Is the Bible God's word? Help please..... (page 3)

Island Man

"To be fair, the bible is suppose to be symbolic in parts. Problem is which parts?"

Which parts? The parts that explicitly contradict [insert name of denomination]'s religious teachings.

Coded Logic

The first question we have to ask is which Bible?

There are eight separate established canons for the Bible. Each of them containing varying books and content. They have many different stories and radically different theology that they teach. Between the years 382 AD and 1647 AD seven of them were canonized. They are:

The Roman Catholic Bible (73 books)
The Ethiopian Orthodox Bible (81 books)
The Eastern Orthodox Bible (85 books)
The Syriac Bible (68 books)
The Armenian Bible (82 books)
The Church of England Bible (the King James Version falls here with 80 books)
The Slavonic Bible (75 books)

(And, just to make the point clear, these are NOT different translations. They are different canons that all have differing content from each other)

The eighth Bible wasn't established until 1825 by the British and Foreign Bible Society and is known as the . . .

The Protestant Bible (The New World Translation falls here with 66 books)

Like all the established canons there are several problems with the Protestant Bible. However, the biggest one is - if it's the "true" version of the Bible than it means that everyone else has/had the "wrong" Bible for thousands of years. If this is the "real" Bible then the Bible was NOT preserved through the ages for everyone because anyone who lived before 1825 didn't have access to it. They all had the "wrong" Bible.

As you can see, there is great deal of disagreement about which books of the Bible should be, and should't be, allowed into canon (John Calvin and his good friend Michael Sevetus disagreed on Biblical canon so fiercely that John eventually had his friend burned alive at the stake over the dispute in 1553 AD). For the Old Testament there are two main sources from which the eight separate cannons draw on - the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. In contest among the differing biblical canons are the books of:

Esdras

Tobit

Judith

Maccabess

Solomon

Ecclesiasticus

Baruch

Prayer of Mannasseh

Psalms

Additions to Esther

Letter of Jeremiah

Additions to Daniel (Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bell and the Dragon)

But it gets worse. In the early 1900s the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. A little background here, the dead sea scrolls were written in the year 100 BC and only contain the Old Testament. The manuscripts are fragments from 972 texts, not entire books, so we can only compare small portions of the Old Testament with modern versions.

Some hoped that, since the Dead Sea Scrolls pre-dated all versions of the Bible, it would finally determine which one was correct. But it did the opposite. It only confused the issue more because the Dead Sea Scrolls contained books not found in any of the established canons including the books:

Enoch

Jubilees

Wisdom of Sirach

Apocryphon of Daniel

Book of War

Additions to Psalms

A study of the modern Bible shows that there is a lot missing out of it. Just a to give you three examples you can look up yourself. In Joshua 10:13 it says, "Accordingly the sun kept motionless, and the moon did stand still, until the nations could take vengeance on its enemies. Is it not written in the Book of Jashar? And the sun kept standing still in the middle of the heavens and did not hasten to set for about a whole day."

And also 2 Samuel 1:18, "And to say the sons of Judah should be taught the bow. Look! It is written in the Book of Jashar."

Of course the Book of Jashar is yet another book of the Bible not found in any of the canons yet it was clearly part of the original Israelite doctrine. The question is, why isn't it in the Bible?

A second example of content removed from the Bible can be found at Mathew 2:23 which says, ". . . and they came and dwelt in a city named Nazareth, that there might be fulfilled what was spoken through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene." "

Of course the problem here is that no where in the Old Testament did it ever say that Jesus, or anyone else for that matter, would be born in Nazareth. Were is the matching component to this prophecy? Are parts of the Bible missing?

One last example here is Mathew 27:9 which says "Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying: "And they took the thirty silver pieces, the price upon the man that was priced, the one on whom some of the sons of Israel set a price." "

And the same problem exists here - Jeremiah never said anything about thirty pieces of silver. So which book got it right? Mathew or Jeremiah? Or are they both wrong?

And the New Testament is not exempt from conflict either. Books that were NOT allowed into the New Testament Canon for hundreds of years are:

Hebrews

James

1 & 2 Peter

2 & 3 John

Jude

Revelation (considered heretical)

If they didn't think they were valid back then, why do we think they are valid now?

Books that were once part of the New Testament Canon but are no longer in the Protestant Bible are:

Shepard of Hermas

Epistle of Baranabas

1 & 2 Clement

Epistle to the Laodiceans

Apocalypse of Peter

Once again, if they were part of the Bible back then why aren't they part of the Bible now?

The earliest complete version of the New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus (400 AD). Before this we have fragments of parchments from the 2nd century. More than 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. There are approximately 300,000 textual variants among them. They vary widely in context and some fragments directly contradict other fragments. And some fragments directly contradict the Codex Sinaiticus.

There is no way to determine which, if any, are accurate.

Nathan Natas

Please read "The History of Everything & Stuff" by the infamous apostate "Farkel".

You can find it here:

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/273290/history-everything-stuff-doug-checketts?page=1

Perry

I believe the Bible is inspired by God. I have done a lot of research.

Here are a couple of websites you might want to use for researching the claims of skeptics.

http://christianthinktank.com/

https://carm.org

It is time consuming to read up on specific subjects, but that is really the only way to prove things to yourself. It is worth it for the clarity of mind.

jwfacts

Ask yourself, if you came from a country that knows nothing about the Bible, what would a Christian have to show you to convince you the bible is inspired?

There is only one thing that ever really impressed me about the Bible - prophecy. However, after research it is apparent that there are a number of failed prophecies, and no compelling prophecies. Saying there will be wars, earthquakes and famines is hardly worthy of being called a prophecy.

It is worth researching how the Bible Canon was formed. There is no such thing as "The Bible." There are several different Bible canons, showing that God did not actually hand down an inspired collection of books.

Anders Andersen

@codedlogic:

Excellent post. I already knew some of what you wrote, yet your clear presentation gives it a whole new (and important) meaning.

Banana1886

I'm reading The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein & Silberman. I'm only a quarter through but I've read good things about it and so far it makes some good arguments, and presents strong cases for the Bible authorship being anything other than inspired

Phizzy

Dear Banana 1886,

two things from that book that I remember are that several places are mentioned in Genesis when Archaeology reveals no town or city was on that Site in Patriarchal times, and the story of Rachel's Camels, Camels were not domesticated in those times.

Genesis is full of Myth and Legend.

Perry

Where did Abraham get his camel? Probably from the same place this man did.

Third Millennium BC Egyptian petroglyph of a man leading a dromedary camel.

Credit: Ripinsky 1985.

The entire carving was dated to the 6th Dynasty of Egypt, ca. 2345-2181 BC, based on the inscription, the style, and the patina. This places the use of domesticated camels in Egypt at least as early as ca. 2200 BC.

Article

Genesis is full of Myth and Legend.

In my research, I have found that humans are full of confirmation bias, selective reasoning, and shameless self promotion, far more than Genesis is full of myth and legend.

LoveUniHateExams

The Bible claims to be God's Word.

That's a huge claim.

Huge claims require huge amounts of evidence.

Bible writers don't bother with any of that - instead the reader simply must believe them.

Is the Bible God's word? Help please.....

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