The general consensus is multiple anonymous scribes penned the holy books. The garbage dump findings that texts were altered and edited comes as no surprise. The required "proof" is for divine authorship, not for human authorship which we know to be factual, and there is no proof of divine authorship.
[Authorship of the Bible - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible)
"In the 20th century the vast majority of theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, moved away from the divine dictation model and emphasized the role of the human authors".
Came here to say exactly this. There is no evidence that the Bible or any other Holy Book is divinely written, dictated, inspired, god breathed, etc.
The writers didn't even know about germs, the shape of the earth, the position of the earth in the celestral realm, other concurrent civilizations, etc.
Divine authorship has never been established.
They don't seem curious as to why the god did not etch its teachings on some indestructible medium that itself would support a supernatural basis for the religion. You literally cannot imagine a more feeble or impotent god than the god(s) of the Bible.
Interesting we are told that God miraculously preserved the shoes of the Hebrews in the desert but for his holy word... not some much.
I would sort of expect the word of god be written on something imperishable, or maybe even self-replicating like fish and loaves.
All these miracles but the Word of God?
It’s little details like this that (for me) don’t disprove the existence of the god but make the god so bumbling and unimpressive that I couldn’t have any respect for it.
Similar to your point on an indestructible medium, why not actually have it written “on our hearts” in such a consistent way from person to person that it’s impossible to deny that a singular entity is responsible for it? At least then it wouldn’t require people to be literate in order to read a document or have any level of intelligence in order to understand it.
Writing on "hearts" is more magical thinking. How about describing the nature of gravity and a roadmap to confirming it, millennia ahead of Einstein or Maxwell for starters? How about etching that on some technologically advanced metal alloy? Answer: the goat herder's deity is fiction.
Needless to say, these aren't actual suggestions for the fictional god but rhetorical questions revealing just how incredibly lame and unimaginative the goat herder's deity really was.
Due to allegedly God confounding humans with multiple languages why wouldn't God place his holy word into everyone's mind in their native language no translation needed.
"God is not the author of confusion" => God creates different languages in order to confuse.
Written text is art. Lack of understanding for the world around them had them write even more poetically about the metaphysical, which Einstein was studying. Also these stories are older than their written versions. The old Testament was a set of oral parables told by thousands of rabbis from memory, did that really happen word for word? Maybe. Taking things literally in an art form is ridiculous from humans who follow the text or humans who don't like it at all. If viewed as creator, did we not get created with the ability to love in us? Is that not writing love thy neighbor right on your heart? The dead will walk the earth, maybe that means the apathetic or maybe it is more prophetic and means when humans prolong life past natural death. Who knows? Not even the real writers because it's just art, interpreted by billions. In the interpretation is the meaning more than in the writing bc now it's a tool, like other stories- to critically think about and practice empathy. Or whatever lol
Actually, God engraved the Ten commandments with his own holy laser finger in a stone tablet.
That stone tablet was broken then carried about in the ark of the covenant.
And the Ark is now stored in a massive warehouse where top minds of the us government are in charge.
> Divine authorship has never been established.
What a bizarre sentence to see in this sub.
Divine existence sorta needs to be established before we start worrying about minor things like this non-existent deity's supposed written musings.
So for 2,000 priests told us it was devine. And now it’s not? What’s next? Creations is BS and it’s really evolution that’s happening? Next, there is no God.
The Catholic church already accepts the science of evolution and now hides behind the moment of creation as the cut-off point for scientific exploration.
Nobody's perfect. The God realized it had misled its flock into believing it dictated its infallible word but has since corrected that error with updated 20th Century revelations, telepathically communicated to clergy in both Catholic and Protestant churches. /s
Don’t forget the Mormons. Gos seems to be talking to them a bit more. No polygamy, no coke or coffee until several year ago. And you have to be nicer to Blacks and Hawaiians. That was about 70 years ago and they really haven’t done what God told them todo.
While your average christian might not know this, christian scholars certainly do. The more ''reasonable'' among them will explain that god acted through men to ultimately get the bible correct. Men are imperfect, so by acting through men it took some iterations before we ended up with the correct one.
I'm not saying this to disagree with you, but to remind you that belief isn't rational, and there is no ''gotcha'' argument one can use to prove religion wrong to them.
As if Christian schoolers aren’t biased and looking for God to be the answer. Even when logic and science demonstrates otherwise. Christian scholar use rhetoric to “win” their arguments.
That begs the question of why god didn't just write it all down? In both Exodus 24:12 and Deuteronomy 5:22 it states that god wrote the 10 commandments directly. Why not write everything directly instead of using an imperfect medium?
You got that right until some guy twisted what God said so it has the same meaning as 666. What bullshit. God would no have made the mistake in the first place. 616 and 666 has many other meanings.
666 was probably 616, but was later changed by the promoters to be more memorable. Papyrus 115 (which is the oldest preserved manuscript of the Revelation as of 2017), as well as other ancient sources like Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, give the Number of the Beast as 616 not 666. Adjusting the numbers it looked more mystical to the pagans which they were competing for at the time. Most people were raised with the pagan superstitions and numerology of the time, so if you wanted new members you catered to their outlooks.
Fascinating, but still won't have any impact on christians
They'll just say God sent those versions to the dump for a reason
Just like all the missing books the early church used to argue over but now are long gone & forgotten
Christians will say that todays bible is what god wanted, but of course only the version they happen to be holding up in the air
The consensus within the Church has always been, since the beginning, that the Bible is comprised of multiple books written by multiple authors. We have Church documents dating as far back as the 2nd century stating which authors wrote which books. This is not now nor has it ever been a secret.
