What even is the bible?

[Wertbag]

I was talking to online Christians who threw out the standard catch phrases "The bible is God's word!" or "It's the divinely inspired word of God!", yet when pressed some didn't know there were multiple versions of the bible (Catholic bible = 73 books, Protestant bible = 66 books, Orthodox bible = 79 books etc), while others just hand waved away all that didn't fit their existing belief of what it should be.  This is not a small disagreement, it's 13 books of difference between Protestant and Orthodox, that's listed as more than 60,000 words that millions of people believe are divinely inspired, while millions of others discount as man-made.  There is no agreement on which books are divinely inspired, and this seems to be because works that claim to be are indistinguishable from those which are not.

 

The first bible is thought to have been assembled around 400AD, so it didn't exist before, during or for centuries after it is claimed Jesus walked the earth.  Those early Christians had numerous lists of which texts they considered holy, and different sects included books now not considered part of any bible, believing just as devoutly that such works were from God.

Different groups have believed so completely that they are right and other groups heretics for not agreeing with them, that many of the Protestant verse Catholic massacres were caused by such disagreements.

 

Even if you can pick a certain version, you are then left with trying to pick a translation.  Biblegateway.com lists 62 different translations.  Some have minor differences, while others are leading people from God if you believe certain Christian claims.  But let's say you can pick both a version and translation, you are then still forced to decide on an interpretation, with some fundamentalist groups saying it should all be taken literally, others saying it is all metaphor or moral stories and all the rest scattered between those two extremes.

 

We also have no clear answers as to when the various books were written (there are some date ranges that they can be guessed at, but not a single one is actually dated), and have no idea who authored most of the books.  Even when we do know who an author was, we often know so little about them that they are little more than a word on a page.  We know very little about the 12 disciples, with what little we do know coming from church traditions solidified centuries later.  It is believed the majority of them never wrote a word.

If we did know the authors, then perhaps we could figure out their intent when they wrote certain passages.  Were they reporting history, repeating myths, writing fiction or just copying pre-existing texts.  There are certainly signs that the gospel authors referred to a pre-existing document that we have no copies of the so-called Q document.  If that document was divinely inspired, then apparently God didn't see fit to save that work from being lost to time.

 

Once you get pass all of that, you are left with the most widely debated book in history.  Does it support slavery?  Yes or no depending on which parts you read.  Does it talk of a trinitarian or unitarian God?  Depends on which parts you read.  Was Jesus God?  Depends which parts you read.  People don't have to go far to justify any belief, with no need to mis-quote to justify horrific actions.  The slave owners and traders of the US were mostly Christian and were quite capable of providing biblical quotes to justify their actions.

 

This leads to the problem of instruction, which is the question as to why God picked a small group of ancient Jews in the middle of nowhere to be the sole source of truth.  Before printing presses, before recording devices, before there was any easy way to travel internationally to transmit the message.  Apparently, He didn't care to get His message to the Chinese empire, South American empires, Indian empires etc.  Jesus himself doesn't appear to have written anything, and the bible has a huge gap of the majority of Jesus's life.  

And that is all before we get to the huge elephant in the room, being asked to accept magic and supernatural claims purely because an ancient person wrote it down.  

 

God seems to have picked a terrible way to spread His message and has failed to protect His words, leaving a confusing mess that Christians cannot agree on.  From the outside looking in, this all appears very man-made and not divinely led.

 

[pantheory]

23 hours ago, Wertbag said:

I was talking to online Christians who threw out the standard catch phrases "The bible is God's word!" or "It's the divinely inspired word of God!", yet when pressed some didn't know there were multiple versions of the bible (Catholic bible = 73 books, Protestant bible = 66 books, Orthodox bible = 79 books etc), while others just hand waved away all that didn't fit their existing belief of what it should be.  This is not a small disagreement, it's 13 books of difference between Protestant and Orthodox, that's listed as more than 60,000 words that millions of people believe are divinely inspired, while millions of others discount as man-made.  There is no agreement on which books are divinely inspired, and this seems to be because works that claim to be are indistinguishable from those which are not.

 

The first bible is thought to have been assembled around 400AD, so it didn't exist before, during or for centuries after it is claimed Jesus walked the earth.  Those early Christians had numerous lists of which texts they considered holy, and different sects included books now not considered part of any bible, believing just as devoutly that such works were from God.

Different groups have believed so completely that they are right and other groups heretics for not agreeing with them, that many of the Protestant verse Catholic massacres were caused by such disagreements.

 

Even if you can pick a certain version, you are then left with trying to pick a translation.  Biblegateway.com lists 62 different translations.  Some have minor differences, while others are leading people from God if you believe certain Christian claims.  But let's say you can pick both a version and translation, you are then still forced to decide on an interpretation, with some fundamentalist groups saying it should all be taken literally, others saying it is all metaphor or moral stories and all the rest scattered between those two extremes.

 

We also have no clear answers as to when the various books were written (there are some date ranges that they can be guessed at, but not a single one is actually dated), and have no idea who authored most of the books.  Even when we do know who an author was, we often know so little about them that they are little more than a word on a page.  We know very little about the 12 disciples, with what little we do know coming from church traditions solidified centuries later.  It is believed the majority of them never wrote a word.

If we did know the authors, then perhaps we could figure out their intent when they wrote certain passages.  Were they reporting history, repeating myths, writing fiction or just copying pre-existing texts.  There are certainly signs that the gospel authors referred to a pre-existing document that we have no copies of the so-called Q document.  If that document was divinely inspired, then apparently God didn't see fit to save that work from being lost to time.

 

Once you get pass all of that, you are left with the most widely debated book in history.  Does it support slavery?  Yes or no depending on which parts you read.  Does it talk of a trinitarian or unitarian God?  Depends on which parts you read.  Was Jesus God?  Depends which parts you read.  People don't have to go far to justify any belief, with no need to mis-quote to justify horrific actions.  The slave owners and traders of the US were mostly Christian and were quite capable of providing biblical quotes to justify their actions.

 

This leads to the problem of instruction, which is the question as to why God picked a small group of ancient Jews in the middle of nowhere to be the sole source of truth.  Before printing presses, before recording devices, before there was any easy way to travel internationally to transmit the message.  Apparently, He didn't care to get His message to the Chinese empire, South American empires, Indian empires etc.  Jesus himself doesn't appear to have written anything, and the bible has a huge gap of the majority of Jesus's life.  

And that is all before we get to the huge elephant in the room, being asked to accept magic and supernatural claims purely because an ancient person wrote it down.  

 

God seems to have picked a terrible way to spread His message and has failed to protect His words, leaving a confusing mess that Christians cannot agree on.  From the outside looking in, this all appears very man-made and not divinely led.

 

 

Don't worry, God has never done, or never could do anything bad or wrong because no gods have ever existed excepting in human imaginations 

[DOA]

On 6/18/2023 at 7:46 PM, Wertbag said:

Jesus himself doesn't appear to have written anything, and the bible has a huge gap of the majority of Jesus's life.  

And that is all before we get to the huge elephant in the room, being asked to accept magic and supernatural claims purely because an ancient person wrote it down.  

Jesus didn't write anything - and that's true.  

 

Quote

God seems to have picked a terrible way to spread His message and has failed to protect His words, leaving a confusing mess that Christians cannot agree on.  From the outside looking in, this all appears very man-made and not divinely led.

Millions of people are finally realizing that!