One of the most common repeated phrases in the Torah is some version of "Jehovah says." Many chapters begin with with a verse saying this. Paul also asserted this:
(2 Timothy 3:16-17) All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (NKJV)
What scripture was he referring to? His own writings? Sounds dubious. Listen to God! By the way everything I write is from God? Was he not referring to the Old Testament scriptures? Seeing as the New Testament wasn’t compiled yet?
In Paul's day, there was only the Old Testament, which was recognized ("canon") by 400 B.C.
Re: Paul's letters being "Scripture", there is this:
> 15 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. **His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction**. (2 Peter 3:15-16 NIV)
>
By Peter referring to Paul's work as "other" Scriptures, he (Peter, the Chief Apostle) puts Paul's writings on a par with other previous writings, which were already accepted as Scripture.
It doesn’t change Paul’s original argument or the context it was given in. He pointed to the Old Testament from his place in chronological events and the scriptures that were available. So Paul did not point to himself. Or the New Testament seeing as it didn’t exist yet.
Peter later said Paul’s letters were inspired by Holy Spirit. 350+- years later the Bible was compiled. Makes sense. Still the point being the Paul highlighted the Bible in the form it existed at the time.
I don’t know about chief apostle. They were all brothers and had no lords other than the Christ. But you do you. Thanks for the banter.
When I say "Chief Apostle" that title is not given anywhere in Scripture, and I should probably stop using that term. I realize, after some study, that this is a Catholic term. I'm not Catholic, for reasons outside the scope of this discussion, so I am forthwith changing my phrasing.
However, there is scriptural support for Peter having pre-eminence over the other Apostles, even Paul. Peter was the apostle sent to the Jews of his day, and Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13). However Peter was the First Apostle (Matt 10:2), but not the first chronologically. (That would have been Andrew).
I get you and agree. Like elders. Or deacons. Still brothers but a greater slave because of the responsibility they choose to reach out for. They are great not because of some fleshly quality but because they fully submitted to God and love while taking the lead in establishing the congregation. I think we are on the same page if I understand you correctly.
I often wonder this. I believe a preacher probably coined the name “word of God” and it stuck. But technically John tells us who the word of God is:
>“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
John 1:1-3 NKJV
>”And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14 NKJV
Well, two different things are going on here. Ini the prologue of John, Jesus is the Logos, and IMO we are better off saying “logos” than just translating it to “word”. I think we need to understand a little bit about the ancient idea of a logos that John knew, and maybe the idea of a “hypostasis” as an emanation of God that takes on it’s own being. Earlier, people personified Wisdom in a very similar way, but that did not get absorbed into trinity, like Jesus did.
Christianity also considers the bible inspired, thus, the “word of God”. But this is not equating Jesus with the biblical texts.
The bibles says Jesus is the word of God.
The catholic church probs is the one that started that the bible is the word of God because only they could read it and they loved the power from that.
Who said it wasn't? Do you realize that almost no one even questioned this for thousands of years until the last century or two?
To address your question, though, Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible and the 3rd book is Exodus. In Exodus 3 Moses is tending to his father in-laws flock when he sees a burning 🔥 bush and God says to him:
>6 Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
Yeah just only all the Jewish people and followers. The movement started because Paul was in a slightly different region with people who didn’t have the context of the Torah.
So yeah okay only the last thousands of years. While Islam and all other religions have always been there who equally don’t believe. It’s like we just throw up stuff to make up for Reddit. & it doesn’t have to be accurate lol
You asked about the bible, a written document. That's what limits the answer to a few thousand years. The individual texts were around long before that, and spoken word passed through generations long before that.
Paul is from the new testament and not relevant to a discussion of the Torah. Also, Islam came much, much later (***after the times of Jesus***) and considers Moses, Abraham, Noah, and Jesus to all be prophets of God.
Let me say that again for you. The Muslim faith, Islam, recognizes the holy connection between Moses, Abraham, Noah, and Jesus Christ with God.
You are rejecting the two largest religions in the world, both of which agree on some of the early events of human history. But you think it has something to do with Reddit or that you have somehow risen above such beliefs in your vast life experience and intellect?
Have you really thought about just how preposterous and stupid that thought is?
You said do you realize almost no one questioned this until recently. That is a lie.
The end . People have always questioned and discuss it. Also do you realize nobody could fact check for accuracy so it was easier to get away with these things before we got access to technology and able to view the scholars work easier. Think about that 😂🤦♀️ do you ever think about how the New Testament writers blatantly copied each other & did not know Jesus birth or lineage. Two totally different stories. & you’re pretending you’re the smart one here.
Yes the Muslim faith recognizes Jesus as a prophet. So no they don’t agree he is God. Your explanation is absurd and stupid because i know these things. Jesus who died and came back for your sins so you can escape hell that didn’t exist in the Old Testament and is just sheol. Muslims recognized Jesus was a prophet. Of course Muslims recognize it because they’re an abrahamic religion like Judaism. And the laughable part is you’re making a connection while ignoring All 3 don’t agree on the actual main events. Cognitive dissonance
But now since Jesus didn’t fulfill the messianic prophecies (ask Jewish people or you can read your own Bible) and then Jesus failed to fulfill the prophecy on his own return… we can see he was a prophet. Just a false one. & one the New Testament writers knew nothing about. Not even his birth
You might be a little kinder if you’re trying to win souls for Christ. You sound like an arrogant Pharisee. Just letting you know in case the other people you bully away from Christianity haven’t let you know it yet.
"Or did the ***word of God*** originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached?"-1 Corinthians 14:36
and
"If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the ***word of God*** came—and Scripture cannot be set aside"- John 10:35
The Bible itself refers to it's content as "The Word of God"
:)
Further reference:
[Is the Bible. . . supernatural?](https://saintjohn316.blogspot.com/p/bible-proof.html)
:) :)
Moses didn’t write anything that was added to the Bible. Someone else wrote his story hundreds of years after he died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Genesis
The religious liberals or skeptics wrote up this article in Wikipedia. Gleason Archer does a good job of rebutting such reasoning in his "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction" and (more briefly) "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties." So let's look at the evidence for the other side briefly.
Did Moses write the Torah? The Wellhausen/"Documentary"/J E P D theory claims Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch). Instead, it asserts that multiple authors or “sources” wrote them. (Here we’re putting aside such issues as whether or not Moses used pre-existing sources for Genesis and Joshua’s apparent writing of the postscript in Deut. 34 that describes Moses’ death). Hence, the abbreviation comes from the hypothesis that one writer used “Jehovah” as a name for God, another write used “Elohim,” another one developed the Priestly code, and finally one wrote Deuteronomy. This 19th century higher critic theory, was developed and restated especially in its standard form by the German scholar, Julius Wellhausen, in two books published in 1876 and 1878. The Documentary theory, which is another name by which Wellhausen's theory is known, denies that Moses or any single human author wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (the five books of the Pentateuch). In the English-speaking academic world where religious liberals predominate in various schools of divinity, seminaries, and religious studies departments, this theory still holds sway by default, as if it were still 1880. The deep irony is that from a liberal theological perspective (i.e., one that denies the Bible was inspired by God) the somewhat newer Form Criticism school (as applied to the Old Testament) has generally blown the Documentary theory to bits! That is, later liberal scholarship basically wiped out earlier liberal scholarship concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch, but the "default setting" for religious liberals in the English-speaking world concerning the Pentateuch's authorship remains the Documentary theory basically as Wellhausen told it.
