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Validity of the Bible
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Was wondering to which extent can one use the Bible as a source? How valid is the Bible in historical discussions and questioning?
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Further more, I do a course at uni called race sex and slavery, about the history of prejudice, and we studied the bible for a bit in one lesson, and there are many problems with it. For starters it is culturally relevant to ancient Israel. much of the teachings in the OT are based on old Israeli purity laws that are based on the common sense of living in the desert, and also the status of women. Eg homosexuality is deemed wrong because it was impure to mix two of the same things, from potatos to sexual partners, and it was wrong for a man to lower himself to the level of a woman and be passive in intercourse. It seems very little of what Jesus (him being Christ and all might indicate that Christ-iantity should be based on him) actually constitues what many christians believe.
Further there are many mistranslations and misinterpreations. St Paul doesn't oppose homosexuality, he opposes infidelity. In one part there was a mistranslation of the the Greek and the homosexuals were not put to death by God, the wankers were (I kid you not!)
Plus the fact that it could all be make believe.
[If there are any spelling or grammatical errors, I fogive you. Not wait please forgive me. I'm quite drunk. Hmmmm the monkeys are revolting! Mercy! Arrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhh!]
Some events we have no other source for, or very limited evidence. Some events we know happened, but do not have any other sources to affirm the Bible accounts.
The Bible may be a fairly factual account or it may be a novel (actually a collection of novels) that makes use of historic events to create understanding and identification (a good historic novel, like the Flashman novels). Which it is, is a matter of faith.
Most of what you find in the New Testiment is in the old in a lesser form. the miracles are purely there to show Jesus as a bigger and beter wonder worker than other miracle workers of the time etc. Such as the changing of water into wine....if I remember rightly but don't quote me on this...Isiah did it in the Old Testiment.
The parables are purely there to show a moral aspect of how we should live our lives, they are put together cleverly with many religious meanings to show spiritual and religious points. In other words they are like a priests sermon in the modern day church. THere is no saying that these were actually said by Jesus, or whether the gospel writers came up with these as sermons to preach and convert people to Christianity with.
The sayings of Jesus, again can't be lterally proven to be his as no other texts mention them, although Jesus is mentioned in various other texts from around the time, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The birth and cruxifiction stories do hold some matter of truth...such as there was a sensus taken, although Christians have got the year of his birth wrong, it's more likely to be about 8BC.
The cruxifiction is mentioned in other texts, but no where else is he called the Son of God.
In otherwords the new testiment is purely there as a piece of propaganda to keep Christians who were going through persecution to the faith. Give them hope that they had god on there side and they would be saved.
Old Testiment is harder to prove or disprove.
As has been mentioned the Creation story has many interesting points and I think Citizen_Bertie has covered that fairly well.
This goes for most of the rest of the old testiment as well. it is veyr deaply written although most are just stories passed down the lines. As we know with gossip and stories these days they get exagerated and added to as they get passed on. this is what has happened in the Bible. The Old Testiment was written hundreds of years after many of the events were meant to happen. these were stories of past generations that have been passed down the lines until someone decided to write them down. Obviously they aren't going to be accurate.
The prophets are there as a warning and precursor of Jesus' coming. They are purely foretelling the future...which of course Jews don't believe have yet come true.
Stories such as Sodom and Gomarragh (sp?) are there to explain natural occurances....why should there be pillers of salt in the area, if this hadn't happened....it's just a nice story to explain a natural happening.
As you can see there isn't much historical truth in the bible.
If you want to read more into it look for scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann....I can get you some more info when i go home if you want. Just can't rememeber a lot at the moment.
While some parts may seem acurate and others not, you need to remember that it was not written as a historical referance, but as a book to inspire and teach the christian faith.
Actually the Old Testament was initially written for the jews. Christianity is a religion decending from judaism, and have therefore continued the usage of the bible, while adding the New Testament.
After reading the thread of polygamy and monogamy, I was wondering, if the Bible could be used as a proof of human nature.
Just decided to make the thread a bit more "open", and generalise it.
basically, when christ is asked why he uses parables, he says in three of the four books 'in order that the people may understand.' ie to explain complex ideas in a simple way. BUT in the fourth - Mark, which is probably textually the oldest - he say LEST the people understand. ie so that those not intended to get his wisdom will be mystified. Rests on the fact
that in Greek 'hina' means 'lest', and 'hoti', 'because', and it was a misreading from the 'parent text', the gospel of Thomas, by 3 of the 4 who were evidently very disturbed by the idea. All that 17th century pre-destinarian stuff - the idea of God's elect, that only a few people are chosen by God and the rest of us are damned and there's nothing we can do about it even if we lead perfect lives - derives from this, I think.
Scary stuff, eh? the idea that christ was trying to fool us. deeply disturbing, if you ask me.
Actually the Old Testament was initially written for the jews. Christianity is a religion decending from judaism, and have therefore continued the usage of the bible, while adding the New Testament.
EEK! I did know that...
I think i lost it some-where between speed of writting and forgetting what i had already written.
*Buries head in shame*
wow! Something I posted on politics wasn't slated! What's going on?!:crazyeyes
I guess I'm just the don when it comes to philosophy!
But back to the thread:
Ok so I'm not a believer so i would say this, but don't you think humans look specially for things like this? Don't you think it's a case of ooh summat's happened, and this person who predicted the future said something similar would happen so it must be true? nop sorry I don't believe things like that at all...just human nature trying to explain and prove things to be true.
