There was a great quote from the Watchtower that says, "of course everyone knows the Bible is full of errors."
I wish I could remember where that was.
The Bible-- Full of Errors And Inconsistencies?
by Recovery 114 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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King Solomon
Etude said:
So it stands to reason that the reference to the circle meant a sphere because a circle does not have any corners. So, corners must be metaphorical.
What you're doing is relying on the oldest ploy in the Bible Apologetics book: when science proves the Bible is wrong on a basic "truth", you're saying, "well CLEARLY the Bible must be talking metaphorically. It CAN'T mean literal truth!!". That's the fall-back position used for oh-so-many scientific topics, that just thinking of them makes my head spin....
I use the term "corners of the Earth" even though I know better.
People use them because of the historical precident where people took it as absolute truths in the past, and once you get a few millenia of such misbeliefs entering the mind, it's hard to break the myth which persists linguistically.
A good example is the concept still seen in the word "inspire". Ancient men believed that the organs of cognition were in the torso (heart, lungs, kidneys), and note the root 'spire': that term pertains to the lungs (as seen in words such as respiration, i.e. breathing). Men once believed that spoken words entered into the lungs via the ears' eustachian tubes, and were then sent into the heart (their idea of the brain). Why? In a pre-literate society, it seems logical to assume that the words of a speaker forms in the lungs, and they use exhalation to drive speech. They KNEW that the lungs were needed to talk, but they assumed the ideas were formed in the lungs as ruah, breath.
So they actually believed that ideas could be directly injected into their lungs, lit "God-breathed" into their lungs, and hence "inspired".
Modern men understand the REAL pathways involved in process of hearing, but we still use the word "inspired". Why? Same reason you use "four corners": historical precedence, where what was once taken as a literal truth is downgraded to poetic expressions, just to keep using them.
See, the thing is this: the Bible is not simply being poetic when it speaks about "God reading the thoughts in the hearts of men": that WAS the literal belief up until 500 BC in Greece. In fact, Aristotle was famously wrong on the very topic, when the Hippocratic school gets credit for engaging in clinical work to come to what we now know is the right conclusion (which wasn't accepted outside educated circles until 1,000 yrs later).
Here's an article from Princeton on Aristotle's logical (but incorrect) arguments for why the heart SHOULD be the organ of cognition:
www.princeton.edu/~cggross/Neuroscientist_95-1.pdf
All ancient cultures relied on the smart Egyptians and Babylonians, who were regarded as the best physicians in the ANE (which often relied on magic; medicine has it's roots in magic).
Search for "Aristotle brain heart" for tons of more writings on the subject. It's basic "history of medicine" stuff, well-documented and incontrovertible (except to those who can't accept overwhelming evidence simply because they refuse).
In fact, ANYWHERE the Bible talks about the roles of organs, it's usually WRONG. eg The kidneys are assumed to be the organs of wisdom (Hebrew word is translated as 'reins' in KJV, which indicates their misguided belief that they played a role in guiding one's actions, as organs of wisdom; NOT organs of urine-formation). They didn't understand the role of the heart as a pump for the circulatory system, but thought it was the brain. They believed the brain was the generative site for the life-force (nephesh), where the clear CSF was thought to be a purified form of blood that was stored in the testes as sperm (and also why blood was special, thought to contain the same life-force).
The anatomical and physiological ignorance in the Bible is so rampant, that it's bog-obvious to anyone who looks into the roots of the ancient beliefs depicted in scriptures.
And if Aristotle has to take a hit for being wrong on human anatomy, then so should Jesus and YHWH (the Bible's authors relied on the knowledge of their smart (but wrong) captors, who actually engaged in human dissection to make mummies).
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mP
Etude,
You must understand that the translators have selected "circle" so it would appear the Bible is accurate. You have then supposed that this is really sphere which it is not. If you examine the original meanings as the ancients understood the earth you will see the word had a very different meaning. There are countless other words describing the earth which show they believed ina flat earth covered by a firmament where the stars are stuck on the inside. The jews gain absolutely no technology from Jehovah.
