Why do people believe in the Bible?

Great Debates
1

Do those of you who believe that the Bible was divinely inspired (written or influenced by God) actually read what is written inside it?

I’m sure there have been many a thread on the contradictions in the Bible (for which there are many) but what about the contradictions of Jesus in the Bible? For example on this website http://www.atheists.org/church/myth.html , it has this quote from Romans which states that Jesus was the son of David not an angel (ie no Virgin birth):

“Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh…” (Romans 1:3)

or how about:

“And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary…” (Matthew 1:16)

and

“And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being … the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli…”(Luke 3:23)

Hold on a minute? Which is it? Is Heli Joseph’s father or is Jacob?

These are just two examples, there are many more. If the Bible is divinely inspired how can these contradictions exist?

(they cite this source: All Bible quotes are from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (Abradale Press, New York). )

Another thing. How do you know that your version of the Bible is in fact the CORRECT version? Throughout time the Bible has been altered and entire books (or chapters) have been added and removed during various power shifts. The current version (KJV) seems to have only existed for about 300 years, not 2000.
http://www.atheists.org/church/realbible.html
The most apropos quote from that site is this:

"As just mentioned, the first problem believers have to face is the problem of which books belong in the Bible, which ones don’t, and how to decide. Actually, it is extremely rare for individuals to decide these questions on their own. Usually they inherit a set of “holy books” from the families they are born into. Catholic children inherit a somewhat ampler number than do Protestant children, and Jewish children get still fewer — thirty-four less than the Catholic kids do. Shortest-changed of all are Samaritan kids. They only get Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and — if they eat their lentils — Joshua. If to be “saved” one needs to have information found, say, in Revelation, 2 Paralipomenon, or Baruch, isn’t it odd of god to let so many people be born into environments deficient in books needed for salvation?
"

BTW I neither work for the atheist site nor do I support it. I literally just stumbled upon it this morning while reading www.fark.com (good site).

I know some of you will dismiss the above link because it is merely from a site created by atheists, I encourage you to open your minds from their narrow perspective and read the above link. I’m not asking you to believe it, just explore your faith fairly and without bias.

So I ask you, why should I believe that the Bible is the work of God? If you choose to use the Bible to support your reasoning, you should justify or correct those contradictions and explain why they exist.

2

“Son of David” means that Jesus was a descendant of David not his actual son.
The differing genealogies in Matthew and Luke are generally explained as being genealogies of Joseph and Mary.
All modern translations of the Bible are done using Greek texts that are more than 1500 years old. A few of these sources are divergent but their is enough agreement to provide a consensus of what the orginal said. People pick the version they like based on what they find most enjoyable or understandable.
The variation between the protestant and catholic canon does not involve any important issues such as salvation but a few minor doctrines.
The answer to the bigger question is that people believe in the Bible because when they read it it resonates in their heart and minds as true and when they put it into practice it works.

3

It is my understanding that the majority of Christians are not literalists, so minor contradictions don’t really matter.

4

Because if you don’t you’ll burn in hell.

Well that and maybe also because they have been brought up in a society of belivers and they want to belive so much that they would ignore a preface explaining that it was all fiction.

imho ofcouse.

// blinx

5

I dunno. Why should you?

One problem with your question as presented is that you are seeking a one-answer-fits-all solution, as if Christianity and Judaism are one or two monolithic structures in which all adherents believe the same things.

Sticking with just Christianity for a moment, there are innumerable views with minor variations that are held by a wide range of disagreeing Christians. Start with the selection of the books (your sources ignored Orthodox Christianity, by the way: they use a couple of books that even the Catholics leave out). The fact that so many people disagree on those points indicates pretty clearly that you cannot get a single answer (that you intend to reject, anyway).

Basically, there is a spectrum of belief that ranges from “The bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God that we know is correct because God would not have allowed (our version) to be corrupted.” all the way through to people who hold that the bible is nothing more than a series of edifying stories that provide us a glimpse of God’s plan (that no human could grasp, anyway).

On that spectrum, I fall a bit closer to those in the second camp than the first, but I have a different approach that is not quite so extreme (which does not remove any objections to my approach, but it does indicate that there are more than merely the two approaches on the extremes).

In my view, God has chosen to speak to people as they lived at any time. The people who were receptive to that “voice” recorded it in terms that they understood. Thus, (for a simplistic example) the ancient Hebrews saw their success in conquering Canaan as the will of God and the later defeats of their various Judean and Israelite kings as signs that they had offended God.

