For those of you who believe in the Bible or Torrah or Koran, etc.
It is believed the God “wrote” these works by inspiring the writers and is a direct line to what God is thinking. My quesion is this:
Why did God stop? Why do all of these books have an end? Has God stopped inspiring people to write for him? There are no new teachings?
Does God have a massive case of writer’s block?
I don’t believe in the Bible, Torah, or Q’uran, but I can tell you that not all such believers say that God stopped.
The Mormons believe that God picked up the pen again and gave the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith.
I don’t think the Mormons have declared any books produced since then divinely inspired, but they do believe that God still inspires prophets, and if one of those prophets wrote his words down, well, I don’t see why they would be any less authoritative than the Bible or Book of Mormon.
That brings up another qustion. How do you determine weather someone’s writings are of their own devices and which are from divine inspiration?
What is the difference between a gospel that is written by God, and one that is written by a man pretneding to be inspired by God for alterior motives?
Remember that TV show Dinosaurs? There was a great episode about the dinosaurs making up a religion to keep everybody in line. What is the evidence that this (with humans, not dinosaurs), and not divine inspiration occured?
DaLovin’ Dj
It took a few thousand years to account Moses’ rendition of Adam and Eve to the Revelation to John, and this doesn’t include Apocrypha/Books of Mormon etc.
A thousand years or so is NOTHIN’!
-Soup
I have often wondered about this as well, and can give what I believe are fairly good answers for a few of the major religions (IANATBIPOOTV):
Islam: The cleverest of religions to spring from the well of Judaism. Mohammed was given God’s message by the angel Gabriel and told, in essence, “you are the last one, now you have the truth, anyone who comes after you is a false prophet. Fie on them.” Up until this point the lineage is similar to Christianity, with one major difference being that Jesus is only considered a prophet, and that he was not killed on the cross, a double of his was killed instead. FWIW, Mohammed was illiterate but related the words of Gabriel to others who wrote down the Word.
Buddhism: Doesn’t not claim divine inspiration, in the sense of God speaking to anyone. Buddha also did not claim divinity and asked his followers not to worship him, only that they should spread his teachings. But of course his followers were mere mortals
Christianity: depends on your branch. Book of Mormon already mentioned. Many Christians essentially believe that God still talks to everyone, if you accept Jesus in your heart, etc. So Jesus was the one who opened the door for the common man. Of course Catholics have a special relationship where the Pope is divinely inspired by the truth. Catholic priests are considered a direct conduit to God to hear confession and remove sins.
Judaism: This is the one that puzzles me. Not really clear on when the Torah ceased to record Jewish history, or if this is actually the case. I have asked my Jewish friends, but they are mainly of the non-practising variety. Anybody out there got a good handle on this one, perhaps CMKeller?
Well from what I’ve heard on Kabbalah is that you can find divine inspiration in any book ever written, you could find it in accounting statements. They just chose the Kabbalah.
Erek
Ah, this is a common theme in the books of Phil Dick. One of his books posits that God has amnesia and is unaware that he is omnipotent. Another book posits that God is omnipotent, but brain-damaged, and thus is quite clumsy in handling his creation. I like these theories.
I’d say that in the case of Christianity, communication with God is now (since the whole Jesus and Holy Spirit thing) ‘distributed’.
Christians believe that the following prophecy has been fulfilled by Jesus (bolding mine):
Jeremiah 31:31-34
The point being that there will no longer be a need for God’s word to be written down, as it is being written on the hearts of His followers instead…
Muslims, I have been told, beilieve that Mohammed is the “seal”, the Last Prophet, and that no more ar to follow him. This is why there is so much animosity against the Baha’ii in Iran (since they believe that Ba’haullah was a 19th century prophet). I was also very surprised to learn (when I was living in Salt Lake City) that Muslims are upset about Mormons, since Mormons clearly believe that Joseph Smith was a “prophet, seer, and revelator”, and wrote/translated the Book of Mormon.
I’ll bet there are very few Mormon Missionaries to Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
For Judaism, to clear that up, the traditional view:
The Torah (first five books of the Bible) were dictated, letter for letter, by God and written down by Moses on Mt Sinai (around 1250 BC or thereabouts.)