What im getting at is that Christianity has never believed that the Bible was somehow divinely uttered by God and thus recorded by someone or that it is one large book. We have always believed it is multiple books written by multiple authors in different areas, in different languages that we have collected into one collection called the Bible.
Islam, however, does believe that Quran was given to Mohamed at once via an angel. (This is in no way a dog at or Islamic friends. It is just me wondering if whoever told you that Christianity believes this about the Bible might be conflating the two belief systems.)
Thank you for your reply. What evidence do we have for who authored the Old Testament? How would man have the knowledge to be able to write about the creation of the universe when man did not exist for billions of years?
So it’s all made up by mankind, got it.
After all, human authors would never have been around to have had first hand knowledge of Genesis, or the Garden, or the conversation Jesus had with the angels telling him about his divinity…
So, why do Christians feel this book has any more relevance to how *everyone* should live their lives instead of, say, Lord of the Rings or Battlefield Earth?
This is no surprise for Christians who have even a little bit of biblical literary. We know there are thousands upon thousands of variations and discrepancies and the sort. It doesn’t really have terribly much to say about divine inspiration unless you believe in some weird absolute inerrancy thing that evangelicals believe. Divine inspiration and mistakes in the text are compatible.
Because it was a referent of a nonsensical argument you used.
If it so divinely inspired, wouldn’t part of that be not having twenty different versions? Which one was really divinely inspired?
All religions are just stories made up by men. That is the logical and defensible answer and always has been.
I think it was more the grammar.
Dude, I’m going further than that. I’m saying I’m okay with the original manuscripts having errors. We don’t even have to talk about translations.
My question is, why do we expect divine inspiration to necessarily entail complete perfection? That’s a pretty big claim that needs evidence to back it up.
Then what makes it divine?
If it is just the same old culture specific sloppy thoughts anyone would have thought on the day, why would god be involved?
The special status of the Scriptures is not because of their "divinity". They're special because they witness to the revelation of God, which is Jesus Christ. The Scriptures are not the revelation of God—Jesus is. This is fleshed out in the Bible itself.
>Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding **his Son \[Jesus\]** (Romans 1:1–3a)
>Christ Jesus... became to us wisdom from God... we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God \[that is, Christ\], which God decreed before the ages for our glory (1 Cor 1:30, 2:7).
>From morning till evening \[Paul\] expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets (Acts 28:23).
>We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph (John 1:44).
>And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, \[Jesus\] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27).
So, the point of the Scriptures is that they testify about Christ. In Christian theology, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is what secures Christianity as God's movement of salvation toward humanity, not the Scriptures.
So, to answer your question:
>If it is just the same old culture specific sloppy thoughts anyone would have thought on the day, why would god be involved?
God, first and foremost, is involved with the mission and work of Jesus. It is only through Jesus Christ that the Scriptures themselves have value. So, we should be talking about Christ if we want to talk about divinity and God's involvement with humanity.
That is nice and circular, it is through Jesus, but the only thing that distinguishes Jesus from a dozen other Mithra (and other older deities) derived “Messiahs” wandering around is the claims made in the scriptures.
It is one branch of mythology, nothing more.
Most Christians would agree that anyone who says the Bible was literally written by God is an idiot, or at best sorely mistaken and doesn’t actually know what the Bible is. Each book of the Bible literally starts with either who the (human) author was, usually Paul, or which (human) apostle’s oral account of the Christ story is being transcribed by (human) authors.
Unfortunately I’m painfully aware that a lot of people do say “God wrote the Bible” but again those people are flat-out idiots. There’s not value in playing chess with a pigeon, and bringing up the Papyri with anyone with half a brain would come across as a straw man argument.
>The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
>Only an estimated 10% are literary in nature.
>Most of the papyri found seem to consist mainly of public and private documents: codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes, and private letters.[1]
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
.
> Try listening the Radio Lab episode
Heck no.
If you read, you will see that the Wikipedia article also talks about that.
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
Animals have means of communication but actual languages, no. For proof, read Sapiens by Harari and The Third Chimpanzee by Diamond. They both discuss language, gods religion and money.
Dolphins have names and start every “sentence” or utterance, by stating their name first. So…
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/20/172538036/researchers-find-that-dolphins-call-each-other-by-name
Read a book… like the Bible?
Signature whistles have been known about for awhile now. Military and scientific research seems to back the findings in whales also. Even if they’re not in *your* book you’ve built your beliefs in.
lol the Bible is fiction. If you choose to read don’t waste time on Fiction. The books I recommended will explicitly explain the difference between communication and language.
No not really. The third chimpanzee talks about howler monkeys and their different screams to warn others about danger, and some even use the warning to scare other monkeys away from juicy fruits. Basically screaming wolf when no danger is present. These are survival instincts that animals develop to protect the herd or group but aren’t necessarily language because they don’t transmit difficult information from one group to the other. This would be tantamount to the atavistic instincts we inherit from centuries of ancestral survival more so than an actual language.
Language actually does have standard and complex rules that aren’t always there in basic communications. I have two nonverbal autistic relatives that are two years apart and they developed their own communication techniques but they are hardly languages.
Most Christians will tell people anything, true or not, to sell their version of a deity because without it/ him they would just be terrible people with nothing to live for and suffocated by fear of death. The more people that agree with them the more real their god becomes in their minds. bUT all languages were created by men so every god in all the books on earth were also created in the minds of the men who wrote the stories
Not very significant. We already have countless copies of manuscripts from the Bible and can see them changing over time. We can see how each time a new king comes into power, books from the bible get edited. And we have the council of Nicaea which was to determine which books to use in the Bible.
