yeah, thats part of it that zeppelin cant explain away, if god's bible is so perfect
how can there be so many copies? many different ones exist, so which one is the real one? how do you know that the one you believe in is the uncorrupted copy? or that the things removed were not the right things and that they still exist because god intervened to keep them alive even though the masses think they are heretical?
Christians do not accept what you state to be the Islamic view of the Bible.Originally Posted by miss tenderness
Read Redzeppelin's posts carefully for one Christian view - I think he is stating that the whole Bible is the uncorrupted word of God, but that the Old Testament must be understood in the light of the New Testament. He is, at any rate, as certain of the divine origin and holiness of the whole Bible as any Moslem may be about the divine origin and holines of the Koran.
At the other extreme there are Christians who believe that the Bible is a collection of writings that express the views, memories, beliefs etc., of more or less inspired humans, writing over a long period of history. Those people were writing for many different purposes, stating the truth as they understood it and as served their need at the time. Collectively the writings define Christian belief and provide sufficient material for anyone who wishes to know God. In such a view, some of the scriptures are more important or true than others - for example, the Gospels are the most important, and maybe the Song of Solomon the least important.
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
"or that the things removed were not the right things and that they still exist because god intervened to keep them alive even though the masses think they are heretical?"
Doh! The Old Testament apocryphal writings were those which, in Jesus' lifetime, were used (in addition to the rest of the Hebrew scriptures) by the Jews outside of Judaea - more particularly the Jewish community of Alexandria.
Those writings are not considered heretical by any mainstream Christian denominations.
They were generally left out of Protestant editions of the Bible because, as Jesus, a Jew of Judaea, did not need them, they are not "necessary."
They are generally included in Roman Catholic editions, because they may be "useful." The history books in the apocrypha, for instance, fill in some of the gap between the time of Ezra/Nehemiah and the time of Christ.
As far as the New Testament goes, there are no significant differences between any of the (Greek) texts used and accepted throughout Christendom. If there may be texts with minor differences, this only serves to point to one great truth - that you will not find God by quibbling over mis-punctuation.
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
As normal human adults we make distinctions between good and better, between the real and the counterfeit that only seems real. That's part of what it is to be human Matrim as I'm sure you'll agree so I don't see what is hugely significant in your first couple of questions. There are bits of the Bible as of any large anthology that are more significant than other bits. There are bits that only a few individuals can see any obvious spiritual bias in. There are parts that retell the same OT story from a slightly different point of view. There are bits that no one who finds The Bible inspiring would want to be without. Your final question is more interesting Matrim and I have sometimes puzzled over a variation on that myself but Whifflingpin's answer seems straightforward to me. Truthfully my daily life does not require me to be able to answer everything and when I consider the inexplicability of many thingsthat happen to me I am not too phased by the few things that leave me puzzled in the survival of and variations in The Bible
There's always the neo-orthodox approach to Scripture that states that what is most important is not if every exact single detail is historically correct (since the ultimate, the greatest, the most holy revelation of God to humanity is not the Bible, but Christ Himself), and that in reading it what one should look for is not only what the words printed in the paper mean (they are extremely important) but also the experience of communion with the divine. The case has been made for the view that sees the Bible as containing God's message, despite the messy human factor inherent to having been written (even under inspiration) by human beings, and when one reads Scripture it becomes, for that person, the Word of God- the power is not in the words and books written in themselves, but in the individual, spiritual reading of them. Rather than focusing, as fundamentalists do, on the absolute inerrancy, or as unbelievers do, looking at it as dry, empty myth, one could see the reading of it as the opening of a window in which contact with the Divine can be made through the proverbial "leap of faith".
But this is, of course, just as with any other way of looking at Scripture, mostly speculation.
"They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground, --
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound."
I do have problems with the view that non-believers necessarily look on religious texts (such as the Bible, Qumran etc.) as "dry, empty myth". You do not have to believe in something in order to value it. Where I come from, more than 2 thirds of the population are non-believers but the majority of them would assign value (including moral value) to the Bible, for instance. I always thought that it is exactly this that makes this kind of literature so great and universal. Beyond its spiritual meaning, it carries moral messages to the faithful and the faithless alike and even unbelievers regard most of the Bible's teachings as having great authority. We may disagree on who was the author but we certainly don't disagree on its general meaning and importance.
If belief would be a precondition of value any myth, legend, fairy tale would cease to have any value as soon as people stopped to believe in Zeus, dragons or magic.
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
I'm sorry, hehe. I've just been reading too much Dawkins/ Dawkinesque writers, and was referring to them, to the zealous, sneering kind of skeptic, not the one that sees the moral and aesthetic value in religious writ while still maintaining unbelief.
But thank you for pointing that out
"They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground, --
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound."
God does not experience the world in the same chronologic way us mere humans do. God is all seeing, all knowing and all powerful, God sit's at the hub of a metaphorical wheel observing all things simultaniously. God has given us free will, we can do as we wish, including rewriting the Bible for our own fickle gain.
Perfectly put.
Which God?
errrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmm,
the one the Bible harps on about!
I am your knee
Oh, ok. With so many out there its difficult for an agnostic to keep up. Thanks.
the bible is pointless morally. there are hundreds of equally good systems. some of the things in the bible are not moral at all. moral value is valueless in making the bible a great work of literature. certainly religious writ has aesthetic and moral value, but so do things not associate with religion at all. lots of paganism is in fact more moral because it doesnt condemn other religions. its typically the large monotheisms that attack other belief systems.I'm sorry, hehe. I've just been reading too much Dawkins/ Dawkinesque writers, and was referring to them, to the zealous, sneering kind of skeptic, not the one that sees the moral and aesthetic value in religious writ while still maintaining unbelief.
But thank you for pointing that out
Never mind
Last edited by West; 03-17-2007 at 04:18 AM.
Scholars have methods for determining textual reliability. I quoted this in another thread - here:
Homer's Illiad is considered to have the greatest manuscript authority next to the New Testament; Homer wrote the Illiad around 900 BC and the oldest copy is from 400 BC - a 500 year span. The total number of manuscripts is 643 and the readings agree 95% of the time.
In contrast, there are approximately 5300 original language manuscripts of New Testament writings spanning 50 years - AD 70 to AD 120. These documents agree with each other 99.5% of the time in terms of language and content. It requires no bias to come to this kind of linguistic conclusion - you simply compare what all the manuscripts say.
So much for the "corrupted text argument." Next?
Giving us freewill does not mean that God sits helplessly while we attempt to dismantle His plans. God's will will be done, whether humans choose to cooperate or not. The fact that God allows us to choose our path does not mean we have the individual power to derail His plan; as such, despite the potentials losses that the biblical scriptures could suffer in the passage of time, we can also assume that God inspired other individuals to spot/stop/revise the errors put in advertantly/inadvertantly by other writers. God is not helpless - He who is capable of creating the earth in six days can easily make sure that the essential truths of His Word survives human error or evil.
Other religions cannot give the same comprehensive view of God, reality, and the existence of morality like Christianity can. In particular, the basis of morality in other religions is suspect for a variety of reasons. The Bible's morality is unquestionable. Instead of making generalized, blanket statements, why don't you offer a clear example of the moral "pointlessness" of the Bible?
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C.S. Lewis
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