I understand by the assertion “the bible is the word of God” that it tells the stories of people who were very close to God and received inspiration directly from God.
Now these old prophets cannot all be spiritually equidistant from God. They must possess varying degrees of nearness to God. Hence some parts of the bible must represent God’s word more truly than others.
If this is so, what parts of the bible do you think fall short of the mark?
I think that the argument goes something like: God has a vested interest in us being able to read his word in uncorrupted form and has therefore played a role in preserving it.
Those who believe in Biblical inerrancy see the prophets, authors, et al of the Bible as basically just stenographers channeling God.
The not-so-literalists think that it’s all inspired, but that it’s filtered through human understanding. The only perfect words of god, from this perspective, are the words of Jesus. As for the veracity of the others, some people will argue that the Bible is sort of evolutionary in it’s understanding of God. The Bible grows more revelatory as it goes along, culminating with JC, of course, and supplemented especially by the commentaries of Paul.
There’s really no hard and fast rule for this, and Christians debate the relative authority of Biblical authors all the time. I think that Polycarp can probably provide some more light on this subject once he finds this thread.
**
Until your last statement above, I might have thought that you were Jewish.
In Jewish tradition, the prophets do have varying degrees of prophetic ability. It is an article of faith, for example, that Moses was the greatest of all prophets and that no other prophet could approach his level. Likewise, some prophets had more “prophetical ability” (for lack of a better term) than others.
In addition, an important distinction between the Pentatuch and the other prophetic books is that we believe that the Pentatuch was dictated to Moses word-for-word by God. The prophecies in the other books, however, are in the prophets’ own words (i.e. God gave them the message, but the words, phrasing and expression of that idea is the prophet’s and reflects his/her time, location and environment.
However, that does not mean that any part of the bible is “less” God’s word than any other. Whether Isaiah decides to use a wolf and lamb metaphor for world peace, or some other metaphor, the idea is still the same. The message is no less accurate.
Zev Steinhardt
Does this not hold water in proving that the bible is not the direct word of God.
a) God is defined as Infallable.
b) The Bible contains repititions, gaps, internal inconsistancies.
ergo: God did not ‘write/dictate/completely control the contents of’ the Bible.
Just a thought, Bippy
Ah, but Bippy. Did you consider the standard response to your comment? Who defines parts of the Bible as inconsistant?
If:
Human logic is our authority on what is and is not logically consistant.
And:
Humans are fallible.
And:
Human logic is created by humans.
Thus:
Human Logic, as a product of fallible beings, may be false.
Thus:
It is possible that some Human Logical conclusions are incorrect.
Therefore:
It is possible that humans are incorrect about inconsistancies in texts.
Has a wonderful internal logic, doesn’t it?
But logic, like pure mathematics, is independant of Humanity. It mearly requires the existance of mind to be derived.
It would be more accurate to say that mind requires the existence of logic in order to be derived.
No TVAA though Logic exists without mind, derivation requires mind. The mind as ‘that which thinks’ is a deffinition, and so does not require logic in and of itself.
‘I think therefor I am.’ is a statement of logic
but ‘I think’ on it’s own is a statement without refference to Logic.
Though of course the idea of any thing existing should logic not exist is very dubious, but it is likely that logic itself is not perfecly known[sup]*[/sup]
Cheers, Bippy
[sup]*[/sup] Set theory and trans finite numbers allready stretch logic considerably, as does quantum mechanics [(the Cat is dead) && (the Cat is alive) = true].
but Bippy, you are positing a universe in which logic is a metaphysical reality. Perhaps this universe does not operate under the rules of logic?*
– Ludovic, who is well on his way to becoming a OTP
Diogenes, wait for Polycarp indeed!
“The bible as the word of God”, if taken in the sense that most mean it is probably a misnomer put out by church’s/ Pastors who know it isn’t fully accurate, but would rather their flock rely on the Bible as a whole document.
When breaking the Bible down, you really have three significant groups of people: Prophets who received the word of God, Historians who attempted to tabulate and collect the word of God, and the ‘saved’ who expressed their opinions on the meaning of the word of God.
Individuals like Moses fall into the first category, Luke and Matthew into the second, and Paul into the third, largely in relation to what they thought was best to do.
