The Bible - truth or fiction - according to you?

by Newborn 38 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  WTWizard

  Fulfilled prophecies? They were written after they were fulfilled!

  I think the Bible is the worst piece of s*** ever written to guide mankind. It creates the "Original Sin" doctrine, which effectively creates problems where none existed. That is the cornerstone on every single one of our regulators' getting power--the essence that we need someone to rule us because we are inherently wicked and evil. I do NOT believe in that crap! Then, it provides the "solution"--coming from the same Almighty Loser that created the problem in the first place. First, Jesus was to die, and his death would become the "solution" to cancel the effect of that Original Sin. But, to benefit, you have to do things that waste your resources and entertain that Almighty Baghead.

  About the only thing in the Bible that is of practical value is Jesus' teachings, and that only if taken the correct way. Paul made a big mess when he got confused and took it literally--if we make the same mistake, we could also find ourselves in the same stagnation trap that Paul did. Remember, Jesus did not want it to be that confusing or difficult to understand; those mistakes and foul-players were the ones that took a simple message and made it complicated.

  Plus, I find zero practical benefit in obeying anything in the Old Testament.
• 

  cluless

  If you say true, how do you explain all the contradictions ?

  Personally I dont know what I think....

  /Clueless
• 

  White Dove

  Brother WTWizard,

  You stated my thought so elequently
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  I'll give you my long answer.

  Nobody ever EVER lived under the Mosaic Law Code- Did I say EVER?
  Most of what was written in the first part of the Bible was passed on to
  Ezra or other editors to come up with the law and the history.

  The priests decided they needed to control the people with sacrifice, so
  the law code was based on something they did before the captivity in
  Babylon, but all those rules in the Bible were written during and after
  the captivity.

  There was no global flood or mass exodus from Egypt. The Israelites
  come from Caananites. Abraham may have existed, Moses almost
  certainly did not. Too difficult to say for sure.

  David was king of a very small kingdom, but was popular. Solomon's
  temple was not as big and glorious as the scriptures say it was. Their
  past was embellished and exaggerated or just invented. Any prophecy
  in the OT was written afterward or invented.

  Jesus probably walked the earth and claimed Messiahship, but so did
  others. He started out as a disciple of John the Baptist, then later did his
  own thing, possibly supported by rebels wanting to overthrow Roman
  rule. He taught mysticism and wisdom and never claimed to be God or
  from Heaven. Some of what the Gospels say he said, he said. But most
  of it is embellished. I imagine he did ride into Jerusalem on an ass in a
  staged proclamation of his kingship/messiahship. I think he lost much
  support when he said to pay back Ceasar's things to Ceasar. The people
  wanted more now. The writes of the 4 Gospels that made it into the Bible
  wrote much longer after the claims. Stories of Jesus fulfilling OT prophecy
  were just built into their stories from searching for any straws to grasp at.
  (Read the OT 'prophecies' without a preconceived notion that they are actual
  prophecies. Many won't seem like they are in the original language.)

  Jesus proclaiming prophecy- well, the writers knew the temple was already
  destroyed so they claimed that Jesus claimed that. Jesus was made larger
  than life by the time of Constantine. His worship is a combination of what
  his followers taught along with Mithra and Isis worship.

  Even if some details here are wrong, the essence of it is being proven more
  and more by archaeology.
• 

  White Dove

  Onthewayout,

  I love it. I've heard of some of what you've said. I don't read up on it because it bores me, but it is fascinating to find out the real history on how the Bible came to be "inspired."
• 

  Number1Anarchist

  Fiction! Horrible written and full of so much bullshit! Who needs it!
• 

  Berean

  OnTheWayOut We must have read the same books and seen the same programs. Seems like we both have come to the same conclusion. Berean
• 

  jaguarbass

  Truth is where you find it.

  The bible has some truth and some things that we do not understand correctly.

  And the bible has some lies.

  When it says whatever you ask in my name you shall receive.

  That is a lie.

  Try it.
• 

  thebiggestlie

  i also am in the "mostly fiction camp"

  Some of it is historical records of the jewish people interlaced with there mythology . The Jews assigned mythological significance to victories in battle, natural disastors adn other such events just as the ancient greeks and romans did.

  Some of it is pure poetic fluff. Many of the proverbs are indeed "true" in the sense that there moral sentiments can be beneficial to live by. But that doesn't make the rest of the books floppy pages any more "true"

  Some of it is hallucinagenic automatic writing.Take revelation for example . The writer of that book (presumably john) merely borrowed concepts from Daniel and the other "prophets" and updated them for his day incorporating sketchy, fairytalish, and highly interpretable imagery tha virtually any one could apply to any future events. Whether it be the fall of Jerusalem, The fall of the Catholic church, or gods "wholesale destruction of false religion" there have been thousands of "plausable" interpretations of its words. When i was younger i used to go to the bookstore and read books such as "revelation for dummies" and similar such books and always found it confusing how there could be so many interpretations . I always thought that only Jehovahs witnesses have even come close to being able to explain the book...as i was told. However it seems hundreds of nuts have come up with there own ddetailed verse by verse ideas of what they think it means . Just like any other prophecy in the bible, the original prophecy is more like a an arrow that has been shot into a tree and the interpreter merely paints the bullseye around the arrow as he sees fit.

  I always found it quite counter productive that the society taught that prophecies could only be truely understood after the event has occurred. Kinda defeats the point of prophecy in the first place doesnt it?

  Tell you what, this is what i did....make a list of some of the fufilled prophecies in the bible and go online and research the hell out of it. I reccomend going to a number of different sources. Encyclopedias, both christian and Atheist Apologest websites, biblical commentaries utilize any resource you see fit. And you'll find that the prophecies "truth" isn't always as cut and dry as the society seems to paint.

  Newborn, have you researched 607 BCE yet? Thats a fun starting point to deconstructing Watchtower chronology and "prophecy"

  tbl (as always sorry for the typos...i gots the butter fingas!)
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  Some of it is hallucinagenic automatic writing.Take revelation for example . The writer of that book (presumably john) merely borrowed concepts from Daniel and the other "prophets" and updated them for his day incorporating sketchy, fairytalish, and highly interpretable imagery tha virtually any one could apply to any future events.

  Speculative, but this is my understanding:

  The Exodus was written from exaggerated legend to inspire the Israelites in Babylon
  to have hope of returning, hope of God's hand in their lives.

  The Revelation was similarly written in the way you say (in quote above) to give the
  Christians and Jews (the writer seemed very Jewish) hope of something better than
  Roman rule. They were to think that God would overthrow human governments.
  
  The lost scriptures found at Nag Hammadi (and somewhere else) show that there
  were other "revelations" and none of them were canonized. History shows that
  the one that was canonized was almost scrapped. It doesn't really praise Jesus.
  It caught on and stayed strongly entrenched in people's hearts because of the
  dark ages. It could have been written by the John who knew Jesus, probably
  wasn't. Almost certainly, the Gospel According to John was written by a different
  person, and later than Revelation.

  Vague prophecy in the Gospels and the NT is easy to fulfill. That's why many
  thought it was fulfilled at different points in history. Paul almost certainly was the
  first NT writer, but he was writing letters to congregations. His stuff was meant
  for those days only, and he wrote to expect deliverance in their own lifetimes.