Is the bible the divine word of god?

reply to post by Nightaudit


Who wants to argue?
You claim that the words you read were garbage. I am just trying to clarify what was written.

@adjensen

How can a creed decide anything?

well, the creed seems to be an authority on as to what one needs to believe order to be a 'christian', ___________________________________________Also, I wanted to know on what basis does one interpret Bible verses as 'literal' and 'metaphorical'. Two christians can claim to read the Bible holistically.. and yet can disagree on an important topic like whether hell is literal or not. Both cant be right. So on what basis does something become ''literal'' or ''metaphorical''? or can the process of interpreting be arbitrary?

There are problems with the premise and responses for this thread for a simple basic issue; Most people cannot read Ancient Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek...the original languages of the bible. The KJV version of the Bible is a disaster, and there is evidence translations were tilted to benefit the Monarchy and ruling classes of Europe at the time.
In its original verbiage, the Bible outlines very different ideals than what is commonly accepted in English nightmarish translations. if you want to truly understand what the Bible is trying to convey it must be studied in its original language, a painstaking process that will take decades.

This being said, we can trace historical events and how they influenced the Old testament, the beliefs and people that would become Israel, and how they came to believe in monotheism instead of polytheistic beliefs they had practiced for generations. The Bible was written over thousands of years and influenced by Zoroastrian and Pagan beliefs, Sumerian and Akkadian cultures and practices, Assyrian and Indus valley beliefs and practices, African beliefs, so many cultures and religions. Hebrews and ancient Christians borrowed heavily from everyone they came across and we can trace these events through History. It is plain to see much of the Bible are stories agreed upon by religious, government, and military leaders for their own personal gain such as Emperor Constantine, early Popes, the eradication of the Cathars, etc.

Is the Bible Divine..?

The intent of the Bible certainly can be said to be divine, as were the many cultures and beliefs that contributed to the creation of the Bible. But in of itself, the Bible are collected works some of which occurred thousands of years before individuals in the Bible attributed to a particular event were even alive.

The Timeline of the Bible cannot be rectified ( god does not make mistakes), so the Bible itself cannot be attributed to God. The intent of the Bible however, can be divine.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Two christians can claim to read the Bible holistically.. and yet can disagree on an important topic like whether hell is literal or not.

First, I don't think that two people who are reading the text holistically are going to come up with radically different views of God. Second, who cares if people disagree? You seem to think that reading the Bible is some sort of test, and if you goof it up, you're condemned.

Unlike the Jews, who believe that they come to salvation though the Torah, and you Muslims, who believe the same thing, except that the book is the Koran, Christians are saved through Jesus, not through the Bible. Though scripture is fine for teaching, it is not necessary for salvation.

reply to post by adjensen

First, I don't think that two people who are reading the text holistically are going to come up with radically different views of God.

They could.
Jim could conclude that hell is literal and that God punishes the wicked with hellfire.
Mike could conclude that hell is metaphorical and that God doesn't punish with hellfire.
So they could end up with 2 radically different views of God.

Woodcarver
First off, i do not mean to offend anyone. I am just trying to see and show how many different opinions there are on this subject. I personally dont believe in any gods and i see the bible as a collection of ancient novels that were written by primitive people who genuinly believed what they wrote. There is some historic value to be gleened from these stories, but how do we separate the facts from the opinions? (Also i am writing this on an iphone so.... You know. )

Who here thinks that every word in the bible is the divinely inspired words of god? Old and new testament.

Now i know some people dont. People have various ideas of how to interpret these books to get the meaning which they can agree with the most, but for those who do believe that every word is the divine word of god, i have a few questions.

Do you think god and jesus are one and the same? If so then does jesus condone the horrible murders, rapes, slavery, and sacrifices attributed to god in the old testament?

Do you think the hundreds of commandments given to the jewish people in the old testament are still relevant to modern christians?

If you dont believe that every word in the bible is divine revelation, Then how can you tell which words are divine, and which are to be seen as metaphor, or symbolic?

Are you allowed to interpret that for yourself?
So is every interpretation correct? Most would say no. So then does it come down to individual interpretations? Which means that none of it can be trusted because everyone interprets these words differently. So you have to look at it skeptically. Thats when you notice things like donkeys talking, and thousands of dead rising from their graves, people walking on water, changing one substance into another, so on and so on, until you realise that none of it is based in reality and people were just writing down what they thought was the truth.

How do you rationalise all the inconsistancies?

My Answer on this, at this moment of time, (and i hope im wrong) is:

There are but only 2 views on the bible (and other religions textes).
2 Choices that everyone for themselfes make.
One is the good in it, the other is the bad.
What you look on will show you the world.

There are no inconsistancies. If you see some, you are wrong.
Life is an interactive movie, or better interactive Dream (which you need yet to discover and to change for better for everyone)

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Jim could conclude that hell is literal and that God punishes the wicked with hellfire.
Mike could conclude that hell is metaphorical and that God doesn't punish with hellfire.
So they could end up with 2 radically different views of God.

