Thread: the integrity of the Bible

i have grown up in a bible-believing christian fatih my whole like, even to the point of ministerial ordination. over the past several years i have left the christian belief system for many reasons. i wanted to post one of those reasons and get some feedback.

how is it that anyone could believe that the integrity of the Bible was maintained through the centuries of its sole control and interpretation by a very corrupt catholic church?

i have always heard it said that god would not allow his word to be tainted or changed in any way, but that would be a complete contradiction to the concept of free-will. Free-will is the ability to choose our actions. What possibly would have stopped power hungry christian leaders of old from manipulating "sacred texts" to control the people and for personal gain?

Man... i wont say i completly believe in the integrity of the Bible, but if God wanted to directly intervene, He would do, and it would not affect the free will... the free will it the ability to choose what will be our acts, but not all the consequences of our acts. So, many times we actually do the contrary of what we meant, due what we call the circunstances, or the luck, or the chance, or whatever... or free will is to decide what WE will do... and Gods will is how your acts will reflect on your life path. So, if He wished, He could easily preservate the integrity of the Bible, no matter how hard the man tried to corrupt it.
Have you heard about the 70s translation? Ive heard (dont know if its actually true... i should research it... if it were false, please forgive me). Anyway... ive heard (or read) that very long ago 70 different studious were to make a translation of a part of the Bible, and when their translations were ready, they were surprised to realize that, despite of each one had been tranlsated by one different man, separatedly, without any communication between them, all the translations were the same!
As i said, i dont know if its actually true, but if it were, is a proof that the integrity could actually be preserved.

it is circular logic and poor intellect to use a source to prove its own authenticity...

it IS an opinion that the bible is a holy book and/or the word of god... there is no significant proof of this outside of its self proclamation of divine inspiration...

do you know of any unbiased, objective evidence of its divine inspiration?

Originally Posted by Daal Curry Surprise

You wanna see the integrety of the Bible?

All you need is the Bible and the ability to put 2 and 2 together..NO prophecy is of any private interpertation, these words are pure.

Originally Posted by hazetwostep

it is circular logic and poor intellect to use a source to prove its own authenticity...

Exactly. It is a circular argument so doesn't stand up to any criticism at all.

Originally Posted by Daal Curry Surprise

look, this is a SPIRITUAL thing, alright brother? You either get it or you don't

I'm not gonna sit here and try to convince you of anything, if you wanna believe it's not important..by all means keep believing it.

What a great reply. "You either get it or you don't." Yeah, that's gonna persuade us to believe you. Don't be so ignorant, you're providing no evidence and then implying we're stupid for questioning your lack of evidence. But by all means keep going

Originally Posted by Daal Curry Surprise

look, this is a SPIRITUAL thing, alright brother? You either get it or you don't

I'm not gonna sit here and try to convince you of anything, if you wanna believe it's not important..by all means keep believing it.

just because something is a "spiritual" thing does not mean that you should not judge and weigh it with god-given intellect and common sense.

eternity with an omniscient, hateful god.. i think i will willingly pass on that one.

Daal, i wish health, hope, happiness, and love to follow you all yours days... may god reveal himself to you and your Israelite brothers and sisters even more... peace

the more i look into the integrity of the bible the more i see its fake. you can see more scientific evidence of things that contradict the bible. and most historians that wrote in those times dont even recognize what the bible says.

These are my opinions based on simple deductive reasoning:

A mere translation of any kind of old, or ancient, text isn't purely subjective. We are the ones that decide what those words are to be translated into based on how we interpret the world and how we THINK the world was like back in those days. Without direct collaboration with the scribes of the past we'll never have a 100% accurate translated Bible. We can't see things from the point of view of the people that wrote that stuff. We just decide which words to use for the translations, comparing the words to other similar words used throughout time until present day.

As for the oldest surviving texts, we have no proof that even those are the originals... they could have all been rewritten copies, and the originals destroyed. Who knows? There's no way to verify any of it... all we know is that it's all really old, and a lot of them have many similarities and contradictions. It's integrity is based on faith.

It's a fantastic collection of stories, some of which are rewritten tales passed on from previous cultures. But sadly not all of the texts could be included to fit into one easy-to-carry book.

If ya ask me, it's not much more different than Aesop's fables; entertainment with the purpose of teaching moral values... and even that is still debatable.

I have no wish to get into a religious discussion since I really don't believe, I have never believed and I think it extremely unlikely that I ever will.
The bible is written by man and man is fallible.
The bible is a translation and anyone who speaks more than one language will tell you how difficult it is to translate one language to another. Ever heard the expression "lost in translation" ?
Each Christian group has it's own interpretation of the good book and if the believers (Baptists / Catholics / Protestants / Others) cannot agree then they have very little chance of convincing those who don't.

Just my take on the holy book.

i hear you psychocat... very good point... if those who believe cannot even agree, how do they expect others to buy into it?

is anyone familiar with other "holy" books like the koran or whatever? do they all have a ridiculous amount of translations like the bible?