• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Why is the Bible even considered in the first place as being foundational for Christianity?

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
How are biblical authors selected, and how are they chosen to represent the Bible? More importantly, why are names of authors not divulged nor put into record leaving people to simply guess as to who wrote it? How is something like that even credible to start with?




Every jot and tittle in the Bible was inspired by God, who held the pen is irrelevant. No theology or doctrines would change.

It's amazing people accept something like the Bible, a foundational text upon which the religion is based, without even knowing exactly who wrote it.

There was an irreconcilable issue that occurred with the QUOTE function here. Couldn't get the text properly sorted out with my response's. Apologies for any confusion as to who said what.

First and last paragraphs were mine. Middle was not mine.


What is really amazing is that you don' seem to understand "inspired by God."

You don't even need a Bible then if it's inspired. Why keep it then?

Nevertheless, it's heavily relied upon collectively as a key source of Christianity written from people that no one knows anything at all about. Standards must be set pretty low for confirmation then.
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
Abortion---You shall not murder---Ex 20:13
I don't want to derail this thread. So I won't go into this too much.

But there is no Scripture against abortion. I know the Bible very well on this subject and it just isn't there.
I, personally, oppose elective abortion quite vehemently. But it has nothing to do with the Bible. My opinions are entirely based on science and secular morality.
Maybe someday I will start a thread on the subject. I will have to feel a lot more ambitious than I usually do while wasting my life dinking around RF.

Tom
 

DavidFirth

Well-Known Member
No one even knows who first wrote it. It could have been written by anybody, anytime, anywhere.

There is no established/known authorship for each individual book within the Bible either. Guessing game?

The Bible is not a two thousand year old book as some claim it to be.

Oral tradition has time and time again proven to be unreliable in terms of accuracy no more different than oral recollections are now.

King James had no access to the Dead Sea scrolls. They were found in 1947. Bit of a problem there. Wouldn't you say? Apologists?

God didn't write it. It's not God's word.

So..

It's therefore obvious people themselves not God that also, for some strange reason, remains completely anonymous other than for a collective acknowledgment right out of the blue, that they were definitely people inspired by God. Whoever they were. . .. How does that work?

Actually the Bible is much older than 2000 years.

Interesting opinions. Fortunately believers find the Bible quite credible as God's inspired word through His prophets and apostles.

There has never been so much as one thing written in the Bible that has been proved wrong, a lie, or a fake. You know very little about it.

Just keep listening to your scientific assumptions and watch them change, get updated and replaced. The Bible hasn't and doesn't change. The word of God is paramount and that bothers you and Skwim, for some reason.
 

NayaVeda

Member
No one even knows who first wrote it. It could have been written by anybody, anytime, anywhere.

There is no established/known authorship for each individual book within the Bible either. Guessing game?

The Bible is not a two thousand year old book as some claim it to be.

Oral tradition has time and time again proven to be unreliable in terms of accuracy no more different than oral recollections are now.

King James had no access to the Dead Sea scrolls. They were found in 1947. Bit of a problem there. Wouldn't you say? Apologists?

God didn't write it. It's not God's word.

So..

It's therefore obvious people themselves not God that also, for some strange reason, remains completely anonymous other than for a collective acknowledgment right out of the blue, that they were definitely people inspired by God. Whoever they were. . .. How does that work?

I kind of agree. I myself wrote a new bible and it was authored 2000 years after Jesus was crucified.
 

DavidFirth

Well-Known Member
2 Peter 3

3Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires
4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water


Even your own scoffing was foretold in scripture.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
2 Peter 3

3Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires
4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water


Even your own scoffing was foretold in scripture.
I'm confused now. What does this have to do in referencing verses pertaining to
the "coming"?

This is about the Bible itself, its validity as it applies to Christians, and their acceptance of a book for which they know nothing about its authorship or actual origins.
 

shawn001

Well-Known Member
Just FYI and it's pretty clear going back to the Sumerians forward how newer religions were formed and took ideas from older ones. I also believe the ancient religion Zoroastrianism had a lot to do with Jewish, Christian and Muslim beliefs on many big issues, including one God, heaven, and hell, souls, cosmic struggle between good and evil and more.

Archeology of the Hebrew Bible

"William Dever, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, has investigated the archeology of the ancient Near East for more than 30 years and authored almost as many books on the subject. In the following interview, Dever describes some of the most significant archeological finds related to the Hebrew Bible, including his own hot-button discovery that the Israelites' God was linked to a female goddess called Asherah."

"Thousands of clay figurines like this one suggest that the early Israelites worshiped more than a single God."