Their writing system was a copy of their neighbours. THey calendar system was copied from the Babylonians, even parts of the language, the word for God was copied and actually just the name of othe pagan gods.
Strange that Jehovah did not even give them a writing system to write down his laws but instead had to let them bumble with their inferior system. If you examine how the ancients wrote you will see how complicated and difficult it was. No vowels, thats why we cant say Jehovah accurately. If pronunciantion was so important why didnt Jehovah give them a proper alphabet from the beginnning. I know they eventually developed those markers(Niqquds(!)) but that was too late as the original or correct pronunciation was lost. You might also be interested to know that they did not use whitespace or punctuation. This of course makes it much harder to read.
By having letters stand in as numbers we have the joke that is 666 , which is actually the name nero. The problem is people are not aware that all letters in Hebrew and Greek also have a numerical value. FOr whatever reason they fail to see the simple fact that the text describgin the beast and giving it a number is a very poor code thats actually just a name.
Even sadder the number in oldest manuscaripts is actually 616 which is Nero Caesar, then somehow mistakes were made in copying and it became 666 which is Neron Caesar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast
666
The Number of the Beast is described in the passage of Revelation 13:15–18 and the actual number is only mentioned once, in verse 18. In the Greek manuscripts, the number is rendered in Greek numerical form as χξ?', [8] or sometimes literally as ?ξακ?σιοι ?ξ?κοντα ?ξ , hexakósioi hexekonta héx, "six hundred and sixty-six". [9] [10] There are several interpretations-translations for the meaning of the phrase "Here is Wisdom, Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast" where the peculiar Greek word ψηφισ?τω (psefisato) is used. Possible translations include not only "to count", "to reckon" but also "to vote" or "to decide". [11]
In the Textus Receptus, derived from Byzantine text-type manuscripts, the number 666 is represented by the final 3 letters χξς:
17 κα? ?να μ? τις δ?νηται ?γορ?σαι ? πωλ?σαι ε? μ? ? ?χων τ? χ?ραγμα, τ? ?νομα το? θηρ?ου ? τ?ν ?ριθμ?ν το? ?ν?ματος α?το?. 18 ?δε ? σοφ?α ?στ?ν· ? ?χων τ?ν νο?ν ψηφισ?τω τ?ν ?ριθμ?ν το? θηρ?ου· ?ριθμ?ς γ?ρ ?νθρ?που ?στ?· κα? ? ?ριθμ?ς α?το? χξ?'. [12]
In the Novum Testamentum Graece, the number is represented by the final three words, ?ξακ?σιοι ?ξ?κοντα ?ξ, meaning "six hundred sixty-six":
17 κα? ?να μ? τις δ?νηται ?γορ?σαι ? πωλ?σαι ε? μ? ? ?χων τ? χ?ραγμα, τ? ?νομα το? θηρ?ου ? τ?ν ?ριθμ?ν το? ?ν?ματος α?το?. 18 ?δε ? σοφ?α ?στ?ν· ? ?χων νο?ν ψηφισ?τω τ?ν ?ριθμ?ν το? θηρ?ου, ?ριθμ?ς γ?ρ ?νθρ?που ?στ?ν· κα? ? ?ριθμ?ς α?το? ?ξακ?σιοι ?ξ?κοντα ?ξ. [13]
[edit] 616
Fragment from Papyrus 115 (P115) ofRevelation in the 66th vol. of theOxyrhynchus series (P. Oxy. 4499). [14] Has the number of the Beast as 616. Other Revelation manuscripts such as Papyrus 115 and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C; Paris, one of the four great uncial codices) reads the number of the beast in (13:18) as 616.
