Is the Bible the word of God?

tonychanyt said:

Loosely speaking, yes. However, technically, I consider a bible as a translation of a recording of the word of God.

One problem is that there is no uniform definition of the Bible. The Protestant Bible has 66 books; Catholic, 73 books; Orthodox, 81 books; Ethiopian, 86 books.

Let's just arbitrarily fix a definition of the Bible as defined by the 66 books of the Protestant canon. Still, there is a problem: Which ancient manuscripts are the word of God? Matthew 17:21 is missing from NIV because of its choice of manuscripts.

Moreover, some passages are clearly words of God, Numbers 9:

6 But there were some men who were unclean due to a dead body, so they could not observe the Passover on that day. And they came before Moses and Aaron that same day 7 and said to Moses, “We are unclean because of a dead body, but why should we be excluded from presenting the LORD’s offering with the other Israelites at the appointed time?”​

8“Wait here until I find out what the LORD commands concerning you,” Moses replied.​

9Then the LORD said to Moses, 10“Tell the Israelites: ‘When any one of you or your descendants is unclean because of a dead body, or is away on a journey, he may still observe the Passover to the LORD.​

Other passages are not so clear, 1 Corinthians 7:

12 To the rest I say this (**I, not the Lord**): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.​

In any case, whether it is direct quotations from God or Paul's personal opinions, 2 Timothy 3:

>16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,​

2 Peter 1:

21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.​

Is the Bible the word of God?

Yes, loosely speaking.

No, if you want to be technical and precise about it.

Is the Bible infallible or inerrant?

It is better to stick to the wording of the Bible and just say that all Scripture is God-breathed.

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It is important to remember that the word of God is not only the written word of God (Logos), but the word of God is also Rhemas, or the spoken word of God. The Holy Spirit's job is to teach us and lead us into all truth, and He uses the written word to do this. most of the time.

Like sometimes when I am reading, a passage jumps up and speaks to me. I can apply this passage to a certain aspect of my life and difficulties and it's effect is s looking into a mirror. This is called receiving a Rhema from the Holy Spirit. So...I do not think that there is a "translation" of the scriptures that the Holy Spirit can not use to speak to with and lead you to the truth and to Jesus.
I don't care what translation it is, He can use it! NiV and it's missing verses? I can use that, the Holy Spirit said...

So whatever translation you have use it up! Read it constantly. Write it's text upon your heart, and the Holy Spirit will be there.

tonychanyt said:

Loosely speaking, yes. However, technically, I consider a bible as a translation of a recording of the word of God.

One problem is that there is no uniform definition of the Bible. The Protestant Bible has 66 books; Catholic, 73 books; Orthodox, 81 books; Ethiopian, 86 books.

Let's just arbitrarily fix a definition of the Bible as defined by the 66 books of the Protestant canon. Still, there is a problem: Which ancient manuscripts are the word of God? Matthew 17:21 is missing from NIV because of its choice of manuscripts.

Moreover, some passages are clearly words of God, Numbers 9:

6 But there were some men who were unclean due to a dead body, so they could not observe the Passover on that day. And they came before Moses and Aaron that same day 7 and said to Moses, “We are unclean because of a dead body, but why should we be excluded from presenting the LORD’s offering with the other Israelites at the appointed time?”​

8“Wait here until I find out what the LORD commands concerning you,” Moses replied.​

9Then the LORD said to Moses, 10“Tell the Israelites: ‘When any one of you or your descendants is unclean because of a dead body, or is away on a journey, he may still observe the Passover to the LORD.​

Other passages are not so clear, 1 Corinthians 7:

12 To the rest I say this (**I, not the Lord**): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.​

In any case, whether it is direct quotations from God or Paul's personal opinions, 2 Timothy 3:

>16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,​

2 Peter 1:

21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.​

Is the Bible the word of God?

Yes, loosely speaking.

No, if you want to be technical and precise about it.

Is the Bible infallible or inerrant?

It is better to stick to the wording of the Bible and just say that all Scripture is God-breathed.

Click to expand...

The word of God is everything spoken by God either directly by Him or indirectly such as through His angels or prophets, which is inclusive of the books of the Bible except what is stated to be the opinion of the author.

The original autographs are, the current Bibles are copies. But most are accurate, to be used as, the original autographs were, as a record of God's revelation to man.

Another issue is that Christians tend to equivocate over the phrase "Word/word of God," using the phrase to refer both to the scriptures and to Jesus Christ the incarnate Word of God. Those two are not identical. They do not share exactly all the same properties; therefore, they are not the same. One is a witness to the Word of God, and the other is the Word of God. Technically, the Bible is a witness to the Word of God, making it the "word of God" in a secondary sense.

public hermit said:

Another issue is that Christians tend to equivocate over the phrase "Word/word of God," using the phrase to refer both to the scriptures and to Jesus Christ the incarnate Word of God. Those two are not identical. They do not share exactly all the same properties; therefore, they are not the same. One is a witness to the Word of God, and the other is the Word of God. Technically, the Bible is a witness to the Word of God, making it the "word of God" in a secondary sense.

Click to expand...

According to, Hebrew 4:12, “the word of God is alive and active. The description of the Bible as “living” means that it has a vital power inherent to itself. Jesus likened the Word of God to seed in Mathew 13. Seed, like the Bible, is not dead, but living, and it has the ability to bring forth more life abundantly.


It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

There's more to the Bible than people give it credit for.

