scratchme1010
Believers: How do you know your view of your chosen holy book is the correct one?
My two cents: why limiting it to believers? The same question can be asked to any person who has a belief (or non-belief).
Okay. I went to the books and documentaries that discuss the development of the Bible. I read so much until it became clear- the Bible was a great gathering and editing of man-made stories intended originally to unite the various peoples in Babylon that were once ruled by Saul, David, and Solomon. The writers, editors borrowed from other legends and stories from other groups. The "God" of the original writings was a warrior god. "El" was the chief of the Canaanite gods and "Isreal" is based on his name, not on Yahweh which El probably became. No matter how well they edited, the written language skills of these people in Babylon was still primitive and developing and they did not fully remove traces of conflict in their stories and did not eliminate "El" to fully replace him with "Yahweh" whom they morphed into the creator of the entire cosmos. The idea of a single "god" further developed when Cyrus returned the Jews and the priests of the temples became ambassadors to Persia.
Jesus stories are similarly loaded with borrowed thoughts from other legends and god stories from other groups. While the Greek gods seemed to be falling out of favor, the worship of Isis, Dyonysus, Mithras, and various pagan gods was popular. And writing was quite advanced by that time. Expressing faith and reason in writing was all the rage. Still, philosophy heavily included belief in deities as people had not developed ideas that the cosmos could have come about without gods or a single god.
And somehow, against all odds, the Romans chose Christianity instead of other belief systems, as the state religion to unite the various groups they ruled over.
It's a much easier story to understand if we ignore all of the above and we go with the promoted story- Abraham worshiped a God who was known by various names, one group of people went from Abraham to Allah and another went off in captivity to Egypt until that same God of Abraham revealed to Moses that He was to be "Yahweh" (or Jehovah) and immediately told the people in 10 commandments to have "no other gods" before them. That fits so nicely with the idea that Yahweh later sent Jesus.
So there's your answer. How do I know? I did the legwork. If any details are slightly off, the general idea that the stories of the Bible were invented and taken from others and that the writings were about giving people a reason to stick together and be controlled by politicians and priests still remains the constant "truth" of my beliefs.