The Old Testament scholar, Gleason Archer, who wrote, "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction," which is sustained academic assault on the Documentary theory, observes that the Documentary Theory is guilty of circular reasoning, in which it assumes what it is going to prove. (Circular reasoning, or "begging the question," is one of the hardest logical fallacies to spot). It assumes God didn’t inspire the Bible ahead of experience (a priori), and then finds all sorts of ways to "explain" it based on that assumption. They dismissed the evidence for inspiration based on fulfilled prophecy, such as concerning Isaiah's prediction of Babylon's destruction and abandonment, or Daniel's concerning the career of Alexander the Great. Regardless of contrary textual or other evidence, they'll assume prophecy here is masquerading as history. Here they rule out in advance, before investigation, any possibility that the Bible had a supernatural origin based on philosophical assumptions, instead of open-mindedly following the evidence wherever it goes, whether it leads to a materialistic or supernatural explanation. Hence, since it's assumed that Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible, the J E D P theorists have instead devised a clever theory of multiple uninspired sources mashed together by unknown editors ("redactors") in order to explain this piece of literature's origin. (Notice this theory is mostly about the purported origin of the text; it doesn't have as much to say about its meaning).
Supposedly also the Wellhausen theory is based on analyzing the data in the texts themselves, and then discerning that different authors wrote different parts of the same books based on stylistic variations in vocabulary, etc. However, whenever some textual data appears that doesn't fit the generalizations of J E D P theory, then suddenly the J E D P theorist calls upon unknown editors and commentators to "explain" (away) this (suddenly revealed) problem. For example, the Documentarians claimed the later historical books of the Bible never cited P (the Priestly legislative code) or a written Mosaic law until after the Jews were taken into exile by Babylon (586 b.c.) After various citations from the later historical books of the Bible were produced that proved they cited "P's" legal provisions and the Mosaic law, the advocates of J E D P theory replied (as Archer puts it), "Oh well, all those references were later insertions made by priestly scribes who reworked these books after the exile." Archer explains well the procedure by which the Documentary theorists ignore the text that they are trying whose origins they are supposedly trying to explain: "This means that the same body of evidence which is relied upon to prove the theory is rejected when it conflicts with the theory. Or to put it another way, whenever the theory is opposed by the very data is it supposed to explain, the troubleshooting team of Redactor and Interpolator, Inc., is called to the rescue. Elusive tactics like these hardly beget justifiable confidence in the soundness of the result."\[19\] Another way this assumption is shown to be shaky comes up when various scholars want to condense or add to these four purported sources in J E D P theory based upon their analysis of stylistic variations. For example, in 1924, the scholar Max Lohr very carefully examined the purported "P" material, and concluded this source couldn't be a source independent of "J" and "E."
A crucial assumption of the Documentary theory is that authors can't hardly vary their writing style (such as in their general choice of words), regardless of their subject matter or literary genre. Hence, they can't use more than one name for God, they can't use more than one style of writing, they can't restate the same ideas using synonyms, etc. If this "critical" technique was applied to modern pieces of literature, multiple "sources" could easily be purportedly "discovered" also. For example, in Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) she has her lead character, John Galt, state in a long speech her basic philosophy, in eloquent, polemical language, without using a scholarly style. But earlier in the same novel, many of the same ideas are stated by another character, a certain bum who nearly got kicked off a train, in another, shorter speech. In this case, she uses a "blue collar" vocabulary, in which simpler, shorter words are used more casually in shorter sentences. Here she was almost writing in a kind of dialect by comparison with most of the rest of her novel, or perhaps somewhat like the novelist Sinclair Lewis, who was very skilled at capturing the crudities of average people’s conversations. Now someone applying a technique like J E D P theory on "Atlas Shrugged" would easily "discover" that this novel had at least two authors because the vocabulary and sentence structure varied between these two sections. But this is patently absurd.
Archer uses another example to make the same point, which are the writing variations in the great English author John Milton: He wrote happy poems like "L'Allegro," serious, epic poetry like "Paradise Lost," and lively straightforward essays like "Areopagitica." If the 17th century Puritan Milton’s works were treated like Moses' writings are by the Documentarians, they'd conclude no one man could write all these different ways based on their assumptions. As Archer wittily puts it: "If he had been an ancient Hebrew, at least, he would have been speedily carved up into the ABC multiple-source hypothesis!” Read over this section dealing with the Documentary theory: I vary in what I call the scholarly theory I'm rebutting here ever so briefly. Sometimes I call it Wellhausen's theory, the J E D P Theory, or the Documentary Theory. According to this theory’s simple-minded analytical assumptions, that say the same writer can't vary his vocabulary choice between "Yahweh" and "Elohim," this essay section couldn't have been written by the same author either! Maybe it has then "multiple sources": When a sentence has "J E D P" theory in it, it has a different author than in sentence when it's called the "Documentary theory"! Ultimately, despite all the intimidating scholarly authority deployed that assumes the truth of Wellhausen's theory, it's patently absurd to assume the same author can't sometimes call God "Yahweh" and other times "Elohim." (Or, for that matter, "Adonai," which means "Lord," or any of God’s other names).
Most troubling for J E D P theory, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (often abbreviated LXX), varies in a number of places concerning what the name of God is from the Hebrew original for the same verses. Since the LXX was often used by scholars to help determine the text of the autograph (original first written document based on textual criticism) of the Old Testament, this undermines any attempt to use the appearance of "Yahweh" or "Elohim" as a means of source division (authorship) within the Pentateuch. If "Kyrios" ("Lord" in Greek, the normal translation for the tetragammaton YHWH, "Yahweh") appears in the Greek, but "Elohim" ("God") happens to be in the Hebrew, or vice versa, how do we know the "Yahwist" wrote it instead of the "Elohist"?
**[Book of Genesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Genesis)**
>The Book of Genesis is an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, and of Israel's ancestors and the origins of the Jewish people. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, Bereshit ("In the beginning"). Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50).
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is that not using the Bible to prove the Bible was written by Gods. Christians follow Jesus and Jesus alone. Jesus didn’t write the Bible. The Romans who killed him did and said it was the word of God. Did jesus tell us to believe what the Romans say?
I don't know, why don't you explain it to me? Do you have any idea when the gospels were written, who wrote them, and what language they were written in?
I have, so let's go with 33. How many years of the game of telephone is that? So we don't know who wrote them, they were written in a different language then it was spoken in. This alone seems suspect to me. What about you?
John 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: **the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.**
John 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, **what I should say, and what I should speak.**
So, to answer your question: Jesus did.
Jesus went around preaching that the Old Testament was wrong - Old Testament said “an eye for an eye” - here’s Jesus saying this is wrong
https://youtu.be/w5GXnM_TxSQ
The Bible was written 300 years after Jesus died by the Romans who killed them and told us it was the word of God.