Divide said:

There's more to the Bible than people give it credit for

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I would say there is a practical necessity to the scriptures, and they are sufficient in terms of their function as a witness to Jesus Christ, but they are not sufficient in and of themselves. The Holy Spirit works in conjuction with the witness of the scriptures to bring us to faith in Christ, and that Spirit who bears witness to Christ is divine. Maybe the Spirit is the "more to the Bible than people give it credit for?"

public hermit said:

I would say there is a practical necessity to the scriptures, and they are sufficient in terms of their function as a witness to Jesus Christ, but they are not sufficient in and of themselves. The Holy Spirit works in conjuction with the witness of the scriptures to bring us to faith in Christ, and that Spirit who bears witness to Christ is divine. Maybe the Spirit is the "more to the Bible than people give it credit for?"

Click to expand...

The way I learned it, when the Lord speaks there is great power behind it and in the spiritual realm it would seem possible for those divine words being spoken to the authors and carries with it a divine aspect from God because He spoke it. Scripture says something about His word will not return to Him void, or something like that. So the book could be said to be supernatural in a way. God works in mysterious ways.

Something like that. The Bible isn't God or anything like that, but is the spoken words of God. The Bible is the book of truth. It is not a book of truth, it the book of truth and our primary way to receive revelation from God.

Well for me every time.. every time I stand on what He said in His book He always .. always does it. Always keeps His word.. I don't doubt. So my faith has the works

tonychanyt said:

One problem is that there is no uniform definition of the Bible.

Click to expand...

No one adds to what we receive from Moses. Other than Jesus Himself. If we understand the very first word in the Bible: Beginning then everything else would make sense. Just as Jesus teaching is contained in loving God and loving our neighbor as ourself.

tonychanyt said:

Loosely speaking, yes. However, technically, I consider a bible as a translation of a recording of the word of God.

One problem is that there is no uniform definition of the Bible. The Protestant Bible has 66 books; Catholic, 73 books; Orthodox, 81 books; Ethiopian, 86 books.

Let's just arbitrarily fix a definition of the Bible as defined by the 66 books of the Protestant canon. Still, there is a problem: Which ancient manuscripts are the word of God? Matthew 17:21 is missing from NIV because of its choice of manuscripts.

Moreover, some passages are clearly words of God, Numbers 9:

6 But there were some men who were unclean due to a dead body, so they could not observe the Passover on that day. And they came before Moses and Aaron that same day 7 and said to Moses, “We are unclean because of a dead body, but why should we be excluded from presenting the LORD’s offering with the other Israelites at the appointed time?”​

8“Wait here until I find out what the LORD commands concerning you,” Moses replied.​

9Then the LORD said to Moses, 10“Tell the Israelites: ‘When any one of you or your descendants is unclean because of a dead body, or is away on a journey, he may still observe the Passover to the LORD.​

Other passages are not so clear, 1 Corinthians 7:

12 To the rest I say this (**I, not the Lord**): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.​

In any case, whether it is direct quotations from God or Paul's personal opinions, 2 Timothy 3:

>16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,​

2 Peter 1:

21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.​

Is the Bible the word of God?

Yes, loosely speaking.

No, if you want to be technical and precise about it.

Is the Bible infallible or inerrant?

It is better to stick to the wording of the Bible and just say that all Scripture is God-breathed.

Click to expand...

The Bible is the Word of God. It is the complete message system, designed by someone extra terrestrial. The miracle is that 40 authors wrote 66 books over thousands of years, and yet each book is connected in such a way that it had to have an overall design outside of the authors who wrote them. Chuck Missler, who has his PhD in information technology has applied his skills to the original text to show that the text in each book is divided by 7 without a remainder. This could not have happened by chance. He shows that at the start of Genesis, each 49th Hebrew letter adds up to "TORA". It is the same with Exodus. But with Leviticus nothing is there. But in Numbers and Deuternonomy it is "AROT". so these point to something significant in the middle. So going back to Leviticus and taking each 7th letter of the text, we get "YHWH". What this shows is that the centre of the Torah, points to YHWH, and therefore God is at the centre of the design of the five books. Chuck Missler explains this more fully in his series on the Book of Genesis to show that the original text of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation has been designed by God to provide an integrated message system to show that the Bible is no only God's Word, but it is totally sufficient for us without having to have anything added to it.

God has totally and exclusively said everything He has said and is going to say in the Bible. The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed. and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. Every event in the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament if we are prepared to do our homework and dig into the Scriptures to find out. We cannot really understand the significance of the book of Exodus unless we understand the book of Revelation. In fact, Revelation explains most of the Old Testament and why events happened. This comes clear, not through a superficial reading of both books, but a serious indepth study of them to establish the linkage.

If we don't know who Jesus really is according to the Scripture, we cannot truly understand the Bible. This is why secular people cannot understand the Bible other than the superficial stories contained in it. The central truths of the Bible are spiritually discerned, and one has to have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them to achieve that level of understanding. This is because it is the Holy Spirit who reveals what the Bible is all about to us. This is why that many commentaries written by unconverted religious authors miss the central truth of what the Bible contains. The secular commentator, many of whom feature on the History Channel, are unable to see Jesus Christ throughout the Bible because all they have is flawed human logic instead of the indwelling Holy Spirit to show them.

This is why I believe that the Bible IS God's complete and integrated message to mankind which shows His complete plans and purposes, and is historically accurate in every respect. Those who have the Holy Spirit can put their total trust in it for their eternal future in Christ.