The remaining books were written at various times during the next thousand years, and were divinely inspired but not letter-for-letter. Some of those books are “history” (Judges, Kings, etc) and some are the poetic writings of prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc). The whole she-bang was codified by around 200 AD, and declared closed – the era of prophecy was decreed to have ended somewhere around 580 BC.
Why would prophecy “end”? Because God had said all that needed to be said, and because there were many people springing up in that era who claimed to have messages from God which contradicted earlier messages from God. (“Ignore what I told you before about eating Kosher, what you eat isn’t important.”) God wouldn’t contradict Himself or lie, and so the later writings were obviously false prophecies. The only way to put the foot down on them was to declare that the era of prophecy had ended.
God communicated with mankind in different ways during different historical periods. Following the end of prophecy, God’s communication with humans does not deliver new messages, but helps us live with the old messages.
[Edited by C K Dexter Haven on 08-17-2001 at 08:25 AM]
To add in for Mormonism. From the ninth article of faith:
In addition to the Bible and the Book of Mormon the LDS church uses The Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine & Covenants as scripture. They refer to these as the Standard Works. Of these the D&C is still theoretically an unfinished work. The last section was added by Spencer Kimball in 1978.
The various books written by church leaders are also viewed as inspired but not Scripture.
CalMeacham wrote: “I’ll bet there are very few Mormon Missionaries to Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan.”
Actually, there are none. In all of these countries, as well as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Libya and many other Muslem countries, it is illegal to try to convert someone from Islam. I understand that teaching about a non-Islamic faith in Afghanistan is punishable by death (of course, almost everything is punishable by death in Afghanistan today). Muslem countries aren’t the only countries it is illegal to try to convert others - China, Cuba, Israel spring to mind.
Grimpixie wrote: “Christians believe that the following prophecy has been fulfilled by Jesus”
I think that should probably read “Some Christians believe . . .” I hope that one thing is clear by now, Christian sects, as well as individual Christians (and Jews, and Moslems, and Wiccans, and Bhuddists, etc. . .) are not monolithic in theior beliefs. Some Christians have other interpretations of this and almost all other verses of scripture.
To CK Dexter Haven:
First of all, according to Orthodox Judaism, there were three parts of the Written Torah, The Bible, and with in each of these parts there were desending levels of “divine intervention.” In the Five Books of Moses, every word, space, letter formation, sound ect. was dictated by G-d himself to Moses. Moses had the highest level of prophesy and as the Torah states there never was and never will be anyone higher or equal to. G-d spoke directly to Moses, he was on such a high level that while talking to G-d he could tell you how the weather was. After that came the Book of Prophets, in them was a lower level of prophecy, in which they were sleep induced and they had no connection with the outside world while they were being talked to. For the prophets they had people dictate their prophecies. After that came the Book of Writings, in which people would be divinely inspired but “talked to” as we would think of being talked to. They had thoughts put in their heads. All of the second two sets of books were cannonized into what is today called the Bible. The reason prophecy continued to decline and eventually cease was because of the sins of Israel. For Israel to have prophecy the whole community has to be on an apropriate level. The availability of prophecy has never ceased we just haven’t merited it.
Touche 
Allow me to explain the concept of “understatement”…
ShibbOleth:
Color me honored and humbled. Of course, I feel obligated to mention that there are a number of other knowledgeable Jews on this board who can (and did) answer this question. I’m only adding here because I was singled out by name.
My answer is as menashe said: After a certain point (shortly after the building of the Second Temple), the Israelites’ level of collective righteousness had diminished to the point where they were no longer worthy of direct communication from G-d.
It is worth noting that at approximately the same time that prophecy ended, the hope for renewing the kingdom ended at the same time. Zerubavel, who descended from the Davidic line had the “potential” to be king, but that didn’t work out. I believe also the fact that the Second Temple did not have the same level of holiness as the First Temple comes into account here as well.
There was likely a “window of opportunity” at the beginning of the Second Temple for a renewal of the kingdom, prophecy and the Temple on its earlier level, but that opportunity was missed. I would guess that the fact that only a small minority of Jews took advantage of the opportunity to return to the Land of Israel was a major factor in that.
So how would that be relevant for today in which the majority of Jews are not “taking advantage of the opportunity to return?” If it is, does a way to reverse the decree exist and what can we do to help?
So how does that “'No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,”’" part fit in with Chick tracts?