Questions about the Bible

There are a lot of different versions of the Bible. I notice that some of them omit verses, or at least put them in footnotes. Some passages seem to be very different between two different versions. Is there one version of the Bible, preferably in modern English, that is more accurate than the others, generally more superior than the other translations in every way?

And is the Bible completely the Word of God, or is it just inspired by God, as in we should interpret the Bible symbolically and in the context of our times rather than literally? Can we know any of this for sure, or can there only be speculation and debate?

I am not a scholar or anything like that. I am not super-religious or anti-religious either. I am still in high school, and have been questioning my beliefs for several years now. I just feel that I have found a message board where I can ask these questions, and hear from many different people with many different beliefs.

PM if I ask you imagine a Car or a house in your mind that is easy. But if I ask you to do the same for kindness or friendship it takes more time. This is because our minds do not visualize emotions in the same way we do solid objects. So if you really want to understand God your in for a lot of reading. Consider that every religion has something to say, but that is merely advise.

For a bit of information to get your studies on track;

1) You have to be aware that any version of the bible had to be originally translated from the ancient Hebrew language. Literal word-for-word translation is not perfect...Even if certain words have an exact translation to another language, over the centuries, the *meanings* & *concepts* that those words tries to convey changes. Also, the many of the scholars whov'e performed the translations have *substituted* words even when the Hebrews used the exact same words in various places of the scripture.

1a) As a result, you will find that many modern day concepts have been formed by the general population which has nothing to do with the original scriptures. Check out what-the-hell-is-hell.com... for a good example of how modern-day concepts differ from actual scripture.

2) God Himself did not pick up parchment & quill to write it; It was written by men *inspired* by God.

Happy hunting...The wisest will always *seek* the truth & never depend on anyone to merely hand it to him on a silver platter...



[Edited on 2-11-2002 by MidnightDStroyer]

I believe the bible is the word of god and was written by
men inspired by god. Only prophets write the bible, they cannot lie nor lead astray. God
has specifically chose them to write the bible and what it contains.

If you are to get "any" bible get a Douay rheims bible. It is a transation into english from
the old latin vulgate bible which St jerome (324-420) translated into latin from the original languages.
St jerome knew latin and greek perfectly, and hebrew and aramaic nearly as well.


MD, and the wisest also know the call from god. You will not know the truth from being wise but from god
revealing it to you which he has done.

just a thought.

peace.

..this is yet another surf-for-cash scam, but apologies Phunky, in advance, if I misjudge.
Wisdom in MidnightD as so often; but the NT was Greek in the original -though in great part a rendering of an Aramaic original -probably oral. No Ancient Hebrew involved (beyond the odd quotation).
"Douay" usually spellt "Douai" -if you want to search and "reims" always spellt "Rheims" and only the NT.
St Jerome's Vulgate was, and still is, a mighty human endeavour but not adequate in the light of modern scholarship -as Pius X recognised a century ago when he worked towards its revision.
Be enormously careful with a Douai version: the original was very, very Latinate -Vulgate rather than the older languages as a source) and if you don't have at least a grounding in Latin, you'll find the English difficult at times.
What the uninformed call the "Douay" Bible was a much later effort by Bishop Challoner (England) to devise something closer to contemporary Catholic needs - it really isn't the Douai.
As a simple matter of linguistic fact: modern Bibles tend to be better ( we know more) -but the language is often ugly in the eyes of some (e.g. Estragon).
I can imagine no better combination of accuracy and linguistic beauty than the KJV; but it's not the best translation.
And remmeber that, on average, Catholic and Protestant Bibles (for want of a better distinction) are different anyway (different views of which texts are canonical).
You pays your money, you makes yoru choice.
On balance, unless you are pretty well equipped linguistically and interested in the subject -the last thing to worry about is the "best" translation. Given the incomplete manuscript tradition: no one really knows the "best" - only which are"better".
Go for the version you find clearest: they're all pretty close.

Again, apologies if yours was a genuine post.

Wasn't the Douai Rheims Bible made before the King James Version? I have seen websites about Bible translations before. I actually done a search about three years ago. Most of the websites I found were fundamentalist Christian, and only supported the KJV Bible. I had trouble reading that though, and I was more religious back then. So I started using the New King James Version for studying. Now I like the NIV. The biggest thing that causes me confusion is the footnotes. There must be different ancient manuscripts. I have heard about Latin Vulgate, Textus Receptus, and the Majority Text. I think that the prefaces to some Bibles mention those texts. Since I don't know much about those texts, I will do a search on the internet later to see if I can find out more. I do not know Hebrew or Greek, but if I go to university next year, I will probably take a language class or theology class.

