Why would God write a book of lies and why would you worship such a being?

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Job was not crazy for trusting God.

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Exactly! Even though Job is a fictional story the basic take away is that bad things can happen to good people due to no fault of their own. IOW, they aren't being punished by God for committing a sin.The story brings the issue to life. Gives people a visual to remember.

Or none of them are? Maybe they all contain fragments of the true word, with fallible people recording what they interpretted? Meaning that none of them are the "one true word", but also, they can't all be dismissed as absolutely not the "one true word".

So, did Job trust God because of the Bible?

I really do recommend option (c). At most one, to be more precise. A Muslim could say exactly the same thing about his chosen "word of God" and the problems with that.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

It takes a leap of faith to say that the Bible is entirely correct.It takes a leap of faith to say that the Bible is accurate on the issue of salvation despite being incorrect on other issues.Why is the first leap of faith acceptable to you, but the second not ?Which position is more consistent with the Bible ?

"Who swallows a camel but strains at a gnat?"

I just wrote this post over in the Peanut Gallery thread, then realised it's actually a direct answer to your OP, so I thought I'd link to it here. This isn't my view, but it's an example of an early attempt by a Biblical inerrantist to describe why God would write things in the Bible that aren't true. {I've copied the entire above cited message to below. - Adminnemooseus}

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Your interpretation above includes the idea that there is fiction in the Bible and that God did it. My response is that nobody takes the position you've laid out. Everyone who believes that the Bible inaccurately describes Egyptian history, for example, believes that men are responsible for the deviation from accuracy. Yet you are insisting that not responding directly from that position that God wrote the Bible is off topic.

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I disagree that nobody holds the belief the simultneous beliefs that the Bible contains historical innaccuracies, and that God was responsbile for those inaccuracies. It seems to be one of the oldest traditions of Bible criticism.

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The view is that these aren't 'mistakes'. Rather, the Bible is not meant to be a book of history. It's a book of spiritual instruction.

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Origen, Bishop of Alexandria in the early 3rd century, certainly seemed to be of this view. He clearly distinguished between Holy Scripture written by men filled with the Holy Ghost, and apocrypha which were simply written by men.

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Nevertheless, he didn't consider Scripture to be literally true, since some of it was so clearly not true. God did not literally walk through the Garden of Eden searching while Adam hid behind a tree - Origen takes this as prima facie obvious - meaning the text must be a metaphor for a spiritual meaning, something to do with men turning their faces from God, I guess.

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You may think that's fine when discussing the more distant accounts of creation and other spiritual matter, but that in books that deal more with political history the same arguments don't apply, and so Origen's argument isn't relevant in the light of modern archaeological reserch which shows much Bible history to be untrue.

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On the contrary, he was not as stupid as modern day Biblical literalists, and was quite capable of seeing historical inaccuracies in the text. His explanation, to me, sounds a bit forced. God put them there on purpose so that we wouldn't get carried away looking for literal meanings all the time and miss the spiritual sense of the text. Noticing errors in the history of Egypt serves to remind us that stories like the Garden of Eden are not historical accounts, but are there for more important reasons. In his own words (or, rather, the words of whoever translated this online edition of De Principiis)

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But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offenses, and impossibilities, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the (true) doctrines, as learning nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine. And this also we must know, that the principal aim being to announce the "spiritual" connection in those things that are done, and that ought to be done, where the Word found that things done according to the history could be adapted to these mystical senses, He made use of them, concealing from the multitude the deeper meaning; but where, in the narrative of the development of super-sensual things, there did not follow the performance of those certain events, which was already indicated by the mystical meaning, the Scripture interwove in the history (the account of) some event that did not take place, sometimes what could not have happened; sometimes what could, but did not. And sometimes a few words are interpolated which are not true in their literal acceptation, and sometimes a larger number. And a similar practice also is to be noticed with regard to the legislation, in which is often to be found what is useful in itself, and appropriate to the times of the legislation; and sometimes also what does not appear to be of utility; and at other times impossibilities are recorded for the sake of the more skilful and inquisitive, in order that they may give themselves to the toil of investigating what is written, and thus attain to a becoming conviction of the manner in which a meaning worthy of God must be sought out in such subjects.

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Like I said, it seems a bit contrived to me, but he's one clear counter-example to the claim that nobody believes that God wrote purposeful untruths into the Bible and yet still worshipped that God. It's interesting how much more sophisticated is his understanding of Biblical inerrancy than many modern fundamentalists. To Origen, it didn't mean that everything in Scripture was true, it meant that everything in Scripture was there purposefully.

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Edited by caffeine, : To add mesage subtitleEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Copied cited message from other topic.

Why are the two mutually exclusive? How would you know if they were real or not? Is it because you have never observed anything supernatural in your life before? What do you mean by validate the whole book? Why do you believe the bible is solely a book of stories whose purpose is to teach morality? Do you realize that many important doctrines of the bible completely fall apart if certain parts of the bible are not real? For instance, if the exodus story is a complete fabrication, the legitimacy of the nation of israel is completely destroyed? If logic and reason seemingly contradict a plain teaching of scripture, does that mean you must reject the plain teaching of scripture?Edited by foreveryoung, : No reason given.

why? wasn't israel promised to both abraham, and david, as well as moses? israel, as a nation, was not formed under moses. it was formed under israel, jacob, from his 12 sons.and on a secular note, i would argue that israel would be *more* legitimate if they were not a foreign, invading power as in the exodus story, but had always been local residents.

why do you think job trusted god? he calls god unjust, and only seems to show trust when god himself answers his charge. well, his wife did, but perhaps with the notion that god would strike him dead on the spot and end his suffering. his friends had said that god cursed him, because he had sinned. job refused to deny god (outright) because that would be sin, and justify his torment. god himself says that his friends are wrong, and that job, who claimed god was unjust, spoke correctly. that this quiets job perhaps reveals his true intention: job is doubting, though not denying god. he would rather an unjust god than a random existence. and yet, god himself verifies job's argument.this is one of those texts that is so frequently misread by christians on a very basic level. it is akin to people arguing that the tree of knowledge didn't make the man and his wife like god, as the serpent said it would -- even though god says it does. similarly, christians tend to miss the quote by god here:

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the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: 'My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath. (42:7)

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which is ironic. in a book people claim to be the word of god, those same people are somehow missing the literal words of god.

The nation of Israel has no legitimacy. The only justification for its existence is its existence. Like an "illegitimate" child, it doesn't matter how it got here but the fact that it is here gives it the right to be here. It's thoroughly improper to use the Exodus story to justify the actions of Zionists and the modern Israeli government.The question is, "Why would God write a fictional story about an exodus?" The answer is to advertise His ability to keep covenants, knock over walls, etc. Projecting the story onto future events is just a wrong interpretation.

And foreveryoung seems to have missed the fact that the Biblical Nation State called Israel was often apostate.

Yes, and your point is.....?

Israel has no legitimacy and even the Bible says that God removed support and condemned the Biblical state of Israel.The only legitimacy that the modern state of Israel has is that it does exist, is powerful and has been recognized as a State by the United Nations and some other nation states.

If the exodus was pure fiction, then there was no state of Israel for God to condemn. You just defeated your ownself.