was the bible dumbed down?

maybe the bible was dumbed down for the people of the ancient past, god knew that we didn't know much of the world we lived in then and that is why he explained it as he did.
What if when the Bible talks about how he made the world in seven days he didn't mean it literally and the first 'day' was the big bang and the 'days' following where the prossess of evolution and the creation of the sun and so forth

you are putting forth a logical fallacy known as "special pleading" with this entire premise.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


where's the logical fallacy, i don't see it. it seems to me to be logical enough.

if the genesis story was a spoken word story for thousands of years it would seem natural for it to be in a highly simplified form. also, if you assume the story were ''penned'' by divine inspiration, the person doing the writing/retelling would naturally pass it through their own cultural filter. there are parallels between the scientific creation story and the juedo-christian story if it's viewed from this angle.

i'ld say it's possible and if you believe it's certainly believable but then again it could be that science itself is passing discoveries through a cultural filter or that parallels are being drawn between the two because of our cultural filter.

Originally posted by open mind
maybe the bible was dumbed down for the people of the ancient past, god knew that we didn't know much of the world we lived in then and that is why he explained it as he did.
What if when the Bible talks about how he made the world in seven days he didn't mean it literally and the first 'day' was the big bang and the 'days' following where the prossess of evolution and the creation of the sun and so forth

I wouldnt say dumbed down, but it loses all kinds of meaning when its translated from Hebrew. Also consider Moses recieved and wrote this down so its his perceptions.

The Meru Project has discovered an extraordinary and unexpected geometric metaphor in the letter-sequence of the Hebrew text of Genesis that underlies and is held in common by the spiritual traditions of the ancient world. This metaphor models embryonic growth and self-organization. It applies to all whole systems, including those as seemingly diverse as meditational practices and the mathematics fundamental to physics and cosmology...Meru Project findings demonstrate that the relationship between physical theory and consciousness, expressed in explicit geometric metaphor, was understood and developed several thousand years ago.
www.meru.org...

Going by the above, I'd say yes, but I wouldn't point any fingers at ancients. I think it might be modern man that dumbed it down.

reply to post by open mind



Open mind, the problem that I have with your assumption is that the ancients were much more spiritually aware than we are at present. Look at the Egyptians, for example. We can't, in our current time, even come close to such a spirituality.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Open mind, the problem that I have with your assumption is that the ancients were much more spiritually aware than we are at present. Look at the Egyptians, for example. We can't, in our current time, even come close to such a spirituality.

I agree and thats something most people don't realize.

I believe that most of the earlier events in the Bible are based on complicated situations more complex than the human minds that experienced them at the time or at least for them to express in a complex way.

Although the events were complex I don't believe they were dumbed-down by the original writers, instead I think they were MUCH later exaggerated and/or embellished by those that sought to control the masses. They plagiarized some of the more popular stories from the original (older) Sumerian depictions. Like the Sumerian flood story of Utnapishtim/Ziusudra becomes the Christian flood story of Noah. They are almost identical and it cannot be ignored.

I personally think that our sophistication came gradually (rapidly at one point) and the "dumbing down" spiraled afterwards. It continues to this day. There were many ancient peoples that lived a life of amazing sophistication that we today are still trying to comprehend.

We actually need to catch back up to some the ancients in spiritual respects.

Originally posted by pieman
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

where's the logical fallacy, i don't see it. it seems to me to be logical enough.

it's adding an addendum: the bible is true, but god dumbed it down for stupid people that didn't understand the universe well enough, so that's why it doesn't seem to be true.

Lee Anoma, I completely agree. We are living in a society that has spiraled out of control into the materialistic abyss. It gets worse everyday.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Lee Anoma, I completely agree. We are living in a society that has spiraled out of control into the materialistic abyss. It gets worse everyday.

yes... because the same materialism that ended slavery, keeps racism at bay, cures horrible diseases, and causes general social progress is bad...

do you honestly think society is any worse than it was in the 50's? if you do, i feel so very sad for you.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Lee Anoma, I completely agree. We are living in a society that has spiraled out of control into the materialistic abyss. It gets worse everyday.

yes... because the same materialism that ended slavery, keeps racism at bay, cures horrible diseases, and causes general social progress is bad...

do you honestly think society is any worse than it was in the 50's? if you do, i feel so very sad for you.

