Origin of Gods word

and yet, ironically, the trojan wars apparently did happen. there's a major problem here you neglected to mention: the bible does have inconsistencies. it's RIDDLED with them. the four gospels, recent texts, don't even line up in all areas.people who say that bible is the literal word of god fail to understand it's history. like how it got lost before babylonian exhile, and reconstructed in the form of the targums. the torah was reconstructed from these, and often times when a story was in conflict BOTH were put in. (see gen 1 v. gen 2). knowing just this, aside from the edittings, compilations, translations, translations from translations, etc... even if the bible originally WAS the word of god, literally written by him in his own hand, it cannot possibly be today.

having read the christian bible, including the torah, i find more validity in the torah, personally, than the nt. i've also read portions of the bhagavad gita, a sacred hindu text. the quran is next on my list, and eventually the qabala. i've also read greek plays, know a bit about nead, the iliad, and have read gilgamesh and beowulf.it's not that different. many of those texts, as well as none mythological texts such as fictional traditions (arthur, et al) hold many of those properties. no, that is a lie. i've read the bible. it has inconsistencies all throughout it. i chalk it to human error, but you prescribing the errors i've seen to my god is blasphemy. please do not insult my god again by saying he's that stupid. i thought you said it was consistent? no, actually, they don't. paul's themes (abandon judaic law) are very different from jesus's theme's ("i did not come to change the law but to fulfil it"). and that's staying inside the new testament. if we wanna cross that line, it's even easier.the theme of a lot of the torah is "obey god at any cost" and teaches this through various methods (counter example, proverbs, etc). the theme of a lot of the nt is "believe in jesus"who is, ironically, not mentioned anywhere in the ot. unless, of course, you're reading joseph smith's annotated version in the book of moses. aramaic was a dialect spoken in galilea at the time of christ. it is then very ironic that none of the bible was written in aramaic. or at least, none that we have today. all of the nt was written in GREEK only, but 3 of the 4 gospels were likely copied from a 5th "q" gospel which MAY have been aramaic. this is all speculation though. how about the gnostic gospels? those didn't survive when the christian church decided to, you know, kill the gnostics. burn monks and whatnot. that text went. portions of the torah are missing, like the three books of maccabees. early targums conflict, and modern translations are often WRONG.the bible has NOT survived intact. communism and religion don't mix, as a principle. (communism and government also don't mix, but i'll let this point slide) but uh, watch some tapes of muslim fundamentalists sometime, and tell my why they'd be afraid of religion. especially one that's caused a thousands years worth of wars and executions. i think this is a communication problem.i consider it.you take every word as literal fact.as a christian, i can say this. christianity is about a personal relationship with god, a gap bridged by his son. right? why rely on a preacher? what someone else says? a book full of problems and errors and mistranslations, and what someone else tells you that you have to believe about it in order to get to heaven, as if that's even the point?it's more in the way. more between you and god. and until you realize the real purpose of the bible, and it's message, you're going to get caught up in the details. who cares if the bible's a little off here and there? it's JUST a book. your god is not a book. there is more meaning to be found there than "god worked 6 days and took a coffee break"

i won't repsond too much, since there's a thread for this.but i disagree with this on a purely historical basis: under examination different specific purposes can be shown for each book of the nt. mark was written for the early church, matthew to convert jews, john as symbolic propaganda (interpretted literally, christ is blasphemous for proclaiming himself a deity), and luke to reconcile existing gospels of various churches, along with it's companion book, acts, as a history of the early church.paul's letters were written to various churches, and he advises them locally on what he thinks they should do in difficulte matters. his advise is often like in galations 5, give up the old covenant for the new. by this point in the church, things were already beginning to take an anti-semitic turn as the church scrambled for legitimacy instead of being labeled and judais offshoot cult. by 300 ad the church was solidified and openly anti-jewish. there is a lot of anti-semitic subtext in the book of john, for instance, which was probably written well before then.it's historical fact that the early christian church tried to set itself apart from judaism as a seperate religion, and therefore there will always be disagreements between the two.although, the overall theme you observed is basically the foundation of christianity, so... the word of god has a name in hebrew, actually. "memra." one targum points to this variety of god as opposed to the standard "eloyhim" being responsible for creation. and it makes sense, the depiction is god speaking creation, or god speaking to moses about how creation happened.the messenger bit has very little foundation. that would mean jesus would have to be an incarnation of malakh yahweh, the angel of the lord. or as he's been called, metatarsus. this would of course take away his divinity. (which i'm fine with, btw) i'll look for more info, but i recall seeing it in a documentary. hear, and take as the word of god are different matters. the following bit doesn't matter much to me, because i disregard the gospel of john, and all of paul's letters. (for reasons discussed above)