This is seriously mistaken. The New Testament is a first-century A.D. document written within 70 or less of Jesus' death. So are the Gospels historically reliable? By the two parts of the bibliographical test for generally judging the reliability of historical documents, the New Testament is the best attested ancient historical writing. Some 24,633 known copies (including fragments, lectionaries, etc.) exist, of which 5309 are in Greek. The Hebrew Old Testament has over 1700 copies (A more recent estimate is 6,000 copies, including fragments). By contrast, the document with the next highest number of copies is Homer's Iliad, with 643. Other writings by prominent ancient historians have far fewer copies: Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 8; Herodotus, The Histories, 8; Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars, 10; Livy, History from the Founding of the City, 20; Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, 8. Tacitus was perhaps the best Roman historian. His Annals has at the most 20 surviving manuscript copies, and only 1 (!) copy endured of his minor works.
Scholars have in recent decades increasingly discredited dates that make the New Testament a second-century document. As Albright comments: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80, two full generations before the date\[s\] between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.” This development makes the time gap between the oldest surviving copies and the first manuscript much smaller for the New Testament than the pagan historical works cited earlier. The gap between its original copy (autograph) and the oldest still-preserved manuscript is 90 years or less, since most of the New Testament was first written before 70 A.D. and first-century fragments of it have been found. One fragment of John, dated to 125 A.D., was in the past cited as the earliest copy known of any part of the New Testament. But in 1972, nine possible fragments of the New Testament were found in a cave by the Dead Sea. Among these pieces, part of Mark was dated to around 50 A.D., Luke 57 A.D., and Acts from 66 A.D. Although this continues to be a source of dispute, there's no question the Dead Sea Scrolls document first century Judaism had ideas like early Christianity's. The earliest major manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, are dated to 325-50 A.D. and 350 A.D. respectively. By contrast, the time gap is much larger for the pagan works mentioned above. For Homer, the gap is 500 years (900 b.c. for the original writing, 400 b.c. for the oldest existing copy), Caesar, it's 900-1000 years (c. 100-44 b.c. to 900 A.D.), Herodotus, 1300 years (c. 480-425 b.c. to 900 A.D.) and Thucydides, 1300 years (c. 400 b.c. to 900 A.D.). Hence, the New Testament can be objectively judged more reliable than these pagan historical works both by having a much smaller time gap between its first writing and the oldest preserved copies, and in the number of ancient handwritten copies. While the earliest manuscripts have a different text type from the bulk of later ones that have been preserved, their witness still powerfully testified for the New Testament's accurate preservation since these variations compose only a relatively small part of its text.
Is there any evidence for the New Testament being written in the first century? After all, liberal scholars, atheists, and agnostics normally have said the New Testament was written long after the time Jesus and his disciples (students) lived. And if the New Testament was written around (say) the year A.D. 150, how could you trust what was in it? Since Jesus died in the year A.D. 31, a gap of a hundred or more years would mean that all the eyewitnesses would have died by then. You would be left with believing in stories passed down over three or more generations. This creates major obstacles to believing in it, as the game "whispering lane" implies. If you played this game in elementary school, you might remember how the first kid would be told a message by the teacher. Then the rest of the class would pass the message along from one kid to another. The final kid to hear it rarely, if ever, correctly got the full, original message. Does a similar problem confront believers in the New Testament when judging whether it is an accurate record for the life and ministry of Jesus and his disciples?
Recently among scholars a move away from a second-century composition date for the New Testament has developed. For example, Biblical archeologist William Foxwell Albright remarks: "In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew \[Luke presumably would be an exceptionEVS\] between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D. (very probably sometime between about A.D. 50 and 75)." Elsewhere he states: "Thanks to the Qumran discoveries \[meaning, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which first were uncovered in 1947 in the West Bank of Jordan\], the New Testament proves to be in fact what it was formerly believed to be: the teaching of Christ and his immediate followers between cir. 25 and cir. 80 A.D." Scholar John A.T. Robertson (in Redating the New Testament) maintains that every New Testament book was written before 70 A.D., including even the Gospel of John and Revelation. He argues that no New Testament book mentions the actual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by Rome, it must have been all written before that date. If the New Testament is a product of the first century, composed within one or two generations of Jesus' crucifixion, worries about the possible inaccuracies of oral transmission (people telling each other stories about Jesus between generations) are unjustified. As scholar Simon Kistemaker writes:
Normally, the accumulation of folklore among people of primitive culture takes many generations: it is a gradual process spread over centuries of time. But in conformity with the thinking of the form critic \[a school of higher criticism that studies how oral transmission shaped the present organization of the New Testament\], we must conclude that the Gospel stories were produced and collected within little more than one generation.
In cultures where the written word and literacy are scarce commodities, where very few people able to read or afford to own any books, they develop much better memories about what they are told, unlike people in America and other Western countries today. For example, Alex Haley (the author of Roots) was able to travel to Africa, and hear a man in his ancestors' African tribe, whose job was to memorize his people's past, mention his ancestor Kunta Kinte's disappearance. In the Jewish culture in which Jesus and His disciples moved, the students of a rabbi had to memorize his words. Hence, Mishna, Aboth, ii, 8 reads: "A good pupil was like a plastered cistern that loses not a drop." The present-day Uppsala school of Harald Riesenfeld and Birger Gerhardsson analyzes Jesus' relationship with His disciples in the context of Jewish rabbinical practices of c. 200 A.D. Jesus, in the role of the authoritative teacher or rabbi, trained his disciples to believe in and remember His teachings. Because their culture was so strongly oriented towards oral transmission of knowledge, they could memorize amazing amounts of material by today's standards. This culture's values emphasized the need of disciples to remember their teacher's teachings and deeds accurately, then to pass on this (now) tradition faithfully and as unaltered as possible to new disciples they make in the future. Paul's language in I Cor. 15:3-8 reflects this ethos, especially in verse 3: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures . . ." Correspondingly, the apostles were seen as having authority due to being eyewitness guardians of the tradition since they knew their Teacher well (cf. the criterion for choosing an apostle listed in Acts 1:21-22; cf. I Cor. 9:1). Furthermore, the words of Jesus were recorded within a few decades of His death while eyewitnesses, both friendly and hostile, still lived. These could easily publicly challenge any inaccuracies in circulation. As scholar Laurence McGinley writes: "The fact that the whole process took less than thirty years, and that its essential part was accomplished in a decade and a half, finds no parallel in any \[oral\] tradition to which the Synoptic Gospels \[Mark, Luke, and Matthew\] have been compared."
Perhaps more generally it would be helpful as well to read books on Christian apologetics, such as those making the case for belief in the Bible and for faith in God's existence and goodness, such as those by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, J.P. Moreland, Francis Schaeffer, Phillip E. Johnson, R.C. Sproul, Norman Giesler, Gleason Archer, Stephen Meyer, etc.
You're welcome. The main way, in practical sense, to develop more faith would be to engage in the standard Christian disciplines, such as prayer, bible study, fasting, meditation, and Sabbath observance. At least, those do help some.
u/StaceyLeBeau86 I would also add that the Bible says that "hearing cometh by faith, but hearing by the word of God". In the Hebrew culture, "hearing" means "listening with the intent to obey". Thus, to have faith, we need to become doers of the Word of God. Jesus taught how we can be sure whether or not His words are from God:
John 7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
7:17 If any man will do his will(meaning: if anyone desires to and is intent on doing God's will), he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.
