that many religious texts are divinely inspired, that they all represent the same truth. To this, I haven't much to say... other than, to bring up Ockham's Razor again. It's simpler to believe a human wrote it than God. It's sort of odd... I've come to realize that I am a Christian. Just not in the normal sense of the word. I don't believe that Jesus was the son of God. I do believe in the teachings of Jesus, but as a philosopher and ethicist, not as a Messiah. What does that make me? An ethical Christian? *shrug*... *end of rambling*
I agree that - in at least the versions I've read - contradictions exist. The question, however, is if there are contradictions does that make the work suspect? I don't feel it does. I take the opinion that no man is perfect and therefore accidents can and do happen, but overall man does have the capacity to do an nearly perfect job in anything he sets out to do. However, people who take this point of view often have a latter response. In questioning the bible based on contradictions, they really discredit the heart of the book. If I had a quarter for every, "I think the bible has good teaching, but because the bible has contradictions ..." What they are really saying is we don't agree with Jesus Christ as the messiah. This is the main reason the bible is questioned more than any other spiritual work. It claims much more authority than anything written before or since. That leads to the question of why this bible as opposed to another. I guess I am drawn to the bible BECAUSE of that authority. Spirituality for me has to mean more than being a good person, whatever. The idea of the historical aspect of the bible is intresting indeed. Most of what I've read about the historical to disprove the bible focuses on Jesus Christ. A man back in this time wouldn't have [insert the historical fact]. However, many other historical facts not related to christ in the bible have been proven highly accurate. I'll just say this about that it's very interesting.
Maybe a broader more relavent question would be: If the Bible isn't divinely inspired, does that lessen its importance as a spiritual guide and if it is divinely inspired, does that make all of it relavent? For example, as a non-Christian, I still find that much of what Jesus taught to be very relavent and important in living a spiritually fulfilling life. I also find books like Isaiah and Psalms to be great sources of inspiration. By the same token, even when I was a born again Christian and felt compelled to read the Bible cover to cover and find meaning, I never understood the relavence of books like Numbers or Deutoronomy. I also had a tendency to question, even then, the writings in the Revelation because they have become such a fundamental part of modern evangelical Christianity even though most theologians and scholars dismissed (and continue to) it as something less than cannonical. Finally, I found that the declaration of divine made me wonder why only books written prior to around 1500 AD got any consideration for inclusion in the category. There have been many brilliant books written about God and Christianity since that time. In fact, there have been thousands more written since then because of the invention of the printing press. For me when I was Christian, divine inspiration was really about relavence to the practice of Christianity. At the time, I didn't really worry about whether it was or not just as I didn't really worry about whether creation was just a story told as a metaphor or a real event. It didn't have relavence to me because I believed whether those things were true or not. As a non-Christian, it isn't nearly as important but I still wonder about it.
I'm not sure you are giving other forms of spirituality a lot of credit here. In fact, most religions (Judiasm, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam) pre-date Christianity. Some by a thousand years. Their texts and beliefs have stood the test of time just as the Bible and Christianity. For them (and me), spirituality goes FAR beyond being a good person. You probably didn't mean it that way so I'm sorry if I reached on that one. I just wanted to point out that every religion has spiritual relavence in the context of the world. I do understand, however, that not every religion resonates with everyone. You were drawn to the Bible for very close to the same reason I was drawn away from it. To each his own. By the way, this is an interesting topic. Thanks for bringing it up.
Yeah Jeff, I really didn't mean it that way. Sometimes I can be really insensitive. I have this inner voice that narrows my mind. I understand that the only way to gain understanding is to bring out the issues in a non-threatening way. I really want to understand why people feel the way they feel while at the same time explaining - as best I can - why I feel the way I do. You know me Jeff - I hate unfruitful bible threads.
As a Young Christian, The Bible is one of the hardest things for me to understand, while Most of the adults in my church use it as a meditation and prayer guide. I just cannot comprehend a lot of it yet. I try to look for secrets in the Bible rather then what is right in front of me, I really want to understand it but I cannot do it on my own strength.
But there are secrets . Or at least things that aren't talked about much. Like, in one of his letters, Paul mentions that a good friend of his was once taken into the 3rd heaven, where God himself supposedly resides. This friend, however, was prohibited from revealing the nature of his revelations. WOW. Someone was taken up to heaven? To where God resides? Yet we've become accustomed to the age-old axiom that this only occurred for Moses. The pericope doesn't mention if this person was transported physically, or merely through the body. Biblical research is really fascinating. How much of the Gospels actually happened? Hard to tell. It seems that Mark actually witnessed events as they happened. But, then, it seems that early versions of Mark ended with either the crucifixion, or the tomb being found empty. All else seems to have been an addition. John clearly had a different agenda. He wasn't there to report, but to prove that Christ was the Messiah. he includes many tales that aren't found in the other gospels, primarily centered on Christ's divinity. Luke and Matthrew seem to have been drawn from two sources... Mark... and a document that no longer exists, but taht scholars call Q. Yet even they had agendas. Luke wanted to show how Jesus included hte outcasts. Matthew wanted to link Jesus with the Hebrew tradition. You get all sorts of differences based on what each author wanted Jesus to be. Have you ever seen the rock-opera "Jesus Christ Superstar?" Sort of the same thing, imo. We all have a different vision of Jesus... and so did the human authors of the New Testament. Have you ever read Song of Songs? Weird stuff in there. Is it an erotic poem? Is it metaphorical? Why was it included? I could go on forever about strange things, but I'll try not to bore you . The Bible's fascinating. When I first began taking theology, I wasn't that interested. I was already agnostic, and figured there wasn't much for me to learn. I was wrong, though. It's worth your time to read it and try to understand it, even if it's just of historical or intellectual interest.