P115 (P. Oxy. 4499), located at Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum, dates to around 300 CE. The manuscript is one of the oldest fragments of Revelation [15] [16] containing Chapters 2-15. It agrees with both Codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi Rescriptus, two of the best known witnesses to Revelation. [17] However, only Codex Ephraemi agrees with the number 616, which is argued to be the original reading of the Greek text, [18] [19] [20] written out as: ?ξακ?σιοι δ?κα ?ξ , hexakosioi deka hex (lit. "six hundred and sixteen"). [21]
Although Irenaeus (2nd century AD) affirmed the number to be 666 and reported several scribal errors of the number, he knew about the 616 reading, but did not adopt it (Haer. v.30,3). However, several centuries later, correcting the existing Latin language version of the New Testament, commonly referred to as the Vetus Latina, Jerome left 616 in. [22] "The number 666 has been substituted for 616 either by analogy with 888, the [Greek] number of Jesus (Deissmann), or because it is atriangular number, the sum of the first 36 numbers (1+2+3+4+5+6...+36 = 666)". [23] The number 616 can still be found in the Latin version of Tyconius [24] and an ancient Armenian version (ed. Conybaere, 1907).
[edit] Identities
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Finkelstein
The bible is a blend of ancient Middle Eastern history, Jewish law, and mythology-- mythology both traditionary among the Jews but also borrowed from neighboring nations such as Babylon and Assyria. An important question arises: do the historical parts of the bible offer proof that supports the miraculous parts?
How can we know that the bible is true? The historical record supports the existence of some of the towns mentioned in the bible, but that should not be surprising. If we wrote a book today which said that there was a country called the United States, and it had 50 states, and Bill Clinton was the president in the year 2000, and that he walked on water and made dead people rise from their graves, well, some of that would be true, and some of it would not be true. Would the fact that we were right about the U.S. and Clinton being president make the other claims true too? No, they wouldn't. Just because the bible mentions towns and kings that were in existence 2000 years ago, that does not make the whole book true. Towns and kings were "current events" when the biblical texts were written. That proves nothing. As far as the New Testament, no first century historian confirms the existence of Jesus. That's right. None of the contemporary Jewish or Roman historians, living during the time in which Jesus said to have lived, wrote one word about him. Modern biblical scholars agree that the New Testament scriptures were written 35 to 90 years after the alleged events, and the names Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were attached afterward by the Church. The clergy do not mention this fact, and would have their flocks go right on believing that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by the men whose names they bear. But this is not the truth.
So, why do people believe the bible is true? To find out the answer, ask a Christian. I have received many answers all along these lines. Christians say things like:
- "It must be true because everybody just knows it's true. How can the whole world be wrong?"
- "The Bible is true because it is the word of God."
- "It's true because it is the most perfect moral guide ever produced. Nothing written by humans approaches its perfection."
- "Its writings span 1,500 years, written by 40 authors, and there are no errors, contradictions or difficulties. No book written by mere humans could be so flawless."
The Christian uses these assertions instead of facts-- belief in place of evidence.
Is the bible true? Says who? No one can tell, except that we tell each other so. Priests and ministers, who make their living selling salvation, tell us so. But why should we believe them? What authority do their words carry, other than the authority that they give themselves? Strip away the claim that the bible is the "word of God", and who in their right mind would still believe it?
Basically, we believe the bible is true because our parents told us it was, and then they told us not to question them. In the west, we are told the Christian bible is true. In the middle east, the New Testament is held to be false, and the Jews endorse only the Old Testament. If you are Islamic, the Koran is the only true bible. Other religions have their own sacred writings. Which book you believe depends predominantly on where you were born. You believe what your parents tell you, just like they believe what their parents told them, and so on, since the book was written. For the most part, you are either a Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Buhddist because your parents were.
You were brought up to believe it. Under the same circumstances, you would have believed anything. Centuries ago, to disagree with the Bible was to face punishment, shame, torture and even death. (The bible itself gives instructions on how to execute non-believers.) Given these conditions, it is no wonder that nobody questioned it for two thousand years. It is obvious why Christianity had such a stranglehold on the minds of the population. To dissent was to be executed. When religion ruled the world, we call that time "The Dark Ages".
