The Bible: Gods Word or Mans?

Originally Posted by PitBull

The bible today isnt what it should be anyway. With translations and everything we lost quite a bit. Today stil they find books of the bible thats not in the bible. We could all be believing something thats not meant to be there. And i believe its like that with many religions

ALTER2EGO -to- PITBULL:

Evidence that the Bible is inspired by God is seen in the accurate fulfillment of almost 2,000 prophesies found therein.

The first half of the Bible is known as the Old Testament (also called the "Hebrew Scriptures"). Most of the Bible prophesies are found in that portion of the Bible. The Old Testament found in Today's Bibles is translated from what is called the Masoretic Text. The Masorites were Jewish scholars who painstakenly copied by hand the Hebrew Scriptures from previous copies whenever the previous copies were too old and were falling apart. They did this between 500 AD and 950 AD.


Bible critics have long argued that the Bibles we have today were tampered with and the words were changed. They insisted on this--although they could not produce a shred of evidence--because they did not want to believe that the prophesies found in the Bible were actual prophesies. Their argument was that the prophesies were written after the events occurred.


The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls effectively silenced Bible critics who had been insisting for years that Bible prophesies had been written AFTER their fulfillment. The Dead Sea Scrolls (the oldest known copies of the Old Testament) have been dated to at least 1,000 years older than the Masoretic Text and are believed to date as far back as the 5th century B.C.E. or 500 years before Christ appeared on earth. Those scrolls contain fragments of all but one of the books of the Old Testament.

Many Old Testament critics fully expected to find a multitude of errors and changes in the text to bolster their accusations that parts of the Old Testament were written late and made to appear as if they had been written early. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls made these critics look like complete fools because the scrolls accurately reflect what is in modern-day Bibles. In other words, the contents of the scriptures have not been changed.

Originally Posted by Seawolf

I wonder what the motivation is behind needing the bible to be God's word or man's word? What makes it so important for a religious book to be true or not true? I can understand it might be partially because of it's popularity, to feel like we fit in with a group is part of our nature. But I still don't really understand why it's so important to so many people. Isn't life itself and the people around us more important than opinions on a book that usually divide people?

ALTER2EGO -to- SEAWOLF:

Think of it in terms of a manufacturer who creates a product (eg. a new VCR or a computer, etc.), and then he writes an instruction manual on how best to used the product. This way, when someone purchases the product, they can go to the instruction manual for how to operate it and how to hook up the various connections.

That's what the Bible is: an instruction manual for us from our Creator on how to live our lives appropriately and how to worship him. Notice the words that are in bold print in the scriptural quotation below.


"{16} All scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, {17} that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

[Reverend Keith]

Originally Posted by Alter2Ego

ALTER2EGO -to- PITBULL:


The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls effectively silenced Bible critics who had been insisting for years that Bible prophesies had been written AFTER their fulfillment. The Dead Sea Scrolls (the oldest known copies of the Old Testament) have been dated to at least 1,000 years older than the Masoretic Text and are believed to date as far back as the 5th century B.C.E. or 500 years before Christ appeared on earth. Those scrolls contain fragments of all but one of the books of the Old Testament.

Many Old Testament critics fully expected to find a multitude of errors and changes in the text to bolster their accusations that parts of the Old Testament were written late and made to appear as if they had been written early. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls made these critics look like complete fools because the scrolls accurately reflect what is in modern-day Bibles. In other words, the contents of the scriptures have not been changed.

I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. To quote from Wikipedia:

The significance of the scrolls relates in a large part to the field of textual criticism and how accurately the Bible has been transcribed over time. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to 10th century CE such as the Aleppo Codex. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back a millennium to the 2nd century BCE. Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus.

According to The Oxford Companion to Archaeology:

The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.[33]

so

#1 The Dead Sea Scrolls date back only to about 150 BCE, not the fifth century.

#2 While some texts are very similar to the Masoretic, some are drastically different.

[Lightspirit]

The bible is the word of God unquestionably. It is a remarkable book with lots of truth in it. The most amazing thing is how 66 different authors managed to write individual books that correlate and tie in together particularly in the prophecy dept.

I am pretty sure I read somewhere Jesus life birth and death are the fulfilment of about a hundred prophecies which the chances of is like a billion to 1.



Not bad from primitive peoples from thousands of years ago. God told them what to write.

[Verunia]

God told them what to write.

Did he tell them to write 2 different creation theories and 4 different accounts of Jesus's life?

[Lightspirit]

Originally Posted by Verunia

Did he tell them to write 2 different creation theories and 4 different accounts of Jesus's life?

there's nothing like a bit of variety. I suppose god made lots of things with variety.

Maybe the lord was trying to keep it a bit fresh for us. Possibly with foresight he thought chat forums might be dull without doing that. It keeps us Christians on our toes.


Ps: I love your bird picture it looks cool.

[Verunia]

I suppose. I just wonder about all the pre-Bible doctrines in this case such as the Upanishads or the Tao te Ching. Unless, this same God told people to write those too. It's interesting to think about.

And thanks, I love birds. =]

Originally Posted by lightworkerAu

The bible is the word of God unquestionably. It is a remarkable book with lots of truth in it. The most amazing thing is how 66 different authors managed to write individual books that correlate and tie in together particularly in the prophecy dept.

I am pretty sure I read somewhere Jesus life birth and death are the fulfilment of about a hundred prophecies which the chances of is like a billion to 1.



Not bad from primitive peoples from thousands of years ago. God told them what to write.

ALTER2EGO -to- LIGHTWORKER AU:

That's it exactly. The Judeo-Christian Bible was written by 40 different men, over a timespan of 1,600 years. Yet, it harmonizes from one book to the next as if written by a single person. This is further evidence that it was written under inspiration by one author: Almighty God Jehovah.

Originally Posted by lightworkerAu

there's nothing like a bit of variety. I suppose god made lots of things with variety.

Maybe the lord was trying to keep it a bit fresh for us. Possibly with foresight he thought chat forums might be dull without doing that. It keeps us Christians on our toes.

Ps: I love your bird picture it looks cool.

ALTER2EGO -to- LIGHTWORKER AU:

There's only one creation account in the Bible, found in Genesis chapter 1. Likewise, there's only one story of Jesus' life--told from the individual viewpoints of the gospel writers. Telling the same story from the viewpoint of different individuals does not amount to contradictory accounts--particularly so since all of the gospels are in harmony.

Originally Posted by Verunia

I suppose. I just wonder about all the pre-Bible doctrines in this case such as the Upanishads or the Tao te Ching. Unless, this same God told people to write those too. It's interesting to think about.

And thanks, I love birds. =]

ALTER2EGO -to- VERUNIA:

The Judeo-Christian Bible is the only book that provides evidence that it was written by inspiration of Almighty God Jehovah. This evidence is seen in the accurate fulfillment of almost 2,000 Bible
prophesies--the fulfillment of which have been confirmed by archeology and secular history (meaning history that is not connected with the Bible).