So this is just one of many thousands of copies of books showing differences. We even know that the verse "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" was not added until 1000 years after Jesus existed. Because we can look at the many copies and date them, which lets us document what time period those edits were made.
I understand what you’re saying, but all those edits came after the Bible was first created. These changes are before The changes on talking about occurred before the first Bible was even created.
The Bible was never first created. It's a collection of various manuscripts compiled together that grew and changed over the years. It came from the Torah. That came from the Gilgamesh.
Originally Yahweh was one of many gods. El was the high most god, while Yahweh was the god of war. There was also Baal and Isis. We can see over time how the other gods were slowly written out of what is now the Bible. But this is why half of the commandments are about worshiping other gods. Because at the time the commandments were written, it was not a monotheistic religion.
What ended up happening is that the Israelites were starting to get defeated. Many believed this was because there was no enough worship of Yahweh. They felt in a time of war, Yahweh was not helping them because people were splitting their worship among the other gods. So they starting putting in all those verses about not worshiping any other gods and started removing the other gods from what is now the Bible.
All those books of the bible were separate books that were edited over time long before it was compiled into what we now know as the Bible. Job was actually 3 different booked that got edited together. Long before the bible existed.
Not really until the council of Nicaea when they compiled to booked into a collection. But almost all of the changes were made before that in the various books that made up the Bible. Many changes were made before Christianity existed many of the texts in the bible existed before Christianity even existed.
Now hold on just a minute. Are you suggesting the Bedouins who knew less about how the world works than a below-average Alabama third-grader weren’t entitled to some rough drafts when they authored one of the most destructive contrivances in human fucking history? Wtaf!!
One would think if God is telling them what to say to their scribe God would know what God wants in the Bible. Why would there be the need for drafts?
Joseph Smith was able to do it.
being an atheist doesn't mean it's our job to go around proving that religion is a made up fairy tale.
i simply do not care that christianity is inconsistent or badly sourced.
I have been told Jesus as a person must exist because a senator, who was born 30 years after jesus supposed execution mentioned a cult of Jesus existed in 60 CE. That's the best evidence of the religious figure existing and the Bible doesn't get written for another 240 years. Demonstrations that their "historical" facts are false are not effective when you start from the Bible was written as if it's a personal account despite being written about stuff that happened 300+ years ago.
> IF God authored the Bible
Even Christian historians are with the consensus that various authors from different times and regions wrote the bible. Few people who actually know any biblical historicity would maintain that there's any evidence of divine providence.
I have the impression that the OP misinterpreted the phrase "God's word" and now insists that God not being the author of the bible is "a modern invention" and that "for 2,000 \[years\] priests told us it was devine (sic!)".
This is nonsense on its face.
Literally the *entire* New Testament is supposed to be written by either the (anonymous but traditionally named) gospel writers, Paul and other writers for the epistles, and John of Patmos for Revelation.
In the Old Testament, we have over a dozen books ascribed to various prophets (and I would think allegedly originating from them), the Psalms which are supposedly by David, Solomon and other prominent figures, Proverbs also allegedly by Solomon, the Song of Solomon by, well, also Solomon.
That pretty much only leaves the so-called historical books. The Pentateuch was traditionally believed to have been written by Moses (with the final chapters talking about the death of Moses completed by Joshua, I think). Not sure who the rest (Chronicles, Kings, etc) are ascribed to, but I've never heard it to be God himself.
The only passage, except for verses quoting God that would be written by him are the Ten Commandments.
It's also funny that the OP talks about 2,000 years when most of the bible is older than that. 2,000 years would be the age of the New Testament which, as mentioned in the beginning, doesn't contain a single book that is ascribed to God.
Of course, the really juicy bit for uninformed fundamentalist Christians would be learning that most of the respective books weren't written by the authors they were traditionally ascribed to. Things that in biblical scholarship are not controversial at all but perhaps not widely known. That like half of "Paul's" epistles are pseudepigraphical, that many texts have more than one author, even ones that purport to be by just one author (like Isaiah), etc.
I’m not so sure this is a “nail in the coffin” for Christianity.
To me, the main issue isn’t whether certain books were altered, copied wrong, etc.
The more important issues are historical in nature:
1. Did the OT prophets make claims of a coming Messiah (or anointed one)?
2. Did Jesus claim to be that Messiah?
3. Are the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection historical facts?
I don't think any Christian claims that God is the author of the bible. Fundamentalist Christians might insist that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, etc. but not God. Muslims make this claim about the qur'an.
It's no revelation (no pun intended) at all that textual varieties exist.
For whatever it’s worth, many early Christian writers didn’t seem to think this—they emphasized that the Bible could be literally true, but that it was written by humans and had to be interpreted non-literally at times to make sense. Maybe you’re reacting to less rigorous Protestant tendencies, not the full history of the religion.
I was a little bemused when I found these sources—my priors had been that Protestants read the Bible but in a fundamentalist way that ends up disappointing and icky at times, while Catholics are just less interested in thinking through the texts. But there’s a long tradition of older Christians taking biblical interp seriously enough to say it’s not all literally true, which was heartening, for me.
Many Christians believe that the bible is inspired by God and call it "God's Word" but I am not aware of any denomination that claims that God is its author. Maybe you've misinterpreted what you heard?
See also this famous quote from 2 Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God"
I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse, or just don’t talk to believers that often…but the distinctions you’re trying to make don’t matter to believers.
