The Bible a Myth?

[GodSaves]

Edit: For further reading go here: http://equip.org/

IS THE BIBLE MYTH?​

If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a million times, “You can’t take the Bible literally.” You often hear people say that although it may be inspirational, it’s also full of myths and fables. Well, is this really true?



If the Bible is really full of myths and fables, it would certainly be appropriate to read it as such. However, the simple fact is that the Bible certainly doesn’t fit that category.



For one thing, the biblical writers flatly denied teaching mythology. For example, Peter said, “We didn’t follow cleverly devised tales when we told you about the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His Majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16). In fact, the Apostle Paul urged Timothy to teach his congregation to disregard mythology (1 Tim. 1:4). He warned that a time was coming when people would “turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to mythology” (2 Tim. 4:4).



Besides all of this, the myths of the ancient world were never based on solid historical fact. They were stories invented to explain such recurring phenomena like the changing of the seasons or the motion of the stars. The events recorded in the Scripture, on the other hand, are firmly rooted in history. By way of illustration, it is an accepted historical fact that Israel became a nation after the exodus from Egypt. Later, Israel became a monarchy, David and Solomon really lived, and on and on and on. It is also a historical fact that Jesus was a Jew who preached about God the Father, who claimed to be God, worked miracles, and was crucified during Pilate’s reign. All of this is, in fact, literal history.



In addition, the supernatural aspects of Scripture are presented just as matter-of-factly as the rest. And indeed, the most stupendous miracle recorded in the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, has been authenticated by numerous scholarly studies including the late great Dr. Simon Greenleaf. Dr. Greenleaf was the Royal Professor of Legal Evidences at Harvard University. He was goaded by his students into looking at the evidences for the resurrection. After a thorough examination he came back and said, “There is not a single unbiased juror in the world who would ever look at the evidence and deny it. Dr. Simon Greenleaf became a Christian. The Bible is not mythology and was never meant to be read as such.



That’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

 

[GodSaves]

how do we know that the bible is the word of god?
​

If I’ve heard it once I’ve probably heard it a 1000 times! Some Christian comes up to me and says, “The Bible says!!…. So what?!… Who says what the Bible says is true in the first place?”



First, we know that the Bible is God’s Word because no less an authority than Jesus Christ Himself says it is. Sounds like circular reasoning, right?



Not so fast, the New Testament documents are actually very reliable historically. The authors of the New Testament were either eyewitnesses to the life of Christ, or were close associates of eyewitnesses. And so they give a clear testimony as to the deity of Jesus Christ. Jesus not only claimed to be God, but He proved His claim through [1] the fulfillment of messianic prophecy, [2] the performance of miracles, and ultimately and most succinctly through His historically verifiable resurrection from the dead.



If you can prove that Jesus is God in human flesh, whatever He says is truth. And what does Jesus say concerning the bible? He says that it is the very Word of God! As to the Old Testament, Jesus said that the “Scriptures cannot be broken,” and therefore they are sufficient, authoritative, and inspired. In fact, he went on to promise that the Bible will guide not only his apostles, but all of us in the truth — the truth he was talking about is not subjective truth, but objective verifiable truth.



Now as I’ve shown inductively, Jesus Christ Himself, God incarnate, testifies not only to Scripture’s authority (Matt. 22:43), but to its reliability (Matt. 26:54), to its sufficiency (Luke 16:31), and finally to its finality (Matt. 4:4,7,10). Bottom line: The living Word (Jesus) bears testimony to the Written Word (the Bible).



The truth is, demonstrating that the Bible is the Word of God is not all that difficult. Of course you have to be dealing with someone who is an open minded person. If someone has already made up his mind and doesn’t want to be confused with the facts, you’re never going to be able to talk him into the kingdom. Only the Holy Spirit can truly open the heart.



On the authority of the Word of God, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

 

[GodSaves]

reliability of the bible manuscripts
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Non-Christians, (skeptics like New Agers or Mormons) claim that in the process of copying Scripture the text of the Bible was corrupted. Is this really true?



Suppose you wrote an essay and asked five friends to copy it. Each of them in turn asked five more friends to do the same — kind of like a chain letter. By the fifth “generation,” you would have approximately four thousand copies. Now, obviously, in the process, some people are going to make some copying errors. The first five people to copy it would make mistakes, and then most of the people who copy from them will make some more mistakes. Eventually you’d have thousands of copies and all of them flawed.