And yes, my post was genuine.

I'm sure it was "genuine" phunky-m, and as my repeated caveats show -I only suggested this because "Religious" is a minefield.
It's complicated -as I said: the KJV was largely a redaction of the much older (comparatively) Tindale Bible -hence its archaic English (for 1611) - and there was nothing we'd understand as a "manuscript tradition" then - indeed, far fewer manuscripts ( e.g the Oxyrhynchus).
The nuts and bolts are of little value if you don't have the Classics and at least a modicum of Semitic grammar and the Massoretic and other pointing traditions. And, I'd venture to suggest, they are of little, or no, spiritual significance.
If you believe -the Bible that suits you won't be much inferior to any other version. ( but remember the canons vary).
The Douai-Rheims (actually quite separate halves) has no claim to any primacy -its interest is essentially hierographical: what was authentic Jerome? - but it has a certain charm.
Again, the translation aspect is fascinating linguistically but largely irrelevant spiritually - I'll demolish anyone
on ATS linguistically in terms of Biblical scholarship ( there's a challenge, spam-for-cash'ers); but TC and many more leave me limping spiritually - it's only "words" ( Bee me no Gees) on a linguistic level.
The spiritual approach, I'd venture to suggest, is a better road.

You must also take into account that the *original* scriptures (The Dead Sea Scrolls) were written by various people living in different time periods...By the nature of language, each of those authors are going to present *some* personal bias in what they write (Whether or not they realized it and/or tried to avoid it, they still *did* it). Some authors were even writing about other people who more more important to the religion in general...In other words, they were writing "second-hand-accounts".

Also, the oldest manuscripts will be written in Hebrew, in it's original form for context & meaning...Perceptions of different people in different time periods are going to change the meanings of words within the same language also.

Also keep in mind that some of the translations involved *substitution* of terms & pharases. For example, the Hebrews wrote that, when people died, they went to Shoel (literal translation = "grave"); In all of the places that the Hebrew used the word "sheol", many times that word was substituted with other terminology such as "hell" or "spirit-realm" or "afterlife".

You should also know that even the Dead Sea Scrolls are not complete; There's no way to know if all of them have been *found* yet (& due to aging, they're not even entirely intact), so translations are going to have, at best, questionable levels of accuracy.

And let's not forget that the Church itself changed/added/edited portions of the scriptures at different times in history...for whatever reasons they had at the time.

Since you're considering taking up some ancient languages to help with your studies, you should also consider Greek & Latin, as these languages are what were used to translate & add to those original scriptures.

This is why everyone who wishes to learn from the bible should be reading it for themselves & draw their own meaning from it...And not depend on a priest/Rabbi/whatever to interpret it for you. As Estragon says...You're best to take the spiritual route rather than the literal word-for-word route of it. This is why I disdain religion in favor of faith...Because the Church is more interested that you believe in their own interpretation of the Bible, rather than to interpret it for yourself.

That's where the "conspiracy" of religion sits...In the Church controlling the hearts & minds (& pocketbooks; "Now let us pass around the collection plate") of their followers. Follow God & Jesus, not other human beings.


[Edited on 2-11-2002 by MidnightDStroyer]

As far as I know, Jesus could literally snap his fingers and a mountain would move. A result the basis for Christianity is not on false hopes.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are extremely important, but what do they say of Moses (Perhaps in what is missing we could find more)?

PM my position on coincidences is to maintain a moderate prose. My advice is that you take that into account.


What are your thoughts?

Don't worry PM, it doesn't matter which bible you read, it is all just a Man Made Book of Moral Law...I doubt "god" even speaks human.

