by Doug Mason 66 Replies latest watchtower bible
My JW visitor left me a copy of the 2006 print of the book "The Bible: God's Word or Man's?", and I intend to provide him with my analysis of it.
I notice that the book was written in 1989, and the dates of the references suggest the book has not been updated since then. Am I correct?
Has anyone produced a review of the book?
Does anyone know the name of the author, and if so, anything about him (her)?
Any thoughts on the book are most welcome.
Doug
I haven't read that book. I did read Misquoting Jesus, by Barth Erhman. I also got The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, by the same author. But the first book is all you need to understand that the Bible is a series of unconnected writings of men. It's just not true that they were meant to be the same book.
Do you really need to ask? It is the ramblings of plagiarist's who took the stories from other deluded stories.
While Bart's views are very bias and havew been answered by a few scholars, they TOO are bias, so....
Here is the basic argument.
Either we have the actual words of God or we don't.
If we have them---where are they?
The originals don't exist. Later copies from oral version do exist--but, they've been recopied and changed.
Even with all that---surely God wouldn't allow so much corruption to exist without setting.......somebody...somewhere straight....
Guess who does have it right?
Yes, Jehovah's Witnesess do.
Trust them.
Everybody else has the corrpt (changed versions) but, Jehovah's Witnesses have the Faithful and Discreet Slave to purify God's communication.
Look at the history of Jehovah's Witnesses. It tells the whole story!! (Just don't look too closely.)
p.s. All of the Christian religion is different opinions about what the Bible must really mean. We don't know what the actual words were by the original writers. But, why let that stop us?
What we have are words of man, written by man.
Men that felt they were inspired to write what they saw, what they heard and what they were told.
Men that believed they were inspired by God to write these things down.
Are these things that have been written the word of God?
Each person must make that decision themselves but they must ALWAYS be aware that MAN wrote these words, inpsired man perhaps, but man for certain.
Hi People,
I too believe that the Bible is the product of people's minds, and lean heavily in favour of Higher Criticism and its various iterations. For that reason, I possess the books that have been mentioned, as well as others. That is not my question.
I have been asked by a JW to read the WTS's book "The Bible: God's Word or Man's?" and I am in the process of preparing a written analysis of it for him.
All I want to know is "does anyone know who wrote the book?". As a bonus, I would also like to know something of the author.
The book is pathetic but my JW visitor deserves an honest and considered review.
Doug
He doesn't deserve it and he doesn't even care what your review says.
Like Terry said, "Jehovah's Witnesses have the Faithful and Discreet Slave to purify God's communication." As long as a JW believes that the WT was selected by Jesus in 1919 to be God's sole channel, nothing you say about any other subject is meaningful and worthy of consideration. You would be better to spend your time at the pub with the Heathens.
the WT wrote it=GB=Holly Spirit = God
Here is the basic argument.Either we have the actual words of God or we don't.If we have them---where are they?The originals don't exist.
Terry,
While we do not have any autographs (original writings) of Scripture, we are extremely confident that what we do have is the original text. I don't want to bore this thread with a lecture on lower criticism. Suffice it to say that scholars are certain of roughly 99% of the text. The remaining 1% represents trivial matters (word choice, spelling, etc.). No doctrine of Christianity hinges on a variant reading.
As for the divine origin of Scripture, one can point to a number of things (fulfilled prophecy, internal consistency, archeological evidence, and near-miraculous preservation of manuscripts/fragments). At the end of the day, however, faith is still needed to bridge the lack of epistemic certainly. Yet that faith is well-supported by the facts. It is not blind. Christians can and should have great confidence that their Bibles contain the written word of God.
In Him,
Rufus
