Believe the Bible - or mock the Bible - which do you choose?

[Speedwell]

I've spent a great deal of time looking at authorship and date, the modernist trend to shameless skepticism is rarely based in anything factual. The Pentateuch was likely complete in the forty year period before entering the promised land. The entirety of the New Testament was most likely completed between 60 AD and 70 AD. What your debate buddy seems to have missed is that the church made meticulous copies of the Gospels and epistles. What would happen is your church gets a letter from Paul, of course they would read it to the church. Well, another church hears about the letter and wants to read it to their church, so they make a copy. The sheer number of manuscripts along with the marginal text variation makes the Scriptures the best preserved documents from antiquity and there is no close second.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered the modernists all believed they were going to be very different then the Masoretic Text because they were separated by nearly a thousand years. Turns out there was nothing but normal text variation. It comes down to different words and grammar usually but it's rare for there is be anything significant in the meaning to be effected, for example:

Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The three remaining letters comprise the word LIGHT, which is added in verse 11 and which does not affect the meaning greatly. Furthermore, this word is supported by the Septuagint (LXX). Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission - and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage. (Norman Geisler & William Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, Moody Press, Page 263).
​

I'm fine with textual criticism but it seldom yields anything remarkable. The idea that the writers just made it up as they went along isn't based on anything concrete.

Grace and peace,
Mark

You two have missed the point entirely. Though I might argue with your date for the closing of the Jewish canon, and find plausible dating for some of the NT books a decade or two later than you do, I do not propose that Patristic tradition has anything radically different to tell us from what is found the scriptures.

 

[BobRyan]

Y chromosomes millions of years old:

Y chromosome - Wikipedia

wild guesswork...

 

[BobRyan]

Mark 7 Jesus condemns the magisterium of the one true nation-church of God started at Sinai and still valid in His day... and He does it "sola scriptura" Mark 7:6-13

Your confusing--intentionally, no doubt--Tradition with Magesterium. But those early church leaders were great inventors; people like Clement, selected by the Apostle Peter to be a successor Bishop of Rome, Polycarp and Ignatius, who were students of the Apostle John. They couldn't have known anything about the birth, death and resurrection of Christ because there was no Bible then. How could they have found out? They would have had to make it all up, right?

Paul said "IMMEDIATELY after my departure" the savage wolves and "strange doctrines" would begin when speaking to the church elders at Ephesus in Acts 20.

Paul tells Timothy to remain at Ephesus and try to put a lid on the heresy and false doctrine erupting there - in 1 Tim 1:3

John says that it had gotten so bad that Christians were being expelled from church simply for choosing to accept what the Apostles were teaching. So that's - "before Clement".

 

[BobRyan]

m

There isn't a "attack-the-bible-first-mentality", for thousands of years Western and Middle Eastern cultures have been indoctrinated into the teachings about history from a Biblical perspective.

And of course your "Urantia" religion had not been invented yet -- so "yes" the Word of God will just "have to do" until then.

 

[SkyWriting]

Then notice how clear and irrefutable the text of God's Word "by contrast"?

Sure.

Genesis 49:26
The blessings of your father have surpassed the blessings of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills. May they rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince of his brothers.

Habakkuk 3:6
He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations; the ancient mountains were scattered; the perpetual hills bowed. His ways are everlasting.

Deuteronomy 33:15
with the best of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills,

 

[BobRyan]

There is a thread here that starts with a mock-the-Bible list -
Apr 30, 2016 #1

By contrast we could choose to believe what the Bible says. Because it is so clear and irrefutable in its statements that even atheists can figure it out.

Notice how the devil starts with "mock the Word of God" as his opening gambit in Genesis 3?


And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

Then notice how clear and irrefutable the text of God's Word "by contrast"? Even the atheists admit to what it says.

Originally Posted by BobRyan =========================================
One leading Hebrew scholar is James Barr, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University and former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England. Although he does not believe in the historicity of Genesis 1, Dr. Barr does agree that the writer's intent was to narrate the actual history of primeval creation. Others also agree with him.

"Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know. "

James Barr, letter to David Watson, 1984.

=====================

"Six days you shall labor... for in SIX days the LORD Made..." Ex 20:8-11

Spoken by God and written in "legal code" not in "parable"

-------------------------------------------------------------

But then arises the religion of evolutionism whose by-faith-alone claim is that "A pile of dirt will sure-enough turn into a rabbit over time - given a sufficiently talented and large pile of dirt... and a sufficiently long and talented length of time filled with just-so-stories that are easy enough to tell".

Such a religion as that is ideal for an attack on the Bible.

And for the sake of the T.E. that does not want to start with the atheist's earth-sized 'pile of dirt' -- we have the "tiny amoeba" version of that same doctrine on origins.

"An amoeba will sure-enough turn into a horse over time - given a sufficiently talented amoeba ... and a sufficiently long and talented length of time filled with just-so-stories that are easy enough to tell".

Sure.

Genesis 49:26
The blessings of your father have surpassed the blessings of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills. May they rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince of his brothers.

Habakkuk 3:6
He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations; the ancient mountains were scattered; the perpetual hills bowed. His ways are everlasting.

Deuteronomy 33:15
with the best of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills,

The hills and mountains will remain for all eternity but not so the wicked and it has nothing to do with "from eternity past" or "from everlasting".

In the Bible God "is from everlasting" but life on Earth is not.

 

[hiwaystar]

Those who mock the Bible must have already been abandoned by God. Because if God loves you, you'd feel a stream of holy energy entering your body when you read the Bible.

To Bible mockers, I urge you to stop being so cynical and see the bright side of things. You'll feel something different soon enough, and you'll win back God's love!

 

[BobRyan]

Believing God is not a sign of hate or rebellion against God. just like believing your parent is not a sign of disrespect. It is natural to believe the one that you love and trust. As we all knew.

 

[The Barbarian]

And of course your "Urantia" religion had not been invented yet

To be fair, neither had your new doctrines of YE creationism.

 

[BobRyan]

To be fair, neither had your new doctrines of YE creationism.

Not true. Read the post. YEC goes all the way back to the original documents.
Nov 19, 2018 #306

 

[The Barbarian]

Not true. Read the post. YEC goes all the way back to the original documents.
Nov 19, 2018 #306

Nope. It's a modern revision of God's word, no older than the 20th century.

“Ronald Numbers is in a unique position to offer some answers. His 1992 book, The Creationists, which Harvard University Press has just reissued in an expanded edition, is probably the most definitive history of anti-evolutionism. Numbers is an eminent figure in the history of science and religion—a past president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History. But what’s most refreshing about Numbers is the remarkable personal history he brings to this subject. He grew up in a family of Seventh-day Adventists and, until graduate school, was a dyed-in-the-wool creationist. When he lost his religious faith, he wrote a book questioning the foundations of Adventism, which created a huge rift in his family. Perhaps because of his background, Numbers is one of the few scholars in the battle over evolution who remains widely respected by both evolutionists and creationists. In fact, he was once recruited by both sides to serve as an expert witness in a Louisiana trial on evolution. (He went with the ACLU.)”—Steve Paulson, Salon


“[An] informative, well-researched intellectual history of the origins of the contemporary creation science movement… Numbers offers a historical analysis of the various permutations in creation science thought, starting with the original response in 1859 to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and ending with creationism’s spread across the globe during the 1990s.”—Pius Charles Murray, Library Journal
The Creationists — Ronald L. Numbers | Harvard University Press