Sincerely,
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ive never read the bible nor had any desire to go to church other than for weddings funerals or when ive been made to go......i dont know what the dead sea scrolls are and ive no idea what the beliefs of some religions are meant to be..........i did once sing in church with a school choir but none of these things made me think jesus was any more real than robin hood........i say robin hood because somewhere around his time there was a census took in england which said 2 million people lived on the island...........property was cheap then and families spread and we currently have just under 60 million residing here.............so i figured if we went back another 1000 years there would be a lot less than 2 million............that would bring us to roundabout the biblical period the bible relates too...........one story i do know is in there is that he fed 5000 people by the riverbank...............i may be wrong here but wasnt he an outlaw in an occupied country..........wouldnt the army notice what would surely be the equivelent of 5 million people taking a day off one wednesday afternoon.........i say a day but seriously it would have taken some weeks to get there and given the immense amount of planning involved are we seriously led to believe 5000 people all turned up with no food.........im not saying the man didnt exist but in those days you had to work to live so at the very least these stories are wildy exagerated..........i also thought religion bought peace and enlightenment whats the point of putting your faith and belief in something if instead of making you love thy neighbour it makes you want to kill him.......i dont mean that to any particular religion its just ive never seen any of them saying they must hate there fellow man and i dont see how any organisation promoting peace can justify taking anyones life for not having the same beliefs......which is amazing given the amount of terrorism in the world for just that reason.......whats also amazing to me is that well balanced inteligent people in this day and age live their life according to the rules set down 2000 years ago depending on which copy they happened to have read...........as i said i have no problem with any mans beliefs but i think ill stick with my own.

That's why we're in this topic...It concerns the general discussion on how religions have been used to manipulate the masses in order to fulfill the goals of the few in positions of power.

You do bring up some interesting points squintingcat. I grew up going to church, and I was a conservative Christian. I asked a lot of those same questions a few years ago, when I was in my early teens. I rejected Christianity and became an agnostic, not really sure what to believe at all. The more I studied the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the more appalled and offended I was. Recently, I started studying other religions. I looked some stuff up on Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, and other religions. I went back to being a Christian, but to being a liberal Christian. I mostly believe what the Bible says, but I look for the most accurate versions, I ask questions, and I make my own interpretations instead of going by what conservative churches say. And whenever religion and science come into conflict, I am more likely to go with science, or try to reconcile religion and science. And some of those stories in the Old Testament must reflect a substandard level of morality!

I don't think that any English version of the Bible would be totally accurate. I'll look for a lexicon some time, and see what the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic words are when translated directly into English. That will also make it easier to determine what should be taken literally and what should be taken symbolically.

MidnightDstroyer, I know that the Catholic church has been really bad about that throughout history. Didn't the Church use to sell indulgences, or whatever they were killed. They said you could basically buy your way into Heaven. This must have been back in Medieval times, before the Bible was translated into so many languages.

Yes, it's true that they used to sell indulgences...That technique has been used several times in different periods of history.

The basic idea being that you could sin & then seek confession (& put a bit of money in for donation), say your "Hail Mary"s & be considered as "cleansed". As far as I know, however, they never went so far as to accept a murderer's confession *before* he actually commits the murder...

These periods of "selling indulgences" seems to (coincidently?) correspond to the times that the Church was seeking more money for vast expansionism...


[Edited on 3-11-2002 by MidnightDStroyer]

Ugh Christians, the very word makes me spit....there isn't a worse theology on the planet. NO religion has been more destructive, more heinous, and more hipocritical then Christianity, all forms. They don't see it but THEY are the anti-christ and their god IS the "Satan that performs miracles and replaces god as 'the creator'..."

Beginning with Christianity's general take over of the known world (Rome), their first task was to set us back scientifically about 2000 years....with the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Moving along they then become the slayer of many pagans, and steal life from the land, like a vampire, they suck the earth from our lives, and make you believe that this universe has little to do with humanity, they believe we must subdue the world, and crush it like a grape.

Everything good and human existed in nature, but now we hide ourselves from nature, and await the return of some dead guy, whom if he did return would probabaly kill himself when he sees what christianity did to humanity.

And this Boy raping isn't the first account of the perversion of the church, you can read "Letters from the Earth" by Mark Twain which plainly states that the Preachers and Ministers of his time (the book was written about 1890s-1900s and reflected his experiences with western religions) would seduce young girls in confession. (Sickening)

And the pope, the almighty dictator of the known world, thank god that the nation states have thrown of their theocratic affiliations and given birth to a new age of discovery, there's no one more heinous then a man who believes he is the closest thing to god. And many of those popes have done many horrible things...along with the Crusades.

And I don't mean 1 or 2 of the Crusades, but all of them....all what 13? 12? especially pertaining to the Children's Crusade.

