Bible: Word of God or Not

It is complex. But it is one book, one story, one writer, one source, and one origin, according to the Bible.The Bible interprets itself. And if it is inspried by God, then we would not expect it to make sense to a mere man.To even begin to grasp it, he must recognize the Spiritual language of God and interpret it through that lens, not just the manner in which he interprets reality through his own lens. God's Spiritual language is the langauge of honesty and truth. It speaks to the whole man. The conscious, soul, heart, and mind. Not simply the intellect, which is capable of rationalizing anything without imput from the conscious.2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,1Corinthians 2:14
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.Now since Jesus is litterally the word of god (John 1 In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God... And the word became flesh) we must consider what he said to the pharisees who were constantly trying to trap and kill Him: John 18:37 ...I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." Edited by scottness, : additional resources

This part we have some clue about. We do not know ALL the folk, but we know some of the major players. As far as I can tell, they looked at the oldest existing documents, which points to a historical preservation aim. They also threw some of them out in favour of the clarity of language found in more recent pages, which points to preservation of content. I am sure with a little research we could uncover what their original intentions were.

Scottness decrees: I didn't know Moses wrote the gospels. Does it have buttons that those preschool books have that when you push them they talk? And of course tell you what it says so you don't have to do anything too hard like actually interpret what is being said. If the Bible can never make sense to anyone as per your definition, why bother reading it? So I take it there are no women in your idea of heaven?

And your support for that is? Sorry but the Bible is a book. It cannot interpret anything. If that is the case then it is worthless. If a mere man can't make sense of it is pretty much pointless and useless. Sorry but that is just a string of words with no meaning.Finally do you actually think that quote from 2 Timmy refers to the Bible? LOL.Why is it that those who so quote the Bible seem to know NOTHING about it.Scripture refers to any inspired writings. The Bible did not even come into existence until hundreds of years later. Even today there is no one universal Canon.The quotes from 1 Cor and Johnie are just a cop out.The Bible is a Holy Book, an inspired book, one that I believe carries an important message as well as a glimpse into the lives and beliefs of the many peoples of the various eras and milieu, the many authors, editors, redactors and committees that were involved in creating what we know as the various Canons of Christianity. But that is all that it is, a Map, not the Territory.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yet they included the many creation myths found in Genesis, placed the youngest of them first in Genesis 1 through Genesis 2:4 and combined at least two sources in the creation story in the rest of Genesis 2 and 3 even though the stories were much older. They did that while recognizing that the younger myth and older myths were mutually exclusive and described two entirely different Gods.The question we must ask is "Why did they do that?"

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I'll grant you two of those! The Bible is complex, and it is not one book.The rest we are still disputing.One story, as in plot, as in general message, is in dispute.
One purpose, as in 'salvation' is in dispute
One origin, one source, and one writer, as in The Word Of God, is the topic of dispute.Sure there are many different writers. Men die, and new ones take their place.Does make me wonder, though, why some feel that God's revelations must have stopped when the Bible was compiled.

Can you explain why? Or do you just cast aside things you do not understand, with proclamations of indignation? Why do you express your opinions as though you are Ceasar? Why do you cast derision upon seekers who stop to consider that there may be more to the Bible than meets the eye? Is it possible that the Bible is actually authored by God through printing presses made of flesh?Why do you see with your eyes and not through them?Job 13:12
Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.The Bible interprets itself plainly. You may not think so, but I do.
You may wish to read my edited original response to you in this thread.John 14:15-17
"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever-- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Had a thought (I know scary).The singular use of the word "word" has always bothered me when associating the phrase "word of God" with the Bible or even with what God supposedly said. Word of God = God's word. But he supposedly spoke a lot of words to people, why use the singular. Always seemed odd to me.But what if when Jesus used the phrase he wasn't talking about scripture at all, but about God's promise? We use the phrase "you have my word on it" which is a type of oath or promise/covenant. If we look at the etymology of the word "word" we see promise as an early usage.Didn't God make this promise to the Israelites? I haven't had time to look through all the instances where the phrase is used, but from a cursory look I feel that the early writings may have used the phrase that way. The later writings don't seem to from what I can tell. By not following the laws or changing them, they invalidate the promise or covenant made in Deut listed above.If that is the case, then the Bible is not the "Word of God." The Bible may contain the convenant promise, but the whole Bible we have today is not the covenant promise.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

In the same post scotness writes: and Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

It is nice to finally know what you DO believe. And I can relate to most of that, except maybe that last sentence! I read something earlier which seemed to say that the term 'Word of God' was only used for the NT, the Tanakh was simply 'the holy books'. Maybe it would be good to also research when the term was first used, and in what context.---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Now since Jesus is litterally the word of god (John 1 In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God... And the word became flesh)

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Well that makes it easy.Since Jesus is literally the word of God then the Bible obviously isn't.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

I like it. It pays sometimes to pause and watch the acrobatics.A few posts ago, I mentioned to jar that the term 'word of God' seemed pretty new in relation to scripture. The Jewish people called their Torah, or Tenakh, 'the holy books'. 'Word of God' came around after and in relation to the NT. So it could be that the Jews called the books 'holy' because they were the only record they had of God's covenant to them. They could still have had direct communication from God, and considered the books which contained the account and the words of God in it, as holy, as in, if it were lost, they may forget. In this sense, the books could be thought of as the "living' words of god. This boils back down to the 'message' I think.There is also a possibility that the term was not used originally in our language at all, so it could be a derivitive of a derivitive of the original meaning.Interesting; but does this explanation do away with the need for inspiration?

Since the Golden Gate bridge is literally the plans of the architect (who's many servants actually did the drawing at his inspiration btw), then obviously the plans are not the bridge.The bridge is the fullfilment of the plans. It is proof that the plans were real and succesful, and that the architect is competent.My apologies for allowing others to draw me off topic.Edited by scottness, : obviousEdited by scottness, : No reason given.Edited by scottness, : fullfilment of point

Edited by iceage, : No reason given.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

well he wasn't talking about the NT, if he was where did he? he never said anywhere "you will write this all down later!"
i think he was reminding people god expected things of them well just to tell you, for the jews, there are two parts to the torah, the written and the oral, the oral was later written down as the talmud. both the written torah and the oral torah are holy.
this is why the OT is rather confusing i think, some of it is oral and people just expected the reader to know
as for the NT, well parts of it might have been considered inspired by god, it took quite a while for people to figure out what was inspired, revelations took hmm 500-600? years?i think really it wasn't untill late in the 15th century that people started to consider it the word of god no its not the message, the message isn't all that amazing, its the fact that people had no clue what the message was or how to understand it like i said, if you have bunch of texts you can't agree on, theres little reason to consider it the "word of god" well if you can find a way to pick what is inspired and what isn't, there ya go, you have your insperation detecter