i did.go to school or something, there you will read things like "the iliad" which is far more epic and grand than the bible, and consistent. and we even know who wrote it!the epic of gilgamesh even pre-date the bible, and contains a few of it's elements, such as the flood.the sayings of krishna in the bhagavad-gita easily rival proverbs.people who say there are no other books like the bibles simply have not read very many other books. i cannot paste them all here. i probably cannot even compile a list of similar books.go take a classical literature class. you'll read a lot of similar books.

you're waiting for you to go read some other ancient literature?why so am i!

no, inerrency is. because, based on the claim that bible is the inerrent word of god, when a single error is found, the entire thing can be descarded as false. this sends foolish creationists like hovind trying to prove that every word of the bible is literally true, because otherwise their faith has no foundation.this does an INCREDIBLY disservice to the religion.i believe the bible to be errant. and yet i do not toss it all. it was never meant to be a science textbook, and putting in that place not only demeans the bible, but removes all actual meaning from it.i find that allowing for error, human error, elevates the text above human problems. basically, god was essentially right, and trying to convey a message, let's look at what he's trying to say, instead "god said there was a flood!"which is more important, the message of the bible, or the details for it? you're straining at gnats and swallowing camels.but here, this one will bake your literalist inerrent mind. why does jesus call himself lucifer?see inerrency prescribes that the ENGLISH version of the bible has to be true. why? they only way out of this one is to look at the symbolism you're missing, the context and origin and misrepresentation of the name lucifer, and realize that something you heard about the bible is fundamentally wrong and unsupported by the text.as an excercise, we'll see what you can find. but i assure, this is not an error. the instruction to hebrew scribes and rabbis is to not alter a single letter. the write midrashes, non-holy texts authored by real people, to explain question, issues, symbolism, meaning, etc. kind of like paul.or is the word of paul also the word of god? i certainly do not worship paul, nore do i beleve very much of what he says. really, i've read a targum with a different name of god in genesis 1:1. the story differed vastly from there. isn't that important? yes, god has a name. several, actually. the problem with the targum is that it uses a never-seen name in place of the standard title, eloyhim meaning "gods" (yes. it's plural, like cherubim, seraphim, nephilim, etc)let me explain to you breifly the history and purpose of the bible.moses, or someone writing for him, receives the torah from god, and the qabala from the angels. to the torah are added texts of histories, etc, until about the time of chronicles, when the torah and the ark of covenant are inexplicably lost. the hebrews are then sent into babylonian captivity, and there numerous prophesy books are written. in an effort to preserve the religion, the council of rabbis reconstructs the original torah from memory. the have a number of drafts and different versions, called targums. when agreement couldnot be met, it seems both stories were put it. (for instance, why are there two creation stories?) stories were borrowed and modified from the babylonians at this point, probably accidentally. the idea was to keep the two cultures from merging, which indicates there were starting to.this set of books, the torah and tanakh are closed, and translated into greek for the library of alexandria. only several poor copies remain after the library was destroyed. this is called the septuigint. from this, most modern translation arise, but new information, NOT IN THE SEPTUGIANT, has been found in the dead sea scrolls, kepts by a slightly heretical offshoot of messianic judaism a few hunder years before christ. compared the hebrew and even the catholic bible, the christian bible is missing a few chapters, and even whole books. which one is right?now, this is all before jesus. want me to get into the mess that's the new testament, or do you get the point? you'll have to forgive any errors, this is from memory and it's been quite a day.but how, given this information, can you say your english bible is not significantly different from it's source?

like i said, the people in ancient china and babylon might be concerned that they existed before god created anything.

