Why doesn't the Bible mention.............

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That He gave some pieces of advice regarding the technology that was already in use doesn't mean He is under an obligation to reveal the way in which we build motorcycles or Empires States Building.

Again, the Bible is concerned with revealing God, man's (sinful) nature, God's wrath and grace... things similar to these. The Bible doesn't and isn't concerned with touching absolutely every subject possible, ranging from mathematics to psychology and computer sciences. God reveals, amongst others, man's purpose and meaning - to glorify God, so why should He have instructed Moses on how to build a spaceship?

It's not a matter of the Bible being an instruction manual; it's a matter of it being (or it being made out to be) a source of guidance for humanity. It doesn't have to give detailed instructions on how to build a car to discuss the moral and ethical implications of auto use, for instance.

And there's other strangeness... for instance, why is it that Revelation - a book made out to be a collection of prophecy that describes plenty of things beyond the ken of someone from the first century - mentions things like swords and trumpets but no objects that have been invented since then?

 

[Sleeppy]

If it did that then you'd be wondering why it didn't tell you that you would fail your math final.

 

[Cesar]

It's not a matter of the Bible being an instruction manual; it's a matter of it being (or it being made out to be) a source of guidance for humanity. It doesn't have to give detailed instructions on how to build a car to discuss the moral and ethical implications of auto use, for instance.

And there's other strangeness... for instance, why is it that Revelation - a book made out to be a collection of prophecy that describes plenty of things beyond the ken of someone from the first century - mentions things like swords and trumpets but no objects that have been invented since then?

The Bible is a source of guidance for humanity - that humanity has a very serious problem with God and people will either perish eternally for that or they have their sins paid in full by Christ. And, through the Bible, people come to know their Creator, why they were made, where they are going after death, why the world is a mess and so on. Yes, it is a guidance, but it has to do more with things (those of God) which transcend objects that rust.

As 4consideration accurately pointed out, it would be unwise to use terminology which the people at your time don't comprehend. Nonetheless, I was referring to the terminology being incomprehensible, not the concepts themselves. How in the world can our limited, finite minds understand God fully? Do we really comprehend how God is three Persons in One: the Trinity? No... but that's the point. Since God is superior to us, then He's the One Who comprehends us fully.

Let me illustrate how ridiculous your assertion sounds.
"From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty." Rev 19:15

Does it sound better like this: "From His mouth comes a huge nuclear bomb, so that with it He may strike down..." ?

The book of Revelation is full of metaphors and it tries to explain something that has never happened before, in words that were comprehensible. The sword, for instance, is a symbol of strength, justice, even aggression. But the ultimate reason for the book is linked to God's hand is the unfolding of history, so the emphasis is not on words like "sword" or other human inventions. In addition to that, it would have been improper for John to write in an obvious manner, which even the Romans (who were not accustomed to Hebrew theology and terminology) could understand. He had to write in a coded fashion, as arthra mentioned. I highly suggest BibleOrTradition's videos on the Book of Revelation. He also commented that it would have been unwise for John to write about the downfall of the Roman Empire in a way that even the Romans would have understood.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

But it is men who wrote the Bible.. not God... And some of it (the scriptures) are written YEARS after the events have actually occurred so not all (detail by detail) can actually be written on it.

I agree with all that, which is why I don't believe that the Bible was inspired by God, and why I don't call it the word of the Lord. Do you?

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

EXCEPT, of course, that both the Jewish and Christian scriptures contain time prophecies which gave the exact year of the beginnings of the Baha'i Faith--using two very different calendars, yet!--, which IOV then constituted the Return of the Christ Spirit.

You can see the details here:

Click on one of the following to navigate further down this page Religious Unity

Peace,

Bruce

I do not believe such things at all.
Predictions are easy when you know the result . The Bible is very fruitful ground for all such "proofs"

 

[arthra]

Why doesn't the bible mention, aeroplanes, electricity, gunpowder, Nuclear fission, Space Shuttle. Space Stations, motorcars, aircraft carriers, vaccines, skyscrapers, cruiseliners, mosques, machine guns, nuclear weapons or billions of other things that have occurred since it was written, if it has so many prophecies in it and god knows all? Why didn't god mention any of this stuff when telling the authors what to write? Is it because god didn't know all this stuff, or he didn't tell anyone what to write, or he just doesn't exist and these are really the stories of bronze age goatherds?

