What to Say When Someone Says "The Bible Has Errors"

Christian Post ^ | 03/07/2012 | Jonathan Dodson

[Tennessee Nana]

What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”
___________________________________________

“That’s not a good enough reason to write a fictious book and call it the book of mormon to take the place of the Bible”

[blueunicorn6]

The US Army was really messed up until they came up with a common doctrine. The Bible is Christian doctrine.

[what's up]

Constantine and James weren't doing the translating.

It was the scholars looking at various comparisons of the ancient documents who did the work.

Since the ancient documents have varied so little over time, why do you have issues with them and claim they are more fallible than popes?

[Scoutmaster]

See www.faithfacts.org for more apologetics facts.

Thank you.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: The ancient patristic writings provides evidence of a universally accepted canon long before Constantine or any council of bishops.

____________________________

Also, LONG BEFORE CONSTANTINE AND THE COUNCIL OF NICEA...

The apostle Peter himself acknowledges that Paul’s writings his epistles) were SCRIPTURE. That’s CENTURIES before Constantine and Nicea.

See 2 Peter 3:15,16

“Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15,16).

This statement of Peter tells us several things. They include the following.

First there were a number of Paul’s letters that were circulating since Peter speaks of his “letters.” While he does not give the exact number of these letters they were circulating as a group.

Second, these writings of Paul were well known by Peter and the other believers. The fact that he could speak of these letters to his audience in this way assumes that they were familiar with them.

Third, Peter placed these writings of Paul on the same level as the Old Testament Scripture. He used the Greek word graphe to refer to Paul’s writings. This Greek word is used fifty-one times in the New Testament and it refers to the Old Testament writings in every other occurrence. Consequently Scripture was a technical term that the New Testament used to refer to God’s divinely authoritative writings.

Also, Paul Quotes Luke As Scripture ( AGAIN CENTURIES BEFORE CONSTANTINE AND NICEA ).

When Paul wrote to Timothy he quoted a passage from Luke as Scripture.

For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads the grain,’ and, ‘the laborer is worthy of his wages’ (1 Timothy 5:18).

The first verse quoted is from Deuteronomy 25:4. However the second is a quotation of one of our Lord’s statements recorded by Luke: “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (Luke 10:7). This saying is not found in the Old Testament. Paul uses the exact same Greek words that Luke used. Consequently it seems that Paul knew of Luke’s gospel at this time and considered it Scripture. Paul quotes Luke on the same level as Moses. This implied equivalence.

So, The New Testament itself is quoted as Scripture twice. Paul quotes a saying of Jesus from Luke’s gospel and calls it Scripture.

In addition, Peter acknowledges the writings of Paul were considered to be Holy Scripture. This shows that the idea of adding new Scripture, apart from the Old Testament, was already occurring in the early years of the church.

[GonzoGOP]

Think of Homer...he and others were trained to recite Illiad-length words and if they got some words wrong they would hear about it.

Yes but nobody expected the Iliad to be taken as, well Gospel. The generalities hold up. Troy existed, but the use of chariots as battle taxis for foot soldiers doesn't. Homer had never seen a chariot fight. Aside from being blind, chariots had been obsolete as a weapon in Greece a century before his time. Think of someone being told about the wooden ships of Nelson era, but never having any experience except with modern navies. He might have accurate description of the ship. But knowing nothing about how they were used describe them sailing in formations with frigates in an anti-aircraft picket outside the ship of the line acting as a carrier at the heart of the task group.

So Homer had heard that there were chariot fights and he invented a way to use them in conjunction with the contemporary, infantry centric, Greek hoplite order of battle. There were gaps in the historical oral tradition, and as a story teller he filled them in.

The armies and fleets Homer describes are far in excess of anything that could have been assembled and dispatched by early bronze age Greece. Nor does the size of Troy, it was much smaller than described by Homer. They were exaggerated, second hand stories from an oral tradition. Sure once it got to Homer with his photographic memory it got locked in. However Homer is telling a story about a war that happened a century before he was born. So before he put it to verse it was a sea story told by a bunch of Greek sailors. It doesn't matter how good Homers memory was, because the story was already retold hundreds of times by the time he got it.

