Who Wrote the Bible?

[prodromos]

Why would a written Q be necessary in the context of a very strong oral tradition?

 

[Reader Nilus]

Raymond Brown in his commentary of the Gospel of St John in the Anchor Bible series, does a fantastic job of explaining this sort of issue. For me as Orthodox, it verifies the significance of Tradition, as Tradition itself was behind the Gospels themselves.

Jeff the Finn

 

[PaladinValer]

So now God inspires lies?

Fallacy of Equivalence; you took what is said too literally.

1. It was standard custom back in those days to attribute your works in the names of saints, gods, and great philosophers (or even your own neighbor) if what you wrote was in honor of them or would be something you believe they would agree with.
2. Although by today's laws and customs this is considered forgery, it is wrong and illogical of us to judge others cultures' norms by our own. This is called "culturalism," and it has played in more disasterous events in Earth history than I like to remember.
3. Such practice could be taken (and possibly was taken back then at times) as a high form of humility; like as "hero-worship."

I mean by that simply that if someone other than Paul started a letter off by saying "Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ..." that would be a lie.

This is culturalism.

Yet you say this is what was done and that it is still inspired, hence you believe that God inspired a lie.

If what the writer writes is true, regardless of who the writer attributes it to, is still true. P v Q is still True if one of the elements is true, even if the other is False. Cannot God work through people who attribute their works to other people's hands in honor of them?

Obviously you do not believe in the same God that Christians do, and the simple fact is that if you don't belive that the epistles which start off "Paul an apostle" were written by Paul, then you don't believe the Bible at all.

Oh of course! I'm a filthy, Devil-worshipping, evil usurper who manipulates people away from the Christ-child through deceit and malice.[/thick sarcasm]

So who wrote Huck Finn? Samuel Clemmens or Mark Twain? Do you know what a psudonym is? God cannot work through people using a partial-psudonym to honor the wisdom of St. Paul? Oh what limits people put on God; a God that cannot work through people because they don't use their own name in their own works...

 

[Breetai]

The problem that I have with many KJV-only advocates is that they are often quite uneducated and simply repeat what they've been taught as being the truth.

No version of the Bible is perfect, they all have some error. Even the original texts have a few errors in them. Inspired doesn't mean without error...