I like Cesar's post above.

My own belief is that the Bible does use words that could be taken as prophetic.. and people that are interested in prophecies can see where some of these things have occurred. The Book of Revelation Was written in code purposefully due to the persecutions at the time so a veiled language using code and symbols was used.

The Bible is not just a science or history text but it does contain I believe inspiration for people and that's why it's part of the spiritual heritage of humanity on this earth anyway..and has caught the aspirations and heart of people.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Okay - I'm on a proper computer now and not my phone, so I can respond to this post:

Why should He have expressed Himself in an incomprehensible way? Jesus, for instance, used those parables (containing metaphors which are a bit hard for us to understand today) so that the people listening to Him would understand. You don't talk or write so that nobody will get your point.

Actually, that's precisely why Jesus talked that way, according to the Bible (Matthew 13):

10 And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” 11 [d]Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. 12 For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. 13 Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

IOW, he used parables to keep his true message from at least a portion of his audience.

Now, it's only natural that one should find apparent contradictions in the Bible. After all, it was written at various times in the past by people living in different cultures, who used different words and metaphors. This is where hermeneutics comes in to solve the problems.
There are lots of people, however, that derive teaching which are not found in the Bible. For instance, you have some neo-Protestants who don't believe in the Trinity although the Bible does establish that, as well as the Church Fathers.

No, it doesn't. The only passage in the Bible that actually explicitly refers to the Trinity (the "Comma Johanneum") was a later insertion that isn't present in the earliest manuscripts.

Or, you have all those moronic pastors that claim that God lives for us and we should pray that our will be done. Such people who are in error have a very poor education regarding the Scriptures, so they just mix their ideas with Christianity or simply invent new ones.

And why doesn't the Bible deal with these people directly? I mean, Paul had no problem calling attention to the contentious issues of the Church that he knew of and telling believers (depending on the particular issue) that they were making a fuss over nothing or that it was something that should be guarded against. Yet Paul doesn't give any specific advice about any of the controversies that Christianity has grappled with for nearly 2000 years.

If the Epistles are just the advice of one limited human, then this is completely understandable. If they're the inspired message from a God who can see all that is to come and is concerned with the affairs of his church, then it doesn't make sense at all.

Anyway... it's getting irrelevant to the original question.

I don't think it is, because it deals with the larger issue that the OP raises: the Bible appears to be in complete accordance with what we would expect from a book written by humans, but has elements that are generally not in accordance with what we would expect from a book inspired by God.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

As 4consideration accurately pointed out, it would be unwise to use terminology which the people at your time don't comprehend.

Correction: it's unwise to use terminology that your intended audience doesn't comprehend. Are modern people part of the intended audience of the Bible?

Nonetheless, I was referring to the terminology being incomprehensible, not the concepts themselves. How in the world can our limited, finite minds understand God fully? Do we really comprehend how God is three Persons in One: the Trinity? No... but that's the point. Since God is superior to us, then He's the One Who comprehends us fully.

But we're not talking about understanding God himself; we're talking about understanding something that was supposedly created by the wisest entity in the universe to communicate with humanity. If it's incomprehensible, then it fails in that purpose.

The book of Revelation is full of metaphors and it tries to explain something that has never happened before, in words that were comprehensible.

Fair enough, but it has lots of fantastic things. It talks about flying horses and lambs with seven horns... why would it be out of keeping with this for it to describe, for instance, something like this: "and lo, I saw great birds of metal in the air, and though they did not flap their wings, they flew, emitting an awful roar and spewing forth fire in their path" ... or something like that.

It just seems very odd that all the things described in the book are things that a first-century person would be familiar with or things that aren't yet known to exist now. It's as if two thousand years of human history had absolutely no effect on the future it describes.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

Let me illustrate how ridiculous your assertion sounds.
"From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty." Rev 19:15

Does it sound better like this: "From His mouth comes a huge nuclear bomb, so that with it He may strike down..." ?

Jesus has the bomb? Does the U.N. know about this?

 

[fallingblood]

Is there any particular reason why God would command his chosen people to avoid pork and keep the edges of their fields unreaped, but not, say, which sorts of fissionable materials are kosher or what the God-approved minimum altitude would be when flying over cities?