Human knowledge has progressed through the years and stories written at one time would be shocking to another. The people who have perceived God’s voice, however, have kept all those recorded views so that their descendants would have the full range of voices fom which to learn.

In the midst of this accumulating history, we find details that are entirely correct and details that are apparently invented. However, the details are not the voice of God, they are the framework into which God’s voice has been captured at a particular moment. The choice of the canons is guided, in my opinion, by the Spirit of God. Why do they differ? Perhaps because God’s unknowable being needs different voices even at the same time in order to demonstrate His complexity. Protestants may need to hear about the utility of praying for the dead (based on the Catholic acceptance of II Maccabees) while Catholics may need to hear from their Protestant brothers/opponents that an acceptance of Jesus must be a permanent thing.

This, of course, you will find unsatisfying, because I have provided no single fact or argument to refute. It will irritate those on the opposite ends of the belief spectrum as one group will find my views disrespectful to their view of Scripture while the other group will find my views giving too much weight to the concept of Inspiration and the Truth of Scripture. I present it only to show that you cannot get a single answer that will persuade you or that you can reject outright. You can reject it all by stepping back to the position that without a god, the rest is human imagination, of course. But if you want a discussion over how anyone can accept some version of Scripture, you would be safer picking one belief regarding Scripture and debating it. When you point out minor inconsistencies such as the name of Joseph’s father, someone with my perspective is simply going to laugh it off as a typically human inconsistency in the narrative. You need to find an adherent to the notion of literal inerrancy to actually fight over the name of that purported person.

Technical nitpick:

In Christian tradition, Gabriel delivers the message that Mary is pregnant. The pregnancy is the result of God’s action, not that of an angel.

6

On “seed” consider that the Holy Spirit could “vibrate” the DNA in Mary’s egg in such a way that it could be arranged to create any type of man God wanted, and also allow for parthenogenesis, or Virgin Birth.

Scientists Use Virgin Birth Technique

It doesn’t make sense that God’s sperm floated down from Heaven into Mary’s womb – and that idea is also the source of much controversy – but it does make sense, according to what we know in science, that a wave or “vibration” can carry meaningful data to apply on the brain, vocal cords, DNA, or whatever else we are told is acted upon by the Holy Spirit.

My own personal belief in the Bible also is based on things I have experienced for myself.

7

tomndebb said:

Wow. That is so logical and makes so much sense. I wish more religious folks and/or folks who study religion would approach the Bible and all other religious texts like the Qu’ran, the Talmud, and so on in the manner you describe, rather than reading these texts literally. I’m an agonostic and fast becoming an atheist, but I just wanted to say, go on ahead and preach that logical, critical thinking approach to the Bible, hon! :slight_smile:

8

I don’t want to provoke you or anything, but while it may be generally assumed that such and such is true, that doesn’t mean that it is. For instance how do we know that the Church back in the 700’s or so when it was just beginning to gain major popularity didn’t “modify” the Bible to either exclude or include specific material that would directly benefit the Church. What I’m suggesting is that we don’t know what they did. They could have created hell specifically to insure loyalty to scripture and therefore loyalty to Church.

While I’m sure many people subscribe to your answer (the feeling in their hearts) I hate to say this, but many people honestly believe what Nostradamous said was true profecy and not coincidence. I’ve met people who swear that Aliens visit this planet regularly based on a feeling. I don’t mean to belittle your intuition, I’m just adding perspective.

9

[ Simplisticly ] Because we have ancient texts held by people who hate each other in which the texts agree.

For the Old Testament, we have the differences/similarities of the (Hebrew) Masoretic recension (completed around the tenth century) to compare against the oldest Christian manuscripts and translations into other languages, such as Syriac, as well as the texts from the second and first century B.C.E. from the Qumran scrolls.
For the New Testament, we have the various Greek, Coptic, Latin, and Syriac versions dating back to at least the fourth century.

There are, indeed, some differences among the various books. However, it is not that difficult (within a cautious scholar’s tentative conclusions) to reconstruct the most likely later additions or deletions.