Are you speaking only of American society or the world in general? I don't think it's any worse, but things are generally the same. Having an increasingly obese nation of materialistic consumers doesn't solve those issues you mentioned at all.

Slavery still exists today all across the globe, genocides (based on race and religion mostly) continue, and as progressive as many consider themselves to be socially we all live in an extremely divided world (even on a personal level) thats consistently on the brink of world war. Recently our leaders in the states have said even "nukes" aren't off the table in dealing with a particular issue.

In those terms things really have not changed...or the more they change the more they stay the same. I think he was speaking of a spiritualness that some ancient people had a connection with that may have eroded over time.

The world (and America) has never been perfect and it certainly isn't right now.

i meant 'dumbed' down in a rehtorical sense but yeah you all make very good points apart from madnessinmysoul who dosn't seem to be making an arguement but just blasting everyones ideas

Sadly, these days, this is such a touchy subject. I need to research my bible knowledge because I was brought up in a very...well forget it. I just don't know much about the bible. What's the oldest version IN ENGLISH still in exsistence that we know of?

Here's a question, how many times was the bible translated to a different language way back when? Think about this, what if in translations, things were changed, cut out, added in? Nobody can easily say, can they? Is there proof that the bible we all know and love these days is an accurate documentation of those times? Can anyone honostly proove that the bible has not changed since it was first written?

I'm gonna research this. Because now I'm interested. I gotta know. If you have an answer to any questions I've given, please share them.

The Bible was written for men, by men.
I find it hard to believe that God, who is all powerful, all omnipotent, etc. Could fit all his knowledge into a book. We need an encyclopedia set just for the basics.

I believe God is to be experienced, searched for, and to have a personal relationship with, not "read" or quoted from a book.
I always felt the Bible, if there is any remote truth to it, was meant to be used like a glossary or appendix, to help if need be, but not to be the word of God.

Ineteresting point about the Egyptians. They needed a whole city, tombs, places of worship, all adorned with vast stories of the Dieties. To express their belief. Not a single book.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
it's adding an addendum: the bible is true, but god dumbed it down for stupid people that didn't understand the universe well enough, so that's why it doesn't seem to be true.

From what I remember, back in the dark ages when I was in college, Special Pleading requires that one proposing the argument exempts himself/herself from the conditions set forth in his case. Hence, the "special" part of the "pleading".

This is not the case here.

reply to post by open mind


Dummying down? Probably not a conspiracy but rather a convergence of shared interests. Across 2,000 years that makes it look conspiratorial.

I attribute the very existence of modern Christianity to the first Emperor Constantine. He along with Paul were the co-founders. Constantine is famous for his conversion on the bridge that led to a military victory when he painted crosses on the shields of his army. Poppycock, but it makes a good story. Emperor Constantine was not unlike the others living in that time period. He was an adherent to several religions at any given moment and he looked upon religion as one more weapon of mass destruction.

Rather than making Christianity the ONLY religion of the Empire as we have been falsely told by those with a strong vested interest in that POV, it is all the more likely he wanted Christianity systemized so it could join the other more popular religions of the day. In other words Constantine wanted the strongest arsenal available at his command.

Curiously, it was Constantine the Emperor and not the Bishop of Rome who called the Council of Nicaea, the first council since the Council of Jerusalem around 45-50 AD. In fact, I am not even sure the Bishop of Rome was invited. For sure, in the early 4th century, the papacy had not yet been invented. The first church council - we named it “church” later - was in Jerusalem when James, the brother of Jesus, and Peter called Paul to task for what they regarded as a grievous error in his missionary practice. Acts 15: 7-11. Paul was admitting new converts to Christianity without circumcision, that is, without requiring conversion to Judaism before becoming Christian. Paul was not a Judean Jew, but was a diaspora Jew born in Anatolia, now modern Turkey.

