I did not want to hijack Esprix’s Refuting Scripture thread, so consider this a spinoff.
In the above mentioned thread Zev Steinhardt states in various posts:
I would assume cmkeller agrees with these statements. And several Christians, including Friend of God, would carry this conviction forward to the New Testament.
While I don’t doubt the sincerity of your beliefs, I can’t fathom how someone can have such complete faith in ancient texts. How are you so confident in your conviction that the Bible (Pentateuch for Jews and NT for Christians) is the infallible Word of God?
It all basically boils down to “my father told me.”
Jews have long had traditions, passed down from father to son. One of those traditions is that God spoke to us on Mount Siani and gave us the Torah. Another is that the Torah that we had at the end of the forty years’ wandering in the wilderness is the same one we have now.
How do I know this? My father told me.
How did he know this? His father told him.
And so on, and so on, back to Mount Sinai.
It’s pretty clear from the Bible that the Jews are “jus’ plain stubborn folk.” Had someone, say, 500 years later tried to tell them “Hey, you know, 500 years ago, this guy named Moses went up on Mount Sinai and got the Torah…,” they would have asked “well, how come my father never told me about it? Wouldn’t he have told me about this important historic event?”
I know this is not proof in the empirical sense. I’m not out to convince anyone else of my beliefs. But, however, you wanted to know how I can be sure of an ancient text. My father told me.
And it’s important to understand that the Torah is itself unchanged since Sinai. While the vast majority of Christians do not learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to study their scriptures, the majority of Jews DO learn Hebrew to study and understand the Torah. As a result, the Pentateuch has not been translated and retranslated–and the Hebrew language has not changed dramatically over the millennia.
Here’s a good site that lays out the arguments for and against Biblical inerrancy and infallibility, written from a Christian perspective: http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/inerranc.htm
I don’t mean to pick on zev, since he basically admitted that this is not empirical evidence, but this is still specious reasoning.
According to the Japanese, the Emperor is the descendent of the Sun Goddess herself. How do they know this? Because their fathers told them, and their fathers told them, etc.
Most modern Japanese have realized that this is just a myth, regardless of how long it’s been around.
Norse myth teaches that the world was created from the slain body of Ymir. How do the Norse know this? You know!
At some point, we have to realize that ancient traditions are poor evidence, especially when they contradict one another!
Everyone is willing to admit that everybody else’s traditional stories are not true, but not their own! This is highly illogical.
Furthermore, we have archaeological and literary evidence which contradicts such traditions. Most people have realized that the evidence for evolution should take precedence over their particular tribe/country’s creation myth. Shouldn’t they do the same with other such stories?
In case anyone here is planning on responding that certain things like the Exodus can only be taken on faith, I’ll preemptorily rebut by saying that this just isn’t so. There are mountains of evidence telling us about the past. Read The Bible Unearthed to see what we’ve learned about early Israelite history that contradicts the Bible. Check out http://www.awitness.org/bible.html to see the extensive evidence that the Bible is not the word of God, inspired down to the very letter, but rather a mish-mash of various (often contradictory) traditions clumsily edited together.
P.S. To andros: the Hebrew language has changed dramatically over the years. I’m sure someone else can fill you in on the details.
Interjecting my own opinion; I do believe the Pentateuch was written by God or at least parts of it was. I think the Decalogue was direct divine revelation, much of the rest was written by men, either under divine guidance or simply using the “voice of God” to add weight to then prominent social customs.
I think the real secret is ferreting out which is which. Jewish custom holds the Pentateuch was wholly written by God; atheists hold that it’s entirely written by men. I think the truth is somewhere inbetween.
I would disagree. I think I know what you mean, but andros’ point is valid. Hebrew was not a commonly spoken language for thousands of years, and was generally used for religious purposes. People didn’t have friendly chats in Hebrew. As a result, it stayed pretty much the same, because its purpose had not been altered.