Bet not many of you heard that one, but the pope did little to stop that...some 60,000 Children marched off to the holy land when some kid thought he was told to by god...and not many of them lived...none were much older then adolecense either, I'm talking about 12 and 10 year olds here....many died in the journey, more when they were captured in egypt and sold into slavery. And if memory serves correctly, the pope of the time allowed this to happen, and the kids managed to find transportation.

And now even Christianity is seeing what happens when you take Naturalism out of life, and make everything a metaphysical existance, even the Great Christianity is fracturing, there are some 1000 versions now...some just about a church big. But some famous ones are those dumb Christian Scientists, the ones who won't let even penicilin save their child's life...."oh it's the will of god"...dispicable.

It's a shame all the good religions are now gone, all but Buddhism, it some how survived christian tyranny. Too bad for the Celts and Norse myths though...at least they respected the natural world around them. Oh, can't forget the indians, speaking of which, nothing much worse then Pizzaro's massacare of 10,000 Incans in the name of God.

Need more be said...??? Maybe Christians should follow the bible more...

Do let me state though, the individual Christian can't be held accountable for the actions of the Massess....and individual can be good, but the public can do bad things....

Sincerely,
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As one keeps repeating: the words will tend to mislead: even so simple a word as "sheol": you'll find different connotations in say Deuteronomy, Ezekiel and Job. It can mean "grave" in some sense close to our use of the word; but other Hebrew words are used for "grave" and "sheol" is to be found extended in meaning to "where we go -in some wider sense -when we die": hence in the NT it is translated "Hades" and later Christian translators made that "Hell" .whereas in the Greek it's simply "the afterlife".
We have to remember changing times: Biblical usage refelects a millennium or more of language - think of how, in a much shorter time, our notions of Heaven and Hell have changed -who to-day shares Dante's vision -only 600 or so years old?
"Literal" meanings are a minefield - the "literal" meaning of "Governor" is "helmsman"; the literal meaning of "calculus" is "little pebble": it gets you nowhere -it's how people use a word at any given time that matters.
And, again -the NT has the word "Gehenna" for "hell" - meaning much more clearly a place of punishment for sinners.
We simply do not know exactly what "sheol" connoted to a 1st century Judaean and there is no more reason to postulate a single common meaning than there is to assert that every native English-speaker means the same thing by "soul", "evil" or even "beautiful".
These bland assertions about what ancient words "really" meant are at best unhelpful.

FeeMason, how can you prove this?

Why do you think Catholics are evil, and that we are the anit-christ and our God is Satan.

What religion are you then?

FreeMason, you are wrong in your opinion as well as your thesis.

I'm not going any deeper as it has all been covered before.

Accept Christ or not, that is between Him and you. I'm not going to drag your family out and torture and murder them until you "convert" or then kill you if you don't. That isn't our bag. You don't want to Accept Christ, that, sir is your bag.
If that is all it takes to make you spit, I hope you never chew tobacco or you might well drown!

well,first let me say to freemason,start spitting my friend, because here is another of those annoying christians,really i dont understand how anybody can really take you seriously when you spew such hatred. where is the regelious tolerance, that you claim we christians dont hold? peopel,before you start putting us down for our views, take a moment to read your own posts.
though let me add that there are some great exampels of dissagreaing, without being dissagreeable on the end of those who oppose my views. perhaphs, freemason, you need to use their exampel to get your point across. its fine to oppose my (our) views, its not fine however to hate us for them.

now, the old testament was written in hebrew, the new testament, in greek and aribic. allow me to explain how the the OT was coppied and passed down:
you must first understand that this process was a long, detalied, and a very tedious one. yes their were priest whos job was to take EXTREME mesures and care to copy the TANACH, and i do mean EXTREME. if the even droped a pin point of ink on an obscure part of the papper the whole thing was burned!
i know it hard for our spell cheking generation to understand this,but this was a holy sacraed job, and only the VERY MOST QULIFIED partook in this prosses.
and to cut it short : regarding the BIRTH HADASHA, in partictular the dead sea scrolls, the book of mark was found with them.you know how the arguments go that"the books were written over 70yrs. after the death and resseration of YESHUA"? WELL IT WAS DATED ONLY 34YRS. AFTER.oh and they were always dated after they were finished,NOT when they were started.
keep your eyes crossward.
thank you for reading friends,
yes even you freemason.