Paul refused to submit to the authority of James and Peter and the others in Jerusalem, almost certainly including Mary Magdalene, so they agreed that each would go his separate way. They agreed to disagree. This seems to be foretelling of the split of Islam some 6 centuries later, into what has become the Shia and Sunni divide. By the bye, Shia is to Islam as Catholicism is to Christianity and Sunni is to Islam as Protestantism is to Christianity. Shia have a hierarchal head and saints and miracles and so on, whereas the Sunni do not.

So back to Emperor Constantine. And his mother, Helena. For reasons best kept to themselves, the people living in and around Judea and Jerusalem in the 4th century AD had neither a memory of nor a concern about the various places which she, Helena, was about to make into Christendom’s first Holy Sites. She arrived in Jerusalem with her pockets full of gold and an irrepressible urge to see the places Jesus had seen.

Local folk, like all local folk in the presence of great power, they aim to please. “Yes, now that you mention it, Your Imperial Majesty, this was indeed the very site of the crucifixion.” Then the queen flips her humble servant a small gold coin. Ipso facto, you have re-discovered Golgotha! Archaeology? She can’t even spell it and sure as heck she didn’t know what it meant. And so ALL the Holy Sites were miraculously found by Queen Helena. More than 300 years after the fact. That's 10 or more generations. Not one site was marked. Not one site was mentioned elsewhere. It makes you wonder, does it not? It does me. And Queen Helena? Surely she is at the very least the patron saint of archaeology?

Sometime later, maybe 350 AD, Constantine set out to build 50 churches in his new capital city Byzantium he had renamed Constantinople. Well, to build some and to remodel others. He summoned some of the more notable church leaders in the area and gave them orders to sort out the 200-300 letters, books, and commentaries then circulating amongst the congregations and to make them into one volume. I think 25 of the current 27 books of the New Testament were selected. The still dubious book of Revelations of Jesus Christ to John was the last one chosen, hence it is located at the end of the New Testament.

The other books were rejected or discarded, or in some of the stories, were burned. Constantine had the selected books copied into 50 Bibles adding the Septuagint done by Jewish scholars in Alexandria and finished in the 1st century BC. He had a copy chained to the pulpit of each of the 50 churches. Although none of those 50 copies have survived, almost everyone believes the story to be true.

The Bishop of Rome was then struggling to become prima dona in Italy. According to Sir Edward Gibbons writing in his opus magnus “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” that effort did not succeed until the late 6th or early 7th century AD. Aside: The papacy did not “supplant” the all inclusive Church Council as the Church’s final authority until the First Vatican Council in 1868. At that time the Bishop of Rome was declared to speak ex cathedra on issues of faith and morals. Vatican 2 was called more for show than for go. End.

FINAL. The first century inhabitants of Judea spoke Aramaic, a Semitic language originating in Mesopotamia (Iraq). The early Jewish church people thought Jesus was going to return in their lifetime as Messiah, which meant to them a leader who would restore King David’s throne in Jerusalem and expel the foreigners. The early traditions were oral. Perhaps a short time before but certainly after the failed revolt of 66 AD, all the books of the New Testament were put to writing. The books were in Greek, the lingua franca of the Mediterranean basin. The Book of Mark seems to be the first. Followed by the various letters of St. Paul. The other writings were completed around 125 AD. Many books written after that time period were rejected simply for being too far removed in time from the incidents of interest to them.

Of course, none of the originals survive. Nor do any copies of the originals survive. It is possible we have a copy of a copy of the original. Possible. Not probable. It seems unlikely that what we have today is 100% of what was originally written. More likely, we have 5% to 20%. Despite computers and editors, most books written today contain errors. I said all that to say this, imagine a speech made in Morocco and first reported 50 years after the fact by a fellow from Finland and then his written report was translated into Old English. Reliable? I'm sure you would not want to bet your fortune on it.

Dummying down? Not necessary.

[edit on 8/27/2007 by donwhite]