Modern Hebrew was invented by Eliezer Ben-Yehudah in the early part of the 20th century. It is quite different from Biblical Hebrew, but not so dissimilar that an Israeli couldn’t read it. I would guess that the primary difference is that Biblical Hebrew future and past are written in the same tense (past tense in Modern Hebrew). I have personally studied only Modern Hebrew, and am only so-so at it, but even I can follow along with the Torah pretty well at services. Which reminds me, hag sameach!
Apologies for the hijack. This is not really an important facet of the debate.
zev has given you the best answer you’ll probably ever get to a question like this – an honest answer.
The thing is, Homebrew, IMHO, such complete faith cannot be fathomed by any one who has never experienced it. I have never experienced it, myself.
I’m agnostic (tilted towards atheism) and I tend to read the bible – the OT, at least – as a warning of the dangers of believing in a god, of abdicating responsibilty for your own actions.
Poor Moses believed and what did it get him? Forty years in the wilderness listening to his people squabble and bitch and moan, and then an unmarked grave just before things took a turn for the better. Abraham was going to kill his own son because he thought god was talking to him. Saul, David, Joseph and his brothers – these are all stories of irony… and the moral ain’t all that complicated either; if you follow the advice of people who hear voices, you’re gonna end up in a mess. Again, MHO.
The very fact that I intend to post what I have just written – post it below zev’s statement that he’s not out to convince anyone – makes me question if I’ll ever be as comfortable in my unbelief as he and others are in their beliefs.
I respect the ability to simply be as one is, to be able to answer questions about one’s belief system honestly and without the need to preach… religious folk ain’t the only preachers in the world.
jm
[sub]I’m not real sure how well his Wolves are gonna do, though.[/sub]
“My father told me” is very similar to my experience of the Bible growing up, but what “my father” told me was that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. What does that mean, according to “my father”? It means that that humans wrote the Bible through inspiration from God. The key point was that in human writing, according to “my father,” human prejudice entered and obscured, and even occasional distorted, the Word.
Does that invalidate the Word? Not at all, but it requires study, and interpretation. It requires self-awareness, it requires listening to others. It requires distillation and finding the essential core that has been buried under layers of human uncertainty, anger, fear, and hate. It means that we often misinterpret, both individually and as a society, but we keep coming back to it and trying again. Sometimes we impose a new prejudice on the Word, a prejudice that didn’t exist 3000 years ago, or 2,000 years ago, or even a couple of decades ago. And so we must keep interpreting, and sometimes it means we must disregard parts of the Word because the human muck overwhelms the essential core.
What I believe is the essential core is something for another GD.
So, no, I don’t think the Scriptures were written by God. But I do think God provided a lot of the background material. And like zev, I believe “what my father told me.”
It is my understanding that there is some question (and has been for centuries) about some of the Hebrew writings. As it was explained to me, there are Judaic scholars that argue over just what that original word was and exactly what it meant, just as Christian scholars do over their Greek texts.
Aside from the definitional changes (i.e., a common word whose meaning changes over time, or a word that drops out of usage and whose meaning therefore must be taken from context), there is the problem of nonexistent Hebrew vowels. Vowel notation didn’t enter Hebrew writing until sometime in the latter half of the first millennium CE & the lack has caused some questions about some of the texts.
That’s not even counting the pilpul arguments over contextual meaning that Judaic scholars so love.
I think this is a relevant point. If your reason for belief is “this is what my father told me and it must be true because it’s been handed down verbatim for generations”, then there’s a problem when we have evidence that the ‘verbatim’ ain’t as exact as one might want to think. Of course, that probably won’t change anyone’s beliefs and I wouldn’t expect it to, but it does matter to someone trying to understand the reasoning behind the beliefs.
Of course, if I’m totally wrong about all of the above, I’m sure someone will let me know.
IANAJ, IANAC. I do not agree at all that any portions of the Bible, Old Testament or Christian Testament, are literal or inerrant.
But the argument “my father told me” does carry a lot more weight when supported. This ain’t just oral tradition here, folks–even non-Jewish scholars agree that the Torah has been around, essentially unchanged, for a loooooong time.