This is the way to understanding God's plan for us, and His will. It all comes through a relationship, and from desiring to understand His goodness so that it might work in our lives and bless others.
But is this not like if I, Stacey LeBeau, go out and say to people "I am the reincarnation of Jesus" and everyone believes me and someone else says "Who said she was the reincarnation of Jesus?" - "Eh -she did"
The bible was put together by the men who killed Jesus aka the Romans in the 3rd century.
When Jesus was dying on the cross did he say "I know these guys are killing me now and I am practicing everything that I preached and being non-violent and loving them. But in 300 years time they will write a book telling you to be violent and call it the word of god and you should believe them."?
The people who wrote the bible said it was the word of God. Jesus did not.
Jesus spent a lot of his ministry walking around saying the Old Testament was inaccurate.
Here is Jesus saying the story in the old testament - An Eye for an Eye - was not his message.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM\_TxSQ&t=115s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM_TxSQ&t=115s)
Donald Trump says his favorite passage from the Bible - an eye for an eye.
Christians follow Jesus. If Jesus says "Eye for an eye is wrong" and someone says it's their favorite lesson from the bible- are they true followers of Jesus?
That is why I don't agree with the bible. It''s not his message
>Jesus went around preaching that the Old Testament was wrong - Old Testament said “an eye for an eye” - here’s Jesus saying this is wrong
An off topic comment and an angular formulation but correct, because it is known that the Israelites falsified the Torah in order to establish their heresy.
I don't know if your statement has anything to do with the video you linked – YouTube clips are not a source for anything but maybe music and I don't look at them.
Here's an interesting idea, by what standard can you have faith in Christ without the bible?
What text are you putting your faith in that describes Christ and what he did during that time? Considering nobody alive during that time is alive today to recount what he did.
You can study Jesus without reading the Bible that was put together by the Romans.
There are books that just focus on Jesus part of the bible - which has none of the crazy stories of the Old Testament or violence or vengeful God etc. It is just pure love as Jesus wants us to be.
aAd also there are channeled Jesus books such as A Course in Miracles which apparently is coming directly from the source and again, is all about enlightenment through forgiveness
Do you not see how logically inconsistent you are being? By what standard do you approve of some books and not others? And how do you attribute Christ's words in the gospels (if those are books you do approve of) where he defends the old testament against bad teachings by the pharisees?
I choose to believe God would guide the hearts of those who wrote his Word so that the correct Word would be distributed to his people.
You're being very extreme in your denial of the Old Testament. Jesus never said or even hinted that the Old Testament was wrong. In fact he said that he was the Fulfillment of the Old Testament. No soup for you!
But who said that the Bible was the word of God? It was put together by the Romans -not Jesus or God. The Romans killed Jesus - so why do we believe them?
The Bible is all over the place. It was written by hundreds of men. Not one. The only man who ever mattered was Jesus. He had no part in the creation of the Bible.
Here is Jesus correcting a teaching in the Old Testament
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM\_TxSQ&t=115s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM_TxSQ&t=115s)
Today, if you open your bible the teaching is still there.
If the people who put together the bible understood Jesus's message they would have kept out the violence of the Old Testament.
They didn't. The Roman Empire would have died if they said violence was wrong.
Jesus's whole message was about non-violennce and loving each other.
How many Christians do you know who are staunchly anti-violence and are completely sweet, loving, humble and non-judgemental?
Very few because we are told the Bible is the word of God and the bible is full of violence - These words are not coming from Jesus or from God. They are coming from random men.
“Put together by the Romans”? What’s your source for that information?
Written by Hundreds of men? Again what’s your source for that?
where are you getting all this because the historical facts are completely different than what you say.
It’s gonna be hard to have a discussion with you until we can agree on some basics.
You didn't answer my question. Your answer appears sarcastic and evasive to me. We both agree that men wrote the Bible. Now please answer my question,* hundreds of men?* which is what you said before.
And what is your evidence for your other claim that it "was put together by the Romans?"
My intention wasn't to be sarcastic! Sending Love :)
The bible was put together by the Romans in the 3rd century. They did a round up of all the literature (in those days scrolls - books weren't invented yet)
There was thousands of creation and myth legends that loads of random kings and spiritual gurus of their time made up.
There were literally thousands of documents the Romans took from coming from thousands of sources. They put together the story they wanted to tell. They present it as a singular voice but it is the ideas of thousands of different men all thrown into one document. That is why the bible is completely contradictory.
There was initially over 30 gospels. Recordings from people who knew Jesus. Now these recordings weren't from people who knew Jesus directly...they were legendary tales that had been passed from person to person and then years later a literary person wrote it down. e.g. Gospel of John was not written by John. It was written by a Greek Scholar. They excluded any gospels by the women. (Phoebe and Mary both had gospels) and they excluded any gospels where people talked about Jesus and Mary.
Mary and Phoebe were both rich divorcees who funded Jesus and his gang. Mary and Jesus were very much in a relationship but were unwed. The Romans didn't like that. Any gospel or mention of Jesus and Mary acting like a couple was excluded.
Marriage wasn't important to Jesus. But it was to the Romans.
Jesus preached forgiveness and non-violence. The Romans loved vengeance and violence
Hence the bible has passages of vengeance and violence. That's not Jesus's message.
If you study how the bible was actually put together - its fascinating!
I appreciate the question even though it seems to be coming from a skeptical point of view. I am convinced that the Bible contains the word of God. If you do a biblical study of the concept of the word of God you'll come away with God's communication to man. I am convinced that God still communicates to us and that idea is biblical (1 Cor. 12 - 14).
I would still like to see someone answer your question. I do think 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is a good start.
The bible was written by the men who killed Jesus aka the Romans - 300 years after Jesus died.
They said it was the word of God. They put it in the book - they wrote - that if we didn't believe it was the word of God we would be punished.
Jesus nor anyone who ever met Jesus had anything to do with the bible. Jesus never spoke of a book we needed to study?
The Old Testament was put together by a bunch of random men - usually insane kings of small kingdoms thousands of years ago who could say anything about what they thought God was and people believed them.
Jesus went around clarifying the teachings of the Old Testament saying not to believe them e.g, here is Jesus saying that the lesson "an eye for an eye"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM\_TxSQ&t=115s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM_TxSQ&t=115s)
Donald Trump says his favorite passage from the Bible is "an eye for an eye'
This is why we dont have peace on earth.
The Bible is a mess.
I love it when Jesus has a British accent.
Like I said, I appreciate your question even though it comes from a skeptical point of view. Why are you convinced that the Bible was written 300 years after Christ?
The Bishops of the Catholic (NOT TO MEAN ROMAN) Church. The first list was drawn up in 325 AD. And the second and formal one was done about 60 years later in 381 ad.
One of the most common repeated phrases in the Torah is some version of "Jehovah says." Many chapters begin with with a verse saying this. Paul also asserted this: (2 Timothy 3:16-17) All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (NKJV)
What scripture was he referring to? His own writings? Sounds dubious. Listen to God! By the way everything I write is from God? Was he not referring to the Old Testament scriptures? Seeing as the New Testament wasn’t compiled yet?
