Things from the Old Testemant that raise questions

What makes you so sure that Jesus was the incarnation of God? Verily, he is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible, but what makes the Christian Bible any different and more valid than my 'Bible'?

Epistemogically (what it is founded on) my 'Bible' shares the same validity as the Christian Bible. In fact, my 'Bible' has the benefit of recent publication. The Christian Bible was written nearly two thousand years ago. The original books are unaccounted for. It was inflicted 1000 years (perhaps 500 years more) of Church coruption in the middle ages. My 'Bible' was hypothetically written yesterday, the original text still exists. The singular author speaks to you at this very moment.

Once again I ask you: Will you not join the Church of Thumontico?

 

The Church of Thumontico? Well if I see some of your followers walkin' through town I'll let you hear.....thqat would mean they'd have also come to weird little Holland

The Bible

The Bible consists of 66 books: 39 in the OT and 27 in the new. (Note: 3 x 9 = 27).
The OT has 23,214 verses. The NT has 7,959 verses.
The Bible took about 1600 years to write.
It was written in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) by about 40 authors and is internally consistent throughout.
It was written on three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe.
It was written by a variety of people: prophets, priest, cupbearer, a king, judges, fishermen, etc.

The first translation of the English Bible was initiated by John Wycliffe and completed by John Purvey in A.D. 1388.
The first American edition of the Bible was perhaps published some time before A.D. 1752.
The Bible has been translated in part or in whole as of 1964 in over 1,200 different languages or dialects.
The Bible was divided into chapters by Stephen Langton about A.D. 1228.
The Old Testament was divided into verses by R. Nathan in A.D. 1448 and the New Testament by Robert Stephanus in A.D. 1551.

Old Testament -- a total of 39 books and has 5 main divisions:
Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy), Historical (Joshua to Esther), Poetic (Job to Song of Solomon), Major Prophets (Isaiah to Daniel), Minor Prophets (Hosea to Malachi).
New Testament -- a total of 27 books and has 4 main divisions
Gospels (Matthew to John), History (Acts), Epistles (Romans to Jude), Prophetic (Revelation).

Reliability of the biblical documents.

The Bible is 98½ percent textually pure. This means that through all the copying of the Biblical manuscripts of the entire Bible, only 1½% has any question about it. Nothing in all of the ancient writings of the entire world even approaches the accuracy of transmission found in the biblical documents.
The 1½ percent that is in question does not affect doctrine. The areas of interest are called variants and they consist mainly in variations of wording and spelling.
The OT does not have as many supporting manuscripts as the NT but it is, nevertheless, remarkably reliable.
The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT done around 250 B.C., attests to the reliability and consistency of the OT when it is compared to existing Hebrew manuscripts.
The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 also verify the reliability of the OT manuscripts.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were ancient documents that were hidden in a cave in Israel about 2000 years ago. The scrolls contained many OT books, one of them being Isaiah.

Before the Dead Sea scrolls, the earliest existing manuscript of the OT was dated around 900 A.D. called the Masoretic Text. The Scrolls contained OT documents 1000 years earlier. A comparison between the manuscripts revealed an incredible accuracy of transmission through copying, so much so that critics were silenced.

The NT has over 5000 supporting Greek manuscripts existing today with another 20,000 manuscripts in other languages. Some of the manuscript evidence dates to within 100 years of the original writing. There is less than a 1% textual variation in the NT manuscripts.

Estimated time of writing of the NT documents

Paul's Letters, 50-66 A.D.
Matthew, 70-80 A.D.
Mark, 50-65 A.D.
Luke, early 60's
John, 80-100 A.D.
Revelation 96 A.D.

Some of the supporting manuscripts of the NT are:
John Rylands MS written around 130 A.D., the oldest existing fragment of the NT
Bodmer Papyrus II (150-200 A.D.)
Chester Beatty Papyri (200 A.D.), contains major portions of the NT
Codex Vaticanus (325-350 A.D.), contains nearly all the Bible.
Codex Sinaiticus (350 A.D.), contains almost all the NT and over half of the OT

No other ancient writing can boast of having copies so close to the original time of writing. With the Bible, the difference is about 50 years. With Plato and Aristotle, for example, the difference is measure in hundreds of years.

