7. If the bible is supposed to be the "word of god," then why was so much removed from it in various version of the bible? There should be ONE version, with no contradictions. Can someone help me with that?
It's not entirely clear what you are referring to when you say "so much removed from it in various version of the bible"
This is really a topic that could be a conversation in itself, because there's a lot of important information that I believe is relevant and should be covered with some depth; but for brevity's sake I'm going to simply provide two key points of information.
1. We talk about a "Biblical Canon", that is, an agreed set of books which Christians have, by consensus over time, regarded as our authoritative books. How that consensus was reached is somewhat complex and nuanced. And there are two sub-discussions, one involving the Old Testament and one involving the New Testament. By and large the Old Testament has been received from our Jewish forebearers, those books which Jews regarded as sacred. But there is a distinction between the Jewish Bible (aka the Tanakh) and the Christian Old Testament, because the development of both followed different trajectories with different influences after the destruction of the Jewish Temple. Christians, primarily, relied on the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Jewish Scripture made a couple hundred years before Jesus in Egypt; the Septuagint contained books and a different ordering of books than what would become the Jewish Bible in the later post-Temple rabbinic period. However, even among Christians there were disagreements on certain books, and there still remains a disagreement among Christians even today. That disagreement is this: Most Protestants do not accept those books which are found in the Septuagint but not found in the Jewish Tanakh, these books are traditionally called "Deuterocanonical" in the West, but beginning with Martin Luther were given the name "The Apocrypha" in Protestant Bible translations. Which is why the Catholic/Orthodox Old Testament looks different than the modern Protestant Old Testament.
The development of the New Testament is a different story. From very early on--about as early as we can look in the historical record--there arose what we can call a kind of "core New Testament", certain books which were received and accepted universally. The technical term for these books is Homolegoumena, a Greek term that roughly translates to "same writings" because they were the same everywhere. Whether you were going to church in Spain or going to church in Egypt or Persia, these books were accepted universally and everywhere. But in addition to these core books of the New Testament (the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, along with 1 John and 1 Peter) there were some disputed books. We call these disputed books Antilegoumena, they are the "contested writings". The books of the Antilegoumena are actually a rather short list, these include the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, 2 & 3 John, 2 Peter, the Revelation of John; all of which are found in the New Testament today; but also a handful of books which have ultimately not been retained in the New Testament Canon. These include The Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement, and in some ancient book lists also includes the Revelation of Peter and Acts of Paul. Even today many consider some of these works to be valuable and important works, not Scripture, but still having value; in particular the Didache and Epistle of Clement (1 Clement) are regarded as valuable early Christian literature. The reason why these books didn't eventually gain full acceptance as books of the Bible isn't because they were bad, or said anything necessarily disagreeable (though the Shepherd of Hermas did raise some eyebrows), but largely came down to other reasons. Certain criteria came to be adopted to help determine a book's canonical value and status, including when it was written and who wrote it. So books deemed too late, or whose authorship was questionable were held suspect--which is why 1 Clement and 2 Peter were both contested, Clement wasn't an apostle and wrote his letter after the death of the last apostle, and there were many doubts about whether 2 Peter was written by Peter. Same with Hebrews, the author of Hebrews is unknown; though arguments which said Paul wrote it helped get it fully accepted, same with 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, and the Revelation of John.
So from that we can know that the Bible really does have exactly the number of books it should have--because the evolution of the Biblical Canon has taken place over a long period of time, with an ever-emerging consensus. When Christians, historically, say the Bible is the word of God, we are saying that the Bible bears divine witness and that the books which make up the Bible stand as a divine witness to Jesus--that it is Jesus who is the Theme and Subject of the entire Bible. As Jesus is, Himself, the Word of God (John 1:1, John 1:14) thus the Bible proclaims that Word (Jesus) for our good within the Church. It's not because, historically, Christians are confused about how the Bible came about; rather it's because the Church as God's people regard our consensus and conviction about these books are
the Christ-bearing books, they bear in their witness Jesus Christ for us. It is Jesus who ultimately makes the Bible holy.
2. Since you spoke about versions, this comes down more to academic disciplines involving the research and study of manuscripts. Taking just the manuscripts of the New Testament together, there are literally thousands of Greek New Testament manuscripts (Greek being the original language) sot hat isn't even including ancient translated manuscripts into Latin, Coptic, or Syriac. These manuscripts range from thumbnail fragments of papyrus to full biblical codices written elaborately on parchment. The oldest of these manuscripts are dated around the early-mid 2nd century, and are found in every century afterward, from many different places of the ancient world. Since books deteriorate over time, especially in humid conditions (the oldest and best preserved manuscripts were preserved by dry conditions) it was necessary that in order to preserve any piece of writing it had to be hand-copied. Well, naturally, it's always possible that a copyist might flub, or might feel the need to add a little note in the margins of the text. Whatever the case, this means that we can find textual variations across manuscripts. Now these variations are nearly universally so minor that they barely matter at all except to nerdy academics who make it their job to care about things like this. But in modern times scholars have, by poring over thousands of manuscripts across centuries, largely categorized these manuscripts into broad "families". So you might see things like "Byzantine text type" or "Alexandrian text type" when referring to these. You might also see "Majority Text" and "Minority Text". Text-types, like Byzantine and Alexandrian are simply large groups of manuscripts which share more details with others in that group than others. That means those manuscripts called "Byzantine" tend to look more like other Byzantine texts than they do, say, Alexandrian texts. In the modern era, scholars have created "Critical Editions" or "Critical Texts" which means going through a host of the manuscript material and producing a complete reproduction of the Greek New Testament, which can then be used for study, and also as a basis for translation. Over the last few centuries several major Critical Texts have been produced for the New Testament, and modern English Bibles usually rely on one or the other, or use multiple of these Critical Texts. Translators won't rely exclusively on Critical Texts, but also look at variant sources (which is why lots of Bibles have marginal notes saying that some sources read differently here and there).