If the early Christian fathers, aka "the three luminous liars" (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Eusebius), hadn't been so extremely ignorant and superstitious and so singularly imcompetent to deal with the supernatural, then I might have more reason to put credence in the hodgepodge of allegory and tribal history that it's composed of. You can even look at the early bishops like Jerome, St. Martin, and Antony, all of whom were definitely psychotic. In fact, there was scarcely a single Father in the ancient Church who was not tainted with heresy, mental abberation, or moral enormity. Thus, deceiving, mentally ill individuals basically constitute the genesis of Christianity.
Have you read Julian of Norwich? Eeek! But then again, people like St. Augustine are still respected today by philosophers.
So if we assume that the three luminous liars got it all wrong and that the true and accurate translation is one based on the Aquila and not the Septuagint, which I might add was translated by the very people who refute its authenticity, then what exactly got mis-translated? Is it a the words, or ideas, what? Again, translations aside, no one disputes that in any translation, original text, so on there sets Jesus Christ. Does the fact, then, that a translation isn't fully accurate to the orginal cause the whole work to be dismissed as faulty and therefore cannot be trusted. The point I'm getting at is, to me, if I could read greek and hebrew, and I had access to any of the original manuscipts I myself am not likely to find in those texts something that would change my mind in that Christ is the messiah. It seems to me, then, that people - to their detriment - too often get caught up in semantics.
Speaking of Augustine , haven, here's a nice little quote from him that talks of the fact that the bible is rife with forgery and fraud. " I should not believe in the truth of the of the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic Church forced me to do so."- St. Augustine. Here's an excerpt from fellow lunatic Tertullian, defending the 'new' faith: "I maintain that the Son of God was born; why am I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing? Why! but because it is itself a shameful thing. I maintain that the Son of God died;well, that is wholly credible because it is monstrously absurd. I maintain that after having been buried, he rose again: and that I take to be absolutely true, because it was manifestly impossible." - Tertullian No one of the four gospels is mentioned in any other part of the New Testament.....No work of art of any kind has even been discovered, no painting, or engraving, no sculpture, or other relic of antiquity, which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of those gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century. Even the exploration of the Christian catacombs failed to bring to light any evidence of that character....The four gospels were written in Greek, and there was no translation of them in other languages, earlier than the 3rd century. kbm, In the end, the only way to justify your belief is to follow Tertullian's lead- Credo quia incredibilis est" hehe...
That is a weak arguement Tacoma. You could dismiss the four gospels but you still have to deal with Jesus Christ. He's there. You could also dismiss the whole new testament. Whatever. The fact still remains Jesus Christ is there. Even if you argue that there is no specific reference to the name of Jesus Christ in the old testament, you still have to deal with the fact that a messiah was expected to come. So you'd, I suppose, dismiss the old testament any version as fiction as well with that position. It doesn't matter where you turn or how many versions of the bible or old texts you turn to to explain away understood christian beliefs you still have to deal with christ.
Since at least one of the Genesis creation myths was a copy of an earlier Babylonian creation myth (which was based on earlier Akkadian and Sumerian creation myths - they are all 4 nearly identical in substance, so it's logical to assume that it was passed down through the ages and inherited during the captivity), I find it hard to swallow the idea that the Genesis creation myth was divinely inspired. It was copied from elsewhere, and not even a monotheistic religion, so... And Revelations... I think that somebody was tripping when they wrote it. I really do... For the most part, I think it's a great philosophical work (Jesus was undoubtedly the greatest ever), has been a wonderful foundation for Western civilization to build upon, and obviously has great value as a work of history as well. But divinely inspired? It was written by men over hundreds of years, and then later edited by other men who desired to use it as a method of controling populations. Maybe the original version was divinely inspired, who knows. Perhaps some parts were, and some parts were not. Who knows? If God inspires men to write great works for him, then I have to believe that the entire Dilbert series is also divinely inspired.
If Jesus claimed He Himself was God and equal to God, then that makes Him crazy, a liar, or for real. If you take either of the first two choices, how can you logically accept any other part of His teachings? Many people say Christians are lame lemmings who need a crutch, but what does that reveal about those who admire Jesus Christ's teachings but reject the importance of His sacrifice? Every part of the Bible is for the purpose of revealing the characteristics of God to mankind.
How do we know anything for sure? What is historical fact and what is fiction? You can go around this circle forever. Nobody can prove empirically that the bible is the inspired word of God, and that's not the measure you should use. The bible is like music or poetry. You can know the words, but if you don't connect with it, it's meaningless. If it resonates with you, if it moves you, if you "get it" then it is true. That's how it should be judged. It has meaning, IMO, because it resonates with the spirit of God. At least it does for me, and it seems to for a number of other Christians I know. (There are people, of course, who parrot the words but don't seem to understand it).
