[TerryBPP]

Originally posted by Jeff Higgins
Terry, I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything here. I respect your point of view on this because I held it once as well. How can such an old book, with countless un-annotated changes made down through the centuries, possibly still be true to the original texts? Doesn't every translator have the opportunity to put his own spin on it? You know, leave out the parts he doesn't like, and maybe add a few more? And how about those original texts - written thousands of years ago, in an obviously less advanced civilization with nowhere near the knowledge we possess today? Folks were pretty superstitious and impressionable back then, after all.

I used to think that way until I decided to do two things: Study the Bible itself, and just as importantly, how it got to us. Very interesting stuff, even putting aside any religious convictions you may or may not have. If it interests you in the least, and you ever have the time to do it, take a look at this. It might change your mind.

So who wrote the Bible? Some books, the various letters to congregations in the New Testement, are pretty easy. The older ones are anyone's guess. It really doesn't matter so much as what KIND of people wrote it. Unlike today, the "Three R's" or reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, were the sole province of the upper classes. In many early societies, the scholars, specifically. The best and the brightest the society had to offer were generally the only ones that were even exposed to, much less trained in, these skills. In other words, these were no impressionable dummies writing this stuff. They did, however, see and hear things that impressed them enough to write them down. Not that they knew at the time, or ever intended for their works to be assembled into a "Bible". They had no idea; that happened up to several thousand years after some of this stuff was written. These people had no way of knowing each other; most lived hundreds if not thousands of years appart. Many were unaware of preceding writings, yet recorded, completely independently, pretty much the same thing.

So how did it all get assembled into the Bible and passed down to us? This is another amazing story unto itself. Suffice to say here, and I know folks will chime in to refute this, it has been the most scrutinized text in the history of mankind. The books from which it has been compiled have been protected, even hidden, by believers down through the ages. Early copies were very much black market, under the official radar contriband. No evil governments, kings, or whatever changing it for political motives or anything like that. By the time the books were compiled into the Bible, they were widely enough disseminated among enough people that for any one person, or group, to try to change parts of it would have fallen under the scrutiny of everyone else. Modern scholars are continually amazed at the accuracy of description of geological sites contained in the Bible and found today, as well as its fidelity to some very old texts that are found today.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. It's worth looking into before dismissing it as some old book, written by unsophisticated men thousands of years ago and revised by unscrupulous men along the way. It's anything but. It actually stands as somewhat of a marvel that it has survived so intact for so long. Nothing much else has.

I think your drawing to many conclusions. I think the oldest bible in existence was created in 347 AD. But it spoke of happenings hundreds of years before that. So none of this info was changed thru story telling? You can't tell ten people something without it being misconstrude. Imagine what centuries will do.

How many different religions have been created since 347 AD? Lutheran, Prodestant, Morman, etc. These sects all have different books reloving around their own belief system.

What if you picked the wrong religion? Maybe only Mormons only go to heaven or better yet Muslims (By the way the oldest known religion).

I think God is the world most sucessful imaginary friend. Revered, blamed, cursed, thanked, hated and loved. If there was only 1 person in the world that said he believed in God we would lock him up in the nut house, but becasue there are millions God is defiently real. Not logical enough for me.

BTW: I'm not trying to belittle you or your beliefs. I just have a different point of view. Maybe right, maybe wrong.