It's not that anything is ever "lost", it's that different Bible translators use different translation philosophies, work with different source materials, and sometimes that means there can be subtle differences between translations. But two translations working with the same and identical source text can still read slightly differently because of differences of opinion in how to translate something. Anyone who has studied languages knows that translation is often more interpretation than an exact science.
8a. If we're "all made in god's image," who is supposed to be a loving god, all-knowing, all-powerful, etc. Why was Hitler allowed to kill over 6 million people?
8b. Why is Putin allowed to do what he is doing?
The Christian understanding is that, while made in God's image, the problem of sin and death has distorted and twisted that image and we live in a broken world and that we, ourselves, are in some sense fundamentally broken--right down to the core of ourselves. People like Hitler or Putin are simply examples of what happens when evil people are given a lot of power.
The problem of sin, of death, of suffering, and all the deep wrongs are seen in Christianity as a deep wound both in the universe as a whole, and also specifically in ourselves. And it is this deep wound, this deep wrong, which makes us all both victims of evil and perpetrators of evil, that Christ came to fix. That is a massive conversation about the core doctrines of Christianity which is difficult to give summary here. But an incomplete brief statement would be: The world is in a state of deep wrongness, this is contrary to God's will, and so God's will is to fix all that wrongness by reconciling people to Himself and, in the end, put the entire universe back together as it should be.
9. I have been told SO many times that I ma not interpreting the bible correctly. While I have never and will never read it, I have of course, seen parts, many times. My question to the people who DO read it is, "How do you know YOU are interpreting it correctly?" Just because you believe/follow, there is nothing concrete in here. It's ALL open to interpretation." So what makes THEM right?
To some extent we will all have our own biases when we read the Bible. So it's, of course, possible that in many cases nobody is interpreting is 100% correctly. But it's also not just some game of guesswork. There are insights, and important toolsets that one can employ when working with understanding any text. This applies to any written work, not just the Bible. So there are good and bad ways to read the Bible, just as there are good and bad ways to read anything. And there can be degrees here, a
less-wrong interpretation for example.
Interpretation does not mean "what I think it means", though unfortunately that is often how the idea of interpretation is presented. Interpretation is a methodological approach of making sense of something. For example when scientists interpret data, they look at raw data and employ certain methodologies to interpret that data in such a way as to talk about it. The same thing is true when it comes to interpreting what someone says, so for example interpreting a piece of media or art--questions like what was the author of this trying to say, why were they saying it? A painting, a sculpture, a poem, etc. Or, a phrase in a biographical work about Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar. Or the words of the Bible.
Interpretation involves discipline, study, and the employment of methodologies to create toolsets to make the best effort to understand what is being communicated in the text.
So while there may not be some totally perfect interpreter; there certainly are good and bad interpretive methods.
10. I thought long and hard about posting this question. I in NO way want to bring up politics (my other least favorite thing in the world) in this post, but I do have a question. I've heard there is a state that wants to bring the bible into the school and teach it. Isn't that what Sunday school is for? If it is an "elective" course, then sure. But if they are planning on making it part of the standard curriculum, then my children (if I had any) would pull them from there instantly and home schooled. Why are some people so adamant about this and not respecting the fact that not everyone follows the same thing? I never understood that.
I can only give my view: I think there is an academic value to studying the Bible, so a course of academic study about the Bible could be interesting. But when certain Christians talk about having the Bible in a classroom that isn't what they have in mind; they aren't talking about an academic study of the Bible, but something closer to what would be given in a Sunday School or in Catechism or a sermon--a religious application of the Bible as the authoritative religious text of Christianity. I don't believe that belongs in a public education setting, that belongs in a church. It is a church's responsibility to provide religious and spiritual formation for the parishoners/congregation. The secular government, in the institution of a public school, has no business pretending to be church.
11. It's a known fact that religion is a VERY large cause of many murders. Why? Why would someone kill someone just because they don't believe in the same thing? What happened to "Love thy neighbor?" Also going back to us all being related - why are you killing a "family member?"
1) That whole sin problem I mentioned earlier.
2) People are very adept at finding anything to justify their behavior, religion is a common excuse because people can attempt to use religion to rationalize their evil behavior and try and make themselves think they are doing it for a higher or more noble cause. Which, again, from a Christian POV, gets back to that whole sin problem.
We're broken, our thought patterns are broken, we act selfishly and can rationalize even the worst possible behavior by finding some kind of justification for it--race, religion, politics, power, food, water, --anything. People will do bad things for almost any reason, and for no reason at all.
There's many more questions, but this is a good start, Following are just some of the things I have gone through. Interested in others' take on these experiences.
While I do not celebrate or practice anything, if anything I guess I should be Jewish, as my ancestors were, mostly coming from Eastern Europe. My paternal grandmother actually survived the holocaust by putting blood from the murdered on herself and "playing dead" amongst the other murdered people. I had HOURS of her talking about this recorded on cassette in the 1970's, but sadly those were ruined in a basement flood.
...
All I can say here is that I have a distaste for the commercialization of my religion's sacred observances, such as Christmas. And I have a distaste for them being used in a silly "culture war". For me Christmas is a holy time, and I don't expect people outside of my religion to see it that way. I no more expect non-Christians to take Christmas the way I do then I'd expect them to take Lent, Epiphany, or the Feast of the Annunciation. These are part of the Christian religious calendar, and are meant to regulate Christian liturgical life. Not make stores sell plastic trees in September and force store employees to say "Merry Christmas".
-CryptoLutheran
