Where did the Bible come from?
 

What I mean is that people follow the Bible because they believe it's "the word of God." However, even christians don't think that God came down from above and wrote the Bible for us to hand out to each other. A bunch of guys wrote the Bible.
So, why do people believe the Bible is the word of God? I mean, if I wrote a bible and told you it was the will of God, you'd cock an eyebrow at me and call me mad! So, why do people believe these guys, specifically?

tradition - a long time ago, the church assembled some of the writings they found, canonized it, and called it "The Bible". They said "this is the TRUTH because we say so, and God talks to us.

ever since then, people have just assumed that what their parents and grandparents have said is true, without bothering to think for themselves. after all, that is encouraged - as every christian knows, it's GOOD to be a sheep! :rolleyes:

Troll. This is a bit harsh. Not all Christians are sheep, and at least some of the Christians I know have considered the origins and history of the Bible and are Christians because it still makes sense to them and resonates with them on some level. I'm not a Christian myself, and I do think a lot of people tend to just go along with what they're taught, but to paint all Christians with the same brush is unfair.

wow, aren't you the enlightened little paragon of humanity :p

how about thinking for yourself as well and forming an opinion that is validated without resorting to clichés Jynx? :rolleyes:

Why is it called the word of God? You can go ask the same thing to the Jews, since the Bible is half New and half Old Testament.

Anyway, why do they call it this? Since in the NT, they describe Jesus Christ. They recite his words and we believe Jesus to be the Son of God, part of the Trinity. However literaly or figurative you want to take this title.
We believe that God spoke through Jesus, when he told his parables.

So during a sermon if any part of the NT is read, afterwards the priest simply restates that he was simply quoting God to put it in a popular term. (Around here, he literally says "the words of God")

that a document has endured in a faith community does speak to its effectiveness in being a part of the dialouge of humankind and the divine. Personally, the particular authority of a verse comes from how it interacts with teh rest of scripture(thematically agreeing or disagreeing), the nature of it's creation (what influences was the author writing about/is is applicable outside those circumstances, how it interacts with the interpretive traditions (such as mishnahs, midrash, theology, etc...), how those in community around me react to it (i seek out the advice of people who have wisdom in reading the texts such as ministers), and i also look at how the verse make me feel personally-how the Spirit moves when i encounter that text.

I think that's a pretty reasonable method of looking at scripture, though i would hardly claim it as the only or authoriative model.

that, and that post from Jynx was a hell of a troll. As a Christian, I for one think i'm a pretty damn opinionated sheep. :)

I came to believe that the bible (as well as all religion) was created as a primitive source of law and structure. This belief in the higher power, that is always watching, as well as inescapable consequences for your actions (hell), creates a will not to do ‘bad things’. Where as previously, you were punished if you were caught, here you will be punished no matter what.

Hope this makes sense.

that is most likely so with the 10 commandments and other laws like it in the OT.
The NT however has alot less of these rules in it, but I see your point.

So how does a Scripture for any religion become valid ?

Christianity arose within Judaism.

The earliest Christians, were Jews, so their hopes and expectations of a Messiah foretold in Jewish Scriptures (the Old Testament) were fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament is the Torah (granted there are differences, but the two are so similar that a common origin is indisputable).

So is the Torah also to be considered not the word of God ?

You should know that what people call scripture is not somethign that anybody just made up. The Guys involved were deemed to have been "inspired by God" to document his teaching. The four gospels were the peers of Jesus and detailed the activities that they witnessed. Hardly the same as any muppet coming up with a rollicking good yarn and having millions of people declare it the word of God.


This is true of most religions. Is the Koran invalid because Muhummad (just a guy ) declares it to be the word of Allah ?

What is a prophet ?


The early Christians already understood what 'scripture' was, and how to use it in the context of teaching and worship from their Jewish roots. Consequently, the formation of 'scripture' to be used for teaching and worship of the Christian faith was a logical requirement. The review of Christian writings to determine what was 'scripture'; that is valid, authoritative and holy led to the development of the New Testament and can be seen in three major stages: 1) the rise of Christian literature to the status of scripture, 2) the conscious grouping of various writings into collections, and 3) the revision and approval of these collections as a 'New Testament' - this being called a 'canon'. Canon comes from the Greek word 'kanon' meaning measuring rule.

Only certain books passed the measuring rules required for 'canonization'.

Now you may know better , please enlighten me as to how every major religion has gotten it wrong , how every authority has been duped and what you believe scripture should be.

Now let me say first up that I am not a church going person , I have no strong faith and if you were to tell me that the concept of God was something that Ron Howard dreamt up my life would go on exactly as before. I consider myself an existentialist , that is to say I believe in me.