As far as "inspiration" goes, how can anyone establish the truth of this claim? What does it mean to be "inspired"? Most theologians would say that it meant that god used men as instruments, making them write his thoughts. How can an inspired man prove that he is inspired? How can he know himself that he is inspired, and not insane? He couldn't possibly know for sure. And what is inspiration anyway? Did he take possession of their minds and destroy their wills? Were these writers only partly controlled, so that their mistakes, ignorance and prejudices were mingled with the wisdom of God? Some people assert that men were guided to write god's will, through their own words and in the prejudices of the times. How are we to separate the mistakes of man from the thoughts of God? How could we do this without being inspired ourselves? If the original writers were inspired, then the translators should have been too, and so should be the men who tell us what the bible means.
And translation is subject to error, and so is copying. Translation and copying are also subject to deliberate alteration, with the translator interjecting his opinions on the subject. With the church being in posession of the original manuscripts, is there any doubt that they could write whatever they wanted? There are passages in the bible where this sort of tampering is obvious.
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mP
Of course the bible has no errors, thats why we have hundreds of different incompatible translations with even more religions. IN fact there are 30,000+ xian religions. How is it possible that the creator of the universe can be such a poor writer that everybody gets confused or that so many people can so easily corrupt or change the meanings.?
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Leolaia
Job 26:10 --
"He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness." NSV
Proverbs 8:27 --
"When He established the heavens, I was there, When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep," NASB
Isaiah 40:22 --
"He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in" NIVNone of those statements describe the earth as spherical and instead fit with the flat-earth cosmology that was typical for the ANE and in other Jewish writings.
The statements in Job 26:10 (choq-chog `al-p e nê mayim "he inscribed a circle on the surface of the waters") and Proverbs 8:27 (b e chûqô chûg `al-p e nê tehôm "when he inscribed a circle on the surface of the deep") clearly refer to the drawing of a circle on a 2D surface. According to Job, this was to "mark a boundary between light and darkness "; the idea is that of the horizon which is the limit beyond which the sun passes from view. In ANE cosmology the sun then passed through the underworld at night so that it would rise the next morning in the east. Job 26 is pretty chock full with mythological imagery, incidentally, with its references to the Rephaim of the underworld (v. 5-6), the pillars of heaven (v. 11), and the Chaoskampf motif of God's battle against the sea dragon (v. 12-13), with even the idea of churning the sea as roiling the dragon (something that sounds straight out of the Enuma Elish). The inscribing of the circle on the deep itself might reflect the common idea that the earth was encircled by an ocean. Here is the "circle of the earth", with that world-circling ocean, as envisioned by the Babylonians:
Isaiah 40:22 even more distinctly evokes the image of ANE cosmology: the earth is a flat disk with the heavens streched over it like a tent, and with God at the apex looking down at the tiny humans from such a height. The tent metaphor is used elsewhere. In Psalm 19, we read that "in the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other" (v. 4-6). Psalm 104 similarly says that Yahweh "set the earth on its foundations" and "stretches out the heavens like a tent, and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters" (v. 2-5).
In Mesopotamia, the Gilgamesh Epic (Tablets IX-X) has the hero journey to Mount Mashu at the ends of the world to follow the "path of the sun" through the realm of total darkness in the underworld. Gilgamesh enters the tunnel underneath the mountain and passes through the underworld, barely making his exit before the sun catches up with him. He then exits and finds a beautiful garden of jeweled trees. Egyptian religion had two notions of the night-time journey. The older one (dating back to the Old Kingdom) pictures a flat earth in a reclining male god Geb with the arched firmament as an arched Nut extending over him. The sun god Re journeys to the east by entering through Nut's body during the night, where it is unseen by those on the earth. But another tradition (also quite old) is that Re battles with the demon Apophis during the night after the sun sinks below the horizon. Apophis lay at the base of Mount Bakhu at the western edge of the earth but he could also attack Re in the east (thus some texts refer to Apophis as the "world encircler"). Re must thus travel on his bark with a complete entourage to protect him from harm. Similar ideas can be found in the Canaanite texts of Ugarit. The sun goddess Shapsh journeys to the underworld at night on a bark piloted by Kothar who protects her from Arsh and the dragon (just as Seth defends Re's bark from attack by Apophis); Shapsh rules over the Rephaim of the underworld and it is she who takes the dead to the underworld at night (KTU 1.6 vi 45-53), just as she is the one who helps Anat bring Baal out of the underworld. In later Jewish literature, the patriarch Enoch makes a journey through the underworld in a manner very much like Gilgamesh in the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 17-24, especially). The Book of Luminaries also has a flat-earth cosmology that construes the sun as rising and setting through certain gates (364 in number) at the edge of the world. In one later rabbinical text, the sun makes its nocturnal journey not through the underworld (as in Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite cosmology) but in heaven itself above the firmament: "The learned of Israel say that the sun moves by day beneath the firmament and by night above the firmament, whereas the learned of the nations say that the sun moves by day beneath the firmament and by night beneath the earth" (Baraita Pesahim 94b).
