JoeEpcotRocks said:
Your ignorance of the Bible's translation is surpassed only by your baseless accusation of a "hate agenda."
If you read the intro to most Bibles they will explain the painstaking care taken in translating the Bible.
This is a perfect example of how different people can interpret things differently.
Yes, my Bible explains the painstaking care, and that includes reference to "grave defects" found in earlier versions and that "we now possess more ancient manuscripts" and are "better equipped to seek to recover the original wording", etc, etc. Words that convey to me the fact that we have done the best we can with what we have. You seem to take that as proof that every single word is completely accurate. I don't. If previous versions had grave defects, how can we be so sure that there are none now? If "we now possess more ancient manuscripts", how can we be so sure there aren't even more that we don't possess yet, or have been lost forever?
I also read the Saxsoon's link, which, while compelling, also does not prove to me that every word of the Bible is accurate. The link states that
this indicates that the Gospel of Mark would have already been in circulation only about a dozen years after Jesus' death.
Only a dozen years?
They were all written a few years later...
a
few years later? Yes, this is a far cry from the 100 years or whatever that was previously brought up in this thread, but gosh, look at how people forget things over the course of a year, a month or even a week? How many of you remember exactly what was said at the beginning of this thread? I don't think the Bible was forged, but I know the pen was put to paper not by God's hand, but by humans who are fallible. I simply cannot believe that there is no chance that anyone could have made a mistake, forgotten or misinterpreted something.
The link goes on...
...could not possibly have been invented in a single generation and then successfully passed off as true on the people of that very generation who knew better. That would have been as impossible as for a writer today to fabricate a story of an unsuccessful Japanese attempt to invade California in the early months of World War II, to locate the invasion landing at Long Beach on December 27th of 1941, to invent speeches and events which were supposed to have happened among the residents of the city due to the invasion, and then to have repelled the invasion by some genius of strategy, and attempt to pass the story off as true on those very people while they were still alive to say otherwise! The New Testament writings could have had no better chance of survival than that if their contents were not true
Sorry, but they've gone a little too far here. What was the literacy rate in the time of Christ? I'm asking honestly, because I really have no idea, but I'm certain it was quite low. I find it ridiculous to compare the accuracy of an ancient document to one today, simply based on the fact that "people accepted it". How can people accept a document they cannot read?
Now, I'm not trying to discredit the Bible, here. I am Christian and I believe that it is generally accurate. But common sense tells me there is no real proof of that. That's why it's called faith. That's why I don't preach to those who believe differently, and speak out against those who do. People of other religions (or no religion) have just as much faith in theirs as we do in ours, and their beliefs deserve just as much respect as ours.
