by Strawberryfieldsforever 11 Replies latest jw friends
I was remembering a conversation I had recently with my Mom when she was still talking to me. I asked her why the JW's keep getting new light on different teachings. She told me that man is imperfect and needs to be corrected by Jehovah time to time to get the teachings right.
Well, I started thinking......man was imperfect when he wrote the bible, right? Does that mean the bible really isn't all that accurate after all? Did God give them new light back then?
strawberry
Obviously you are mostly going to get those that do not believe the Bible to be accurate responding to this. But the Bible witers don't claim to have written it on their own. Unlike the WT, the Bible claims to be inspired of God. It was God writing it through men. This means that the originals (not the copies) are claimed to be inerrant. There was no "new light". There isn't a single time in the Bible where a writer wrote something, and another writer says "No, that was wrong and false. This is the new light."
The Bible DOES opperate along the lines of "progressive revelation", however. God revealed a bit at a time until it was complete in Jesus Christ. But this is far different from "new light". God didn't have something wrong and have to fix it later. However, he revealed things partially as history progressed. That is why Paul could say that the OT was like looking through a dim mirror.
Whether you believe the Bible or not, it is not like "new light".
New light, according to the WT is based on Proverbs 4:18. Interestingly, even this verse does not support their teaching of "new light". It refers to ACTUAL light getting BRIGHTER. If something is wrong, it's not light. But the verse talks about real light increasing. It's also not a prophecy. It's a PROVERB. It's a general truth that as a person progresses in anything, they will grow. This is true also with the man of God. A person. An individual. They will grow and progress and get stronger in their walking with God.
So yes, the Bible was written by imperfect men. But they didn't claim to write this without God. It's been illustrated like a glove. A glove can do nothing on it's own. But when a hand is insterted into the glove, the glove acts.
Some time spent reading how the bible came to together, who actually wrote it, and what language experts have to say will be a real eye opener for you.
I suggest you start with karen armstrong's a history of god, then Richard elliot freidman's Who wrote the bible.
Does that mean the bible really isn't all that accurate after all?
Well, right from the get go in the Bible, God makes plants, animals, etc before making the sun. There's something not quite accurate about that.
I've read Freidman's "Who wrote the Bible" and found the scholarship somewhat weak and sometimes downright faulty. There were a number of claims that Friedman made in which he says that a biblical passage says something, and it actually does not. The interpretation was off, and many of his statements contradict themselves. He also tends to not understand the language itself in many cases, changing it to fit a specific interpretation that he is trying to get across. One of which is that it was not Moses that wrote the first 5 books of the Bible, but in fact some preists in Hezekiah's time.
Just one example of what I'm talking about is his argument that it could not have been written by Moses because the passage refers to Moses in the third person. He does not seem to realize that this was a common practice to refer to oneself in the third person, especially when relating a story where the writer is included. He also throughout the entire book uses phrases such as "Moses was not likely to have said..." An example of this is that Moses was not likely to have said that Moses was the meekest of all men. There is no proof of such a statement, but he does this throughout the book.
I'm open to biblical critisicm. But his arguments, in many cases, were very weak.
Richard Elliott Frieman on You Tube:
Thanks for posting that, frankiespeakin!
Check out the Quran, it won't hurt you but might open doors that you've never imagined
Well, I started thinking......man was imperfect when he wrote the bible, right? Does that mean the bible really isn't all that accurate after all? Did God give them new light back then?
That is exactly the questions you need to ask your Mum. It leads to one of two conclusions:
Unfortunately, there is a third conclusion for the indoctrinated, "who are we to question God?" So don't expect this to get your mother to start thinking logically.
Richard Elliot Frieman "The editorial team behind the Bible":
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2004/02/The-Editorial-Team-Behind-The-Bible.aspx