Does this mean that there could have been no changes to, say, the letters of Paul between 50 C.E. and 425 C.E.? No. However, it makes it unlikely that there have been radical changes of the sort that people who held other copies would have tolerated. If, for example, St. Ambrose in Rome had decided to have a new copy of the letter to the Romans written to establish the primacy of Peter in Rome, he could have had some copies of the Greek and, perhaps, the Latin Vulgate written to say what he intended. However, the Christians in Antioch and Alexandria would have never changed their Greek versions to make him happy and the Coptic and Syriac churches (who were already in the midst of separating from what would later be the Catholic and Orthodox divisions) would have simply ignored him. When we find that the Syriac version gives a fairly good translation of the Greek version, that indicates that neither group changed the texts.

10

In reference to:

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by tomndebb *
Your first two paragraphs are noted and understood. You are correct that I have limited the range by creating those constructs, if I hadn’t I’m sure the discussion would exploded exponentially.

I love your view of God speaking to all people in any time period. Seriously, I think that’s a refreshing viewpoint that I haven’t heard before. That being said though, when you stated:

“When you point out minor inconsistencies such as the name of Joseph’s father, someone with my perspective is simply going to laugh it off as a typically human inconsistency in the narrative.”

Assuming the work was divinely inspired and meant for people throughout time, why would there be inconsistencies such as the minor Joseph issue to the major Virgin birth issue? Why would there be any inconsistencies at all? Further, why would the Old Testament encourage corporal punishment (stoning homosexuals and such) and at the same time have the Sermon on the Mound (turn the other cheek.) Speaking of the Sermon, Jesus was quoted later as saying:

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I [Jesus] tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.” (Luke 12:51-2)

“Think not that I [Jesus] have come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34)

“…for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)

“…and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” (Luke 22:36)

What happened to turning the other cheek? Peace, love and forgiveness?
Also back to the David issue. The quote is this:

“Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh…” (Romans 1:3)

Which uses the word “seed” not descended from. All the times I’ve ever heard the word “seed” used it has been in reference to sperm, not descendent.

11

There are many places where the word seed means descendant and not literal son or daughter.

God promised the land of Israel to Abraham’s seed. It obviously does not mean only Isaac but his descendants.

The priestly duties are described as applying to those of the “seed of Aaron.” It doesn’t mean just Aaron’s sons, but all his descendants.

Zev Steinhardt

12

LiquidLobotomy:

Yes, or more importantly, many of us have studied it. It’s true that a surface reading yields contradictions or ambiguities. However, this is a document which has been passed down - and this is true whether you believe it was divinely authored or whether you believe it was authored by multiple humans and then redacted - through thousands of years, hundreds of generations, studied by millions of scholars. These folks didn’t discard it, they understood it and at some point, recorded their understandings in writing so future generations would understand what previous generations had taken for granted.

By contrast, these wise-ass atheist web sites (and other-media sources) which delight in listing what they see as contradictions, read what they see and walk away, preferring to think of - and perpetuate an image of - religious believers as idiots, ignoring the heavy thought and study recorded in huge libraries and continued in seminaries of all religions on a worldwide basis.

Why do I believe? Because when my father and my teachers taught it to me, they gave me the background and tools to understand what I’m looking at…something that “atheists.org” and its ilk pride in their ignorance of.

13

Well, from my perspective (which differs from that of cmkeller’s, for example), God did not inspire the story, itself. God inspired the event that some human wrote as a story in their words. So, God did not lean down and tell Luke (or Moses) to write a specific narrative with specific facts. God created an event–the life of Jesus, the Exodus and desert sojourn–and inspired Luke or Moses (or some later person) to present a life of Jesus or a description of the flight from Egypt. (Limiting further desfcription to the New Testament) Luke then went out, borrowed materials from Mark, materials from Q, and stories he may have heard from Mary or friends of Mary and put it into a readable narrative in his own fashion. God was interested in people knowing that he had made Himself human for their salvation. The specifics–particularly as Luke would incorporate them into the story–were not high on God’s wish list of things to express. This is the whole point of noting that people recorded things as they perceived God’s voice as opposed to the viewpoint that God directly inspired the words of the text. (And the notion that we have to “figure out” what God intended us to know is what drives those who accept (or demand) that the Scriptures be viewed literally; they are very concerned that if we decide what is “real” or “story” we will impose our own errors on God’s word.)

