Originally posted by dlbrandt
The thing with the Bible is you can't pick the parts you like and deny the parts you don't like. You either believe it all from cover to cover or
you don't.
IMHO that could lead to some serious trouble...
I have had an interest in biblical New testament history for quite some time now and have been reading up on the subject.
When you say "You either believe it all from cover to cover or you don't." you dont leave much room for errors in the Bible do you?
Lets say that you discover an "error" in the New Testament, would that invalidate all your faith you mean?
If I say that Paulus were not in fact the author of several of his letters in the New Testament, would this invalidate your faith? My faith isnt
really shattered about this, since I realise that even though the Bible is a "holy book" the texts were still written, edited and compiled by
humans.
Remember that the canon we have today was chosen around 350 CE (if I recall correctly) and that there were more texts circulating than are included in
"our" New Testament which were used by the early Christians as holy text.
As you may have noticed there is also some quite noticable changes in mood between the Old Testament Jahwe and the New Testament Jesus where the Old
Testament Jahwe seems more bloodthirsty than in New Testament?
I have seen different explanations for this fact, but the most natural explanation (at least in my eyes) is that history have always been written (and
rewritten) by the winner in a war so any description in the Old Testament where "God" tell the Israelites to go into a town or region and kill
everyone, man, women and child just for the sake of it, I would believe was inserted as a way to validate the wars fought between Israel and its
neighbours, not so much that God wanted whole regions slaughered.