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Originally Posted by RonRyan85
Sure Jesus lived,died and came back to life 3 days later...just like the Bible predicted he would do it.
Being the Son of God ,he had the power and God had a plan for all of Mankind to live forever in his
heaven IF we believed in JESUS and GOD. Sounds like I believe the HOLY BIBLE doesn't it? There
are too many things in the Bible that are true NOT to believe it. (Another thing: What if I am right
and non-believers are WRONG ? )
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I will enthusiastically state, I do my very best not judge others or their beliefs. The obvious motivation for this being the many faults I carry sober me of doing so. Even in debates where I am totally the opposite in beliefs, I strive to understand why other side sees they way they do. When it comes to this topic, I will admittingly confess that minor frustration sets in. Not enough to ever down someone for their spiritual beliefs, but to suggest research. I am a former Christian that saw atheists as lost souls; shaking my head with a “if they only knew” attitude. I saw advice to research history outside the Bible as either a waste of time or in some cases the devil trying to influence me. After all what more did I need other than the Bible. After years of research applying critical thought and several visits to Israel with an archeologist; I began to fully understand a diiferent acceptance. When the interest of science and quantum physics took hold, it was the last push to where I am today.
That is, I don’t know what God is. There is currently nothing other than the Bible that suggests (or Koran) that the reality we now know, (the laws of physics and other displines of science) will someday cascade to a permanent supernatural exsistence when the Mesiah returns in a light of heavenly glory. There is nothing to suggest that humanity deserves to keep this planet if it doesn’t use the evolved tool it has- the brain to stop blaming its shortcomings on a central unseen force that instigates the motivation of what this civilization (in its many facets) has determined as being “evil”. I don’t know what god is, but when I look at the universe in its majestic span of time- I cant help but think that whatever, if there is a supreme creator of something of this magnitude, its very arrogant to think that there is anything “we” simple carbon based beings on this tiny speck of dust could do anything that would offend it.
There is plenty that offends us though. Think about what one single thing has caused more wars than anything else in history.
Whether you do or don’t, I will still suggest that you research how the Bible was written. If you do, also keep in mind these were men; human beings writing from stories and accounts passed down. Not from words burnt into rock of metal from a scientifically unknown source left as an enigma, but writings just like mythology. While if you ever decide to venture down this path; finding your own sources is the best here are examples:
Christian Texts
Dating Early Christian Gospels
from jesus to christ: the first christians: from hebrew bible to christian bible
Bibliography of some of the Bible research resources used by BibleTexts
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The Old Testament is not the whole literature of Israel, nor is the New Testament the whole literature of early Christianity. Many other books with religious themes circulated among those of ancient Judaism and in the early church. Some of these books are called pseudepigrapha, a Greek term meaning "spurious writings." Among Judaism's pseudepigrapha are: The Letter of Aristeas, III and IV Maccabees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Testament of Job, the Life of Adam and Eve, the Psalms of Solomon, and the Assumption of Moses. The Christian pseudepigrapha include various gospels, books of acts, epistles, and revelations.
Of the vast literature that circulated in ancient Israel and in the early church, only a small number of works came to be included in the Bible. Those that were eventually included make up what is called the canon (from a Greek term for standard) of the Old and New Testaments. This meant that there was a consensus in both Judaism and Christianity concerning the authoritative books of their religions. New Testament canon. The 27 books of the New Testament are the only canonical books out of many writings considered sacred by the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The process of sifting to form the final canon took another 200 years.
There were two chief reasons for the formation of a definitive New Testament canon. As the church moved from the 1st to the 2nd century, it was obvious that the oral tradition concerning Jesus and the work of the apostles was ending because the original witnesses were dying. And a number of sects and heresies (schools of doctrine) had emerged, each laying claim to the correct interpretation of the Gospel. Both of these factors made it imperative for the church to collect those writings that most accurately presented its message. The principles by which books were accepted as canonical were three: they had to have the authority of apostolic teaching in them; they had to present true doctrine; and they had to have been widely circulated.
The first part of the New Testament to gain general acceptance was a collection of the letters of Paul, in circulation before the end of the 1st century. The four Gospels were widely regarded as canonical by the end of the 2nd century. The rest were slowly received, but by AD 325 the historian Eusebius of Caesarea made a compilation that listed most of the present canon and left a few books on the list as disputed. In 367 Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, made a canonical list of all the presently accepted New Testament books. Church councils in subsequent decades established his list as final. Still, controversy over the Book of Revelation and some of the Catholic Epistles lasted for at least two centuries.
None of the original Bible manuscripts exists. They were lost centuries ago, and the texts that are now in the Bible represent copies of copies that were handed down in a variety of translations over many generations. The most famous version of the Old Testament is a Greek translation, the Septuagint, made at Alexandria by about 70 Jewish scholars beginning in the 3rd century BC. Another famous ancient translation, including both testaments, is the Latin Vulgate (common, or vernacular) made by St. Jerome in about AD 400. Throughout the Middle Ages the Bible was translated and copied by hand, a process prone to error. It was only with the invention of printing in the late 15th century that fixed, invariable texts of the Bible could be published.
In the 20th century the Bible has often been updated--mainly to eliminate archaic translations and reflect contemporary usage. The American Standard Version of 1901 was followed by a rephrasing of the New Testament in 1946 and the Old Testament in 1952. Among the more than two dozen different English translations of the whole Bible published since then was the New Revised Standard Version (1990).
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Christianity, The Bible