A few weeks maybe.
Oil is very easy to put out as it doesn't give off vapour.
The predictions in the bible are toss.
i remember reading a verse, before smoking it that went something like this; "and the lord sayeth, the man who wears a bag on his head will one day sprout fangs and thingymebobs, and lamenting on his bed he shall be"
Yes it does.
Sorry, terribly off topic, i really should sober up
" How To Make A Bible"
http://www.tojustin.com/makebibl.htm
This is inline with Islamic belief. In simple terms Muslims believe that all Prophets spoke the truth but those messages were not preserved in their *pristine purity* in the Bible.
The New Testament is primarily Paul's writings and not Jesus' words. Muslims say that mainstream Christianity is based on what was said about Jesus and not on his words alone. In a Red Letter Bible only 10% of the NT have red words (Jesus). The 4 (why 4?) Gospels were written after him and 2 of them were definitely not his disciples (Mark and Luke).
Muslims believe the Bible to be the words of God and the words of man.
First, the Qur'an states that Christians have access to the truth in their scriptures. But it does not catalogue the sixty-six small books called the Bible and label them as accurate. In fact it condemns those who would claim divine inspiration for something composed by a man. Part of the Bible, as will be seen, falls into this category.
Second, the Qur'an does not accuse Christians of deliberately tampering with the original texts of their scriptures. Rather, it accuses them of manipulating the understanding of their scriptures. The deceptive translations mentioned in part I illustrate this practice.
In short, the Muslim believes that the Bible contains the words of God, and more words besides these.
Is Total Acceptance of The Bible Deserved?
The last sentence of the preceding section states the Muslim's attitude toward the Bible. It is actually the attitude of many Christians. It is only a certain collection of Christians (the Fundamentalists) who maintain that ALL of the Bible originated with God. Adherence to this belief is unwarranted for at least four reasons; (1) It is not claimed within the Bible itself; (2) It is an unworthy attitude; (3) It is not self-consistent; (4) It is logically impossible.
(1) ... The Bible nowhere names itself. The word "Bible" is not in the Bible. Sixty-six books have been bound as one without any divine command to do so. Compare, for example, the opening of the book of Jonah: "The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying ?" and the opening remarks of the writer of the third gospel account: "... it seemed fitting for me ... to write it out... ," (NEW AMERICAN BIBLE). The first book claims divine inspiration, while the second author makes no such claim.
By trading on the vagueness of the words "scripture" and "book" the Fundamentalists try to make a case for the Bible's total inspiration. For example, they quote 2 Timothy 3:16 where Paul wrote to Timothy, "... all scripture is inspired of God ..." In the first place, it still remains to establish the authority of Paul ... did he speak for God here? But the real trickery is in the isolation of this verse. In the sentence before this. Paul indicated what he considered as scripture, namely, that which Timothy studied as a child. When Timothy was a child the last twenty seven books of the Bible had not been written.
The antepenultimate verse of today's Bible seems to conclude the whole of the Bible, as it warns against adding or subtracting contents in "this book". However. "this book" can only refer to this last book of the Bible and not to the Bible itself. The reason is clear: Any Christian reference will acknowledge that other books of the Bible were written after this one, that is, the last book in today's Bible was not the last one written. In fact, exactly which books should form the contents of the Bible was still being debated three hundred years after Jesus.
(2) ... The official position of Fundamentalist churches is really a modification of the blunt statement: "The Bible is the perfect word of God." While they consider the modification only slight, it is actually ruinous. They say that the Bible is "inerrant in the original manuscripts". If all contradictions in the Bible could be explained away as misunderstandings, why would they rely on this excuse? By taking this position they admit to errors in the Bible. These are said to be only small copying errors made over the centuries as the scriptures were recopied. They have disregarded the advice of Jesus who said that carelessness in the little things means carelessness in large matters (Luke 16:10). Yet the unworthy statement about today's Bible is really: "The Bible contains small mistakes but no big ones."
(3) ... There are abundant copying errors in the Bible, the conflicting statistics of Ezra 2:5 and Nehemiah 7:10, for example. On the one hand the Fundamentalist admits this to be the case and excuses it as a minor copying error. On the other hand, he puts his trust in the statement of Isaiah 40:8 which says, "The word of our God stands forever." This verse does not go on to accept minor details due to flaws in the transcription of His word. According to this verse, if God says it, it does not get lost. But mistakes of transcription means something of the original has been lost. It is inconsistent to excuse error and simultaneously disallow error. The only solution is to drop the notion of total divine inspiration of the Bible.
(4) ... Total inspiration is illogical because it is both disavowed and disproved within the Bible. At 1 Corinthians 7:25 the Bible writer specifically says that he is about to make a statement which did not originate with God ... inspiration is disavowed. In the first chapter of Titus we have a counter example which disproves total divine inspiration. Paul quoted the famous Epimenides paradox, specifying that the speaker himself was a Cretan: "Cretans are always liars ...". He then says that the man spoke the truth. But when the statement is spoken by a Cretan it is definitely not true. If it was true then at least once, a Cretan was not a liar, in which case the statement is false. The conclusion is the denial of the assumption, so the statement is not true. The writer Paul at least on this occasion, was without divine guidance for he did not discern this subtlety.
http://www.geocities.com/alummah2000/ReplyToChristianity.html