by economy 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Yes, the Bible is a compilation of ancient Bronze/Iron Age, Middle Eastern stories spanning over 1,000 years authored by desert dwellers attempting to explain the unexplainable. While it does contain a smattering of historical reference, it mostly contains factual errors, forgeries, exaggerations, superstition, fantasy, and contradictions.
It is Science's pursuit of truth no matter where it leads us that has truly advanced our knowledge. I highly recommend reading a Science book over the Bible any day.
Is there some ban on Banarama Kumaris on this forum?
Yes. We don't want cult scum trying to take advantage of people who have just been freed from one cult by trying to recruit them.
So economy: please express your condemnation of that cult and it's leadership. Speak clearly into the microphone ....
The Banarama bunch can sod off.
Until Marcion of Sinope ( circa 85 C.E.-160 A.D.), it was not a popular notion among Jews or Christians to see the Scriptures as a basis for religious doctrine or free of contradictions. Even to this day, among Jews, Catholics, and Orthodox, Scripture is read and interpreted as a product of religious belief, not the source.
Marcion tranformed Gnostic principles into a "proof text" system in which doctrine was based on sacred writings interpreted by an elite or "enlightened" class, but his selection of Scripture was based on a rule (in Greek the word for rule is where we get the term "canon") that rejected all Jewish texts in favor or select epistles of Paul and an edited version of Luke. Material that Marcion felt contradicted his interpretation was dismissed as not fitting according to his rule ("canon").
The response of the Christian leadership to the Marcion/Gnostic threat was to counter the doctrine of an "elite/enlightened" class as the source of knowledge that leads to salvation and to teach that salvation was instead universal (in Greek, "katholicos") dependent on faith in the Church and its teachings more so than the texts read in liturgical gatherings (which is where Marcion extracted books for his canon).
But as the Jews divided their sacred writings according to certain rules (language, era, subject, etc.), the question about whether any of the texts read in liturgical settings written by Christians being equivalents to the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrews was one that Christian leaders would keep building on until the days of Eusebius in the 4th century. It has been suggested by some academics and scholars that the reason Luke is included as an official Gospel (Luke is neither an apostle or Jewish) is that Marcion claimed that Luke taught a Gnostic, non-universal salvation, and that the reason for such a Pauline library is also a response to the Marcion claim that Paul supported this view as well, especially the practice of proof texting. Their inclusion into an official Christian canon in full instead of the edited forms used by Marcion perhaps counters his claims.
In this process, Christians debated on how to choose and and canonize texts. It was accepted that the redaction or editorial process was part of the inspirational development, and since texts had to reflect apostolic teaching and not originate it, this would allow for inclusion of writers like Luke and Paul as well as doubtful works like 2 Peter and the Revelation of John. Again as the objective wasnot seen as setting doctrine as much as supporting current thought, the problematic sections in texts were less worrisome.
Jews likewise don't base their belief on Scripture as much as they accept Scripture as confirming and keeping alive the essential truths of their religion. This includes additions made to the Scriptures over the eras as explanatory material set old lessons into new settings, very important for the Jews during the Babylonian period where they were no longer allowed access to their own land. Upon return the lessons they learned further changed how they understood the basic truths of their religion, and these new lessons further shaped the Scripture texts. By the time the Second Temple was built, however, it became settled that the texts were at their final state, but the changes and the interpolations were also accepted and even left in place in many situations.
Scholars don't necessarily agree on or have full answers as how to handle the situations you mention. Often referred to as doublets and triplets, scholars suggest that repetition of stories twice, three times, and maybe more (often with different details) may reflect a desire on behalf of the Jews to save all the variations on a tradition. In such a situation the conflicting details are not important. The underlying story and its central lessons is what is meant to be kept intact. For instance in Exodus the Egyptians lose all their animals twice in the first nine plagues, and the firstborn of their animals die again a third time on the night of the first Passover. The animals are not dying and being resurrected in order for God to kill them again, but several traditions are being cut and pasted together to tell the Exodus story in full. In other places, like Psalms and the Book of Wisdom, the number and order of the plagues is different. All stories agree on the basic truth, but the details are different due to narrative genre or this redaction tradition process.
Marcionism became popular again during the Great Awkaenings of American religious history. Adventists created new proof texts systems which claimed that Scripture was not the product but the source of religious teaching. Joseph Smith took Marcionism to the extreme, introducing a new set of texts which he claimed were essential to salvation. These new American belief systems either claimed that the original "katholicos" system was being reestablished in them or that an elite person or class was now present on the earth and dispensing saving truths that would make others dependent on listening to these new teachers. These in turn demanded and invented creative ways to explain the contradictions in Scripture, some attempting to remove sections again like Marcion in order to have a central source without contradictions.
The Banarama bunch can sod off.
This is reminding me of Bananarama :
This is reminding me of Bananarama
LOL, I actually meant to put "Bananarama" but spelt it wrong (Banana is easy to write ... the trick is knowing when to stop).
Why did God permit Scriptures to be corrupted? - He just did, okay.
Leave it - it's clearly a bad question.
I stopped 2 Mormon missionaries last month- I asked them if they knew what a metaphor is? "sure"-- So, then if you knew that the book of genesis was a metaphor would the LDS religion make any sense? (eyes roll- oh-)
It's hard to have a factual religion based on a metaphor, of which Scientology comes to mind as an extreme example of human religious invention.
