Biblical Statements About Infallibility/Inerrancy (A Theology / No Science Topic)

no, nor will you in paradise lost, hamlet, jurassic park, the lord of the ring trilogy, flavius josephus, or my high school history textbook. no one ever writes "no really kids, this happened. i swear"except for movies, sometimes, which say "based on a true story." and then you have to be skeptical of how much they changed. the last good example i saw was "the texas chainsaw massacre" which said "inspired by true events." in reality, the story was inspired by ed gein, who niether lived in texas nor owned a chainsaw.what you have to do is understand it in the context of who wrote it. were they reading it as fact? was it compiled to be factual? does it have other motivations, such as politics? and LEAST importantly, did the person writing it think it was fact?the evidence we have of the bible, IN the bible, is that it was compiled without regard to factuality. genesis in particular seems to be a melting pot of different traditions which are often in clear contradiction of one another (see the gen1 v gen2 thread). this indicates that multiple traditions were written or passed down, became holy, and were included without change under a redactor. it is very unlikely that a single author would write the book in multiple styles which contradict each other.however, the inclusion indicates that the redactor cared more about the holiness tradition than consistency or factuality. when there's a contradiction, one HAS to be wrong. yet it's in the bible anyways. even the histories in the bible show other motivation, especially in politics and foreign relations.the point is that the only educated way of reading the bible is that people, plural, that wrote and editted it had other things on their mind than accuracy and factuality. i would go more in depth as to why, with examples, but it'd end up being a huge essay.

book, chapter, verse?here's a verse from earlier in the chapter. let's see how jesus thinks of bible.

quote:

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Mat 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

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ignore for a second what he's actually saying, and look at how he says it: the law (torah) and the prophets (nevi'im). assuming his table of contents looks something like mine, he's leaving out a whole third of the old testament: writings (ketuvim).in other words, by omission, jesus is saying the following books aren't the holy eternal word of god:psalms
proverbs
job
song of songs [solomon]
ruth
lamentations
ecclesiastes
esther
daniel
ezra
nehemiah
chroniclesjesus makes numerous references to the law and the prophets, matthew: 7:12, 11:13, 22:40, Luke: 16:16.the only time he ever mentions another book in conjunction with it is the psalms, in luke 24:44. are we reading different books again?under mosaic law, the punishment for sin is sacrificing a bull. at least that's what it says in exodus and leviticus last time i read them, which was about a month ago. there have been a few occasions of god punishing a man for sinning with instant death, and adam was not one of them. it is absolutely wrong to say that god punishes us for adam's sin. he didn't even punish adam in the way he said he would.further, there have been people the bible calls perfect.

quote:

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1Ki 15:14 But the high places were not removed: nevertheless Asa's heart was perfect with the LORD all his days.

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that doesn't sound tainted by original sin, let alone his failure to fulfill god's will (his own sin). i'm sure you can find similar statements about david and solomon if you look. and what about enoch? he didn't even die, god just took him up to heaven. and elijah?the statement that god condemned all of mankind in the old testament is just plain wrong. the picture painted is of a very forgiving god, unless you do something to REALLY piss him off (divide the church, worship idols, let the people worship idols, etc). ok, NOW pay attention to what this verse says:

quote:

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Mat 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

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couple of problems with that. jesus was not made in the image of the thing afflicting the people. what we have in numbers is fiery serpents, and moses makes a fake one and attaches it to a pole. btw, the fiery bit is the word "seraph" as in "seraphim." it indicates that these snakes were not of natural world, but thing that moses made was. this is the REVERSE of the christ story.and it has nothing to do with satan. satan tests faith, it's his job. these were sent, according to numbers 21, by god. there's textual evidence that the people who complied the bible didn't care about factuality and contradictions. there's also evidence that they borrowed and often MADE FUN OF other culture's stories. and there evidence for political motivation in what it chooses to record or not record, and how. we have an assyrian picture of king jehu of israel kissing the feet of shalmanessar the 3rd, after losing to him in battle. where's that verse in the bible? we have a president who lies to us. we've ALWAYS had presidents who lie to us. why on earth would they do it? there are political reasons at work here, just as in the bible. read it a bit more closely. the bible. the fact that it is inconsistent, innaccurate, influenced by the texts of the surrounding nations, and generally written with other purposes in mind. what is your basis for interpretting it literally, and how to do you justify the places that it doesn't line up, and appears to be a hodge-podge of multiple conflicting traditions? alright, listen closely.i'm speaking for god right now. he has ordained me as his divine prophet. do you believe me? why or why not?OF COURSE i'll say that. does it mean anything when i say it? why would it mean anything when paul says it, especially if i've quoted jesus more times in this post than paul did in his letters? he contradicts the teachings of christ.above, christ said that he didn't come change the law. paul said he did. who's right? paul or jesus? does this validate or invalidate paul's appraisal of himself as divinely inspired? yes, and i appear to read more closely and more analytically than fundamentalist christians, as this post should be proof of.