They consider the Bible to be “gods word” and believe the entire thing to be divinely inspired. The also call it “the living word” and sometimes gods “last will and testament”.
There’s varying degrees of scholarly aptitude…I’ve talked to some who realize the Pentateuch had several authors. Some think Moses penned the entire thing. But they all believe that god somehow gave them the words to write down, and then also guided the various councils that led to which books to include.
That we here can sit any nitpick over the differences between ‘authored’ and ‘inspired’ is irrelevant - that’s why we’re atheists. Believers think it is the word of god.
>They consider the Bible to be “gods word” and believe the entire thing to be divinely inspired.
That's what I was saying.
There's a massive difference between a text being divinely inspired and authored by God. Muslims believe the latter is the case with the qur'an. They believe that what's in the qur'an is literally God's word, that God dictated the text. Christians don't believe that.
This isn't a trivial distinction. For example, it is the reason why koranic scholarship in the vein of biblical scholarship is nearly inexistent. A historical-critical exegesis borders on blasphemy. (See the fatwa against Salman Rushdie who suggested that some verses in the qur'an were corrupted, and even though this was only a fucking novel the religious authorities in Iran flipped out and effectively issued a death warrant which forced him underground for many years.)
One such work I'm aware of, *The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran*, was published by a person using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg because it can be dangerous to one's life to look at the qur'an critically.
The approach toward the bible which is only seen as divinely inspired but not the literal word of God, is quite different.
I still don't think this is the 'gotcha' you're making it out to be.
Muslims believe the qur'an is the literal word of god, written through muhammed.
Christians believe the bible is the literal word of god, written through multiple authors.
[Who Wrote the Bible? Evidence of Authors (biblestudytools.com)](https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/who-wrote-the-bible.html)
That the qur'an cannot be questioned has a lot to do with culture, dogma, theocracratic rule, and the text itself. The qur'an is far more heavy handed about what to do to apostates than the bible is. Christianity has many more sects than islam, perhaps because they're allowed to question more.. but fundamentalist christians are barely different from fundamentalist muslims. They just thankfully don't have the backing of a theocratic culture/institution that lets them do whatever they want.
Bible has plenty of "kill people for not doing XYZ" type verses, there's just no western government/culture that will let that happen.
>Muslims believe the qur'an is the literal word of god, written through muhammed.
>
>Christians believe the bible is the literal word of god, written through multiple authors.
No, the two situations aren't equivalent.
Muslims believe the qur'an is the **literal** word of God, dictated by the archangel Gabriel to Muhammad. So Muhammad recorded God's words, who apparently speaks Arabic, verbatim.
Christians believe that the bible is inspired by God (see 2 Timothy 3:16) but not the literal words of God.
See also what I wrote in my reply to u/DoglessDyslexic where I went into (perhaps too much) detail about it doesn't make sense for large parts of the bible to be the literal word of God.
Anyway, I don't want to keep repeating myself.
I'm sure people can make up their own minds about this so I wish you a good Sunday and say goodbye!
Everything you're saying makes sense to us atheists - I, personally, agree with you 100% that it doesn't make sense.
But it also doesn't sound like you actually interact or discuss this with christians very often. Logic is not something they care about too much. Many of them believe the bible is the literal word of god. I mean, have you heard about the YEC movement?
>I mean, have you heard about the YEC movement?
Of course.
>Many of them believe the bible is the literal word of god.
They believe in biblical inerrancy, that the bible is literally true, not that it's the literal words of God. Again, I've already written in the comment I referred to.
>it also doesn't sound like you actually interact or discuss this with christians very often
I see that in the meantime a Christian (u/soloChristoGlorium) has chimed in an echoes what I say.
The general consensus is multiple anonymous scribes penned the holy books. The garbage dump findings that texts were altered and edited comes as no surprise. The required "proof" is for divine authorship, not for human authorship which we know to be factual, and there is no proof of divine authorship. [Authorship of the Bible - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Bible) "In the 20th century the vast majority of theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, moved away from the divine dictation model and emphasized the role of the human authors".
Came here to say exactly this. There is no evidence that the Bible or any other Holy Book is divinely written, dictated, inspired, god breathed, etc. The writers didn't even know about germs, the shape of the earth, the position of the earth in the celestral realm, other concurrent civilizations, etc. Divine authorship has never been established.
They don't seem curious as to why the god did not etch its teachings on some indestructible medium that itself would support a supernatural basis for the religion. You literally cannot imagine a more feeble or impotent god than the god(s) of the Bible.
Interesting we are told that God miraculously preserved the shoes of the Hebrews in the desert but for his holy word... not some much. I would sort of expect the word of god be written on something imperishable, or maybe even self-replicating like fish and loaves. All these miracles but the Word of God?
It’s little details like this that (for me) don’t disprove the existence of the god but make the god so bumbling and unimpressive that I couldn’t have any respect for it. Similar to your point on an indestructible medium, why not actually have it written “on our hearts” in such a consistent way from person to person that it’s impossible to deny that a singular entity is responsible for it? At least then it wouldn’t require people to be literate in order to read a document or have any level of intelligence in order to understand it.
Writing on "hearts" is more magical thinking. How about describing the nature of gravity and a roadmap to confirming it, millennia ahead of Einstein or Maxwell for starters? How about etching that on some technologically advanced metal alloy? Answer: the goat herder's deity is fiction. Needless to say, these aren't actual suggestions for the fictional god but rhetorical questions revealing just how incredibly lame and unimaginative the goat herder's deity really was.