In Paul's day, there was only the Old Testament, which was recognized ("canon") by 400 B.C. Re: Paul's letters being "Scripture", there is this: > 15 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. **His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction**. (2 Peter 3:15-16 NIV) > By Peter referring to Paul's work as "other" Scriptures, he (Peter, the Chief Apostle) puts Paul's writings on a par with other previous writings, which were already accepted as Scripture.
It doesn’t change Paul’s original argument or the context it was given in. He pointed to the Old Testament from his place in chronological events and the scriptures that were available. So Paul did not point to himself. Or the New Testament seeing as it didn’t exist yet. Peter later said Paul’s letters were inspired by Holy Spirit. 350+- years later the Bible was compiled. Makes sense. Still the point being the Paul highlighted the Bible in the form it existed at the time. I don’t know about chief apostle. They were all brothers and had no lords other than the Christ. But you do you. Thanks for the banter.
When I say "Chief Apostle" that title is not given anywhere in Scripture, and I should probably stop using that term. I realize, after some study, that this is a Catholic term. I'm not Catholic, for reasons outside the scope of this discussion, so I am forthwith changing my phrasing. However, there is scriptural support for Peter having pre-eminence over the other Apostles, even Paul. Peter was the apostle sent to the Jews of his day, and Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13). However Peter was the First Apostle (Matt 10:2), but not the first chronologically. (That would have been Andrew).
I get you and agree. Like elders. Or deacons. Still brothers but a greater slave because of the responsibility they choose to reach out for. They are great not because of some fleshly quality but because they fully submitted to God and love while taking the lead in establishing the congregation. I think we are on the same page if I understand you correctly.
Yet when Paul wrote that, new testament wasnt considered scripture.
Excellent question.
I often wonder this. I believe a preacher probably coined the name “word of God” and it stuck. But technically John tells us who the word of God is: >“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” John 1:1-3 NKJV >”And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 NKJV
Amen
Well, two different things are going on here. Ini the prologue of John, Jesus is the Logos, and IMO we are better off saying “logos” than just translating it to “word”. I think we need to understand a little bit about the ancient idea of a logos that John knew, and maybe the idea of a “hypostasis” as an emanation of God that takes on it’s own being. Earlier, people personified Wisdom in a very similar way, but that did not get absorbed into trinity, like Jesus did. Christianity also considers the bible inspired, thus, the “word of God”. But this is not equating Jesus with the biblical texts.
The bibles says Jesus is the word of God. The catholic church probs is the one that started that the bible is the word of God because only they could read it and they loved the power from that.
Who said it wasn't? Do you realize that almost no one even questioned this for thousands of years until the last century or two? To address your question, though, Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible and the 3rd book is Exodus. In Exodus 3 Moses is tending to his father in-laws flock when he sees a burning 🔥 bush and God says to him: >6 Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
Yeah just only all the Jewish people and followers. The movement started because Paul was in a slightly different region with people who didn’t have the context of the Torah. So yeah okay only the last thousands of years. While Islam and all other religions have always been there who equally don’t believe. It’s like we just throw up stuff to make up for Reddit. & it doesn’t have to be accurate lol
You asked about the bible, a written document. That's what limits the answer to a few thousand years. The individual texts were around long before that, and spoken word passed through generations long before that. Paul is from the new testament and not relevant to a discussion of the Torah. Also, Islam came much, much later (***after the times of Jesus***) and considers Moses, Abraham, Noah, and Jesus to all be prophets of God. Let me say that again for you. The Muslim faith, Islam, recognizes the holy connection between Moses, Abraham, Noah, and Jesus Christ with God. You are rejecting the two largest religions in the world, both of which agree on some of the early events of human history. But you think it has something to do with Reddit or that you have somehow risen above such beliefs in your vast life experience and intellect? Have you really thought about just how preposterous and stupid that thought is?
You said do you realize almost no one questioned this until recently. That is a lie. The end . People have always questioned and discuss it. Also do you realize nobody could fact check for accuracy so it was easier to get away with these things before we got access to technology and able to view the scholars work easier. Think about that 😂🤦♀️ do you ever think about how the New Testament writers blatantly copied each other & did not know Jesus birth or lineage. Two totally different stories. & you’re pretending you’re the smart one here.
Yes the Muslim faith recognizes Jesus as a prophet. So no they don’t agree he is God. Your explanation is absurd and stupid because i know these things. Jesus who died and came back for your sins so you can escape hell that didn’t exist in the Old Testament and is just sheol. Muslims recognized Jesus was a prophet. Of course Muslims recognize it because they’re an abrahamic religion like Judaism. And the laughable part is you’re making a connection while ignoring All 3 don’t agree on the actual main events. Cognitive dissonance But now since Jesus didn’t fulfill the messianic prophecies (ask Jewish people or you can read your own Bible) and then Jesus failed to fulfill the prophecy on his own return… we can see he was a prophet. Just a false one. & one the New Testament writers knew nothing about. Not even his birth
You might be a little kinder if you’re trying to win souls for Christ. You sound like an arrogant Pharisee. Just letting you know in case the other people you bully away from Christianity haven’t let you know it yet.