i dunno, but i am.

i would not. i posted this elsewhere on here. there's movie out now called "the texas chainsaw massacre." maybe you've heard of it. it's remake of an old horror movie. it says on the box "inspired by a true story." and it is, leatherface is based on ed gein. gein, however, didn't own a chainsaw, and never lived in texas. nor did he kill more than two or three people. compare this to the movie.another famous movie which has a character based on gein is "the silence of the lambs." compare buffalo bill to leatherface. they're both inspired by the same REAL events, yet are suprisingly different stories.anyways, the point that i'm trying to demonstrate is that inspiration does NOT mean infallible. if it does, why do our four inspired gospels contradict each other? why do the inspired writings of paul contradict the inspired writings about what jesus said?

actually, the much older hebrew system of reading (pardes) insists that EVERY passage has four ways of being read:p'shat: simple (literal)
remez: hinted (contextual/symbolic)
d'rash: teaching (moral)
sod: secret (mystic) correct. but we must go beyond the context of the text itself, and look at how the people who wrote it understood it, and what the ideals of the society were. we do this by reading more books from the area and time. all the time. last nite i said, rather crassly to some friends, "i really need to take a dump." but i didn't steal any garbage, did i? it's called euphemism, and they can be found in the bible, along with figures of speech, and all kinds of other grammatical functions that do not mean literally what they say. that makes no sense. i wrote what i wrote, so it's the word of god. this is your assumed claim of the canon. the canon makes no such claim, and varies from religion to religion, church to church. the first christian canon was devised so constantine could have a pretty book to read, not to devise what was accurate or not.

here's a devil's advocate answer. or, in this case, a christ's adovocate answer i suppose.no, it didn't.i would argue that it, at most included tanakh (probably just the torah and nevi'im and not the ketuvim), but not the inter-testamental documents (most of the apocrypha). it probably included at least one gospel (luke-acts?) that would have been used in the churches under the direction of paul. i seriously doubt it included paul's own writing, but i'd have to think about that one.it is evident that by the time of jesus, "the bible" looked like this:torah:
genesis
exodus
leviticus
numbers
deuteronomynevi'im:
joshua
judges
samuel
kings
isaiah
jeremiah
ezekial
(hosea)
(joel)
(amos)
(obadiah)
(jonah)
(micah)
(nahum)
(habakkuk)
(zephaniah)
(haggai)
(zechariah)
(malachi)it's likely that jesus would also have heard of the majority of psalms, since i think he mentions them somewhere. the rest of the texts translated in the septuagint still technically have not been canonized in jewish world, i think, but were certainly in various collections at the time of christ.

this is true. but enoch was also around at the time of the septuagint and was not included, so i think we can rule that out. well, this is more or less what i've been saying. epistles are letters. it's good to look at things in context like that. who wrote the book? to or for whom? why? in which church?there is no definitive nt canon until after 330 ad. luke/acts appears be the first attempt at it, but that was after paul, and before 330.

i agree with your post, except: i would argue that there is. the vast majority of christian bibles sold today all have exactly the same line up of books in the new testament.

er, yes. thanks for catching the goof. so used to arguing pauling letters. it's likely a play on the hebrew concept of the spirit of the lord, actually. our god is often represented by wind. el was the ugaritic wind god, and yhwh is called el in some portions of the bible.when genesis 1:2 says "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. " the word it uses for spirit actually means wind. one of my translations says that sent a wind over the waters. similarly, when moses parts the sea of reeds, it's a strong wind that drives the waters back.so when paul says "pasa grafh qeopneustonz" he doesn't neccessarily mean that god breathed it so to speak.and what if he does mean it that way? so what? it's his opinion. and if you beleive genesis 2, we all have the theo-pneustos in us. so this post was brought to you by the breath of god.and which scriptures is he refering to? certainly not EVERYTHING written down, as asgara pointed out? is he refering to his own work?

well, yes. you're never going to get EVERYONE to agree. that's just a simple fact of humanity.but the vast majority of churches use basically the same new testament.

well, the other babylonian influences are rather apparent. why does this one bother you?

oic.