As such I am always wary of bible bashers , people who quote scripture to defend scripture and am well aware that you can find stuff in the bible that could sway just about any argument either way.

So it is with some reticence that I use the following passage ,
borrowed from http://www.bible-origin.com/ .

It seems that the question of Bible origin turns on the truth of its divine inspiration. In Luke 24:27,44; John 5:39; and Hebrews 10:7, Jesus says that what was written about him in the Old Testament would come to pass. Romans 3:2 and Hebrews 5:12 refer to the Old Testament as the Word of God. We read in 1 Corinthians 2:13, "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit." This is confirmed in 2 Timothy 3:16. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, Paul when referring to that which he had written says, "...you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the Word of God..." Peter speaks of the inspiration of Paul's writings in 2 Peter 3:15-16, where he maintains that, "...Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters..." Earlier, in 2 Peter 1:21 Peter writes, "For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along [moved] by the Holy Spirit." And then finally in Revelation 22:18,19 the writer John, referring to the book of Revelation states, "...if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life..."


My take on this.

Bunch of guys met JC.
They wrote about it.
People believed that JC was the Son Of God.
Their writing and perosnal experience were thus , inspired by and based on personal experience with the man believed to be the son of god.

Why not revere their works as true ?

Anybody looking for some light relief from all this can head here :
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=19523

interesting.....methinks true trolling must be a rare occurrence here if you believe my previous post to be one... allow me to clarify my stance:

• nowhere in my previous post did i say that ALL christians were sheep. i believe that many are, but certainly not all.
• a sheep seems to be very accurate, however, and as far as i can tell from reading the NT (which i've done), a true chrisitan would WANT to be a sheep! after all, jesus himself referred to his followers, indirectly, as sheep - they are his flock, and he is the good shepherd. in addition, i have heard sermons lauding the qualities of a sheep, and saying directly that people should aspire to be a sheep, and a member of the right flock.
• i would consider many sheep because they simply believe what someone else told them. and i used to be like this: i was told that the bible was the perfect Word Of God, and that jesus existed. i believed it for a long time, but no longer. as for the first, several contradictions, both direct internal (one part of the bible contradicts another) and direct external (the bible doesn't agree with archeological findings). as for the second, i believe that there is a distinct possibility of some man who radically changed judaism, but simply don't currently believe in his divinity.

finally, please understand that my stance is not one of blind hatred - what i don't like is being preached at, and folks using poor logic to defend their beliefs, not to mention people saying "i believe therefore it's true!" that is incorrect - truth is independant of belief.

for those interested, this link opened my eyes. while i may not believe ALL of the opinion stated on this page (and it is a long read), the concrete evidence provided made me stop and reevaluate my beliefs.

and every time you reevaluate your beliefs, it's a good thing.

Ahem:

If you don't want people to think you're a troll, then perhaps you should clarify your stance the first time before you hit submit, instead of throwing out sweeping generalizations that don't really address the question that was asked but disparage the sincerely held (and, many times, thoughtful) beliefs of an entire religion. I'm not a Christian either and I don't believe that the Bible is the word of God, but that doesn't give me the right to assume that people who do believe so are mindless sheep who believe everything they're told.

looking at your link, Jynx...i have to say that it's hardly good scholarship. most of the "problems" of the text are discussed quite openly in any biblical studies class...but with out the spin, and including alternative theories, not just the ones most friendly to discrediting the tradition.

*They totally misrepresent the nature of "El" and "Elohim" as titles...
*They do not have the correct chronology of the J and E sources.
*They misrepresent the nature of prophets in hebrew society.
*They describe the events of Ezekial's life in a way that distorts his relationship with God.
*The standards of historical scholarship, such as the Negative Evidence Principle are NOT accepted by most in the historical community. It's a neat trick for shoving off burden of proof that totally ignore the general lack of records in that era.
*They distort the nature of Josephus's writings. It is not a "secular" source.
*They fail to present the documentary hypothesis of the Gospels correctly. There is a fundamental mistake as to the nature of Mark, Q and the other synoptics.
*There is a fundamentally different standard of evidence used when the author makes allegations, much looser than for Christian claims.
*The judgment confered on the Gospels is written to discredit, and does not adeqatuely deal with the potential and problems of such texts.
*The document errantly confers a Christology on to the Gospel of Matthew. At very least, this is a HIGHLY debatable fact.
*The author displays a lack of knowlege of translations, and their qualities. The only versions discussed are outdated. The reliable NSRV is not mentioned at all. This omission is so glaring as to make it almost certainly intentional.
*the author over literalizes, ignoring the use of poetic and metaphoric language. This is an error many fundamentalists make, and he feeds right in to it.