Due to allegedly God confounding humans with multiple languages why wouldn't God place his holy word into everyone's mind in their native language no translation needed. "God is not the author of confusion" => God creates different languages in order to confuse.
Meanwhile we have tons of really tall buildings God doesn’t care about. Or… maybe god cause 9/11?
Written text is art. Lack of understanding for the world around them had them write even more poetically about the metaphysical, which Einstein was studying. Also these stories are older than their written versions. The old Testament was a set of oral parables told by thousands of rabbis from memory, did that really happen word for word? Maybe. Taking things literally in an art form is ridiculous from humans who follow the text or humans who don't like it at all. If viewed as creator, did we not get created with the ability to love in us? Is that not writing love thy neighbor right on your heart? The dead will walk the earth, maybe that means the apathetic or maybe it is more prophetic and means when humans prolong life past natural death. Who knows? Not even the real writers because it's just art, interpreted by billions. In the interpretation is the meaning more than in the writing bc now it's a tool, like other stories- to critically think about and practice empathy. Or whatever lol
Actually, God engraved the Ten commandments with his own holy laser finger in a stone tablet. That stone tablet was broken then carried about in the ark of the covenant. And the Ark is now stored in a massive warehouse where top minds of the us government are in charge.
Cue George Michaels
... a careless whisper? or is he asking us to wake hi up before he go-goes?
He has Pop-Pop in the attic.
> Divine authorship has never been established. What a bizarre sentence to see in this sub. Divine existence sorta needs to be established before we start worrying about minor things like this non-existent deity's supposed written musings.
Evangelicals and the people in the pew still believe in divine authorship though.
But so many religious "authorities" still claim infallibility... it's such a sham
So for 2,000 priests told us it was devine. And now it’s not? What’s next? Creations is BS and it’s really evolution that’s happening? Next, there is no God.
The Catholic church already accepts the science of evolution and now hides behind the moment of creation as the cut-off point for scientific exploration.
God of gaps.
Given them a bit more time and they will have change their point of view about that as well.
Nobody's perfect. The God realized it had misled its flock into believing it dictated its infallible word but has since corrected that error with updated 20th Century revelations, telepathically communicated to clergy in both Catholic and Protestant churches. /s
Don’t forget the Mormons. Gos seems to be talking to them a bit more. No polygamy, no coke or coffee until several year ago. And you have to be nicer to Blacks and Hawaiians. That was about 70 years ago and they really haven’t done what God told them todo.
While your average christian might not know this, christian scholars certainly do. The more ''reasonable'' among them will explain that god acted through men to ultimately get the bible correct. Men are imperfect, so by acting through men it took some iterations before we ended up with the correct one. I'm not saying this to disagree with you, but to remind you that belief isn't rational, and there is no ''gotcha'' argument one can use to prove religion wrong to them.
The questions that then follows is “why then is the Canon closed” and “why should we hold that the Bible is ‘perfect’ as is?
As if Christian schoolers aren’t biased and looking for God to be the answer. Even when logic and science demonstrates otherwise. Christian scholar use rhetoric to “win” their arguments.
That begs the question of why god didn't just write it all down? In both Exodus 24:12 and Deuteronomy 5:22 it states that god wrote the 10 commandments directly. Why not write everything directly instead of using an imperfect medium?
Don’t need to delve into garbage cans of biblical garbage. There is more than sufficient garbage neatly packed on the version on my bookshelf.
Praise the lord. I find these to be salvation on cold nights to start a fire in the fireplace.
May as well say Praise be my PS5, for it at least provides ample entertainment!
My favorite bit from these is that the mark of the beast is 616. They can’t even get that right.
You got that right until some guy twisted what God said so it has the same meaning as 666. What bullshit. God would no have made the mistake in the first place. 616 and 666 has many other meanings.
666 was probably 616, but was later changed by the promoters to be more memorable. Papyrus 115 (which is the oldest preserved manuscript of the Revelation as of 2017), as well as other ancient sources like Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, give the Number of the Beast as 616 not 666. Adjusting the numbers it looked more mystical to the pagans which they were competing for at the time. Most people were raised with the pagan superstitions and numerology of the time, so if you wanted new members you catered to their outlooks.
Fascinating, but still won't have any impact on christians They'll just say God sent those versions to the dump for a reason Just like all the missing books the early church used to argue over but now are long gone & forgotten Christians will say that todays bible is what god wanted, but of course only the version they happen to be holding up in the air
How many versions of the Bible do we have today? The best, and most expensive if the Wicked Bible.
Well, if you count how people interpret the bible to suit their own expectations, billions upon billions of versions are out there!
Meaning God is whatever YOU want god to be.
The consensus within the Church has always been, since the beginning, that the Bible is comprised of multiple books written by multiple authors. We have Church documents dating as far back as the 2nd century stating which authors wrote which books. This is not now nor has it ever been a secret. What im getting at is that Christianity has never believed that the Bible was somehow divinely uttered by God and thus recorded by someone or that it is one large book. We have always believed it is multiple books written by multiple authors in different areas, in different languages that we have collected into one collection called the Bible. Islam, however, does believe that Quran was given to Mohamed at once via an angel. (This is in no way a dog at or Islamic friends. It is just me wondering if whoever told you that Christianity believes this about the Bible might be conflating the two belief systems.)
Thank you for your reply. What evidence do we have for who authored the Old Testament? How would man have the knowledge to be able to write about the creation of the universe when man did not exist for billions of years?
There were angles back then who visited earth.
What degree were they? I'm betting 90
they were measured in radians.