That is not a holistic reading, that is the personal interpretation of one part of scripture.

adjensen
Though scripture is fine for teaching, it is not necessary for salvation.

Exactly. The Old-Testament-legalistic-mentality in regards to scripture has no place in Christianity.

The OP asked ... is the bible the divine Word of God?
Some is. Some is myth. Some is folklore. Some is allegory.
That's how it was written and that's how it's supposed to be read.
The vast majority of Christians agree with this statement.

Some non-Christians don't understand and try to impose their own notions on how to read scripture. But it doesn't work that way. The bible wasn't written for reading it any way other than reading each book in the individual flavor it was written in.

@ adjensen---''That is not a holistic reading, that is the personal interpretation of one part of scripture. ''--- one part of scripture that leads to 2 different views of God. So what is your take on hell? Does everybody who claims to read the bible holistically share your view on hell?

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Does everybody who claims to read the bible holistically share your view on hell?

How could I possibly know that?

Again, whether hell exists has nothing to do with Christian salvation.

@ adjensen---''How could I possibly know that?

Again, whether hell exists has nothing to do with Christian salvation.'' --- then it is possible that 2 christians CAN arrive at 2 different conclusions despite reading the Bible 'holistically'.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


As the nature of hell is irrelevant for salvation, who cares?

Seriously, you're arguing over minutia that doesn't make any difference.

No it is not the word of god. The old testament is written by a people who thought they were more important than everyone else. Their agricultural god was the better god. All religions are based on the sun or moon cycles and the zodiac. The year is divided in four seasons. Going from the return of life(spring) back to death in the winter. Hence the wreath(represents death) on your door at Christmas time and the Christmas or evergreen tree represents life. The death of the sun and the return to life of the sun......so merry mythmas

Woodcarver
Who here thinks that every word in the bible is the divinely inspired words of god? Old and new testament.

I had a supernatural encounter in 1979 that left me KNOWING without any question that the Bible was written by GOD.

My experience was enough to convince me 100% but since then, I have read about many others who have had very similar experiences.

IF the Bible were not the "Word of God", WHY does He so often tell people to read it?

A few examples:

"Didn’t you read my book?"

"You don't believe my word the Bible..."

"an audible voice telling him to read a Bible..."

As I stood there in the front of the church weeping and weeping, huge weights were being lifted from my back, my life and my mind. I was literally being cleansed and purified supernaturally by the Lord Jesus Christ as I was repenting of my sins, and I was filled with such tremendous love, joy and peace.

The Lord spoke two things to me there. The first was that every Word in the Bible was true, and the second was that I would never die. I was floating after that for eight years, and the Bible came alive to me and the words leaped off of the pages and literally exploded into my brain. happy707.wordpress.com...

Praying all night in the mosque, he asked God to help him. Suddenly he felt drops of oil falling on him and even smelled its fragrance, he says. He claims another time he heard an audible voice telling him to read a Bible—an abomination to a Muslim. “We would not touch a modern-day Bible,” he says. “This voice immediately put a desire in my heart. It is so vivid, so clear, so overwhelming. Still today, I could not forget that voice.”

Why Revival is Exploding Among Muslims

CJ's Testimony of a Face to Face Encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ

This quote is the key point: "You don't believe my word the Bible."

"It's My responsibility as God to protect My word for you."

Dr. Richard Eby was a professor and obstetrician who fell off a second story balcony in Chicago and hit his head and died instantly and found himself in Paradise. When he came back to a bloodless corpse in the hospital morgue, the athiest Doctor refused to believe he was alive and told him to 'shut up and don't give me any of that #' because he knew that Eby had been taken into the hospital as a totally bloodless dead body.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Jesus, where am I？I gasped！ Suddenly in a new body in a new place with new life, I was ecstatically joyful: no pain, no tears, no sorrow, no memory.

Instantly, before I could complete my query, that same Voice in a tone of gentle thunder echoed within my head:　"Didn’t you read my book？"

　　He was speaking to me (in fact, in me) with a speed greater than lightning, and in a language of sweet purity unlike anything that an earthly tongue could utter. I gasped again. I had HIS MIND, impossible as it seemed！ Every word clearly meant exactly what was being said. We seemed to have a joint mind: I would ask, and He would answer. (The speed of this communication in such a MIND is hard to describe in human terms. Perchance I can now liken it to a printed page on which the questions being typed have the answers typed upon them, line upon line, at the same time, instantly.)

　　Yeshua began His answer: "If you had read My Book you would have known all the answers."

"In fact, everything that My children need to know about how God thinks and works and judges and rewards, either before or after the Cross, is already in My Book. That is why I commanded mankind to ‘engrave My Words upon their hearts,’ and to pass them along from generation to generation. I wanted everyone to hear and know just Who I AM, the Messiah, their one hope of Salvation, their Most High God."

Dr. Richard Eby dies, visits heaven, and returns with a startling message

reply to post by Murgatroid


And yet not all NDE's yield that result. Why is that?

reply to post by Nightaudit

I honestly cannot understand how any free thinking individual can accept that as the word of god, or even as INSPIRED by god. Do you really accept the god of the old testament as your god?