That is the problem with an oral tradition. Get one generation with a bad memory. One disaster, war or plague that kills the poet-scribe before another can be trained up and you are SOL. You have to piece it together from the memories of less gifted individuals. Parts get lost, embellished or modified to fit the politics of the local king. Without a written record there is no way to prove the change ever happened. The person telling you sure as heck isn't going to point it out.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Yes and Jude 3 refers to the faith once delivered to the saints (past tense). All anyone did after the apostolic period was to confirm what was already accepted in the 1st Century.

[240B]

The Christian Church has no Bible of it's own. What is called the New Testament, is merely a compilation of letters, visions, hopes, aspirations, and journal notes of the apostles and others written after the death of Jesus.

These writings had to be appended to the Torah (the Christian Old Testament) to give them any context, meaning, and to clarify what they are talking about. When it is written Jesus, said, “if you keep ‘my’ commandments” (Jesus is God in the Christian sense), I assumed he meant, “if you keep God's commandments” which would be the Judaic laws. In fact it is mentioned several times in the New Testement that Jesus prohibited the eating of blood. And yet, Christians eat blood and say, it is not what goes in your body that defiles a man, but what comes out. Which is good and great. I understand it. I love it! But Jesus still said do not eat blood, which would be a part of the Judaic laws of Kashrut. (Kosher)

None of the actual original Christian letters or “Epistles” have ever been found and authenticated. In that sense, the entire New Testament is a translation. It is difficult to argue that the text is true, but the translation is in error, when the entire thing is a translation, or an interpretation of a translation which was in turn translated.

The entire NT, according to my reading, is rife with the conflicted nature of the religion. Are we Jews or not. Do we circumcise or not? Do we obey the Mosaic Laws or not? It depends on which book you read and how you interpret it. Nothing is very clear. In my opinion, as the books were written separately at different places and by different translators, there were just too many cooks making the soup. That was my humble reading of it.

There are indisputable differences in the Books of the New Testament. One book has Joseph going to Egypt after the birth of Jesus, another has him returning home. One book names Thaddeus as an apostle, another replaces him with a second Judas.

As far as the Old Testament being manipulated, I have heard this and it may or may no be true. I don't know. But if it was manipulated, whoever did it did a poor job. There are many passages which condemn Jewish behavior and portray the Jewish people as less than stellar people and there are many prophesies of terrible things happening to Jews and the world in general. Certainly, if I were editing my own Bible, I would tend to leave the bad stuff out. I believe the oral laws have been manipulated or misunderstood throughout the millennium's, but the Old Testament is relatively straight forward and consistent in its theme. Thou shalt not kill, for example, should have been written, thou shalt not murder, which would be an entirely separate concept.

This is by no means an attack on God, Christianity or Judaism. I have no agenda to dissuade, change, or convert anybody to anything, least of all, to the way I think. I am just writing how I read the New Testament. It is one wayward person out in the nether regions of the Internet expressing an opinion, and I hope this forum is mature enough to allow me to say the way I read the Bible. To my humble brain, it was just confusing.

[smvoice]

That is EXACTLY RIGHT, Colonel and SeekAndFind.

[Lucas McCain]

I find the Bible has a serious contradiction. On the one hand it reports that God is infinite in His love and mercy. On the other hand it reports that I, along with billions and billions of others, will be tortured with fire forever and ever without end.
In my case, I will be tortured (supposedly) because I studied the evidence carefully (I have a four year degree in Biblical Studies), and have decided that the evidence is insufficient. That’s my crime. It’s like asking a jury to weigh the evidence, then punish them if they make a mistake. Not just punish them, but torture them without end. How does that square with love and mercy?

[Verginius Rufus]

There are lots of arrows in the Bible.