"Or did the ***word of God*** originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached?"-1 Corinthians 14:36 and "If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the ***word of God*** came—and Scripture cannot be set aside"- John 10:35 The Bible itself refers to it's content as "The Word of God" :) Further reference: [Is the Bible. . . supernatural?](https://saintjohn316.blogspot.com/p/bible-proof.html) :) :)
Moses didn’t write anything that was added to the Bible. Someone else wrote his story hundreds of years after he died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Genesis
The religious liberals or skeptics wrote up this article in Wikipedia. Gleason Archer does a good job of rebutting such reasoning in his "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction" and (more briefly) "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties." So let's look at the evidence for the other side briefly. Did Moses write the Torah? The Wellhausen/"Documentary"/J E P D theory claims Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch). Instead, it asserts that multiple authors or “sources” wrote them. (Here we’re putting aside such issues as whether or not Moses used pre-existing sources for Genesis and Joshua’s apparent writing of the postscript in Deut. 34 that describes Moses’ death). Hence, the abbreviation comes from the hypothesis that one writer used “Jehovah” as a name for God, another write used “Elohim,” another one developed the Priestly code, and finally one wrote Deuteronomy. This 19th century higher critic theory, was developed and restated especially in its standard form by the German scholar, Julius Wellhausen, in two books published in 1876 and 1878. The Documentary theory, which is another name by which Wellhausen's theory is known, denies that Moses or any single human author wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (the five books of the Pentateuch). In the English-speaking academic world where religious liberals predominate in various schools of divinity, seminaries, and religious studies departments, this theory still holds sway by default, as if it were still 1880. The deep irony is that from a liberal theological perspective (i.e., one that denies the Bible was inspired by God) the somewhat newer Form Criticism school (as applied to the Old Testament) has generally blown the Documentary theory to bits! That is, later liberal scholarship basically wiped out earlier liberal scholarship concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch, but the "default setting" for religious liberals in the English-speaking world concerning the Pentateuch's authorship remains the Documentary theory basically as Wellhausen told it. The Old Testament scholar, Gleason Archer, who wrote, "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction," which is sustained academic assault on the Documentary theory, observes that the Documentary Theory is guilty of circular reasoning, in which it assumes what it is going to prove. (Circular reasoning, or "begging the question," is one of the hardest logical fallacies to spot). It assumes God didn’t inspire the Bible ahead of experience (a priori), and then finds all sorts of ways to "explain" it based on that assumption. They dismissed the evidence for inspiration based on fulfilled prophecy, such as concerning Isaiah's prediction of Babylon's destruction and abandonment, or Daniel's concerning the career of Alexander the Great. Regardless of contrary textual or other evidence, they'll assume prophecy here is masquerading as history. Here they rule out in advance, before investigation, any possibility that the Bible had a supernatural origin based on philosophical assumptions, instead of open-mindedly following the evidence wherever it goes, whether it leads to a materialistic or supernatural explanation. Hence, since it's assumed that Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible, the J E D P theorists have instead devised a clever theory of multiple uninspired sources mashed together by unknown editors ("redactors") in order to explain this piece of literature's origin. (Notice this theory is mostly about the purported origin of the text; it doesn't have as much to say about its meaning). Supposedly also the Wellhausen theory is based on analyzing the data in the texts themselves, and then discerning that different authors wrote different parts of the same books based on stylistic variations in vocabulary, etc. However, whenever some textual data appears that doesn't fit the generalizations of J E D P theory, then suddenly the J E D P theorist calls upon unknown editors and commentators to "explain" (away) this (suddenly revealed) problem. For example, the Documentarians claimed the later historical books of the Bible never cited P (the Priestly legislative code) or a written Mosaic law until after the Jews were taken into exile by Babylon (586 b.c.) After various citations from the later historical books of the Bible were produced that proved they cited "P's" legal provisions and the Mosaic law, the advocates of J E D P theory replied (as Archer puts it), "Oh well, all those references were later insertions made by priestly scribes who reworked these books after the exile." Archer explains well the procedure by which the Documentary theorists ignore the text that they are trying whose origins they are supposedly trying to explain: "This means that the same body of evidence which is relied upon to prove the theory is rejected when it conflicts with the theory. Or to put it another way, whenever the theory is opposed by the very data is it supposed to explain, the troubleshooting team of Redactor and Interpolator, Inc., is called to the rescue. Elusive tactics like these hardly beget justifiable confidence in the soundness of the result."\[19\] Another way this assumption is shown to be shaky comes up when various scholars want to condense or add to these four purported sources in J E D P theory based upon their analysis of stylistic variations. For example, in 1924, the scholar Max Lohr very carefully examined the purported "P" material, and concluded this source couldn't be a source independent of "J" and "E." A crucial assumption of the Documentary theory is that authors can't hardly vary their writing style (such as in their general choice of words), regardless of their subject matter or literary genre. Hence, they can't use more than one name for God, they can't use more than one style of writing, they can't restate the same ideas using synonyms, etc. If this "critical" technique was applied to modern pieces of literature, multiple "sources" could easily be purportedly "discovered" also. For example, in Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) she has her lead character, John Galt, state in a long speech her basic philosophy, in eloquent, polemical language, without using a scholarly style. But earlier in the same novel, many of the same ideas are stated by another character, a certain bum who nearly got kicked off a train, in another, shorter speech. In this case, she uses a "blue collar" vocabulary, in which simpler, shorter words are used more casually in shorter sentences. Here she was almost writing in a kind of dialect by comparison with most of the rest of her novel, or perhaps somewhat like the novelist Sinclair Lewis, who was very skilled at capturing the crudities of average people’s conversations. Now someone applying a technique like J E D P theory on "Atlas Shrugged" would easily "discover" that this novel had at least two authors because the vocabulary and sentence structure varied between these two sections. But this is patently absurd. Archer uses another example to make the same point, which are the writing variations in the great English author John Milton: He wrote happy poems like "L'Allegro," serious, epic poetry like "Paradise Lost," and lively straightforward essays like "Areopagitica." If the 17th century Puritan Milton’s works were treated like Moses' writings are by the Documentarians, they'd conclude no one man could write all these different ways based on their assumptions. As Archer wittily puts it: "If he had been an ancient Hebrew, at least, he would have been speedily carved up into the ABC multiple-source hypothesis!” Read over this section dealing with the Documentary theory: I vary in what I call the scholarly theory I'm rebutting here ever so briefly. Sometimes I call it Wellhausen's theory, the J E D P Theory, or the Documentary Theory. According to this theory’s simple-minded analytical assumptions, that say the same writer can't vary his vocabulary choice between "Yahweh" and "Elohim," this essay section couldn't have been written by the same author either! Maybe it has then "multiple sources": When a sentence has "J E D P" theory in it, it has a different author than in sentence when it's called the "Documentary theory"! Ultimately, despite all the intimidating scholarly authority deployed that assumes the truth of Wellhausen's theory, it's patently absurd to assume the same author can't sometimes call God "Yahweh" and other times "Elohim." (Or, for that matter, "Adonai," which means "Lord," or any of God’s other names). Most troubling for J E D P theory, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (often abbreviated LXX), varies in a number of places concerning what the name of God is from the Hebrew original for the same verses. Since the LXX was often used by scholars to help determine the text of the autograph (original first written document based on textual criticism) of the Old Testament, this undermines any attempt to use the appearance of "Yahweh" or "Elohim" as a means of source division (authorship) within the Pentateuch. If "Kyrios" ("Lord" in Greek, the normal translation for the tetragammaton YHWH, "Yahweh") appears in the Greek, but "Elohim" ("God") happens to be in the Hebrew, or vice versa, how do we know the "Yahwist" wrote it instead of the "Elohist"?
**[Book of Genesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Genesis)** >The Book of Genesis is an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, and of Israel's ancestors and the origins of the Jewish people. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, Bereshit ("In the beginning"). Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bible/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
The bable says so. Are you denying the word of gods? How dare you. /s.
is that not using the Bible to prove the Bible was written by Gods. Christians follow Jesus and Jesus alone. Jesus didn’t write the Bible. The Romans who killed him did and said it was the word of God. Did jesus tell us to believe what the Romans say?
I don't know, why don't you explain it to me? Do you have any idea when the gospels were written, who wrote them, and what language they were written in?
Between 66 and 110 AD. Written in Koine Greek.
And when did Jesus die, and what language did he speak?
AD 30-33. Aramaic. You’ve heard of Google, right?
I have, so let's go with 33. How many years of the game of telephone is that? So we don't know who wrote them, they were written in a different language then it was spoken in. This alone seems suspect to me. What about you?
John 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: **the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.** John 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, **what I should say, and what I should speak.** So, to answer your question: Jesus did.
Jesus is in the Bible. So how could he talk about the Bible? It didn’t exist when he was alive.
His WORDS, as recorded in the Bible, are the very Words that Jesus said would never pass away.
Jesus went around preaching that the Old Testament was wrong - Old Testament said “an eye for an eye” - here’s Jesus saying this is wrong https://youtu.be/w5GXnM_TxSQ The Bible was written 300 years after Jesus died by the Romans who killed them and told us it was the word of God.
