You guys aren’t the first to think of this one. The folks over at Church of Virus have the best attempt I’ve seen so far"
Sounds pretty good to me. The downside is the fact that there is no wine involved with the services. Not even a keg . . .
DaLovin’ Dj
It seems to me like we’re approaching this question backwards. A lot of people are pointing out the standard obstacles to believing in divine authorship (internal contradictions, factual error, moral inconsistency, etc.). These are all valid and compelling objections but they are also unnecessarily trying to take on the burden to show that God did not write the Bible. I think it might be more productive to point out that we have no evidence whatever that the Bible was written by anything other than human beings. Any burden of proof should rest on those would insist on supernatural authorship.
The answer to the OP is that we have absolutely no reason to believe that humans did not write the Bible.
JImbo said:
What kinds of facts are you looking for? Specific contradictions and errors? They’re there, and I’m sure with a little looking you can find them yourself. There’s also a variety of websites and books devoted to the subject. I note however, that if a person is convinced that the bible is inerrant, they will attempt any number of mental gymnastics in an attempt to make the pieces fit.
The bible was written by men, the various books of the bible were voted into existence by the Nicea council. They’re criteria for determining what should be cannon? What was in accordance with the catholic doctrine of the time. Sounds like a bit of circular reasoning doesn’t it?
My suggestion is to research the topic yourself with an open mind. Critically examine your data. Use every reference you can. Learn to recognize your own biases as well as the biases that everyone else will speak from on this subject. This is best because although I can provide you with links, resources and examples, you will not feel satisfied that you have come to a correct conclusion unless you have done the research yourself.
Regards,
Ron
Dear Diony:
In a humorous vein, I must confess I usually find it difficult to understand sentences like your last line:
“… we have absolutely no reason to believe that humans did not write the Bible.”
Would the following rephrasing be an equivalent formulation?
“… we absolutely have reason to believe that humans wrote the Bible.”
The correlative contrary statement to that would be?
“… we abolutely have reason to believe that God wrote the Bible.”
When I was in college taking up basic writing, I seem to remember my mentors telling us to avoid double negatives.
OK, don’t be annoyed.
I just want to be funny.
Yes, I must still confess, that double negatives seem to be a very slippery thing to grasp in the mind.
Of course, my mind is not really so keen and profound.
On the other hand, there does appear to be something in double negatives that an allegedly equivalent positive formulation seem to be wanting in.
Something illusive but present nonetheless.
Best regards,
Susma Rio Sep
How do you decide what constitutes a HUGE reach? Before Chernobyl who said anything about what wormwood meant in Revelations?
There is of course Nebachadnezzar’s(sp?) dream and Daniel’s interpretation. The interesting thing about it is the belly and thighs of the statue being bronze. Going down the statue is traveling thru time. The statue splits in two at the legs. The Roman Empire split in two, an East and a West. The word czar comes from ceasar, the word kaiser has the same origin. American football is like Roman gladiators. Roman culture has spread around the world.
I haven’t seen this mentioned on th boob tube. But I do not doubt for a second that if it had not been for Chernobyl then the wall would not have come down in 1991. How much damage did it do to the soviet economy and the confidence of soviet citizens in their government?
The Bible Code business has the same judgement problem. I tried the program, unfortunately I don’t know hebrew. I’ve read and listened to the detractors saying you can find stuff in any large text. True, but not meaningful stuff.
Dal Timgar
Note the Staff Reports which describe the most recent conclusions of archaeology, literary analysis, historic analysis, etc.
Who wrote the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible)?
Who wrote the (Old Testament) biblical histories?
Who wrote the Old Testament books of prophecy and poetry?
Who wrote the books of the New Testament?
More information than you ever wanted on this topic. And, finally, What’s up with the Bible Code?
How about if I phrase it this wasy:
We have absolutely no reason to believe that the Bible was written by anything other than humans.
Touche (with the accent on the last syllable).
See, I said that my mind isn’t that keen and profound.
Thanks a lot.
And have a good day.
Susma Rio Sep
Let’s try this from a different perspective.
Overt internal evidence indicates that almost every part of the Bible was written by a given human being. A fair amount of the Tanakh depicts Moses and the Prophets as setting forth (a) the Law dictated by God or (b) things that God has told them to prophesy. The Gospels and a few passages in the Epistles quote Jesus, believed by Christians to be God the Son incarnate in human form, as having said such and such.
Almost all Christians think that God was “behind” the writing of the Bible, “inspiring” it in the sense that the writers wrote what they understood His will to be. Many take it further, feeling that He guided them to the extent that it contains no doctrinal error. Some go further yet, and feel that He is responsible for every word that they set down on paper, that they were in effect His amanuenses, “taking dictation” from Him.
There are a number of Scriptures that will be quoted by these latter groups to “prove” that their view is right – in a form of circular reasoning: He inspired it all verbatim, including the passages that testify to His inspiring it, therefore it must be inspired by Him, because what He inspired says so.
To Polycarp:
What then is your conclusion on the question ‘Did God write the Bible’?