Honestly, I don't see God commanding such things in the first place. And I see the OP as some what ridiculous, because the answer is easy. Those things didn't exist when the Bible was written. And even if God did command anything about airplanes or flying, it would have made no sense anyway.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Honestly, I don't see God commanding such things in the first place. And I see the OP as some what ridiculous, because the answer is easy. Those things didn't exist when the Bible was written. And even if God did command anything about airplanes or flying, it would have made no sense anyway.

I agree that this is an easy answer, but the thing I'm trying to point out is that it has implications for how we view the role of the Bible. If we take it as somethibg like a blog of one collection of people's ideas about the divine, then what you're saying works fine. It works less well with the idea that the Bible is God's mechanism to communicate with humanity, though.

 

[fallingblood]

I agree that this is an easy answer, but the thing I'm trying to point out is that it has implications for how we view the role of the Bible. If we take it as somethibg like a blog of one collection of people's ideas about the divine, then what you're saying works fine. It works less well with the idea that the Bible is God's mechanism to communicate with humanity, though.

I completely agree.

Personally though, if it was God's mechanism to communicate with humanity, I would expect the Bible to be a continuing expanding work. We don't see that either though.

 

[ChristineES]

The books in the Bible are not a book about the future, they are not science books, they are book about the followers of God and how to be reconciled to God.

 

[connermt]

Why doesn't the bible mention, aeroplanes, electricity, gunpowder, Nuclear fission, Space Shuttle. Space Stations, motorcars, aircraft carriers, vaccines, skyscrapers, cruiseliners, mosques, machine guns, nuclear weapons or billions of other things that have occurred since it was written, if it has so many prophecies in it and god knows all? Why didn't god mention any of this stuff when telling the authors what to write? Is it because god didn't know all this stuff, or he didn't tell anyone what to write, or he just doesn't exist and these are really the stories of bronze age goatherds?

There's a couple of possibilities:
1) the writers of the bible (the men) didn't understand these things and thus couldn't translate them into anything that would make sense
2) they were mentioned but when the bible was edited, they were removed/changed to make sense to those editing
3) the things you mentioned were of no consequence to people and were left out
4) the people writing the bible were only writing what they knew/thought and there was no deity/god involved.

Out of those 4 options, the last one is the only one that makes any logical sense.

Point of fact, there were some things mentioned in the bible that people are still unsure as to what they were, so that would seem to eliminate options 1 & 2.

 

[fishy]

I don't think it is, because it deals with the larger issue that the OP raises: the Bible appears to be in complete accordance with what we would expect from a book written by humans, but has elements that are generally not in accordance with what we would expect from a book inspired by God.

HUZZAH :clap: :clap:

I went for a sleep and then spent time in the dentists chair, I come back and not only have you made my arguments you have made them far better than I ever could. I salute you Penguin.HUZZAH :clap: :clap:

 

[fishy]

Other than a few vague philosophical points, the bible bears no relationship with modern man. In fact the bible is and always was a book about bronze age man. As Penguin says if it's a book for all of mankind why did it stop 2000yrs ago. The bible was written by men.

 

[Quagmire]

Why doesn't the bible mention, aeroplanes, electricity, gunpowder, Nuclear fission, Space Shuttle. Space Stations, motorcars, aircraft carriers, vaccines, skyscrapers, cruiseliners, mosques, machine guns, nuclear weapons or billions of other things that have occurred since it was written, if it has so many prophecies in it and god knows all? Why didn't god mention any of this stuff when telling the authors what to write? Is it because god didn't know all this stuff, or he didn't tell anyone what to write, or he just doesn't exist and these are really the stories of bronze age goatherds?

Are those the only 2 options we get?

 

[waitasec]

Yeah, cause there is no way in hell it could simply be because the people who wrote the Bible did not need that information....

to be fair, the book of revelations is about their future...

 

[Rakhel]

Wait a minute. What about the tower of Babel? that was a skyscraper.
And the winged chariots were airplanes
and
and
and the ummmmm UFC. Jacob wrestling the angel.
Sodom and Gomorrah...nuclear disasters.

 

[Quagmire]

Wait a minute. What about the tower of Babel? that was a skyscraper.
And the winged chariots were airplanes
and
and
and the ummmmm UFC. Jacob wrestling the angel.
Sodom and Gomorrah...nuclear disasters.

Balaam's donkey: an ancient trailer for Shrek?