I can see how the that question Murray or someone put up was offensive, as it does have a component of labeling and a component of undermining intellectual integrity by essentially putting a connotative association to a person as being unoriginal or shallow minded.
But these thoughts were a bit familiar as common objections. I can't tell how many of my friends tell me essentially the same things. It's fustrating. But as for the concrete validity of these statements, this is the wrong thread. But It does not matter much will post my random thoughts too anyway:
Ivellious wrote:Just to post my random thoughts on the topic...
1.The Bible in its current form has been altered numerous times throughout history. First, the Bible itself is a construct of man, not God, and written by a few powerful (see:literate) men back a couple thousand years ago. They picked and chose what would and would not be in the Bible and left out/edited it to fit their view of the religion.
2.Second, the Bible was written in Hebrew. Literally thousands of translations and (likely) mistranslations along the way to today, and you have quite a mess. The first issue there is that there never can be a perfect translation of a document (much less one so poetic and massive) from one language to another. Stack these variations and different interpretations over time, and you have some serious discrepancies. This is particularly relevant when discussing very specific parts of the Bible. General ideas might be easier to use, but phrases, figures of speech, and metaphors are almost certainly not accurately representing the ancient source material. Interpretation of the Bible's numerous vague passages becomes skewed because of this.
3.I admit also that at various times in history humans have changed the Bible, again often to fit their agenda or desires. Not just the Catholics, but all varieties of Christians utilize their own versions and interpretations of the Bible.
4.Also, I think it's not really logical to assume that the first church of Christianity obviously had it right. By that measure the ancient Middle-Eastern People that wrote the epic of Gilgamesh must have had it right. They were likely the first to develop a major societal mythology/religion.
1. You make an extremely strong statement here by essentially saying God had no part in the construction of the bible. Also it was not written by the elite powerful, one of the main themes in the bible is to undermine the supreme authority of worldy royalty. Unlike the Egyptians here, we don't think our leaders are actually devine.
2. There is A LOT of study that goes into this. Also scholars are not blind to the idioms and poetic and we are always debating interpretations over and over because of this and other reasons.
3. It is a bit awkward that you are admitting something that you already put in fact form in the first part of the reply. But what I think you trying to point at is that Catholics are not the only one to blame for what they are being accused of in this thread. So in a sense it does contain a lot of relevence but is still mostly material for another nonspecific thread.
4. The first church has nothing to do with the creation of the ten commandments. Historical fact already proves this since they are in the dead sea scrolls which date before the time of the first church.
Romans 12:17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
I'm a Catholic, too, so I'm eager to join this discussion.
So will have to go to a larger one. Think I'm also gonna approach a pastor friend of mine -- he might have access to some of the original texts and translate them direct.
Anyway I'm no biblical scholar so thought it might be a better idea to contact someone who has studied these issues like a pastor.