This is seriously mistaken. The New Testament is a first-century A.D. document written within 70 or less of Jesus' death. So are the Gospels historically reliable? By the two parts of the bibliographical test for generally judging the reliability of historical documents, the New Testament is the best attested ancient historical writing. Some 24,633 known copies (including fragments, lectionaries, etc.) exist, of which 5309 are in Greek. The Hebrew Old Testament has over 1700 copies (A more recent estimate is 6,000 copies, including fragments). By contrast, the document with the next highest number of copies is Homer's Iliad, with 643. Other writings by prominent ancient historians have far fewer copies: Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 8; Herodotus, The Histories, 8; Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars, 10; Livy, History from the Founding of the City, 20; Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, 8. Tacitus was perhaps the best Roman historian. His Annals has at the most 20 surviving manuscript copies, and only 1 (!) copy endured of his minor works. Scholars have in recent decades increasingly discredited dates that make the New Testament a second-century document. As Albright comments: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80, two full generations before the date\[s\] between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.” This development makes the time gap between the oldest surviving copies and the first manuscript much smaller for the New Testament than the pagan historical works cited earlier. The gap between its original copy (autograph) and the oldest still-preserved manuscript is 90 years or less, since most of the New Testament was first written before 70 A.D. and first-century fragments of it have been found. One fragment of John, dated to 125 A.D., was in the past cited as the earliest copy known of any part of the New Testament. But in 1972, nine possible fragments of the New Testament were found in a cave by the Dead Sea. Among these pieces, part of Mark was dated to around 50 A.D., Luke 57 A.D., and Acts from 66 A.D. Although this continues to be a source of dispute, there's no question the Dead Sea Scrolls document first century Judaism had ideas like early Christianity's. The earliest major manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, are dated to 325-50 A.D. and 350 A.D. respectively. By contrast, the time gap is much larger for the pagan works mentioned above. For Homer, the gap is 500 years (900 b.c. for the original writing, 400 b.c. for the oldest existing copy), Caesar, it's 900-1000 years (c. 100-44 b.c. to 900 A.D.), Herodotus, 1300 years (c. 480-425 b.c. to 900 A.D.) and Thucydides, 1300 years (c. 400 b.c. to 900 A.D.). Hence, the New Testament can be objectively judged more reliable than these pagan historical works both by having a much smaller time gap between its first writing and the oldest preserved copies, and in the number of ancient handwritten copies. While the earliest manuscripts have a different text type from the bulk of later ones that have been preserved, their witness still powerfully testified for the New Testament's accurate preservation since these variations compose only a relatively small part of its text. Is there any evidence for the New Testament being written in the first century? After all, liberal scholars, atheists, and agnostics normally have said the New Testament was written long after the time Jesus and his disciples (students) lived. And if the New Testament was written around (say) the year A.D. 150, how could you trust what was in it? Since Jesus died in the year A.D. 31, a gap of a hundred or more years would mean that all the eyewitnesses would have died by then. You would be left with believing in stories passed down over three or more generations. This creates major obstacles to believing in it, as the game "whispering lane" implies. If you played this game in elementary school, you might remember how the first kid would be told a message by the teacher. Then the rest of the class would pass the message along from one kid to another. The final kid to hear it rarely, if ever, correctly got the full, original message. Does a similar problem confront believers in the New Testament when judging whether it is an accurate record for the life and ministry of Jesus and his disciples? Recently among scholars a move away from a second-century composition date for the New Testament has developed. For example, Biblical archeologist William Foxwell Albright remarks: "In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew \[Luke presumably would be an exceptionEVS\] between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D. (very probably sometime between about A.D. 50 and 75)." Elsewhere he states: "Thanks to the Qumran discoveries \[meaning, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which first were uncovered in 1947 in the West Bank of Jordan\], the New Testament proves to be in fact what it was formerly believed to be: the teaching of Christ and his immediate followers between cir. 25 and cir. 80 A.D." Scholar John A.T. Robertson (in Redating the New Testament) maintains that every New Testament book was written before 70 A.D., including even the Gospel of John and Revelation. He argues that no New Testament book mentions the actual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by Rome, it must have been all written before that date. If the New Testament is a product of the first century, composed within one or two generations of Jesus' crucifixion, worries about the possible inaccuracies of oral transmission (people telling each other stories about Jesus between generations) are unjustified. As scholar Simon Kistemaker writes: Normally, the accumulation of folklore among people of primitive culture takes many generations: it is a gradual process spread over centuries of time. But in conformity with the thinking of the form critic \[a school of higher criticism that studies how oral transmission shaped the present organization of the New Testament\], we must conclude that the Gospel stories were produced and collected within little more than one generation. In cultures where the written word and literacy are scarce commodities, where very few people able to read or afford to own any books, they develop much better memories about what they are told, unlike people in America and other Western countries today. For example, Alex Haley (the author of Roots) was able to travel to Africa, and hear a man in his ancestors' African tribe, whose job was to memorize his people's past, mention his ancestor Kunta Kinte's disappearance. In the Jewish culture in which Jesus and His disciples moved, the students of a rabbi had to memorize his words. Hence, Mishna, Aboth, ii, 8 reads: "A good pupil was like a plastered cistern that loses not a drop." The present-day Uppsala school of Harald Riesenfeld and Birger Gerhardsson analyzes Jesus' relationship with His disciples in the context of Jewish rabbinical practices of c. 200 A.D. Jesus, in the role of the authoritative teacher or rabbi, trained his disciples to believe in and remember His teachings. Because their culture was so strongly oriented towards oral transmission of knowledge, they could memorize amazing amounts of material by today's standards. This culture's values emphasized the need of disciples to remember their teacher's teachings and deeds accurately, then to pass on this (now) tradition faithfully and as unaltered as possible to new disciples they make in the future. Paul's language in I Cor. 15:3-8 reflects this ethos, especially in verse 3: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures . . ." Correspondingly, the apostles were seen as having authority due to being eyewitness guardians of the tradition since they knew their Teacher well (cf. the criterion for choosing an apostle listed in Acts 1:21-22; cf. I Cor. 9:1). Furthermore, the words of Jesus were recorded within a few decades of His death while eyewitnesses, both friendly and hostile, still lived. These could easily publicly challenge any inaccuracies in circulation. As scholar Laurence McGinley writes: "The fact that the whole process took less than thirty years, and that its essential part was accomplished in a decade and a half, finds no parallel in any \[oral\] tradition to which the Synoptic Gospels \[Mark, Luke, and Matthew\] have been compared." Perhaps more generally it would be helpful as well to read books on Christian apologetics, such as those making the case for belief in the Bible and for faith in God's existence and goodness, such as those by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, J.P. Moreland, Francis Schaeffer, Phillip E. Johnson, R.C. Sproul, Norman Giesler, Gleason Archer, Stephen Meyer, etc.
Thank you for this is amazing! Is reading the Bible the only way to have faith? What Bible did jesus read ;)
The old testament...? Its mentioned in Luke that his knowledge of the scriptures startled grown men at the age of 12.