Christian inerrancy, IMO, is more a leap of faith than Jewish, honestly. With the Pentateuch, once one accepts on faith that Moses took dictation directly from G-d, the rest is gravy. With the New Testament, we approach the realms of detailed recorded history. We have records of the synods and meetings which determined what was and was not canon, and records of the writings that didn’t make the cut. We know that the boks of the NT were written after the Christ’s death, some many years after. And we know they were written by many different people. The questions that are raised are more numerous and varied than with Mosaic law and the Torah. And, again IMO, the requirements of faith greater.
It was written by God through men. Kind of like you could argue that my keyboard wrote this post. It wrote just like a keyboard in its own unique style, different from a pencil, pen, marker, crayon, or paint. But it writes what I want it to. It was passed down. You know about your great great great etc etc relatives because it was passed down from your family. The only difference is we also have the Bible/Torah and whats passed down to us by our families and Christians and Jews.
Jersey, either we’re unthinking automatons, barely one step removed from your keyboard (which would make this debate irrelevant), or we’re thinking, feeling humans with free will to the extent that our biochemistry allows, with biases and prejudices and axes to grind, and hence more than enough willingness and opportunity to edit our crap into the Word and pass it off as truth.
Either God is clumsy and not too bright, thus the clear contradictions and gaps in the Word, or imperfect humans have in fact stepped in and mucked the Word up with the aforementioned biases, prejudices and axes to grind.
Frankly, the second option in both above circumstances is obviously the case.
Which isn’t to say that the truth isn’t hiding in the Word. It just means you have to work to find it, and if you’re not careful, you’ll get caught up in some very dangerous untruths.
And you gotta watch quoting the Bible to prove the inerrancy of the Bible. That kind of circular reasoning will get you nowhere.
Jersey, either we’re unthinking automatons, barely one step removed from your keyboard (which would make this debate irrelevant), or we’re thinking, feeling humans with free will to the extent that our biochemistry allows, with biases and prejudices and axes to grind, and hence more than enough willingness and opportunity to edit our crap into the Word and pass it off as truth.**
Another point: Why use a metaphorical keyboard if you can make text magically appear on a metaphorical screen? Or, why doesn’t God make public appearances? I’m talking clouds parting, voice from the sky public appearences.
Excellent point. I’ve never heard a decent argument against direct communication from God. As the OP intimates, relying on generations of oral traditions eventually written down just doesn’t seem to cut it. Can’t God do any better than that?
We don’t even need clouds parting. How about a quiet message in everyone’s head, along with a feeling of utmost calm and peace. That way we don’t have to deal with any panic, which always seems to be a reason offered for why God doesn’t part the clouds and talk from up high.
If this were to occur, you wouldn’t have people like me making a mistake in judgement about whether there is a god or isn’t a god based on imperfect information. After all, what if I make a mistake, and teach my children to follow the wrong god because I didn’t know any better. Boy, wouldn’t that suck. All very preventable.
I can see no benefit to giving people imperfect information other than that God likes a good game of dice. That’s really what imperfect information does; it just injects an element of chance into the game of life, thereby removing our eternal destiny from our own control…assuming we have an eternal destiny. On my bad days, faith seems to be just another word for rolling the dice.
Assuming arguendo that Christ was God-made-man and did perform miracles among us, he ran into the problem that people STILL didn’t buy it. Hell, he cured a leper on the sabbath, and all the Pharisees could do was nitpick about how he labored contrary to the Law.
I can’t speak for God, but there’s that old rule about “You shall not put God to the test.” When Christ met Satan in the desert, he was challenged to toss himself from a cliff so the angels could catch him. Christ’s response was that we’re not supposed to put direct “prove it” challenges to got…mostly, as I understand it, because us lowly humans aren’t in a position to do that.
Speaking for the Catholics, we believe Christ is physically present in the consecrated bread & wine. (Yeah, yeah…it’s a leap that could and probably will touch off a whole new GD thread.) Hey, it’s a public appearance, albeit without the booming voice.