sorry bout that.although, still, from someone out there, i'd like to hear someone who believes the bible to be a literal innerent document to answer that one.

i would say the "lose sight" and "change focus" have two different meanings.

almeyda: you do know the following three facts, right?1. ancient hebrew traditions were often derived from neighboring regions, with a moral spin.2. numbers bear more weigh symbolically in the torah than anything else, and often have no relation to factuality.3. the oldest claimed date for the torah is about 1400 bc by moses. this is assuming moses wrote the frist four books (deut had to be at least partially written by someone else). that puts gilgamesh a THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE genesis. it was an old story by the time of the babylonian captivity of the hebrews (600 bc?) which is where the would have picked it up.

well, i just mean that faith in god in the ot and faith in god in the nt seem to have different meanings.when it calls abraham faithful, it means that he was willing to kill his own son should god ask.belief in god doesn't seem to an issue much in the ot until like isaiah or so, with the three in furnace. in early parts, god hangs around a lot in person. the question isn't so much "do you believe that he exists" or "do you believe that jesus was the son of god" etc, it was "are you willing to follow?"just from what i've read.althought it is most certain that believers have changed the focus to faith in recent times. but the nt texts we have are biased heavily towards faith. there were supposedly nt texts biased towards works, but those were removed with the gnostic texts.

you're right, no it doesn't. however, the genesis legend contains elements also found in the gilgamesh story: one survivor, a big wooden boat with all the animals, and a repentant god who puts something in the sky as a reminder that it won't happen again. and your evidence for this is? and your evidence for this is?see, you have a view biased by modern perspectives. the iliad may have absolutely be written as a factual historical count. it doesn't read like greek mythology, it reads like epic history. yes, there are mythical figures, but they are treated in a very real way.genesis, like the iliad, is based on ancient legends and some actual events. some of it's stories are really old. much of the torah was written by different people, at different times. genesis is ancient legends, exodus the tradition, leviticus and deuteronomy church (levite) law, and numbers a census, all interspliced into historical narrative. the rest of the old testament was written seperately for many various purposes: poetry, music, a love letter, prophesy, propaganda, traditional history, etc. it is not one book, like the iliad. the trojan wars happened.if the exodus happened, there is no evidence for it.i would argue that the iliad is more consistant historically.

you are absolutely wrong. homer had the same intention the various authors of the torah and parts of the nevi'im had. they recorded epic traditions and historical backgrounds. and actually, homer didn't write the iliad. if i recall my last greek class, homer is the name attributed to person who recorded pre-existing legends and epic (oral) poetry. the trojan wars happened long before homer ever lived. but, then again, greek stuff never interested me much; i could have it backwards.similarly, the latest dates for biblical tend to be much later than you'd think, and each book has a different focus, or fantastic story to tell. gilgamesh is an epic written in akkadian, in babylon, which is older than even genesis. the hebrews certainly would have had access to it and other babylonian lore during their stay there. much of the hebrew bible shows babylonian influence, often even in their knocking the babylonians. the tower of babel is the story of an ancient ruin of a ziggurat in babylon, and is a rebuttal of a local legend explaining why it's in ruins. also, the first chapter of genesis bears strong similarity to the babylonian creation myth.it's not a question of whether or not they copied from the babylonians, they certainly did.and last time i checked, abram was from a place called ur. ur was a city in sumeria. so that's the tail end of sameul/kings and chronicles, and isaiah? every textual clue tells us the bible is not recording history, but conveying messages, often from very different view points. yes, some of the events happened. but some of them we have absolutely no evidence for, like the exodus. and the history channel has documentaries on it. it doesn't mean they're right. the text can't even reach a conclusive date on it happening (year wise).as for a good variety of historical information... well. what books would you call history? at the very most we're limited to genesis through chronicles as arranged in the christian bible, sans a book or two like leviticus.

well, yes. they may have shared the same source.i would argue that there's too many specifics in line to say that it's just a coincidence of a traditional story, although this is still possible. i think the case is very good for the authors getting it from babylonian legend, considering the vast babylonian influence present in the rest of the texts.

i'll get back to you as well, going out to watch the debate.