The Master speaks.
Cecil said it, I believe it, that settles it. Period.
(someone used to have this as his or her sig, I believe).
The bible isn’t a book. It is a collection of many books by many authors. None of those authors to my knowledge say that you are to read his book or any of the other books of the bible. Go take a bible study course and you might learn something. I have and I did. 
yme: You might be interested in Nightfall.
It’s extremely questionable whether any of the events in the NT actually “fulfill” anything in the OT, but it if that were true, so what? Anybody can write a piece of fiction in which prophecies are fulfilled. Just because the events are written down doesn’t mean they actually occurred. There really is no evidence at all that either the OT or the NT have any supernatural connection or reveal any kind of divine truth. Christians may have reasons they believe the NT, but from a purely empirical standpoint there is no more reason to believe they are the “word of God” that the Koran or the Hindu Vedas, or the Bhagavad-Gita.
The answer to the OP is we don’t know. It’s a matter of faith, pure and simple.
Might I add…
The Bible was written before the English Language. How, may I ask (mainy because I’m not honestly sure) can we be certain that even if one finds everything in the bible to be relevant, that it is what was contained in the original text?
My personal opinion is that the Bible is a decent morality tale, and a collection of interesting fables and parables, but is generally irrelevant in this American society.
I believe this generally because there are so many people willing to exploit it for their own personal gain, that there must be so much more to it (and not in a good way) than can be gathered by simply reading it, that not only is it not a relevant document, but it is indeed quite harmful, especially when placed in the wrong hands.
English translations directly from the earliest known copies of the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts, that’s what.
I strongly urge you to reconsider these words. If God exists, your casual dismissal likely carries an eternal consequence.
Ah, the ol’ one bad apple method of evaluation at work. Perhaps you’d be better advised to search for the truth in the book, rather than in the all-too-human failings of men.
I have noted that such views are being expressed more and more often, which I must admit causes me some alarm. This seemingly implicit advocacy of censorship would signal the beginning of a new age of ignorance.
NaS said…
I don’t recall asking from what language the Bible was translated, that much I know, what I question is how we can know for certain that what was translated is indeed what is in the Bible today. As an illustration, try this at the next party you attend… Gather 10 people in a circle, tell a short story to one, less than a paragraph, and see how convoluted it is by the time it gets back to you. I guarantee it will be nearly unrecognizable. What’s more, I’ll just assume all of your friends are literate, intelligent and somewhat worldly, unlike the unfortunate majority of people who were around during those times. (and spare the Greek/Roman scholars lecture, I know about them, I am referring to the common folks)
NaS said…
IF God exists? You’re not certain? I never said that I disbelieve the existance of a higher power, I did however question the relevance of said deity(s) ad campaign.
NaS said…
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The " ol’ bad apple method" is simply linear reasoning. A kind of essential profiling, necessary to make thoughtful decisions i.e. if a small man in a silver suit wearing red shoes strikes me in the head with a hammer, I will henceforth be wary of small men in silver suits wearing red shoes and carrying hammers. And by the way, ONE bad apple? Please…flip through your cable channels after 10 pm, there’s more than ONE “bad apple”. Those channels are bubbling over with hucksters, charlatans, frauds, liars and phonies, all workin’ it in the name of the Big Three, not to mention a shite-load of profit!
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So let me get this straight, you would have me search for the truth, in a text developed, written, and printed by men, in order to avoid the pitfalls associated with the “all-too-human failings” of men? That’s just daft.
NaS said…
WHAT? :dubious:
How is questioning ANYTHING advocating censorship??
When you pose questions, you lay the issue open, you do not isolate it. If anything, a LACK of questioning is the harbinger of a new age of ignorance…
Another textbook example is that Jesus never existed because the Bible is not accurate.
Without taking the validity of one or the other for granted, we cannot establish the validity of either work (set of works) by appealing to each other.
If we want to know what authority says, we should look to authority. If we want to know what the world is, we should look at the world.
You should understand the danger of secondary sources. When we’re searching for the truth, every model of the universe is a secondary source – the world itself is the source that genuinely matters.
That’s partly true. Note, however, that I’m not saying this is the only reason for believing either of these works.
As I said, many historians – even non-Christians – consider the New Testament to be a fundamentally reliable account of Jesus and his life. Even if one doesn’t accept every single statement in the N.T., one can still agree that it is fundamentally reliable. This is nothing new; modern historians may consider the works of Josephus, Pliny the Younger and so forth to be basically trustworthy, even if they allow for occasional errors.
If the Old Testament makes dramatic prophecies, and if the fulfillment of these prophecies is recorded in a set of works (e.g. the New Testament) that are fundamentally reliable, then it is reasonable for someone to conclude that both the Old and New Testaments are worthy of belief. Is this absolute proof of their validity? No, but that’s not how ancient history works. The normal standards of ancient history have been more than enough to convince many scholars of the validity of the Old and New Testaments.