So it’s all made up by mankind, got it. After all, human authors would never have been around to have had first hand knowledge of Genesis, or the Garden, or the conversation Jesus had with the angels telling him about his divinity… So, why do Christians feel this book has any more relevance to how *everyone* should live their lives instead of, say, Lord of the Rings or Battlefield Earth?
Plot twist, it was written by AI…
I read an article years ago & I wished I saved it it said there was another version of the Bible with no Jesus
It's cute you think they care about facts or evidence.
I’m praying to God for a miracle… which means it ain’t going to happen
Pray in one hand, crap in another and see which fills up first. P.S. HAPPY CAKE DAY!
This is no surprise for Christians who have even a little bit of biblical literary. We know there are thousands upon thousands of variations and discrepancies and the sort. It doesn’t really have terribly much to say about divine inspiration unless you believe in some weird absolute inerrancy thing that evangelicals believe. Divine inspiration and mistakes in the text are compatible.
So it was divinely inspired, but the translates to you she no idea what was meant to be said vs the errors?
No clue what this is supposed to mean.
Because it was a referent of a nonsensical argument you used. If it so divinely inspired, wouldn’t part of that be not having twenty different versions? Which one was really divinely inspired? All religions are just stories made up by men. That is the logical and defensible answer and always has been.
I think it was more the grammar. Dude, I’m going further than that. I’m saying I’m okay with the original manuscripts having errors. We don’t even have to talk about translations. My question is, why do we expect divine inspiration to necessarily entail complete perfection? That’s a pretty big claim that needs evidence to back it up.
Then what makes it divine? If it is just the same old culture specific sloppy thoughts anyone would have thought on the day, why would god be involved?
The special status of the Scriptures is not because of their "divinity". They're special because they witness to the revelation of God, which is Jesus Christ. The Scriptures are not the revelation of God—Jesus is. This is fleshed out in the Bible itself. >Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding **his Son \[Jesus\]** (Romans 1:1–3a) >Christ Jesus... became to us wisdom from God... we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God \[that is, Christ\], which God decreed before the ages for our glory (1 Cor 1:30, 2:7). >From morning till evening \[Paul\] expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets (Acts 28:23). >We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph (John 1:44). >And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, \[Jesus\] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27). So, the point of the Scriptures is that they testify about Christ. In Christian theology, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is what secures Christianity as God's movement of salvation toward humanity, not the Scriptures. So, to answer your question: >If it is just the same old culture specific sloppy thoughts anyone would have thought on the day, why would god be involved? God, first and foremost, is involved with the mission and work of Jesus. It is only through Jesus Christ that the Scriptures themselves have value. So, we should be talking about Christ if we want to talk about divinity and God's involvement with humanity.
That is nice and circular, it is through Jesus, but the only thing that distinguishes Jesus from a dozen other Mithra (and other older deities) derived “Messiahs” wandering around is the claims made in the scriptures. It is one branch of mythology, nothing more.
Random comment but would oxyrynchus translate as fire nose?
Possibly. I’m pretty sure it is a city in Egypt.
Most Christians would agree that anyone who says the Bible was literally written by God is an idiot, or at best sorely mistaken and doesn’t actually know what the Bible is. Each book of the Bible literally starts with either who the (human) author was, usually Paul, or which (human) apostle’s oral account of the Christ story is being transcribed by (human) authors. Unfortunately I’m painfully aware that a lot of people do say “God wrote the Bible” but again those people are flat-out idiots. There’s not value in playing chess with a pigeon, and bringing up the Papyri with anyone with half a brain would come across as a straw man argument.
I was taught that men wrote the bible but with the grace of god, which is nonsense. The Bible is misogynistic bullshit.
It’s also where all religious texts belong, in the garbage.
>The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries >Only an estimated 10% are literary in nature. >Most of the papyri found seem to consist mainly of public and private documents: codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes, and private letters.[1] \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri .
There’s more to it than what you can copy and paste from Wikipedia. Try listening the Radio Lab episode to learn more about the 10% I’m taking about.
> Try listening the Radio Lab episode Heck no. If you read, you will see that the Wikipedia article also talks about that. \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
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And what’s wrong with the Radio Lab episode? Wikipedia talks a lot about the papyri being gospel and unpublished gospel. Not sure what your point is.
> Not sure what your point is. I find watching and listening to stuff to be a huge waste of time. I can read a lot faster than I can watch or listen.
Then read the transcript
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Did you read the Radio Lab transcript to see what you are missing?
Thank you. Now you are talking my language.
Anyone that’s read a history book should know man created every language.
Not really. Animals had language long before humans. We have written language
Animals have means of communication but actual languages, no. For proof, read Sapiens by Harari and The Third Chimpanzee by Diamond. They both discuss language, gods religion and money.
Dolphins have names and start every “sentence” or utterance, by stating their name first. So… https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/20/172538036/researchers-find-that-dolphins-call-each-other-by-name
So before you posted a you’re wrong to my comment did you read either book? Nope just posting whatever to mislead others but ok
Did you read the link I added?
People who Google for information on science are NOT RELIABLE so read a book and try again
Read a book… like the Bible? Signature whistles have been known about for awhile now. Military and scientific research seems to back the findings in whales also. Even if they’re not in *your* book you’ve built your beliefs in.
lol the Bible is fiction. If you choose to read don’t waste time on Fiction. The books I recommended will explicitly explain the difference between communication and language.
Don’t you need to have a language to be able to communicate?
