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if the bible is just a book like people say how come its the only book that people died for it and yes i do believe every word in the kjv bible
Huh? I spent plenty of time in the Middle East watching coffins get loaded onto the backs of airplanes because some idiot was willing to die for the words in the Koran.
The original Torah was written about 2600 years ago by a cabal of priests in the then Babylon commissioned by Cyrus the Great (Persian conqueror) with the deliberate intention of creating a belief system that would have people in fear of authorities and so tied up in rules and regulations that they would be easy to rule. These priests were sent to Palestine to replace the existing leaders there and convert/impose the new religion onto the populace. Thus were the Jews born. They used many of the near eastern legends and mythologies, relying heavily on Zoroastrianism as the basis. The so-called "history" in it does not align with known histories and archaeological evidence. Some sounds suspiciously similar to other conquerers and warriors but the time is all wrong.
The New Testament books started being written around 70+AD with Revelations - distinctly different in style and theology from the other books. The gospels started showing up a couple hundred years after the purported events described in them. They are suspiciously similar in events and theology to several of the extremely popular mystical resurrection cults spread throughout the Roman Empire of the time.
So, to me, it is very evident that people wrote and made up the whole of the Bible in fits and starts for differing purposes. The Council of Nicea created the Christian Bible by making an edict of what was included and what was excluded as heretical. Again - just people exercising control over other people for their own power and aggrandizement. How better to control other people and have them give power to you than to claim god told them this and that?
So I see it as one of the most cynical snow jobs ever put over on people by other people.
I scrolled through this thread hoping to find an answer like this.The above is basically my understanding of it from what history I have read. I thought that the writers of the dead sea scrolls ( the Qumran?) had something to do with the original texts as well but I'm probably wrong. Also it is my understanding that it was never meant for the general public Firstly because the general public couldn't read and then when reading became more wide spread it was kept in the original latin so that it remained in the control of the clergy and the elite. Sparking all of that bloodshed when Martin Luther had the bright idea of translating it for the lay person to be able to read. He thought it would be a great thing for everyone to be able to read it and make up there own minds.I think the church knew that it would only expose it's obvious flaws.
Sorry if I waffled on a bit there. This is something I have always been interested in.
I scrolled through this thread hoping to find an answer like this.The above is basically my understanding of it from what history I have read. I thought that the writers of the dead sea scrolls ( the Qumran?) had something to do with the original texts as well but I'm probably wrong. Also it is my understanding that it was never meant for the general public Firstly because the general public couldn't read and then when reading became more wide spread it was kept in the original latin so that it remained in the control of the clergy and the elite. Sparking all of that bloodshed when Martin Luther had the bright idea of translating it for the lay person to be able to read. He thought it would be a great thing for everyone to be able to read it and make up there own minds.I think the church knew that it would only expose it's obvious flaws.
Sorry if I waffled on a bit there. This is something I have always been interested in.
From what I understand, the Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish writings and there is some material germane to the Torah but absolutely nothing about the Christian stuff. There was much buzz when they were found and dated to the purported time of Jesus. Then they were buried in secrecy and limited access for decades - only recently being made more accessible. There were originally many claims that finally, they would have archeological and contemporaneous evidence to prove the Jesus myth was all real, but there is nothing in there about Jesus or any Jesus-like figure.
The best they can come up with is some weak claims that Jesus must have lived among the Essenes who made the scrolls because there are some similar ideas. But this again is fitting later events into an old ill-fitting shoe to bolster the claims. There is no one figure that can be remotely attributed to being the source of the Jesus myths in the scrolls. All the Jesus myths started cropping up much later - like a couple hundred years later.
The original NT texts were written in Greek, not Latin. The ressurection god myths were largely Greek in origin and at the time were very popular. Greek was the common language of the Near East. Latin was just layered over it.
Ignorance does seem to be the best weapon for religious control. Hence all the claims that you don't need to read anything except the bible. Even better if people can't read and need a preist to read it for them.
I'm a big fan of Greek Mythology. I put bible somewhere along those lines, but i found Mythology much more easier to read then bible. It is way too complicated for me. When i read it for the first time, i had to skip numerous pages describing wars and such.
Bible has a good recorded history of places and certain events that happened. There are a lot of metaphorical references to some divine encounters, which in my book, is a great description of alien visitation on Earth.
I don't know how anyone born in 20th century can take bible literally.
To me, the bible is a collection of stories that have a various basis in reality -- some more than others, some not at all. If you pick and choose from it, you can get some good object lessons, and certainly some entertaining myths. Don't look too deeply however, because then it all unravels and the contradictions become far to apparent.
Take it as just another work of fiction to reside on the shelf next to all your other works of fiction.
I'm a big fan of Greek Mythology. I put bible somewhere along those lines, but i found Mythology much more easier to read then bible. It is way too complicated for me. When i read it for the first time, i had to skip numerous pages describing wars and such.
Bible has a good recorded history of places and certain events that happened. There are a lot of metaphorical references to some divine encounters, which in my book, is a great description of alien visitation on Earth.
I don't know how anyone born in 20th century can take bible literally.
Except it doesn't match up with the archaeological record or other recorded history. The times are all wrong, some stories and personalities might have been stolen from other groups who in fact may have conquered the peoples of the place but not once is even that link matched with time period that it happened. There are grandiose claims but not a shred of evidence that any such buildings or cities ever existed. And yet, we have lots of grandiose buildings from the purported time period and before that other peoples had built so it isn't as if it all disappeared.
That isn't history any more than the Chronicles of Narnia are history.
Scripture is characteristic of a vastly superior intelligence
Would humanity ever write anything like this?
Well, Yes would be my response. Will Shakespeare wrote amazingly well about the human condition and included in depth details of both the best and the worst of humanity, dealing with real human woes and triumphs. He pointed out well the flaws of human nature, he was particularly fond of lampooning hubris. Mark Twain described the basis nature of man, in a manner that allowed the reader to laugh at their own "isms"; The christer "black book" offers very few chuckles and even less real wisdom, dogma is not the same as intellectual insight. Steven J. Gould, danged if I didn't really get depressed when he died, but, I have made no attempt to cannonize the man. His writings offer a well thought out descriptive of the mannerisms involved with the appearance of life and how various life forms appear as they do. He also went into various quirks and traits that living specie share. He was a class act mind who wrote with insight and humor to get his points across. So, in response to what I consider an absurd assertion, I suspect man writes more intelligently than those who write under the auspices of this self-proclaimed god of the christers, with better style (see- TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Walt Whitman, Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Frost), and these are just the ones who wrote in English! It took a compendium to plagiarize a vast portion of the so called bible.
We are so enamored with and hung up on our physical evolution and knowledge . . . we completely ignore the fact that the very consciousness we are using to examine that evolution is, itself, the product of a spiritual evolution with its own more complete fossil record. To expect it to be more than that is wrong . . . but to expect it to be less than that (fiction, meaningless myths) is equally wrong.
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Hence all the claims that you don't need to read anything except the bible.
Even better if people can't read and need a preist to read it for them.
Part of the Scriptural Fossil Record