As I said, if you want to examine the evidence, there is enough subject matter for scores of threads. What I’m trying to emphasize is that the reasons for their belief goes far beyond the woefully naive (and terribly simplistic) assertion “These fools believe in Jesus, just because some musty old book said they should!”
Then you have to deal with the claim that the prophesies referenced in the NT have been misinterpreted, and the aspects supposedly fulfilled minor ones.
Where’s Zev? I vaguely remember him talking about a similar subject several months ago… Perhaps I’m mistaken.
There are many other scholars, including Christian ones, who do not accept what you are saying. Clearly many people get into this field through faith, and it seems that it is very easy to start with the premise that the Bible is correct, and produce apologetics defending it. This is not to accuse them of dishonesty, but the barrier to changing ones opinion is a lot higher in this case than for some scientific result.
My understanding is that historians evaluate documents and writings for reliability. They must consider how much of the information therein the author had direct knowledge of, and if there was some motive for the author to distort information, and if there is supporting evidence. You’d want to judge the memoirs of a presidential advisor by the same standards, right?
The NT was written by people living fairly long after the events, with very pure (to them) motives for adding things to support what they saw as a noble cause. You really think the writers of the Bible wouldn’t throw in a miracle or two to save the souls of their readers? It was done all the time then, so it was not even considered unethical. As an example - what evidence do we have that Mary was a virgin, outside of the NT? Notice how some deny James was the brother of Jesus, just because it would violate a theological principle.
The NT, and the OT, fail as true history by any accepted standards. They are valuable documents, true, but you can’t accept them any more than other, similar, myths. Where is the independent evidence?
You’re belaboring the obvious. OF COURSE one would have to deal with those claims. Merely stating this possibility is by no means a valid refutation.
Ditto for Voyager’s objection. Yes, I know full well that not all scholars agree with those who accept the divine claims of the Bible. Heck, I went out of my way to emphasize that, earlier on! This does not mean, however, that all the Bible-believing scholars start with the premise that the Bible is correct. Some of them surely do; others become convinced by the evidence, and others remain unconvinced.
Again, I emphasize: It’s naive (and frankly, a bit arrogant) to assume that these scholars accept the Bible’s validity out of mere faith or circular reasoning. For heaven’s sake, I think one should at least do some reading on how they came to their conclusions first.
Also, to say that “The NT, and the OT, fail as true history by any accepted standards” is simply false. As I said, the vast majority of historians do accept them as general historical documents, even if they do not accept the miraculous claims. Additionally, I’ve often mentioned Sir William Ramsay, one of the most learned historians and archaeologists of all time. He set out to disprove the validity of Luke and the Book of Acts, but after years of research, he was forced to conclude:
and
Remember, these words came from one of the foremost historians of all time. Now, I know that some of the laypeople on the SDMB disagree with Ramsay. In light of his credentials though, I think it’s both naive and arrogant to insist for a layman to insist that the Bible truly fails as an account of history.
Ramsay’s account also disproves the notion that scholars who accept the validity of the Bible must surely be acting out of faith and preconceived notions. In fact, Ramsay himself said,
Why? Did I offend you somehow?
I don’t recall meeting you yet…
Much of the Old Testament is esssentially mythical; it contradicts what we know of the ancient Middle East through archeological evidence. The cities that the Israelites suposedly destroyed on their way to the Promised Land are now throught to have been abandoned several hundred years before the Exodus, for example.
Actually the opposite is true.
http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/q0402/point3.html
The serious challenges to the historical accuracy of the Bible are being answered by the work of archeologists. **They are uncovering more and more evidence to verify the historical record of the Bible. **
For example, the Old Testament mentioned a people known as the Hittites nearly 50 times. But for centuries, those who studied the ancient world questioned the Bible because they had discovered no evidence of such a people. In 1906, however, the Hittite capital was uncovered about 90 miles east of Ankara, the capital of Turkey.
Ooops. The Bible was right and the “experts” were wrong…
:smack:
Ramsay was always a Christian, he just wasn’t a Biblical literalist. His great discovery was basically that some of the geographical sites in Acts really existed. The notion that he was some hardened, atheistic scholar who was converted by overwhelming archaeological evidence is an exaggeration of what happened. Ramsay’s geographical discoveries no more prove the overall truth of the gospels than Schliemann’s discovery of Troy proves the historical truth of Homer. The Ramsay story is really just so much glurge.
Arcaheology also show such inconvenient facts as that the city of Jericho was destroyed by an earthquake centuries before the Hebrews ever got there. Joshua discovered a ruin.
I really did not wish to enter this but the comment on Luke on found interesting. Is Luke then the correct gospel as opposed to the others:
For example on the grandparentage of Jesus Matthew says that Josephs father was Jacob (Matthew 1:16), whereas Luke says that the father of Joseph was Heli (Luke 3:23).
Both cannot be true (I know there are others but cannot find them at work on my lunch hour).
And preview ought to be a better friend of mine