Prophecy and mathematical odds of fulfillment.

The odds of Jesus fulfilling 48 of the 61 major prophecies concerning Him are 1 in 10157; that is a one with 157 zeros behind it.
By comparison, the estimated number of electrons in the entire known universe is about 1079; that is a one with 79 zeros behind it.

Inspiration and Inerrancy - The Bible is inspired by God. Inspiration means that God, through the Holy Spirit, caused the writers of the Bible to write the accurate and authoritative revelation of God. It is God breathed (2 Tim. 3:16) through the instrumentation of the apostles and prophets (2 Pet. 1:21).
It is without error in the original manuscripts and absolutely reliable and true in all areas it addresses.
Every true Christian accepts the inspiration and authority of the Bible.

Scientific Accuracies in the Bible.

The spherical shape of the earth (Isaiah 40:22).
The earth is suspended in nothing (Job. 26:7).
The stars are innumerable (Gen. 15:5).
The existence of valleys in the seas (2 Sam. 22:16).
The existence of springs and fountains in the sea (Gen. 7:11; 8:2; Prov. 8:28).
The existence of water paths (ocean currents) in the seas (Psalm 8:8).
The water cycle (Job. 26:8; 36:27-28; 37:16; 38:25-27; Psalm 135:7; Ecc. 1:6-7).
The fact that all living things reproduce after their own kind (Gen. 1:21; 6:19).
The nature of health, sanitation, and sickness (Gen. 17:9-14; Lev. 12-14).
The concept of entropy, that energy is running down (Psalm 102:26).

(copied from http://www.carm.org/doctrine/christiandoctrine1.htm)

Couls you say this of 'your' Bible?

 

You should read a book that explains the difference between Opinion and Education.

This type of wording/reference is used by Yahweh (sp?) in other passages in other books too.

The reason you dont find a lot of resources dealing with God refering to 'Other gods' [or 'Your god Baal' or 'those who worship false gods' ] is because until you came along, no one has been troubled by this.

Its been so obvious that he is refering to what THEY might call a 'God' that nobody thought it would ever have to be explained!

This kind of question is actually very effective in catching Bible Teachers off Guard because even their Sunday School Kids 'Get' that God is refering to what 'The People' are calling a 'god'.

ya so.. there ya go.

 

but all those tohewr 'gods'
never did anytihng

 

God picked his team, stuck with them until they proved themselves weak and needing outside strength, and after a while decided to start recruiting new players from other established teams. He didnt cut any body, unless they refuse to accept the new rules. He just changed who the star players were.
Them original starters have come back. But not quite team players yet.

 

cool site, very easy to use.
http://www.carm.org/kjv/Gen/Gen_1.htm
I hadnt realized I was using the same site to cross reference dutch's claims...I am no scholar.
Still a cool site. VERY easy to use.

 

what means 'to cross reference' (sorry, english isn't my first language

 

he posted verses, Isaiah 40:22 for example. I could easily look it up and read it verbatim, as the site master posted it.

 

It could be said that the mass mutilations of dead Philistine bodies as described in the OT as pleasing to God raises more than a few questions.

 

ever heard of King James I of England? aka King James VI of Scotland.. i think his input to the bible would have been enough to debunk its reliability.. and as for 98.5 pure.. compared to the size of the bible, 1.5% is quite a lot..

well for one, for jesus to have been messiah he would needed to wage war/rebellion against the romans and deliver the jews to the holy land, which he never considered.. so, if i was jewish and not agnostic, that there would be enough for me to believe he was no messiah.
and as for 1079 electrons in the universe, that is the stupidest comment ive ever heard. ive got millions in my body, im hoping that was a typo..

and yeh, lemme join the church of thumontico.. mwhahaha

 

about the 1.5%.....compared to other ancient manuscripts that is superspecial.
And that text U posted about the Bible also says this:
"The 1½ percent that is in question does not affect doctrine. The areas of interest are called variants and they consist mainly in variations of wording and spelling."
This has been further proved by for example the dead see scrolls (isiah scroll).