To all readers here:
May I ask here if my impression is correct about Jimbo’s psychological stance?
He appears to be personally troubled with doubts in regard to the teaching of his church, that the Bible is written by God – in his inaugural post.
In his two subsequent posts, he appears to be a committed advocate of the proposition that God wrote the Bible.
Now, the picture I have from these two subsequent posts is that the original post was not so much genuinely in search of answers to the question 'Did God write the Bible, as a sort of gambit or bait to draw out real serious doubters and convince them that indeed God wrote the Bible.
Be that as it may.
I think I have another approach to solve the question whether God wrote the Bible.
There are three things indispensable in writing,
namely: the writer, the writing, and the written.
Insofar as humans are concerned the only writing strictly understood as writing is when a human (the writer), uses a writing implement to record in a medium (the writing), words that can be understood (the written) by other humans.
Loosely understood, however, a human can be said to do writing, even if he does not himself use an implement to put down records of words understandable to other humans.
But he provides the thoughts and asks others to use words to express his thoughts, and to use an implement to record these words in a medium, so others can know and understand his thoughts.
On the basis of our distinction between strictly understood writing and loosely understood writing, let us ask the following questions:
Since the only agents doing writing we know from our factual knowledge are humans, so that humans make up so far the only one class of writers, is it allowed to postulate another class of writers, namely, consisting of one member, namely, God?
What is the justification for creating another class of writers, consisting of one member, God?
Granting that another class of one writer, the class of God, is allowed as legitimate, does He do strict writing or loose writing?
Are there instances of His doing strict writing in the Bible?
(Correct me if I am wrong, the Ten Commandments, for example? But who actually saw Him writing them – Moses got them already written in tablets of stone. Is Moses a credible witness. If he ever so much as told one lie, then his credibility is compromised.)
Aren’t most instances of God’s writing those of loose writing? He expresses His thoughts in any way accessible to a human agent writer who does the strict writing for him.
And do we not here have a real insurmountable trouble, namely: There are potentially innumerable people claiming to do the strict writing for God’s loose writing. For we have the Bible and the Koran, and within Biblical persuasions, there are variations of Biblical collections – probably also with the Koran.
If God exists, then He should really at the present moment make it clear which human writers are His strict writers for his loose writing.
Otherwise, since anyone can claim to do strict writing for the loose writing of God, then we can safely draw the conclusion that for our own safety, God did not write the Bible or the Koran.
Susma Rio Sep
Susma Rio Sep, you’ve been told before by another moderator that it is not necessary to start a new paragraph after every sentence. It is distracting and makes it harder for others to see the point you might be trying to make. Is there a specific reason you write in this style?
Hmmm.
One of the main reasons we’re all here on this board is a fondness to the column “The Straight Dope” written weekly by Cecil Adams. Cecil is quite up front about using the SDSAB for assistance and research. In one column on diseases a while ago, I detected the inimitable style and insight of JillGat making clear a point on which my thinking had been fuzzy. In several columns on quasi-religious matters, I’ve seen material that fits the ouevre of CKDexterHaven. And so on.
Are we then to assume that those mere mortals wrote those columns? Of course not. Cecil wrote them – but, being the ideal student of truth that he is, he derives information from all sources he can find – and the expertise of those two SDSAB members is one such source.
No, God did not “write the Bible” in any physical sense. He inspired it in that people sincerely desirous of following Him wrote it to express their understanding of His truth. Some parts of it are no doubt precisely His words – others are the views of the human writers, who have been changed by His touch in their lives. Paul’s comments to the church in Corinth on marriage furnish a good example of this:
How come there are gospels missing in the Bible, if its supposedly written by/inspired by God? I’ve heard of the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, the Secret Sayings of the Living Jesus, etc; these all sound pretty important, so why aren’t they included? Same with the Apocrypha.
Here’s a link I found dealing with the Gospel of Q:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/gosp_q.htm
What left those four in Scripture and rejected the others? The judgment of the early Church as to which Gospels accurately portrayed the life and teachings of Christ. It shouldn’t be too difficult to grasp the idea that some people would write books purporting to be Gospels that served their own agendas – just look on the religion shelves of any library or bookstore, and you’ll find the modern equivalent in droves. Or spend a half hour discussing religion with one of the folks who believes that the Saved are supposed to withdraw themselves from contact with the Unclean Millions, and enforce proper morality (in their opinion) on them by act of law – and can “prove” it by reference to the Bible.
The Gospel of Thomas (as opposed to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas) is a special case – it was not well known outside the small area in Egypt where it circulated. It appears to have been composed by a Gnostic Christian who attributed it to the apostle, and while some of the teachings are authentic and others could well be, much of it has a tendency to arcane mumbo-jumbo that is the farthest thing from Jesus’s earthy and idealistic, if parabolically expressed, teachings.
