Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I agree that the writers of the Bible were telling stories and that the Bible is stories about their God and how he dealt with them. I do not believe that God necessarily thought, felt, or did what is attributed to Him in the Bible. None of these writers had any direct communication form God, so how could they know these things? It is ludicrous to believe these things the Bible says about God. God is unknowable.Well, the easiest explanation for me is that the writers of the Bible were telling stories... stories of legend and myth. Stories about their God and how he dealt with them. Obviously, there are problems for them that take it as the absolute, literal Word of God. I can see why some people think it is all make believe and made up by the religious leaders to keep the people in line. But the hardest position to believe for me is the Baha'i explanation... that it is somehow God's Word, but has errors and traditions that got mixed in. Plus, that many of the stories were meant to be taken symbolically, but the people mistakenly took them literal.
Baha'u'llah did receive direct communication from God and He did not say how God thinks, feels or what God does. Baha'u'llah only revealed God's Attributes and God's Will for this age.
I do not understand why the Bahai position is so difficult to understand. Here it is explained again. Maybe this will help:
From Letters Written on Behalf of the Guardian:
...The Bible is not wholly authentic, and in this respect is not to be compared with the Qur'an, and should be wholly subordinated to the authentic writings of Bahá'u'lláh.
(28 July 1936 to a National Spiritual Assembly)
...we cannot be sure how much or how little of the four Gospels are accurate and include the words of Christ and His undiluted teachings, all we can be sure of, as Bahá'ís, is that what has been quoted by Bahá'u'lláh and the Master must be absolutely authentic. As many times passages in the Gospel of St. John are quoted we may assume that it is his Gospel and much of it accurate.
(23 January 1944 to an individual believer)
When 'Abdu'l-Bahá states we believe what is in the Bible, He means in substance. Not that we believe every word of it to be taken literally or that every word is the authentic saying of the Prophet.
(11 February 1944 to an individual believer)
We cannot be sure of the authenticity of any of the phrases in the Old or the New Testament. What we can be sure of is when such references or words are cited or quoted in either the Quran or the Bahá'í writings.
(4 July 1947 to an individual believer)
Except for what has been explained by Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, we have no way of knowing what various symbolic allusions in the Bible mean.
(31 January 1955 to an individual believer)
The Bible: Extracts on the Old and New Testaments