And about Jesus fulfilling prophecy...yes He is the messiah. Wage war and settle His kingdom? But first another prophecy needed to be fulfilled, a big one: a bridge being made between the gap between mankind and God, and this bridge is for both jew and greek. As becomes clear when reading some parts of the letter to the romans, prophecy says that there will be a race of believers coming from the heathens, and that prophecy is getting fulfulled all the time, even to this day, because whenever non-jews (heathens) become a child of God, this prophecy is being fulfilled!

Not all the prophecies in the OT are fulfilled yet, but that's because we live in the time of grace now, the time in which people are free to go over the bridge to God that Jesus 'constructed' on the cross.

 

Where are you all getting these percentages from? Your ass?

 

It's all based on scientific research....just like making someone from a piece 'o rib & some dirt.

 

yep... with that whole 'not worship any gods before me' rule... that's one hell of an ego he's got going....

 

Back to original topic of GOD and gods. The supreme god is the creatING, and I like to view it more of a process than a thing. It is natural selection, and evolution. Its the same thing to me, GOD is the superintelligence guiding everything. The only thing worth worshipping. It is what makes animals in the wild kill and eat each other for their own survival. It could be dualistic like the Tao, it could be anything, could be just the energy source that everything plugs into and thats the point. It could be everythings blood and dna. WHO KNOWS! FUCKIN NO ONE!

GODS however are referred to as the plural Elohim. In the bible the Elohim are responsible for the creation of man. If you've ever read the book The Genesis Race, that becomes quite evident. The Agricultural Revolution happend all over the earth all around the same time. Also occuring with the fall of Neanderthal man. Is it possible that these Elohim, did not "create" but "mutate" our ancestors and that simple mistake in translation has carried on through the years?

I studied Anthropology and they plainly state that Neanderthal man dissappeared. There are many theories as to what couldve happened, but none more fitting than MINE; mutation. They werent killed by modern humans, they didnt evolve into humans. We were mutated part neanderthal part whatever the Elohim had the capability of doing. The Elohim have often been compared the Sumerian Annunaki, who are an alien race that came down mutated early ape-man to serve them. Personally, I think they are the serpent in the garden of eden. Who deceived man by mutating them into a more intelligent species, thousands of years before the Superintelligence could handle it. Nothing else can explain such a rapid evolution.

 

You may be on to something there. I like to think that the 'Adam's rib' story is the simplified record of just such a genetic manipulation, put into layman's terms. The Annunaki that Sitchen describes certainly seem to fit. The Sumerians even had a name for the first half-breed: Adamae.

 

Ya.. hehe.. Cloning someones DNA is crazy talk.. oh wait. It wasnt until scientific research caught up to Eve's creation.
[Mind you, Cloning DNA requires intelligence to cause it]

As for the first one being made from dirt.

Let see what is more likely.

A man being created from dust by a highly advanced designer.
[granted an amazing claim]

OR

A man being created by some space gasses, which turned into soup - then morphed millions of times until becoming a man.
ALL BY ACCIDENT!?

Both are astonishing.. but the latter is FAR MORE Unlikely.

 

you could say that it takes far more faith to believe in evolutiontheory than in God as creator

Do people reject what they can't believe in, or what they CAN (but don't want) to believe in?

 

We can't say tao is dualistic. Its very clear from tao te ching that tao is not definable in intellectual terms or formulae. You probably mean tai chi - the yin yang duality.

 

Science is not a question of faith, but hypotheseis and experiment, validation of theories and so on. A great amount of evidence exists to support the theory of evolution, and Christian attempts to discredit this are really not convincing.. For instance, the question of Dinosaur remains and extinct species.
Without science, we'd still be citizens of a flat earth, imagining disease to be caused by devils etc. That might suit some Christians, but hardly serves the needs of wider humanity.
But really, there is no need for such a stance on the part of Christians. Many find no problem in reconciling science and Christianity. It is only the fundamentalist who finds a difficulty. But the beliefs of the fundamentalist are quite obviously illogical, whether Christian, Muslim or whatever.
Personally, I have no trouble believing in both science and God.