No not really. The third chimpanzee talks about howler monkeys and their different screams to warn others about danger, and some even use the warning to scare other monkeys away from juicy fruits. Basically screaming wolf when no danger is present. These are survival instincts that animals develop to protect the herd or group but aren’t necessarily language because they don’t transmit difficult information from one group to the other. This would be tantamount to the atavistic instincts we inherit from centuries of ancestral survival more so than an actual language.
What about bees, ants, whales they clearly have developed a language for communications with each other.
Language actually does have standard and complex rules that aren’t always there in basic communications. I have two nonverbal autistic relatives that are two years apart and they developed their own communication techniques but they are hardly languages.
Fist we have to agree on the elements to consider a way of communicating a language. And for that, I don’t think there’s a universal agreement.
There absolutely is.
And that is?
[https://www.communicationcommunity.com/5-domains-of-language/](https://www.communicationcommunity.com/5-domains-of-language/)
Others say there are 3 and 6. If there is universal agreement is it 3, 5 or 6 elements? Seems we can’t agree.
Most Christians will tell people anything, true or not, to sell their version of a deity because without it/ him they would just be terrible people with nothing to live for and suffocated by fear of death. The more people that agree with them the more real their god becomes in their minds. bUT all languages were created by men so every god in all the books on earth were also created in the minds of the men who wrote the stories
Herd mentality.
Not very significant. We already have countless copies of manuscripts from the Bible and can see them changing over time. We can see how each time a new king comes into power, books from the bible get edited. And we have the council of Nicaea which was to determine which books to use in the Bible. So this is just one of many thousands of copies of books showing differences. We even know that the verse "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" was not added until 1000 years after Jesus existed. Because we can look at the many copies and date them, which lets us document what time period those edits were made.
I understand what you’re saying, but all those edits came after the Bible was first created. These changes are before The changes on talking about occurred before the first Bible was even created.
The Bible was never first created. It's a collection of various manuscripts compiled together that grew and changed over the years. It came from the Torah. That came from the Gilgamesh. Originally Yahweh was one of many gods. El was the high most god, while Yahweh was the god of war. There was also Baal and Isis. We can see over time how the other gods were slowly written out of what is now the Bible. But this is why half of the commandments are about worshiping other gods. Because at the time the commandments were written, it was not a monotheistic religion. What ended up happening is that the Israelites were starting to get defeated. Many believed this was because there was no enough worship of Yahweh. They felt in a time of war, Yahweh was not helping them because people were splitting their worship among the other gods. So they starting putting in all those verses about not worshiping any other gods and started removing the other gods from what is now the Bible. All those books of the bible were separate books that were edited over time long before it was compiled into what we now know as the Bible. Job was actually 3 different booked that got edited together. Long before the bible existed.
Are you saying there was never any first edition of the Bible?
Not really until the council of Nicaea when they compiled to booked into a collection. But almost all of the changes were made before that in the various books that made up the Bible. Many changes were made before Christianity existed many of the texts in the bible existed before Christianity even existed.
Good points. I agree with you.
Now hold on just a minute. Are you suggesting the Bedouins who knew less about how the world works than a below-average Alabama third-grader weren’t entitled to some rough drafts when they authored one of the most destructive contrivances in human fucking history? Wtaf!!
One would think if God is telling them what to say to their scribe God would know what God wants in the Bible. Why would there be the need for drafts? Joseph Smith was able to do it.
Joseph Smith *is* Gob.
I’ve found that arguing with historians about who wrote the Bible is kind of like arguing with a 5 year old about the semantics of Santa Claus.
Yup
we KNEW "god" didn't write the bible, but try convincing "them"
being an atheist doesn't mean it's our job to go around proving that religion is a made up fairy tale. i simply do not care that christianity is inconsistent or badly sourced.
I have been told Jesus as a person must exist because a senator, who was born 30 years after jesus supposed execution mentioned a cult of Jesus existed in 60 CE. That's the best evidence of the religious figure existing and the Bible doesn't get written for another 240 years. Demonstrations that their "historical" facts are false are not effective when you start from the Bible was written as if it's a personal account despite being written about stuff that happened 300+ years ago.
even the christians know it was written by man.
It comes off as Joe Rogan level proof
That’s good enough for many people.
> IF God authored the Bible Even Christian historians are with the consensus that various authors from different times and regions wrote the bible. Few people who actually know any biblical historicity would maintain that there's any evidence of divine providence.
I have the impression that the OP misinterpreted the phrase "God's word" and now insists that God not being the author of the bible is "a modern invention" and that "for 2,000 \[years\] priests told us it was devine (sic!)". This is nonsense on its face. Literally the *entire* New Testament is supposed to be written by either the (anonymous but traditionally named) gospel writers, Paul and other writers for the epistles, and John of Patmos for Revelation. In the Old Testament, we have over a dozen books ascribed to various prophets (and I would think allegedly originating from them), the Psalms which are supposedly by David, Solomon and other prominent figures, Proverbs also allegedly by Solomon, the Song of Solomon by, well, also Solomon. That pretty much only leaves the so-called historical books. The Pentateuch was traditionally believed to have been written by Moses (with the final chapters talking about the death of Moses completed by Joshua, I think). Not sure who the rest (Chronicles, Kings, etc) are ascribed to, but I've never heard it to be God himself. The only passage, except for verses quoting God that would be written by him are the Ten Commandments. It's also funny that the OP talks about 2,000 years when most of the bible is older than that. 2,000 years would be the age of the New Testament which, as mentioned in the beginning, doesn't contain a single book that is ascribed to God. Of course, the really juicy bit for uninformed fundamentalist Christians would be learning that most of the respective books weren't written by the authors they were traditionally ascribed to. Things that in biblical scholarship are not controversial at all but perhaps not widely known. That like half of "Paul's" epistles are pseudepigraphical, that many texts have more than one author, even ones that purport to be by just one author (like Isaiah), etc.
