I'm Tired...

Nonono, the Bible doesn't CONTAIN the words of God - it IS the words of God.
And divine inspiration has of course long been a bone of contention. I do believe God "wrote" it - but through others. And I believe it's exact.
BTW, what do you mean that the copies vary greatly?!? They don't. the Dead Sea scrolls put paid to that.
Finally, if you haven't figured it out - I do believe that even my English translation is the words of God. But don't bite your tongue - I don't get offended .

How can it contain the words of God, when every time it has been retranslated, it has been altered, edited, or changed in someway?

Does God change his mind a lot?

Once again - how? I am not an expert in this matter, but according to what I know, the translations do not vary enough to greatly change the meaning. One wouldn't translate Cervantes into English and say it's by Dostoevsky .
and - - does God change His mind? That's an interesting question...I suppose He might, but then He may have to change history...in which case we wouldn't know...

There are collections of stories that were originally intended to be included within the Bible but as they passed the hands of scribes certain stories were excluded and removed because the Chruch felt they did not relay the message the chruch wanted to covey.

There are also debates among scholars that the way certain words in were translated from the original Hebrew were changed or mistranslated from what they originally were intended to mean.

For exmple the use of the word virgin, according to some scholars the original hebrew only meant a young woman, not virgin the way the word is understood today.

^__^ Gotta agree with Dark Muse on this one. In the Bible before the King James version, there was a passage about Jesus slaying a dragon and marrying a princess, so the Church has definately changed it to relay the mssage as they wanted it to be conveyed... definately. Seriously, look at the publicity they have as well.

Perhaps the original version was guided by God, but the latest ones... are definately not.

[I'm getting back on my little hobby horse and state that it all begins with FAITH. I believe the Bible as written in the original language was infallible and guided in the writings by the Holy Spirit to te writes such as Moses, King David, Paul, John, etc. TheJews awere extremely protective of the scriptures (Old Testament) to the point where they could tell you the precise middle LETTER of the book and copies were scupulously checked and rechecked. Now it is very easy to say that the Englsih translations are faulty bcasue there are so many right now. I personally prefer the King James but if a person is SERIOUS about wanting a reliable text comparisns should be made and I believe you'll find much in agreement with each other. Forexample on the virgin verse (porbably the most popular one brought up to deny the Virgin birth of the Lord Christ). Yes it can be a oyug lady and guess what it can be a virgin. You actually can have your cake and eat it too. This is where faith comes in. The Amplified Bible translates verses and gives the various shades of menaing and nunaces to the original language. The Marshalls Greek Interlinear gives one the actual translation from Greek to English word by word but sentence structure is incrediblly turned around as a result and five minutes trying to read THAT way will convince you there are reasons why translations try to get the best rendering out of the orginal language presented as best it can be conveyed to the reader. Besides (again bearing FAITH in mind) preety sad if God can't take good care of his own material and He is so much greater then that. I generally tell the long suffering spouse it's a very good thing I'm not in charge of the universe. By the bye best current English version still is the New American standard.

But if the original Hebrew never intended it to mean a virgin, the way it is understood today, than someone along the way just made that up, so how is that the word of God, unless God just later changed his mind about the whole virgin thing and "inspired" someone to alter the meaning.

What I meant to say is that the word can mean a young lady AND a virgin. Then it gets down to the individual belief of the reader. In the Jewish culture of the times a childless woman was coinsidered unblessed of God because most of the women hoped to be the mother of the Messiah so having a child was very important to them in and of itself. As to God changing His mind--that too is all about our perception of how He works put in turns we can understand. For instance God repented of destroying of world (by water) as Revelelation seems to predict destruction by fire but I claim no authority to speak decisively about Revelation and I refuse to play the when will He return game. Hope this helps a bit DM.

Ok here is the thing that I start pondering today. If God wanted to inpart his word to man and have human beings the ones transcribe this all for him, in his divine inspiration to those who write The Bible, wouldn't he be a little more precise?

If you are God and you want men to write your word in this book that people are suppose to live by, I would think you would not want it to be vauge but you would make much more specific, so your word cannot be interepeted in 50 different ways.

If you are God, I would not think you would want people like.

I think God meant this

No, God meant that.

Ok, since we cannot agree on what God meant lets start killing each to figure out who is right.

Personally I have NOT wanted to kill anyone over religion so for me that argument has always been moot. Similar to condemming all Germans for just a few being of the Nazi persausion if I am generalize. For me when I read the Bible I do two things. I choose to believe what I read EVEN if I do NOT like what it says. ALso I look for God's glory to be uplifted at the expense of my ego and worldly leanings of which their are many. When the words seem and can be taken literally I do if symblic I do that. And mostly I read in faith for without that all the Bible reading in the world comes to nothing. Everyone (even if they deny it) believes in 'something' and I find the more I read, study and pray the Bible can and does meet the spiritual needs of anone. Hope this helps I would horrified if you thought I was PUSHING anything on you. I seek to share the believng or not to believe will always be yourresponsibility. I dislike religious robots of which there are too many these days.

Well my main point was that if the Bible is the word of God I would not think he would leave it so open endended and I would not think he would want people to try and put words in his mouth but I would think he would make his own word more clear and on certain important issues be a bit more precise as to just what he intended instead of making everything so vauge that everyone who reads it could decide it means something completely different.

I love how I can't always tell who is joking and who is being serious....

Interesting note....at last count, there are more differences in our surviving manuscripts of the books in the new testament than there are words

at last count, there are more differences in our surviving manuscripts of the books in the new testament than there are words

The differences are relatively minor. You can read about Bible translations here and you can see that most of the inaccuracies are verb tenses or an inability to get across a metaphor that does not work in another language: http://www.gnpcb.org/assets/products...81346433.1.pdf. Frankly no religious meaning is in dispute. The ten commandments are the ten commandments. Muse picks on the word "virgin" and that dispute does not relate to the Virgin Mary, but the use of Virgin in Isaiah which is in Hebrew. Now people have used that passage in Isaiah to put forth a theory of the Old Testament prefiguring of the New Testament, and people have interpreted virgin to mean both young lady and virgin as Rich points out. I'm no Biblical scholar to have a knowldgable opinion. But none of this calls into question the New Testament use of Virgin (in Greek) for Virgin Mary. So how you translate the Isaiah passage may suggest to what degree you see the Old Testament prefiguring the New, but it does not question Christ's mother's vrginity. The New Testament was written in Greek and what Muse is bringing up is the Hebrew.

The only thing I have to add is that perhaps in those days the Old Testament wasn't vague - seems odd that it would be vague considering all the laws and rules and regulations in Leviticus and the prophets, etc.