The fulfillment of prophecy in the Bible is irrefutable proof that the Bible is in fact divinely inspired.

The laws of probability have proven that the Bible is a supernatural book.

"Perhaps the most compelling of evidences demonstrating that the Bible is the word of God is its unswerving ability to accurately predict future events, often in minute details. Specific prophesies are conspicuously absent from the 26 other religious books that claim to be scripture, including the Muslim's Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Hindu Vedas, and Buddhist writings. This in itself should be a major eye-opener to the honest skeptic. "

Accuracy Of Prophecy

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

then it is possible that 2 christians CAN arrive at 2 different conclusions despite reading the Bible 'holistically'.

Yes. But it is well established now that there is NO HELL.

The hell myths were taken over bodily from pagan mythology. But even the ancient historians knew the hell myth was a fabrication created to keep the people in line. Polybius, the ancient history, called the myth “contrived”:

Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions.
Polybius' statements sound very much like the rationale the church had for adopting the hell myth and using it to keep parishioners in line.

The famous ancient historian Seneca termed the hell myths a “fable”:

Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc., are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors."

Sextus Empiricus called them "poetic fables of hell."

Cicero spoke of them as "silly absurdities and fables" (ineptiis ac fabulis).

Strabo, the ancient geographer, described the same justification for “the punishments the gods are said to inflict on offenders,” calling the creations “superstitions”:

The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds. For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and all the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue—but this must be done by superstition, or the fear of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (of the Furies), the dragons, etc., are all fables, as is also all the ancient theology. These things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude.

These fables and myths were taken up eagerly by the church to convert the unbelievers and keep the believers in line, even though the pagan writers themselves thought them to be ridiculous.

30ce.com...

Good grief, Sk0rp, when...WHEN...are you going to give this up? You've been schooled by those who know better.. Please, please, lighten the hell up.



another good source for ancient documentation:
what-the-hell-is-hell.com...

I don't know,
but i don't think so

The creator God wrote in stone because the Israelites didn't want to "hear"(revelation) .They wanted Moses to tell them what The creator God said and so that's what they got....the 2nd hand version...written in stone, then with ink ,now with 1's and 0's and believed as the infallible bible "the word of God". However the "bible" is not the scriptures.It is translations of what is known of the scriptures (right and wrong). It is impossible to have the "same" words that were "written" as scripture.It wasn't because of the false notion of how the ancients were idiots and kept changing it to the contrary they were very ,very good at being accurate much better than modern scribes.It was the height of craft to be a "scribe".

The words of scripture Yahoshua spoke of were written many years ago and were inspired by the creator God however what is the "bible" is not those words.Besides all the multitude of bad translation of a religious agendas they were twisted into religion by the Jews of Judah and made into Judaism via the Talmud and in modern day into the many sects of Christianity.The twisting of the truth is the changing of the "meaning" by translation and doctrinal interpretation tradition .A cursory study of the concordant will expose many of the fallacy's however that is not the main point.

The fact is it is impossible to" know" the creator God by or through a book. Yahoshua clearly stated to the pharisees "you search the scriptures thinking that in them you have life yet you fail to come to me whom they are testifying of that I would save(deliver) you. Yahoshua is the "living word of God" not the bible.Yahoshua didn't have "bible" studies.He didn't "try" to teach anything he only proclaimed what the Truth"IS".The disciples didn't understand any of what he said until WAAAAY afterward.Their "ears" were just beginning to be opened the night of his betrayal.

Yahoshua clearly stated the only way to "know" the creator God is through revelation from the Father.When he asked the disciples who do YOU say I am and Simon said "The Son of God the christ"..Yahoshua said flesh and blood(nor scripture) has NOT revealed this to you but my Father.

The scriptures are a testimony of Yahoshua(God is salvation) that is their sole purpose.It has ALL been fulfilled.It is a DONE deal.The creator God only communicates directly to mankind not through a book.The scriptures cannot save anyone nor make them any better.It is not the "manual of life" where the student of life "studies" the concepts and "follow and keep" the commandments and they "know" God.That is religion....idolatry.The many are called religious have perverted the scriptures into the doctrines of men.Worshiping words written in a book.The creator God is not IN that book(s) The creator God is not the God of the dead but of the Living..The LIVING word of God.Deifying the bible" as the "word of God" is idolatry.

reply to post by adjensen


Problem is the god in the bible isn't a loving one, it repeatedly commits mass murder (2,500,000+ men killed and an untold number of women and children - all while telling people 'thou shalt not kill') and also sends people to hell for eternity if they don't fit in with their narrow world view. It's a perfect example of cherry picking which pieces to believe and to discard to fit in with a preconceived view instead of looking at it objectively.

When the bible says god sent down two bears to murder a load of kids because they broke his golden rule on respecting your elders, it requires an awful lot of mental gymnastics to twist that into meaning it had nothing to do with god.