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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.

"according to my reading".

Millions of theologians and scholars have studied the Bible for approximately 2,000 years. Most people, when it comes to any other field of study - I like to use the engineering world as an example - would never think to say they knew anything about a field of study before actually studying it. If a person has zero knowledge of computer programming, they have some learning to do before they can successfully write a complex program. And just to accomplish relatively easy programming goals, they would struggle mightily unless they read up on what programmers who have gone before them have come up with.

With the Bible, unbelievers often dismiss it out of hand with their outward words, though I have no idea what is going on in their hearts and minds as they do this. How does one profess the great wisdom to dismiss something out of hand as being false when a) it is a large topic that people make a career of studying, b) many smart people have studied it over a span of 2,000 years and c) one has not undertaken any sort of quality study of what has been written on the subject ?

I assume some of those who studied were much smarter than I and had a much better knowledge than I. Lo and behold, I discovered that I had zero understanding of the Bible, and if I just read it, and no commentary on it, I could read it for my whole life and not understand the theology it presented. Practically every verse in the Bible refers to other verses and teachings somewhere else. Part of what Scripture teaches is that ordained pastors have a duty to teach Scripture. Not just memorizing the words, but teaching what is meant by them. There are many wonderful commentaries written by theologians. Many of these are rubbish, many of them offer excellent insights into Biblical meanings. The seeker will seek.

The whole idea behind the Reformation was to fix errors in doctrine - the basic idea being that if the Bible was the document that conveyed the meaning that the Church was based on, but the Church was departing from the Bible in it's doctrine and practices - and the Bible specifically warns to not do that as a common theme throughout - then the Church needed to be reformed. In many places the Bible decries hypocrisy and it never says that hypocrisy is acceptable. The whole Reformation was based on an honest read of the Bible and common sense; and to that end, many people were put to death and did not recant. In my goofy little mind, I wondered, "gee, maybe there's something there".

What is truly amazing is that an honest study reveals a perfect truth. A lot of the heavy lift of study is accessible at http://www.biblegateway.com and then looking at the Matthew Henry commentaries (click Show Resources) right alongside the King James text.

The Bible is not a cookbook with recipes that can each be studied separately from each other; the whole must be brought to mind at once. For example, your comments on Jews and Jewish behavior; the Bible does not "portray the Jewish people as less than stellar people". I remember in this case the significant verses:

Acts 10

"34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

35 But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. "

In various places Scripture declares that no man is worthy of God. It is only by the sovereign (God is the Creator) grace of God that man is saved.

If a man designs and builds something, he has control over the thing; how it will function, every aspect of it's nature. Why should not God be sovereign over his creation ?

The truth must be sought in order to be understood.

In fact it is mentioned several times in the New Testement that Jesus prohibited the eating of blood

That's untrue.

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.

No, it doesn't depend on which book you read. The NT is quite clear that to be Jewish is not required...that's the general overall message and the very reason for which Christ came.

Paul is the very clearest on the issue...he discusses the issue head-on. But all books agree if you really devote yourself to reading them.