girlinterrupted364

also, interesting aside, i noticed a lot when my parents drag me to church, taht "teaching resources" aka books written about specific parts of the bible are becoming really big. so its like we have little bibles popping up all over the place and people just believe them because they mention a bible passage. so not only do people believe in paul and others who wrote the bible they now believe in all the people who wrote books about the bible now.

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Non ducor, DUCO

I wish on shooting stars

I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

Tanglefoot

Let me try to give one example of a Bible story that just does not make sense. According to Luke, there were 77 generations between Adam and Jesus. If the average age of the father was 25 when he had is son, that would be a total of around 2,000 years. So Man’s time on earth would have started 2,000 BC. Now if the average age of the fathers were 50 years old, then Adam would have been around 4,000 BC or 6,000 years ago. Many fundamentalist believe this to be true. However, I don’t think man’s average life expectancy was near 50. And if you really wanted to juice it up, say the average father’s age at birth was 100. That would make Man appearing around 8,000 years ago.
But we have human made artifacts, stone tools that were made over 100,000 years ago. We have man made carving, such as the Venus of Willendorf, that was produced over 25,000 years ago. Just does not add up from the biblical writings. The bible’s timeline for Man is really pathetic, nearly comical.

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My Hero: Giordano Bruno - the first martyr to the cause of freethought

Gaius

Okay people. For some good insight into this topic, if you want both a Christians perspective and that of an agnostic, both of which books contain very highly reknowned scholaristic textual criticism I offer a couple of suggestions. For a Christian perspective you could look at anything by Bruce Metzger. For a condensed Christian perspective on the topic by numerous Christian scholars "The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel offers some good insight. (I speak here merely of dating the Gospels and not many of the other opinions expressed in the thread regarding Bible fallacy) For an agnostic perspective you could read "Misqouting Jesus, Who Changed the Bible and Why" by Bart Ehrman. (I forget the exact spelling of his name). However the differences in dating between the two circles is not very great. Standared scholarly dating of the Gospels generally goes something like Mark in the 70's, Matthew and Luke in the 80's, and John in the 90's. This short timespan for Jesus' personnal biographies is unparalled in the world of ancient literature. For example the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were not written until at least a full 40o years after his death. Yet historians do consider them trustworthy. There are plenty of other examples I could provide if you wished! Peace!

Gettin' In Tune

...

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"But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact."--C.Sagan

Jayhawker Soule

This is non sequitur drivel and distortion. Show me where Bruce Metzger or Bart Ehrman calls the Gospels historically accurate biography. And what of the Infancy Gospels, arguably written but 50 years after John. Are they too 'trustworthy'?

Gaius

Show you where? Bruce Metzger was the worlds foremost leading expert in textual criticism and was a dedicated Christian till the day he died. Everything the man ever wrote spoke of them as being trustworthy. Ehrman on the other hand is agnostic. He actually studied under Bruce Metzger the very subject of textual criticism. (textual criticism is the study of how the Bible was handed down to us over the ages and how the version we now have compares to what the originals must have looked like) Ehrman was a Christian until about 10 years ago when he became agnostic. However his transition to agnosticism had nothing to do with his seeing weaknesses in Christs biographies. He even says as much in his book. Read it. He says that after studying (and becoming an expert in) the transmission of the biographies of Christ to us present day that his faith was unshaken. Rather it was the problem of pain and suffering which brought him towards agnosticism. The dates placed on the four Gospels constitute what I would call roughly 25% of why they should be considered trustworthy. They were written during the times that people were still alive who knew Jesus and so could be criticised and cross checked by believers. Mathew was written by a man who knew Jesus and was His disciple, as was John, Luke was written by well Luke who was Pual's companion and physician. Luke did not only write the Gospel of Luke. He wrote other literary historical workds and guess what?..when cross checked with acrcheaology and other sources it ends up hes an accurate and articulate historian. Then of course you have the Pualine letters which were written mostly in the 50's (17-25 years after the death of Christ.) And they all attest to the same thing as the Gospels. These were the men in the position to know Jesus and well in fact they were not only in a position to but DID know Him. If you want to know something about somebody wouldnt you want the best sources? We have no clue who wrote any of the gnostic gospels. It should go without saying that Judas did not write the gospel of Judas, Mary Magdalene did not write the gospel of Mary. People attatched significant fictitous names to them in order to give them more weight. These gospels not only came MUCH later (Thomas being the only exeption at 50-100 years later) but have no historical base to them. They were written to progogate their perspective gnostic agendas which were invented about 150 years after the death of Christ. Contrast this to the agendas of the Gospel writers who faced nothing but persecution, death, and torture, but did not care as the truth to which they were all witnesses was their only concern.

When asked if scholarship had diluted his faith, Metzger had this to say,

"it has increased the basis of my personal faith to see the firmness with which these materials have come down to us, with a multiplicity of copies, some of which are very very ancient. Ive asked questions all my life, Ive dug into the text, Ive studied this thoroughly and today I know that my confidence in and that my trust in Jesus has been well placed. The last foundation for any doubt that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed"- Bruce Metzger, worlds leading New Testament textual critic scholar.

duck

The problem with the authenticity is not the original Greek or Hebrew/Aramaic texts of the bible, but the fallacious translations into Latin and other European vernacular languages from the Renaissance.

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Religion: The ultimate definition of verisimilitude

Gaius

It all depends really on the version you choose. The Latin and other various translations are typically not the traslations used in the authoring of our modern day texts. Even if they were the differences which would be associated with the texts would not affect any major Christian doctorine.

Geshtinnanna

The fact you would have versions to choose from just goes to re-enforce my opinion that the bible isn't accurate to anything. It's frightening how many version there have been.

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Gettin' In Tune

The Bible cannot be supported with accurate and historical claims. Until the Bible can be confirmed with historical accuracy, it is drivel.

I am asking for honesty based on reason. God created us in his own image, so we must be reasonable. His divine intervention during a crisis can either support two possibilities: acceptance of the truth or a masquerade of self perpetuating lies.

It would be perfectly reasonable that god would show his divine presence, during an age of skepticalism based on reason. Perhaps, only reasonable people can see through this foggy mask.

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"But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact."--C.Sagan