14

I don’t know what happened to my earlier post but here it is again:

I hate to argue but I think you’re mistaken. The dead sea scrolls for one weren’t even thought to exist until fairly recently (I think 1970s or 80s or so), frankly we don’t know what there was out there. I’m not sure how much of the dead sea scrolls have been translated, but who’s to say that these scrolls don’t contradict the existing Bible? I’ve heard (rumors mind you) that there is reference in the DSS that John the Baptist was the true Christ- not a minor sticking point! (While that may be a rumor it does illustrate my point.)

Once again I think it’s a mistaken assumption to say,

“There are, indeed, some differences among the various books. However, it is not that difficult (within a cautious scholar’s tentative conclusions) to reconstruct the most likely later additions or deletions.”

Look at Cecil’s column on the book of Job or any of his columns describing “who wrote the bible”. He concluded that the book of Job is assumed to have been written by no less than 4 different people, possibly at different times. Based on that (and the "who wrote the bible series ((parts I - V))) illustrate just how difficult it is to conduct any analysis on these ancient books.

15

I don’t doubt you’ve studied the Bible. But you yourself admit that it has been passed down throughout hundreds of generations. Throughout time it has been changed. Those who objected to it’s changing formed new churches or were killed (hence the inquisition). Which makes it a very political vehicle and therefore anyone who did find a problem with the “official” Church version were persecuted. Religious freedom is a relatively NEW phenomena. People were not free to study and teach alternative versions (Inquisition was all on top of that.)

I’m not saying religious believers are idiots- far from it. You may have taken something I’ve said personally which was not my intent. I do not know much about “atheists.org” or for that matter much about the “atheist movement” in general. What I do know is that Christianity has undergone many face lifts throughout time. Whatever happened to purgatory for instance (Catholic reference)?

I’m sure my descendents believed many things which are no longer held to be true. Black holes weren’t even discovered until recently, but the theory has been around for 30 years. My grandfather tried to teach me that anti matter was nonsense as well as “general” evolution. His tools included the Bible which makes no mention of evolution. Does that mean he’s right because it was tradition to believe in creationism as such? (Old form of creationism- I don’t know the present day creationist beliefs.)

16

>It doesn’t make sense that God’s sperm floated down from Heaven into Mary’s womb
Why not? That sort of thing happened all the time in ancient Greece. :wink:

Regarding the Sermon on the Mount (not Mound) vs. later claims that may seem to support violence: yes, those used to bother me, too, especially the “I come not to send peace but a sword” bit. However, I’ve thought about them quite a lot in the last couple of years, and I think I’ve got a solution worked out:

Jesus was telling the truth about the divisiveness thing. His teachings and claims did bring about divisiveness, both directly (dividing Jews and Christians almost immediately) and indirectly (dividing, for example, Catholics and Protestants later on), perhaps more divisiveness than any other one person’s teachings in history. Jesus obviously knew that his teachings would, whether he intended it or not, inspire divisiveness–the “sword” he came to bring–and admitted so to his followers in quotes like the ones you mentioned.

Yes, taken out of context, these quotes look like Jesus is advocating violence and war. But! look at them in the context of “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (did I get that right? I’m going from memory here) from the Sermon on the Mount. Here’s what I think Jesus meant: Yes, Jesus did bring about divisiveness. That’s obvious, whether he intended it or not. It is up to us to rise above the turmoil that resulted from the divisiveness and bring about peace in spite of it, which, I think, is what Jesus would have wanted.

In other words, Jesus gave us the sword, and it is our duty not to use it as a sword, but to beat it into a plowshare.

I am reminded of a story I once heard about a certain church in some bombed-out city in WWII France, or possibly Germany, I don’t remember. The point is, when the war was over, the folks that ran the church came back to rebuild, and they found that most of the church was destroyed. This they could rebuild. However, the centerpiece of their church, a small and very old statue of Jesus, was another question. It had been left otherwise intact but was missing its hands due to the bombings. Their dillemma was this: should they add new hands and risk the possibility that it wouldn’t look much like it used to, or leave it unchanged without hands?

They finally decided to put the statue out in the garden, unrepaired, with a sign that said “You Are My Hands.”

-=-Barnabas

17

Hi Barnabas_Truman. The debate over “begotten” and “unique” Son of God is at the heart of many conflicts, especially between Jews and Christians. If the Bible says that God’s Word created everything (in Genesis and John, for example), then the notion that it could become flesh by altering DNA should not be hard for any believer to accept. That should also quiet objections to the more sexual type of pagan god Christianity seems to suggest.

