Thread: bible question
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Old 06-14-2003, 05:26 AM   #5 (permalink)
SecretMethod70
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Wehn quoting the Bible, you are correct to say that to the quoter the speaker is irrelevant.

As to your assessment of the Word of God through man, it's still a mute point because the nature of having faith in the Bible is faith that God instructed the men who wrote it to write it in just the way that they did, therefore there is no room for human error in the actual writing.

Where there IS room for human error is in interpretation and translation. Because of this, your criticism of quoters lacking context is a good one.

As far as translation, short of reading and understanding the Bible in its original language, it's very difficult to assess the meaning. For example, the original word used in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" actually has a meaning of thou shalt not take innocent life, and, therefore, is a completely invalid phrase for arguing against the death penalty.

So, how can one trust interpretation of the Bible? This is one of the flaws as I believe the Catholic Church sees it in the various Protestant faiths, and is the reason the Catholic Church also takes into account Apostolic Tradition to guide them in their understanding - that is to say, they look to how the original Apostles acted and what they taught. It is also why the Catholic Church actually has, generally speaking, one of the most liberal interpretations of the Bible of all Christian religions, accepting the possibilty of evolution, the big bang, and the idea that many of the Bible's stories are just that - stories told by God with a moral, much like the parables of Jesus.
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