All in all, i say it's pretty well crap, and that's being generous. I'm not going to stand here and tell you everything in the bible is true, and that he's a heretic. Not everything in the bible is literally true...but it still has value as a sacred text. The story of the Isrealites, the prophets and of Christ all offer a compelling narative of the relation of humans to the divine...

Gutenberg.

A good guideline in life, and this I live by and I hope others do too, is to *never* take anything you read at 1 single place as your new creed/gospel in life.

When people say: this link has opened my eyes, I will automatically look for other places to get similar info and form a total image without resorting to 1 person's POV. For all you know that guy is a raving lunatic and frequently abuses LSD. The chances are equally high that he's a theologist with a degree and some serious study in the field.

But do you really wanna take that risk?

absolutely correct, and I don't take what i see here at face value - i made that mistake once, i'll try not to make it again.

i agree that there are mistakes (i found several myself) and i will fully allow that there may be some poor scholarship. what it DOES give is several references to several different books, and what it did was knock me out of the blind acceptance state that i was, i am ashamed to admit, fully in.

but while there are mistakes, some larger questions hold true, and despite some research, i cannot resolve some biblical contradictions. these contradictions lead me to believe that this group of books is a work of man.

also, for the record, i believe that the heart of the bible is good - the teachings ascribed to jesus are noble, and i try to live by them. my issue is not with those who use the bible selectively as a guideline for a good life, but those who slavishly take the book and say that EVERYONE should follow it, with no open mind for alternate opinions.

as for the "sheep" thing, if the difference between saying "every single christian is a sheep" (which i didn't say) and "christians know that the bible says that sheep-like behavior is good" (which i did) cannot be seen, then i apologize that i have neither the time nor the inclination to further explain it.

Man, is there a point to this thread or do we all just hate Jinx and leave it at that? I may disagree with him, but there's more space devoted to side topics here than to the main question.

Getting back to the original subject, I believe that the Bible was not dictated by God, but that it was divinely inspired. Mayhaps it was written more like a newspaper article where the actions of a group or individual were explained with quotes from people who were involved. Some passages in the Bible refer to God directly speaking, while others tend to be more straight history. I think that those passages where the Bible refers to events in Heaven or direct quotes from God require the divine inspiration of God while the passages that simply describe the reign of a king are probably not.

As for the New Testament, I think that (as many have said) those who met Jesus wrote about it or told others who then proceeded to write about it. There is nothing wrong with that. Socrates never wrote anything, yet his wisdom is never challenged. Many philosophers and religions have to orally pass down their teachings before they are written in a book. Just because a bunch of guys wrote the Bible does not destroy its credability.

hate? no.... "I'm sorry" are two small words that would go a long ways here. Trolling is something we've all done, and that we can apologize for when caught.

there's probably good debate outside of the questions jynx raises too...so ask, and it shall be answered unto you. or somethign like that. :)

Didn't a bunch of guys sit around and come up with the Bill of Rights? How abut Human Rights? Why should we believe or follow any of them. Is it the same idea as the bible?

THANK YOU!!! I've noticed that people just try to backpedal and justify themselves and say "well, that's not what I meant" instead of just saying "oops, my bad - I said that wrong." Apologies would go a long way toward keeping this a civil place. Thanks for reminding us.

The bible is gay.

Who cares.

Its been translated so many times is not even half correct, if it was correct in the first place.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that:

(A) there really is omnipotent and all knowing God in the heavens

(B) given the falacies of man, the Bible has been overtranslated into a document that bears little resemblance to the authors intended word

Knowing what a bunch of screwups we are, wouldn't it make sense for "God" to pick a couple of good honest souls to rewrite the Bible, to get it right? To let us all know what His actual intent was/is.

Or could it be, that God knows that we would probably just lock up his "chosen ones" in the booby hatch?

this post is the only one that makes any sense to me at all. the writer isn't trying to lay out a mile of psycho babble. Just saying what’s on his mind. However I would remind him that although I share his thoughts... words of this nature do more harm than good. Atheists have no desire to be looked on as “simple-minded” individuals. Which is exactly what this post conveys.

So, with that in mind I would like to re-write “Doesn’t Matter’s” post so the rookie doesn’t sound like he’s partially retarded.(no insult intended)

1. The bible doesn’t make any sense in accordance with facts and laws of nature that have proved to be true.
2. A growing number of people are starting to realize the futility of throwing their lives away worshiping and living by a false belief in a deity that doesn’t exist.
3. The real and original “bible” was lost in a fire a couple hundred years ago. It’s was “rewritten” by several catholic “officials” and since then has been translated by everyone under the sun. and therefore can-not be trusted as any kind of “factual” book. Because, if you doubt any part…. just one…then the vitality of the complete work becomes invalid as a source of knowledge.