Unfortunately, Revelation also says that humanity won’t achieve this on its own.

18

**

Well, I’ll address this from the Jewish perspective, because cmkeller (and myself) are Jewish.

The Jewish bible was compiled in it’s final form about 2100-2200 years ago. Please provide a cite that the Jewish Bible has changed substantialy in that time.

And, BTW, 2200 years is about sixty six generations… hardly hundreds. And no one (except for the Christians, of course) has tried to substantially change the Jewish Bible (they, of course, added the NT and, in some churches, the Apocrypha).

**

Sorry. In asking cmkeller that, you’ve asked the wrong person. We don’t conduct “inquisitions.”

Zev Steinhardt

19

BTW, Chaim, please forgive me for barging in on your debate. I just couldn’t let that pass…

Zev Steinhardt

20

The scrolls were found in the late 1940s. All of the complete scrolls and all the larger fragments have already been translated (for well over 30 years). They include all but a very few segments of the entire Hebrew bible and they are in very close agreement (sometimes word-for-word) with almost all of it–with the specific sections that disagree already noted. The point of looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls is that for years we had only the Masoretic reconstruction to compare/contrast aainst the various Christian translations, yet when we did find the scrolls, they demonstrated that the Masoretic texts were accurate. (The specific places where the Qumran Scrolls differ from the Masoretic text are in a few passages from the latest-written books–the ones most likely not yet set into their unchanging canonical form.)

With your comment regarding Job, you appear to be confusing two separate issues. One issue, “how many people created the works we have?” is relevant to those who hold for a single author, but irrelevant to me. I am willing to acknowledge that some older works were re-worked to get to the version we know, today. Sticking to the New Testament: it is clear that the gospels of Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark and from a now lost tradition or document that we call Q (German quelle: source). There are indications that some of Paul’s longer letters might have undergone some re-working, as well. However, the versions that have come down to us are the versions accepted by some very early group of Christians. Similarly, the Torah/Pentateuch may have be re-written in different ways up until the time of the return from the Babylonian Captivity. From that point, however, the version that we use is the one that has been the expression of the belief of the people at that time.

Since copyright laws were not in effect and it was the common practice in antiquity to append one’s thoughts to the works of someone already respected (both to elevate the importance of one’s own work and to display humility by not claiming credit for the ideas) I have no doubt that some works have had modifications following their first writing. However, the subsequent authors are engaging in the same activity as the original authors–they are placing an understanding of an event or a concept into their own words. Where the spirit of God enters the picture is when the group recognizes His word in what has been written.

The second question is whether any group deliberately re-wrote some section of what had already been accepted to their own purposes. This question is the one that I answered. While it is physically possible for this to have occurred at some point, it is unlikely for the reasons I have already outlined. As noted, within the early Christian community there were several groups, often competing with each other, who each had copies of the various works of Scripture. Had one group created a changed version, it would be seriously out of synch with the other surviving versions. In the same way, Judaism had different schools, first in Jerusalem and Babylon, later in Alexandria (from which we get a Greek translation known as the Septuagint) and other locations. Had one group set out to create a separate version, it would have been in conflict with the versions held by other groups. To the extent that there are a few differences between the Masoretic text and the scrolls from Qumran, we have a fairly decent idea of how most of those changes were introduced.
(I am not claiming 100% infallible accuracy–only that we have a good understanding of where and why changes occur.)

Well, the Inquisition, per se, was a relatively new phenomenon even in Christianity, beginning only a few years prior to the Protestant Reformation. It is true that various “truths” were held out as “correct” (often under pain of death) there was no official arm of the church to enforce that until the Renaissance. However, even with the notion of enforcing orthodoxy, the church (however it is defined) was never able to suppress all heterodoxy or heresy: the Catholic/Orthodox split, the earlier separation of the Coptic and Syriac churches, and several other smaller divisions have testified to that.

Expanding on Zev’s point, Judaism has not engaged in that sort of activity, to begin with. There have been great debates within Judaism regarding the meaning and purpose of passages of Scripture or the rules and principles derived from them. On a few occasions, there has been a scholar of the magnitude of Maimonides who has laid down princples that have been accepted by various councils as holding the “correct” view. However, they have never had a policy or a procedure to suppress thought–and the great bulk of the Talmud is composed of their arguments and disagreements laid out for everyone to read and review for all time.