Archeology of the Hebrew Bible — NOVA | PBS

"
Origins of the Written Bible
  • In the modern era, we take for granted that the Hebrew Bible is a text—written words, displayed in chapters and verse. Yet biblical scholar William Schniedewind, the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at UCLA, has a different view. In How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge University Press, 2004), he explores when and why the ancient Israelite accounts—once conveyed only orally—came to be written down and attain the status of Scripture. Here, Schniedewind offers an overview of his findings.
Origins of the Written Bible — NOVA | PBS

"
The Rise of Judaism
  • When did Judaism as we know it today—devoted to one God and the teachings of the Torah—really take root? How did the religious practices of the earliest Israelites differ from monotheistic Judaism? In the following interview, Shaye Cohen, the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University and author of The Beginnings of Jewishness, addresses these and other questions.
The Rise of Judaism — NOVA | PBS


HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US American Bible Society

http://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/how-the-bible-came-to-us


"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. "
Mark Twain
 

omega2xx

Well-Known Member
There was an irreconcilable issue that occurred with the QUOTE function here. Couldn't get the text properly sorted out with my response's. Apologies for any confusion as to who said what.

First and last paragraphs were mine. Middle was not mine.

You don't even need a Bible then if it's inspired. Why keep it then?

Without God's inspired word, we have o rely on errant men. Is that the best way to know the truth?

Nevertheless, it's heavily relied upon collectively as a key source of Christianity written from people that no one knows anything at all about. Standards must be set pretty low for confirmation then.

You are assuming the scholars didn't get it right when they named the writers.. If God inspired them to write what they wrote, who cares who held the pen?
 

omega2xx

Well-Known Member
I don't want to derail this thread. So I won't go into this too much.

But there is no Scripture against abortion. I know the Bible very well on this subject and it just isn't there.
I, personally, oppose elective abortion quite vehemently. But it has nothing to do with the Bible. My opinions are entirely based on science and secular morality.
Maybe someday I will start a thread on the subject. I will have to feel a lot more ambitious than I usually do while wasting my life dinking around RF.

Tom

Do you really not consider abortion to be premeditated murder? If you don't you don't know the Bible or this subject as well as you think you do. Why are you opposed to elective abortion?

Here are a couple of bones for you to chew on.Ps 139:13 - For you formed my inward parts, you wove me in my mothers womb.

Do you not consider that is when life began?

Ex 21:22-223 - If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yer thee is no injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, etc IOW of the child dies, the death penalty may be applied.

If you think trying to defend the Christian view is dinking around, maybe you need to reevaluate your opinion---but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you...I Pet 3:15
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Abortion---You shall not murder---Ex 20:13

Same sex marriage.: It is no the marriage that is sinful, it is the sexual activity that is involved.

Lev 18:22 - You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female.

Rom 1:27 - and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Abortion is not murder and marriage is not lying with somebody. Murder is defined as deliberate, illegal homicide. Abortion is legal.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Why do you use the word inspired rather than authored?
I use what the Bible says, 2 Tim 3:16.

You evaded the question. Good choice. There is no adequate answer available to you.

Inspired isn't good enough. The Flintstones was inspired by The Honeymooners (Fred is Ralph Kramden, Wilma is Alice, Barney is Ed Norton,etc), and West Side Story was inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Are the inspired examples close enough to the originals to say that they are the same things, or are they significantly altered?
That is not spiritual inspiration.

Another dodge. Inspired in this context is a weasel word that the apologist chooses to use so that he can both claim that the scriptures are the mind of his god when that is expedient, or something else when he wants to say that man has interjected his own thoughts into them.

If the Bible is only inspired by God, then it's not the same book that He would have written had He been its only author.
It would be exactly the same.

Sorry. You said that the Bible was only inspired by this god, not authored by it.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There has never been so much as one thing written in the Bible that has been proved wrong, a lie, or a fake.

The Christian Bible is replete with internal contradictions, failed prophecies, unkept promises, moral and intellectual failures of its god, and errors in science and history.

Just keep listening to your scientific assumptions and watch them change, get updated and replaced. The Bible hasn't and doesn't change

The plasticity of science is among its chief virtues. The scriptures are ossified, and become less relevant each passing century as a result. It's mistakes are forever, and their list grows every time science comments on something the scriptures comment on.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
2 Peter 3

3Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires
4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water


Even your own scoffing was foretold in scripture.

Are we expected to be surprised that the inventors of Christianity realized that it would be scoffed at? Every cult includes this provision. I promise you that the next cult that comes along will be scoffed at as well, Does that make me a prophet?
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Ex 21:22-223 - If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yer thee is no injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, etc IOW of the child dies, the death penalty may be applied.

That scripture pretty much defines the fetus as property like a goat, the destruction of which elicits a fine, and only if the owners of the fetus objected. If they arranged the event to abort the pregnancy, there isn't even a fine.
 
Top