There, re-written!

Yeah! What he said!

lol, very nice.

thankyou

LOL

cnor,

where did you get #3 from? that's rich

the Bible
 

To start, don't think of it as verbatim. The Bible was taken from stories of G-D. If you tried to tell a story now, how different do you think it would be in 4000 years. They are stories with morals. This being the basis for law. The object is to pass along what a god would want from man. Look at the different versions of the Greek and Roman gods, or even the Norse gods. The stories are not completely accurate but you know Zeus was the bad ass big daddy of the Greeks. Odin for the Norse.
As with Odin you could enter Valhalla by dying in battle. To the Jew it is to be a good person and follow G-D's law. The whole idea of the Bible is to be a good person. The Bible helps guide us on what we see as the right path.

quick quote:

"Like a true believer, I am skeptical of all that I have said."

I'm a Christian, not a traditional Christian, but a Christian all the same. I like the Bible, I do think that its to word of God, but you have to understand about the origins. 'The Bible' has be translated and modified about a bazillion times. Things have been taken out, things have been added, all according to whatever the 'church' wanted to represent at any given time. Regardless, the true meaning remains pretty much unaltered, but its not the only text that I read in a spiritual manner. The Gospel of Thomas is a wonderful text that has been removed. The Apocrypha (i'm not a catholic so this was stripped from my KJV.) Also stuff like Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross (a good read about the mysticism of early Christianity) and the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. Some of these texts are traditionally Christian texts, the others not so much.

I guess what I was trying to say is, whatever strengthens your understanding of yourself and your place in the universe is worth reading.

I think the key to this whole discussion is the word "translated."

the bible has been translated and converted and re-translated so many times that nobody knows what the hell is going on.

"God creating all" is just an excuse for the simple-minded who can't accept scientific facts because they don't understand them.

wow. did not know that

Seems to me the issue isnt where this book, or these books, came from.the issue is what we do with them. I very much enjoy the origin of species but would NEVER attempt to push a fundimentalist christian towards the "dark side"by slamming my head against a wall in an attempt to "show them the light". There are extremists in all religions, and that is what creates problems, not the bible, torah . koran or any other book. Why does anyone need to be wrong?

Is it just me or does it seem that the people who perceive the Bible or any other religious creed objectively; usually do so to further their own agendas and/or arguments?

Not at all.

The Bill or Rights is proscriptive. It's something suggested by someone because they think it's a good idea.

The Bible is descriptive. It attempts to describe how things are and if you don't believe it then you're an idiot who will burn in hell...

If you say that you "believe" in the Bill of Rights then what you're really saying is not that you believe it exists ('cause we all know that!) but, rather, that you believe it's a good idea.
In contrast, if you say that you believe in the Bible, what you're (typically) saying is that you believe the events in the Bible to actually have happened.

Well put. My problem with this is, was JC quoted accurately? After all the actual writing of the Bible wasn't done at the time JC was around. Secondly, through all the various translations and editing is the Bible of today been corrupted to the point it is no longer resembles the original? I know theologians that believe God has intervened in the process to keep the Word holy.
Personally, I take the Bible as nothing more than an historical text.

There is much study and debate on the real words and acts of Jesus...and there is no easy answer. Many scholars have tackeled the issue-Dominic Crossen, Robert Funk, and Paula Fredriksen being some of the well known ones....i respect all for their scholarship, though i caution any reader to be aware that none has it "just right."

I think that this is getting blown fairly out of proportion. The texts used today have not be translated countless times....most good bibles are direct translations from the available manuscripts... For the New Testament they are usually 250-100 years old...for the Greek manuscripts, we can assume they stayed in Greek during that period of transmission. Syraic, Coptic, Aramaic, and other texts are used as a double check on accuracy.

For the Old Testament...this is somewhat fairer of a point. Many texts spent a great deal of time in oral form before being written. Today's english versions are based off of the most authoritative Hebrew copies known, giving weight to the Masoretical interpetations, but not being bound by them.

Better yet...linky...

http://www.ncccusa.org/newbtu/reader.html

That's the translators note to the reader from the NSRV...the version i reccomend to anyone interested in seriously studying the text. The main point is that we *do* know, with a fair amount of certainty, what the texts mean and what they should read. I don't think that gives any one reading, fundamentalism or liberalism or whatever, an automatic advantage....but its not a fair criticism of any of these readings to say that the text is without reliability.

Moses wrote down the "Word of God" as the Torah, Old Testament.

This could also mean that he was Divinely Inspired, which in my opinion, is the same thing.