Moses did what he did because God told him to, a good enough reason, and naturally someone had the forsight to write this down(Not sure who, Zev, maybe you can clarify?). Paul was continuing the ministry of Christ on earth not too long after Christ died, which is why his work is recorded in letters, not Gospels. Presumably the words of Christ were reasonably fresh having come from the Apostles mouths. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, albeit godly men, were attempting to record a history of Christ from written sources, and whatever living sources may have remained. In this repect, they are not really prophets, but ‘saved’ historians, seeing the need to preserve the words and deeds of Christ for future generations(With the exception of Mark).
Some might argue that John was preserving the ‘way’ of Christ rather than explicit deeds, having more focus than the other authors(IMO) on the means of Christly life.
Just my .02
Now we will wait for Polycarp, so he can correct me.
I think you did a pretty good job, Copa, that sounds like a reasonable way to break it down. 
Polycarp still has me beat on the detail end. But, hey, I’m gettin’ better. 
Let’s muddy the waters further. There are Christians who deny that the Bible can be the Word of God because the Word of God is God ("…and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John.)
Instead, Scripture is seen as “words from God” or “words about God”.
Write what down? The Pentatuch?
Zev Steinhardt
Yeah, Zev, I mean somebody physically wrote it down. I’m not up on Jewish scriptural history, so I wasn’t sure who wrote it down or when.
I mean Moses could have set it down himself, but I didn’t think he did. I wasn’t trying to insinuate anything. We’ve only got part of the Hebrew scripture in the Christian Bible, so I thought I’d defer to you, rather than butcher it. Not just the Pentatuch though, I meant a general rundown of prophets from the Hebrew scriptures and your take on what degree of their work was close to/ far from the word of God. I know you already put some down but I’m finding it really interesting.
I can do the NT pretty well now, but my OT studies are still under the wire.
I think the Christian bible has the entire Tanakh in it, doesn’t it?
Now I feel ignorant. I don’t know how much is really in there, and how much isn’t. I’m seriously thinking the body of Hebrew scripture isn’t in the OT.
I didn’t talk about it, and I’ve already butchered it. Alright! I admit it! I’ve only read the Christian parts!
I’m going to study Hebrew scriptures, I just haven’t gotten to it yet. I’m young! There’s so much to read, and so much to study, and I’m learning Greek, I can’t learn Hebrew at the same time.
Zev, I’m sorry! :smack:
Well, Jewish tradition does say that God dictated the Pentatuch word for word to Moses. Regarding the last eight verses (which deal with Moses’ death, there are two opinions: (1) Moses himself wrote them (before his death, obviously) and (2) Joshua wrote them.
As for the rest of the Jewish bible, the Talmud (Bava Basra, 14b) discusses its authorship (my comments in brackets):
Moses wrote his books as well as the book of Job.
Joshua wrote his own book, as well as the last eight verses of the Pentatuch (the authorship of the end of Joshua is generally ascribed to Elazar and Pinchas).
Samuel wrote Judges, Samuel (with the post-Samuel’s death portion of the book written by Gad [the prophet, not Jacob’s son] and Nasan) and Ruth,
David wrote Psalms (with others).
Jeremiah wrote his book, Kings, and Lamentations
King Hezkiah and his court published Isaiah (as Isaiah was killed before his book could be fully written, as the custom, according to Rashi [the foremost Jewish commentator on the Bible and the Talmud - 1035-1100] was that prophets only wrote their books shortly before their deaths), Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (all three traditionally ascribed to Solomon).
The Men of the Great Assembly (a Jewish body of Sages from the latter part of the Babylonian Exile to the early Second Temple period, which included Hagai, Zechariah, Malachi, Zerubabel and others) published Ezekiel (who lived in exile in Babylonia. Rashi himself admits that he doesn’t know why Ezekiel didn’t write his own book. He postulates that perhaps it is because it was not fitting for prophetical books to be published outside of Israel, and so it was published by the Men of the Great Assembly upon thier return from Exile), the Twelve Minor Prophets (published collectively since it was feared that due to their short size, they would be lost if not published collectively), Daniel (see the explanation regarding Ezekiel), Esther, Ezra (together with Nehemiah) and Chronicles.
Zev Steinhardt
Just to add that Dex and Eutychus pust together an excellent 5 part Staff Report on the subject of who physicaly wrote the various sections of the Bible (back in Jan of 2002).
This is part 1 - the Pentateuch and there are links to the other four parts within…
Grim