Sounds pretty bad, right? But hold on. Your five friends might make mistakes, but they wouldn’t all make the same mistakes. If you compared all of the copies, you would find that one group contained the same mistake while the other four did not — which of course, would make it easy to tell the copies from the original. Not only that, but most of the mistakes would be obvious — things like misspelled words or words that were accidentally omitted. Anyone looking at all four thousand copies would have no trouble figuring out which was the original.



That’s essentially the same situation with the Bible. We’ve got thousands of copies of the Bible in its original language, and scholars who have studied them have been able to classify them into groups and in most cases determine what the original documents actually said. The few cases which are still debated by scholars really don’t affect the basic message of the Bible at all.



In fact, interestingly enough when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran, they predated the earliest extant text — the Masoretic text by almost one thousand years — yet in spite of this vast span of time, there was no substantive difference at all…..In fact, in looking at Isaiah 53 there were only 17 changes between the Masoretic text and those found at Qumran — 10 involved spelling, 4 style and 3 involved the Hebrew letters for the word light in verse 11. However, none of these differences were substantive — God has indeed preserved His Word.



On Manuscript reliability, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

 

[versastyle]

“turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to mythology” (2 Tim. 4:4)

 

[versastyle]

So are we in "copy and paste" mode this evening?

 

[GodSaves]

Yeah, I found somethings that I thought I would share.

 

[versastyle]

Yeah, I found somethings that I thought I would share.

Well I've read most of this stuff already, its good reading, but it fails to reach justification for belief in my honest opinion.

 

[GodSaves]

THE KENOSIS OF CHRIST​

It’s popular today to say that Jesus in the Incarnation was fully man, but certainly not fully God. In discussing the doctrine of the Incarnation (God the Son in human flesh), Philippians 2:7 says that Jesus “emptied himself.” Does this mean that Jesus was not 100 percent God as well as 100 percent man?​

While historic Christianity has always affirmed that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully man, some have argued that in order for Jesus to have been truly human He must have divested Himself of certain divine attributes. In fact, those who affirm this very novel view nearly always appeal to Philippians 2:5-7. Which, by the way, says, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” The words “emptied Himself” are interpreted by a growing number of people today to mean that Christ actually laid aside certain divine attributes. But is this correct? Well as a matter of fact, it’s not.

To say that Jesus surrendered even one divine attribute is to say that Jesus is less than God, and therefore not God at all! See, if God is deprived of even one attribute, then He is not fully deity. Of course references to his deity abound in Scripture (John 1:1; 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Col. 2:9; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8). And by the way, this is not only affirmed by the Bible, it’s clearly affirmed by the creeds.

Of course the question is asked: If Jesus didn’t give up His deity, then what did Christ empty Himself of? Well the context indicates very clearly that Jesus veiled His glory as a sign of his humility. He voluntarily makes Himself of no reputation. He sets aside His high position and waves His divine prerogatives because He loves us. But while Christ surrenders His divine glory, he does not surrender His divine attributes.

On Christ being 100 percent God as well as 100 percent man, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

 

[mhess13]

This is great stuff! Hanegraaff is pretty good, I listen to him quite a bit. He has written a book exposing the fallacy of evolution. I don't know if he believes YEC or not, he seems to kind of allow for long ages. BUT he's very much opposed to evolution

 

[Gold Dragon]

Myth does not always equal to false or untrue. While our most dominant examples of mythology (Greek, Roman, Norse) are considered strongly on the side of fiction, there are also applications of the word myth for non-fiction.

Wikipedia - Myth
...
Although myths are often considered to be accounts of events that have not happened, many historians consider that myths can also be accounts of actual events that have become highly imbued with symbolic meaning, or that have been transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed. One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what people think, feel and say about the event takes on progressively greater historical significance while the facts become less important. By the time one reaches the mythical end of the spectrum the story has taken on a life of its own and the facts of the original event have become almost irrelevant.

This method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events, evhemerist exegesis, dates from antiguity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to Evhémère's Histoire sacrée (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, Everything-Good, in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, "Myth is a word chosen by history. It could not come from the nature of things" (Mâche 1992, p.20).
...

With that said, the bible is obviously not all myth but certain sections do carry a mythological literary style to them, which doesn't mean that the account is false.

 

[PaladinValer]

Gold Dragon hit the nail right on the head.

The theological definition of a myth is a fictional or legendary story that teaches a moral or religious truth.