I’m seeing this thread rather late, and what Friar Ted said was many posts back, but: no. The bible is NOT an authoritative source on Jewish belief. Not even the Hebrew text. Rabbinic interpretation of the text is the authoritative source on Jewish belief. For example, see: How come pet food never contains pork? - The Straight Dope See Cecil’s point #6. I had this discussion with Ed when he was editing Cecil’s column. The Hebrew text of the bible says not to touch pig or pig products; the rabbis interpreted that to mean in certain contexts. Rabbinic interpretation (Talmud, etc) trumps the plain biblical textual statement when it comes to Jewish beliefs and practices.
Just to be a jerk and ask the question being begged, could some please define the Bible?
Is it the Catholic Bible, or Protestant? Maybe it’s just the Jewish Canon or is it the Ethiopian Canon? How about the book of Enoch? Does it count? If so why or why not?
Because it looks to me like Bible is a vague concept, like asking if The Doctor is an authoritative medical source.
What’s interesting, is that those arguing that the Bible is an authoritative source are looking outside the Bible to find out what it means. There is a dispute about what hell, fire, and eternal mean so you need to go back and try and figure out what those words meant at that time by looking at extra-Biblical sources. A subjective task at its best. But even when we look at the earlies texts, they themselves are a transcription and translation of earlier oral stories. So we need to understand what the original words meant, and those are lost.
I think you’re misunderstanding DtC’s comment. DtC is not making his case (which I happen to agree with) that a correct rendering of “hell” is dependent on a single translation. The KJV was translated 1500 years—give or take—after Christ and authorized by a non-Christian. It uses a form of English that is uncommon to us (and therefore difficult to read) and to those who care about such things it has a lot of errors.
What you didn’t hear from either of us is some variation of, “If you only used this particular translation…”
Boy am I glad I didn’t invest any more time in my response. You suggested we start with Jude 1:7, and now you’ve been given substantial responses from me and DtC.
You are not the first to abandon ship when asked to substantiate your claim.
Yeah that was my first thought. Which version of the Bible? One could believe in God or Jesus but not necessarily think the Bible has everything right. Surely any legitimate debate about Christian religion has to take into account who wrote and compiled the Bible, which translation to use, what was the authors’ intent, etc.
I have not abandoned my claim, but you seem to. You have said that there are no important distinctions among translations then used an error in translation to justify why what the KJV says is not what it really means. And of course the KJV is not the only translation that uses similar words to describe hell and eternal punishment. Furthermore, you have used sources outside of the Bible to justify what you think the Bible means.
So you seem to be wrong in at least two areas. The text of the Bible is not the authoritative source for biblical questions and there are some very substantial differences among translations of the Bible.
More than anything, what interests me about this thread is notion that a vast majority of Christians who have actually read and studied the whole Bible (already a minority among the larger set of Christians, I’d guess) don’t actually know what it says because they haven’t invested themselves adequately in Biblical scholarship.
Of the ~2B Christians on earth, how many of them do you suppose could comment intelligently on Jude 1:7 to provide a convincing rationale regarding how “the punishment of eternal fire” is not a Biblical allusion to hell? If I was an educated Christian that’d bug me.
The Pew Research Center just did a survey that suggested that atheists were more knowledgeable about the bible (iirc…) than Christians. It was a sad commentary on Christians. Of course, the atheists crowed, conveniently overlooking the fact that all groups scored poorly.
It seems evident to me that if one wishes to be a Christian it is necessary to know what the bible says.
Your analogy of Constitutional Law works quite well to point out the flaws in your line of thinking. Any first year law student can tell you that it is not enough to simply quote the Constitution when answering a question about Constitutional Law. There are 200 years of case law that address how the words of the Constitution are to be interpreted and applied.
The Bible could be considered a text about God, Jesus, and religion. But not every question about God, Jesus, and religion can be answered by the Bible. The Constitution is a text about law and rights. But not every question about the law or rights can be answered by the Constitution.
I’ve never heard that particular definition of “Christian” before. Based on your rather exclusive definition, how many Christians might you suppose are in the world today?
You said that it was evident that one must know what the Bible says to become a Christian. How well must someone know the Bible? Must they read the whole thing? Does it matter as to which version they read?
No…What I said was that it was evident to me that someone professing to be a Christian should know the bible.
It seems almost surreal to me that that would be in question. To me, it seems evident that if I choose to be a follower of Christ (or Gandhi, or Confucius or Mr. Rogers) that it is incumbent on me to know just what he taught. Now I’m aware that there are some—perhaps many----who live in blissful ignorance of the bible and hold the position that the church informs the bible, and not that the bible informs the church. If they are self-identified as Christians then that’s fine. I’m not vetting anyone.
That is a separate thread.
I would add that that discussion is a valid one, and one I’d be prepared to participate in. But that question is upstream of any “What does the bible say…” type thread. Other worthy discussions include
Are translations accurate rendering of the source language?
Does the canonical bible unfairly exclude other writings? (The Gnostics, Thomas et al)
Are there material differences between translations?
And several others.
Downstream there are valid discussions to be had as well. The problem as I see it is that when you use one of these answers in a “What does the bible say…” it isn’t just irrelevant to the question posed to you, and not germane to the discussion at hand, it looks distinctly like you’re ducking. In other words, I can’t count how many times someone has actually used the bible and then found it somehow all gibberish when asked to back up his claim.
I mean, if the underlying assumptions are faulty in your view, politely stay out of the thread. Most certainly there will be a thread where you can impress us with your knowledge. It looks mighty fishy when the bible is good enough to pound your virtual chest, and somehow an error riddled book of fables when asked to put up or shut up.