Q is a hypothesis widely accepted by scholars that there must have been a source for Jesus’s teachings common to the authors of Matthew and Luke. I’ve evolved a theory that it was the original of Matthew referred to by the early Church historian Papias, whose description of what Matthew wrote does not match the extant Gospel but does describe the hypothetical Q. Under this theory, the ur-Matthew logia document mentioned by Papias, equivalent to Q and also used by Luke, would have been inserted into a slightly modified manuscript of Mark (with some rough edges shaved off for the sake of the editor’s community’s piety) to comprise the gospel we know today.
Much of the other stuff is bizarre by anybody’s tastes. Example, from the Protevangelium of James: The boy Jesus is playing with his friends when one of them takes a slingshot and kills a bird with it. Jesus picks up the bird, strokes it gently, and it comes back to life. Then he turns to the other boy and magicks him dead. Riiiight!
I’m confused by your logic, Susma Rio Sep.
From your section on Moses, are you seriously claiming that anyone who has ever told a lie is uncredible? Who would be a better witness to such an event?
Obviously, someone who has never told a lie. I invite you to name a credible source.
Acurrately portrayed the life and teachings of Christ according to what standard? The other Gospels already chosen? And for the four Gospels already in the Bible, what standard determined their accuracy? Or was it just their similiarity (wait a minute, weren’t all four Gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John all depicting the same time period during the life of Jesus? Then what accounts for the rest of Jesus’s life?)? Even if it was their similarity, people have found inconsistencies in the four Gospels; hell, who’s to say any of them are accurate at all?
Just because those teachings sound far-fetched doesn’t mean that they weren’t the teachings of Jesus (again with my case on what determines the standard).
Many Christians say the authors of the Bible were inspired by God; you’re saying something about authors being inspired by authors inspired by God.
Again…what standard determines the accuracy of any of the Gospels? How is the idea of Jesus reviving an innocent bird and punishing the kid that killed it so hard to believe while you compare it to other acts like turning water into wine and coming back to life three days after dying? I’m guessing that someone will tell me that Jesus was benevolent and wouldn’t do something like kill another kid, but the idea that Jesus is benevolent comes from the four Gospels already in the Bible, which I don’t believe have any credibility now just because they’re in the Bible.
Well, unless you’re a subscriber to the idea that the whole concept of Jesus’s life and teachings was a myth, scam, or other form of falsehood, you are forced to the assumption that there was an objective historical referent by which to judge such stories. And there were a fair number of people around who had known the historical Jesus, though their belief structure focusing on what He had done clearly tended to shape the stories that they reported of Him.
The standard was what concurred with what the Apostles and other folks who had known and followed Jesus during His earthly life had to say about Him, and what those who were taught by them as time went on and they died off, recalled as accurate. And the focus of all four books is on Jesus’s ministry, and His death and the ensuing events, for reasons they explain. If He necked with Dorcas the daughter of the Nazareth blacksmith at age 14, nobody thought that was essential to telling His story, so it didn’t get included. The one anecdote that was preserved by anybody with credibility was His trip to the Temple with His parents at age 12, which is traditionally ascribed to a memory that Mary told to Luke (tradition has it that they became good friends after Luke’s conversion).
Dear Czar:
Actually, Dexter tells me it just a friendly advice but no big deal.
I want to ask you a personal question, what do you find unacceptable with my spacing of lines?
Susma Rio Sep
My post explains exactly what I find unacceptable with your postings, and your response tells me that you have no intention of changing.
Back on topic, the only factual answer that is possible is that God(who or whatever she/he/it might be) did not write the Bible(whichever version you might consider legit). Anyone’s belief that the people that wrote the Bible were inspired by god cannot be supported by facts, thus such beliefs are based on blind faith and blind faith only. If blind faith works for you, more power to you.
Just to add on to discussion of how certain gospels were chosen as canon and others weren’t. For the first century or so, there really was no recognized Canon of gospels, and sevral of them were in circulation. Around the 180’s CE, Iranaeus makes references to a recognized “tetramorph” consisting of the synoptics and John, and he places them on a level with Hebrew scripture. To be honest, is not completely clear why these four gospels rose to the top out of many, but basically their eventual canonization was built on a preexisting tradition of popularity and acceptance by the Christian community at large. Why they were accepted is a subject for debate. Some will say that they were accepted because of apostolic authority or because God willed it.
Personally, I think it was a combination of those four being the best written, being the “meatiest” as far as providing good stories about Jesus and the popular belief that they had some basis in apostolic authority, either directly or indirectly.
Other apocryphals were written far too late to be taken seriously, or simply never gained any popular traction as being authoritative.
I happen to differ a little with Polycarp on his assesment of Thomas (the sayings gospel, that is, he’s right about the infancy gospel) . The gospel of Thomas is quite early, contemporary with Mark in fact, and while it may have been used by Gnostic Christians, I don’t believe it was gnostic in origin. The sayings aren’t really gnostic, the date of composition slightly predates the gnostic movement, and while some of the sayings may be rather oblique, I believe they make sense if they are read as mystic aphorisms simlar to zen koans. I think Thomas may be a collection of genuine sayings which reflect transmissions of mystic insights to the apostles. not all of the sayings in Thomas may be original to the historical Jesus, but i think there’s a good chance that many of them are.