I just want to know how many believers know how the book we call the bible came to be, I know the answer but I'm curious to see how many believers really know.
Who decided the bible was form god?
by Anti-Christ 9 Replies latest watchtower bible
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REBORNAGAIN
?????????????? Not too many responses to your question. That tells me, we as former JW's were never taught that. I guess I'm just as ignorant. I can only guess that it came to be via scholars who wrote things down on scrolls, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and were well preserved over time????
LINDA
P.S. Fill us in. THX!
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shopaholic
At this point I'm sure most of what I know regarding the bible is not the truth. Please share.
As someone raised in the JW org, I've always envisioned holy spirit coming from heaven and surrounding the chosen writer. And then the papyrus paper being carefully protected by holy spirit. And then holy spirit delivered it to bethel. And then holy spirt directed some lady to come to my parents house to read this holy book. And then my mother and all her children were duped.
Sounds like a 3-year-old telling a story. Well that's what happens when you're raised as JW, you fill in the gaps with your imagination and believe it to be true rarely stopping to consider what really happened. Besides, it not like they are going to tell you at the hall because most of those folks don't know.
So Anti-christ, please share your thoughts!
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Narkissos
As a side note in advance to what Anti-Christ will likely tell us about the history of the Bible canon in the 2nd to 4th century AD, I would venture a somewhat paradoxical answer: the pre-Reformers and Humanists of Renaissance (14th-15th century) did. They made the Bible a separate "object" susceptible to be played against church tradition, suggesting that it "came from God" in a different way, qualitatively superior to the rest of church teaching (Church Fathers and councils, for instance). Or at least they made that nuance popular. Until that point Christianity was much less of a "book-centered" religion.
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Frjprice
I'm interested in seeing Anti-Christ's answer on this before I comment...
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Anti-Christ
Well I'm back from work, sorry for the wait. Well like Narkissos said, I was going to mention a few things about the 2nd and 4th century AD but I think Nark's answer is cooler. To sum it up , it was the church that won.
When I was a JW I always assumed that it was very clear that the bible was from the beginning believed to be the word of god, now after some research I have discovered it is not that simple. First, I did not know there was more than one version of the OT and that the version are different from each other. The Greek version (Septuagint) has a shorter version of Jeremiah and other text are different from the Hebrew version of the OT (Masoretic). An other thing I found interesting is that the Masoretic text is only from 895 AD, now for the Septuagint I believe it is from the 2nd BC. There is a lot more information about the OT but I will leave it up to you to find it out ( lets not forget the dead sea scrolls).
A few more thing about the OT. The Catholics claim as inspired the books of Maccabees, Tobit, Esdras, etc. Others doubt the inspiration of Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. In the book of Esther and the Song of Solomon the name of God is not mentioned, and no reference is made to any supreme being, nor to any religions duty. The books composing the Old Testament were not divided into chapters or verses, and no system of punctuation was known.
All these things I find can put some doubt in the inspiration theory, like I said there is much more problems with the OT bout I don't feel like getting in to all of it now.
Now for the NT, were to start.. the oldest known mention of a gospel is in the writings of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons(about 180 AD) and he only mention 4 gospels being inspired and back then there was a " war" going on about which writings were inspired.
Well for now that's all the time I have so I will get back to you all.
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blueviceroy
A MAN or group of MEN decided the Bible came from God Just as in any other religion a group of men/man decide what is holy and what is not . Confusion is used to allow an idea of unification to be utilized as a means of controll . An 11 year old child is wise enough to understand that NOONE has the answer about GOD or lack of GOD . Why do we delude ourselves into believing what we are told is the trurh just because that is what we are taught? Because we are human and this causes us to work well together. Mixing spirituality in with social drive just screws with our head. God is for each of us individually to find on our own in our own way not in the way dictated by others. The truth is in each of us .
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Homerovah the Almighty
The marketing department $$$$$$
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Anti-Christ
Thank you Nark for that link ( btw that's were I get a lot of my information ) I found that site to be very useful and accurate.
blueviceroy, very well said!
With the link Nark gave I don't think I could add very much, actually I know I can't add anything, that is a very good explanation of the formation of the NT.
I just find it ironic that most of the people I know who believe so much in the bible don't know much about it, I guess if they would know more about it they would probably not believe in it any more.
I find it sad and disturbing that so many people are ready to live by and even die for some beliefs written in a ancient book that they don't know much about.
I used to believe very strongly in the bible, I would talk about it a lot even when I stopped believing in the JW. When I started to go deeper in my research about the bible, I started to discover a lot of disturbing things, I had a very hard time accepting all the new information I was finding but eventually I had to accept reality.
To learn more about the history of the bible I suggest starting with the link Nark gave.