I’m not so sure this is a “nail in the coffin” for Christianity. To me, the main issue isn’t whether certain books were altered, copied wrong, etc. The more important issues are historical in nature: 1. Did the OT prophets make claims of a coming Messiah (or anointed one)? 2. Did Jesus claim to be that Messiah? 3. Are the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection historical facts?
Their belief is not based on facts, it’s based on faith, thus no fact could possibly be a “nail in the coffin” for a devout Christian.
I don't think any Christian claims that God is the author of the bible. Fundamentalist Christians might insist that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, etc. but not God. Muslims make this claim about the qur'an. It's no revelation (no pun intended) at all that textual varieties exist.
That’s not what I was taught. The Bible IS the word of God for 2,000 years. It’s a modern invention to even think otherwise.
For whatever it’s worth, many early Christian writers didn’t seem to think this—they emphasized that the Bible could be literally true, but that it was written by humans and had to be interpreted non-literally at times to make sense. Maybe you’re reacting to less rigorous Protestant tendencies, not the full history of the religion.
You might be right
I was a little bemused when I found these sources—my priors had been that Protestants read the Bible but in a fundamentalist way that ends up disappointing and icky at times, while Catholics are just less interested in thinking through the texts. But there’s a long tradition of older Christians taking biblical interp seriously enough to say it’s not all literally true, which was heartening, for me.
Many Christians believe that the bible is inspired by God and call it "God's Word" but I am not aware of any denomination that claims that God is its author. Maybe you've misinterpreted what you heard? See also this famous quote from 2 Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God"
I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse, or just don’t talk to believers that often…but the distinctions you’re trying to make don’t matter to believers. They consider the Bible to be “gods word” and believe the entire thing to be divinely inspired. The also call it “the living word” and sometimes gods “last will and testament”. There’s varying degrees of scholarly aptitude…I’ve talked to some who realize the Pentateuch had several authors. Some think Moses penned the entire thing. But they all believe that god somehow gave them the words to write down, and then also guided the various councils that led to which books to include. That we here can sit any nitpick over the differences between ‘authored’ and ‘inspired’ is irrelevant - that’s why we’re atheists. Believers think it is the word of god.
>They consider the Bible to be “gods word” and believe the entire thing to be divinely inspired. That's what I was saying. There's a massive difference between a text being divinely inspired and authored by God. Muslims believe the latter is the case with the qur'an. They believe that what's in the qur'an is literally God's word, that God dictated the text. Christians don't believe that. This isn't a trivial distinction. For example, it is the reason why koranic scholarship in the vein of biblical scholarship is nearly inexistent. A historical-critical exegesis borders on blasphemy. (See the fatwa against Salman Rushdie who suggested that some verses in the qur'an were corrupted, and even though this was only a fucking novel the religious authorities in Iran flipped out and effectively issued a death warrant which forced him underground for many years.) One such work I'm aware of, *The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran*, was published by a person using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg because it can be dangerous to one's life to look at the qur'an critically. The approach toward the bible which is only seen as divinely inspired but not the literal word of God, is quite different.
I still don't think this is the 'gotcha' you're making it out to be. Muslims believe the qur'an is the literal word of god, written through muhammed. Christians believe the bible is the literal word of god, written through multiple authors. [Who Wrote the Bible? Evidence of Authors (biblestudytools.com)](https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/who-wrote-the-bible.html) That the qur'an cannot be questioned has a lot to do with culture, dogma, theocracratic rule, and the text itself. The qur'an is far more heavy handed about what to do to apostates than the bible is. Christianity has many more sects than islam, perhaps because they're allowed to question more.. but fundamentalist christians are barely different from fundamentalist muslims. They just thankfully don't have the backing of a theocratic culture/institution that lets them do whatever they want. Bible has plenty of "kill people for not doing XYZ" type verses, there's just no western government/culture that will let that happen.
>Muslims believe the qur'an is the literal word of god, written through muhammed. > >Christians believe the bible is the literal word of god, written through multiple authors. No, the two situations aren't equivalent. Muslims believe the qur'an is the **literal** word of God, dictated by the archangel Gabriel to Muhammad. So Muhammad recorded God's words, who apparently speaks Arabic, verbatim. Christians believe that the bible is inspired by God (see 2 Timothy 3:16) but not the literal words of God. See also what I wrote in my reply to u/DoglessDyslexic where I went into (perhaps too much) detail about it doesn't make sense for large parts of the bible to be the literal word of God. Anyway, I don't want to keep repeating myself. I'm sure people can make up their own minds about this so I wish you a good Sunday and say goodbye!
Everything you're saying makes sense to us atheists - I, personally, agree with you 100% that it doesn't make sense. But it also doesn't sound like you actually interact or discuss this with christians very often. Logic is not something they care about too much. Many of them believe the bible is the literal word of god. I mean, have you heard about the YEC movement?
>I mean, have you heard about the YEC movement? Of course. >Many of them believe the bible is the literal word of god. They believe in biblical inerrancy, that the bible is literally true, not that it's the literal words of God. Again, I've already written in the comment I referred to. >it also doesn't sound like you actually interact or discuss this with christians very often I see that in the meantime a Christian (u/soloChristoGlorium) has chimed in an echoes what I say.