Hellenistic philosophers and scientists understood that the earth was spherical, but it took a long time for popular notions to change. Similarly, Greco-Roman scientists were able to predict eclipses but still people popularly thought of eclipses as unexpected omens. It is not until the third and fourth century church fathers (Lactantius, Augustine, etc.) when the spherical cosmology was accepted as fact.
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mP
That circle looks like a zodiac with a cross in the center. In fact zodiac literally means circle of animals. The cross represents the 4 seasons.
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Leolaia
It's a schematic map of the world.
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Terry
We are born into this world where almost every part of Western civilization has been founded upon and built from one monolithic idea:
THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD.
It doesn't take much investigation to determine how much this idea has been eroded by the discoveries of science and by the application
of scientific method to archeology.
History shows the first one thousand five hundred years of Christianity had little to do with the BIBLE and much much more to do with
the institution of the Catholic Church.
When Martin Luther split with the Church over mostly corruption and malfeasance an opportunity arose to REPLACE the Authority of that institution.
The question became: WHAT do we replace Magesterium, Tradition and infallibility WITH?
From that moment in history came a dynamic and dramatic TEST of the power of scripture.
What was that test?
From the time of Martin Luther the replacement authority (pushing aside priests, cardinals and Pope) was SOLA SCRIPTURA (which meant: the Bible Alone+ Holy Spirit=True Christian Doctrine).
Why was this a TEST?
LOGICALLY speaking, if the Holy Bible contained true doctrine and the Holy Spirit were guiding that understanding, Christianity would become the rival institution to Catholicism as a SOLIDARITY of UNIFORM BELIEF.
But, Sola Scriptura created the very opposite effect!
Christianity (as Protestantism under sola scriptura) split, shattered and fractured into competing DENOMINATIONS!
Every single reader (lay scholar) guided by his/her own version of holy spirit produced contrary, contradictory and competing theology using the SAME BIBLE as every other student of scripture.
Baptists, Methodists, Calvinists, Lutherns, Anglicans, etc. could stand in the same room shouting at each other while confuting and screaming the same scripture quotes "proving" their doctrine as superior to the others.
The Bible is a FALSE PREMISE.
Everything we know of as christianity is an implosion of interpretation and self-delusion steeped in ego and megalomania.
What is a "cult" but another competitor with a different version of the same product?
Christianity is a cult vis a vis Catholic Christian tradition.
Catholic Christian tradition was a corruption of early christianity which, itself, was a corruption of Judaism.
Judaism was fractured and shattered itself by interpretation, praxis and political corruptions.
Montheism was a corruption of polytheism and pagan ecumenical mythology.
There is no THERE "there" because it is all superstition and human psychology.
Except, of course, for YOUR version...
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mP
Looks more like a zodiac circle, with those 8ish circles and that large disk at the top with designs within them. Given its Babylonian it looks nothing like what might be their view of their neighbours. Ive never seen a world map with a big fat cross ontop like that. Without reading the cuniform, im only guessing, but given that some parts of Job discuss astrological elements its a fairish assumption.