I Samuel 20.20: "I will shoot three arrows on the side thereof."

Psalm 7.13: "He ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors."

Psalm 18.14: "Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them."

Wait. Was this about arrows or errors?

[Belteshazzar]

You make a lot of assumptions, my friend, and then assertions based on your assumptions. I assume you are mature enough to consider that your way of reading the Bible may not be leading you to greater understanding but less.

[moonhawk]

No. The Holy Spirit doesn’t guide anyone “fallibly.”

[Belteshazzar]

What to say when someone says to you, “The Bible has errors.”

Hmmm. My first response would be: Really? Show me such an error. Then explain to me how it is an error and how you know that.

[mel]

You nailed it there. I attend a sunday school class with a teacher that is theology at Rhodes college in Memphis.
I have to admit for a lib, I do like her. But I can see a lot of things that she says are way out.
I am at the point that i want to ask her will what do you believe in?
probably doesn’t even believe in resurrection.
you know you can study theology without religion beliefs i think.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: No. The Holy Spirit doesn’t guide anyone “fallibly.”

Next time, you are going to tell me the Sun rises in the East. That is not my question. My question is WHO does He guide infallibly?

[RJS1950]

The “universally” accepted canon were canons as in multiple. There were multiple versions of the various scriptures and most were not universally accepted. Most of the writings and scriptures of the time were rejected by the council of Nicea and the version the council approved was heavily influenced by the need for Constantine to bring together the various sects and and beliefs into a creed that could serve to unite his growing empire. Again, anything touched by the hand of man, even the apostle’s letters, were shaped by situational politics and individual point of view of the writers. Even today, many denominations profess their interpretations of scripture, old and new. The scriptures should be taken as providing lessons and insights into God and not necessarily as the infallible word of God. Put your faith in the message of the scriptures and not on the literal infallibility of a set of documents shaped by mans interpretations of God’s message.

[Verginius Rufus]

Homer was illiterate but was heir to many centuries of oral poetry on heroic themes. No one could have listened to the Iliad or the Odyssey on a single occasion. There are depictions in Homer of a poet entertaining people at a banquet--a performance would have lasted as long as the people wanted to listen and weren't falling asleep. Each performance would have been a little different even if it was the same plot (the poet could omit inessential details if the audience was growing restless, or elaborate parts of it with extra details if they were in the mood for a longer performance).

The American scholar Milman Parry did groundbreaking work on oral poetry and recorded living oral poets in Yugoslavia in the 1930s (before his accidental death in 1935) to understand how they learned their craft--the recordings show how each performance was a little different.

Later there were people in Greece who memorized the Homeric poems word-for-word--Plato's dialogue Ion depicts a conversation between Socrates and one of these so-called "rhapsodes."

[NoDRodee]

In my case, I will be tortured (supposedly) because I studied the evidence carefully (I have a four year degree in Biblical Studies), and have decided that the evidence is insufficient. That’s my crime. It’s like asking a jury to weigh the evidence, then punish them if they make a mistake. Not just punish them, but torture them without end. How does that square with love and mercy?

If I fell in love with a woman who did not love me back and refused to be with me does that make me any less loving?

Then that same woman falls in love with another man who did not love her or show mercy to her, does that make me any less loving or merciful.

Then that same woman new love abuses her and treats her in ways I told her I never would, does that make me less loving

Yet this whole time I told her I would take care of her and protect her from this torment despite her refusing me, that would make me even more loving and merciful.

But in the end she dies because she refused my offer I'm am no less loving and merciful, it's the same way with God. He even went further by send his Son to die (get abused by that other man) to take on that punishment I deserved.

[mel]

You nailed it there. I attend a sunday school class with a teacher that is theology at Rhodes college in Memphis.
I have to admit for a lib, I do like her. But I can see a lot of things that she says are way out.
I am at the point that i want to ask her will what do you believe in?
probably doesn’t even believe in resurrection.
you know you can study theology without religion beliefs i think.