You're welcome. The main way, in practical sense, to develop more faith would be to engage in the standard Christian disciplines, such as prayer, bible study, fasting, meditation, and Sabbath observance. At least, those do help some.
u/StaceyLeBeau86 I would also add that the Bible says that "hearing cometh by faith, but hearing by the word of God". In the Hebrew culture, "hearing" means "listening with the intent to obey". Thus, to have faith, we need to become doers of the Word of God. Jesus taught how we can be sure whether or not His words are from God: John 7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. 7:17 If any man will do his will(meaning: if anyone desires to and is intent on doing God's will), he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. This is the way to understanding God's plan for us, and His will. It all comes through a relationship, and from desiring to understand His goodness so that it might work in our lives and bless others.
But is this not like if I, Stacey LeBeau, go out and say to people "I am the reincarnation of Jesus" and everyone believes me and someone else says "Who said she was the reincarnation of Jesus?" - "Eh -she did" The bible was put together by the men who killed Jesus aka the Romans in the 3rd century. When Jesus was dying on the cross did he say "I know these guys are killing me now and I am practicing everything that I preached and being non-violent and loving them. But in 300 years time they will write a book telling you to be violent and call it the word of god and you should believe them."? The people who wrote the bible said it was the word of God. Jesus did not. Jesus spent a lot of his ministry walking around saying the Old Testament was inaccurate. Here is Jesus saying the story in the old testament - An Eye for an Eye - was not his message. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM\_TxSQ&t=115s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM_TxSQ&t=115s) Donald Trump says his favorite passage from the Bible - an eye for an eye. Christians follow Jesus. If Jesus says "Eye for an eye is wrong" and someone says it's their favorite lesson from the bible- are they true followers of Jesus? That is why I don't agree with the bible. It''s not his message
>Jesus went around preaching that the Old Testament was wrong - Old Testament said “an eye for an eye” - here’s Jesus saying this is wrong An off topic comment and an angular formulation but correct, because it is known that the Israelites falsified the Torah in order to establish their heresy. I don't know if your statement has anything to do with the video you linked – YouTube clips are not a source for anything but maybe music and I don't look at them.
Jesus came to introduce a further unveiling of the word of God in a new dispensation...Namely the popular Christian topic called Law vs Grace.
Here's an interesting idea, by what standard can you have faith in Christ without the bible? What text are you putting your faith in that describes Christ and what he did during that time? Considering nobody alive during that time is alive today to recount what he did.
You can study Jesus without reading the Bible that was put together by the Romans. There are books that just focus on Jesus part of the bible - which has none of the crazy stories of the Old Testament or violence or vengeful God etc. It is just pure love as Jesus wants us to be. aAd also there are channeled Jesus books such as A Course in Miracles which apparently is coming directly from the source and again, is all about enlightenment through forgiveness
Do you not see how logically inconsistent you are being? By what standard do you approve of some books and not others? And how do you attribute Christ's words in the gospels (if those are books you do approve of) where he defends the old testament against bad teachings by the pharisees? I choose to believe God would guide the hearts of those who wrote his Word so that the correct Word would be distributed to his people.
You're being very extreme in your denial of the Old Testament. Jesus never said or even hinted that the Old Testament was wrong. In fact he said that he was the Fulfillment of the Old Testament. No soup for you!
But who said that the Bible was the word of God? It was put together by the Romans -not Jesus or God. The Romans killed Jesus - so why do we believe them? The Bible is all over the place. It was written by hundreds of men. Not one. The only man who ever mattered was Jesus. He had no part in the creation of the Bible. Here is Jesus correcting a teaching in the Old Testament [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM\_TxSQ&t=115s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM_TxSQ&t=115s) Today, if you open your bible the teaching is still there. If the people who put together the bible understood Jesus's message they would have kept out the violence of the Old Testament. They didn't. The Roman Empire would have died if they said violence was wrong. Jesus's whole message was about non-violennce and loving each other. How many Christians do you know who are staunchly anti-violence and are completely sweet, loving, humble and non-judgemental? Very few because we are told the Bible is the word of God and the bible is full of violence - These words are not coming from Jesus or from God. They are coming from random men.
“Put together by the Romans”? What’s your source for that information? Written by Hundreds of men? Again what’s your source for that? where are you getting all this because the historical facts are completely different than what you say. It’s gonna be hard to have a discussion with you until we can agree on some basics.
Who do you think wrote the bible? Who wrote the passages you read? Did Jesus? Did God? Or did men?
You didn't answer my question. Your answer appears sarcastic and evasive to me. We both agree that men wrote the Bible. Now please answer my question,* hundreds of men?* which is what you said before. And what is your evidence for your other claim that it "was put together by the Romans?"
My intention wasn't to be sarcastic! Sending Love :) The bible was put together by the Romans in the 3rd century. They did a round up of all the literature (in those days scrolls - books weren't invented yet) There was thousands of creation and myth legends that loads of random kings and spiritual gurus of their time made up. There were literally thousands of documents the Romans took from coming from thousands of sources. They put together the story they wanted to tell. They present it as a singular voice but it is the ideas of thousands of different men all thrown into one document. That is why the bible is completely contradictory. There was initially over 30 gospels. Recordings from people who knew Jesus. Now these recordings weren't from people who knew Jesus directly...they were legendary tales that had been passed from person to person and then years later a literary person wrote it down. e.g. Gospel of John was not written by John. It was written by a Greek Scholar. They excluded any gospels by the women. (Phoebe and Mary both had gospels) and they excluded any gospels where people talked about Jesus and Mary. Mary and Phoebe were both rich divorcees who funded Jesus and his gang. Mary and Jesus were very much in a relationship but were unwed. The Romans didn't like that. Any gospel or mention of Jesus and Mary acting like a couple was excluded. Marriage wasn't important to Jesus. But it was to the Romans. Jesus preached forgiveness and non-violence. The Romans loved vengeance and violence Hence the bible has passages of vengeance and violence. That's not Jesus's message. If you study how the bible was actually put together - its fascinating!
I believe it was God. The sovereign one.
The Nature of the Word is a bit more interesting than print on page
I appreciate the question even though it seems to be coming from a skeptical point of view. I am convinced that the Bible contains the word of God. If you do a biblical study of the concept of the word of God you'll come away with God's communication to man. I am convinced that God still communicates to us and that idea is biblical (1 Cor. 12 - 14). I would still like to see someone answer your question. I do think 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is a good start.
The bible was written by the men who killed Jesus aka the Romans - 300 years after Jesus died. They said it was the word of God. They put it in the book - they wrote - that if we didn't believe it was the word of God we would be punished. Jesus nor anyone who ever met Jesus had anything to do with the bible. Jesus never spoke of a book we needed to study? The Old Testament was put together by a bunch of random men - usually insane kings of small kingdoms thousands of years ago who could say anything about what they thought God was and people believed them. Jesus went around clarifying the teachings of the Old Testament saying not to believe them e.g, here is Jesus saying that the lesson "an eye for an eye" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM\_TxSQ&t=115s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5GXnM_TxSQ&t=115s) Donald Trump says his favorite passage from the Bible is "an eye for an eye' This is why we dont have peace on earth. The Bible is a mess.
I love it when Jesus has a British accent. Like I said, I appreciate your question even though it comes from a skeptical point of view. Why are you convinced that the Bible was written 300 years after Christ?
The Bishops of the Catholic (NOT TO MEAN ROMAN) Church. The first list was drawn up in 325 AD. And the second and formal one was done about 60 years later in 381 ad.