is the bible real or just some verry old story?

[Dune_trooper360]

Is the bible real, or just some old story some guy made up and every one started to like it and then took it up as a relegin?

[thomas]

hmm well comsidering the bible contains over 2500 prophecies and 2000 of those prophecies have come true. . . go to www.reasons.org

[Acriku]

Any book with prophecies surviving for over 2000 years is bound to have some of them fulfilled, Scytale. It doesn't add any validity to the book, however.

Trooper, in my honest opinion, the book was written by many men, that's all. It's a book. Pieces of thinned processed wood covered in patterns of processed bladder, bounded by string. The stories are just that, stories. People's guesses at what could have been. If you take a second to look at the history of the bible, you will see that there is nothing special about it. Many different people, a few decades after the supposed death of the supposed Jesus, wrote books of their tales. Tales of Jesus' life, not complete in the most loose sense, and about God. Then politics come into it. Books were actually chosen and thrown away, in the Council of Nicea, by votes of the people. This was during much turmoil, so something had to be done to bring the oppositions together.

The morals of the authors are very well apparent in the books, and many of them are outdated. Unapplicable in today's world, you could say.

The thing that made it so popular, and still alive today, is that it gave people hope. Hope that people have had since the beginning of their awareness. They wanted more to life, after death, something bigger than themselves so they didn't have such a big burden on their lives and their decisions. Have you ever wondered how missionaries are so successful? It's human nature to hope. And when that hope is given, it is held onto tightly.

The bible evolved, in a sense. From mere singular books, to compilations, to official compilations; from myth stories, to possibilities, to actuality for a lot of people.

The intensity of the beliefs fluctuated through time, often very intense, and that intensity burns even today. Maybe it's dying out this decade, and while one can only hope so, it is never guaranteed. It may lie dormant for a few decades, and erupt into the flourish it was in the beginning times.

The future for the bible? In my world, it never would have had a past.

[Scrinlord]

sorry, I dont have time to post well, but I have to say something.

I think that the bible is real. It is a historical fact the Jesus of Nazareth lived at the time period it says in the bible. You can also find non biblical resorces that speak of miraculious happening following him around.

And you are right, if a book is around for 2000 years, something is bound to happen like it was stated in to book, but almost everything...

[Acriku]

Scrinlord, it is not a historical fact, there are no reliable sources that speak of that, and you need to back yourself up if you are going to make such claims.

[ordos45]

Scrinlord, it is not a historical fact, there are no reliable sources that speak of that, and you need to back yourself up if you are going to make such claims.

Harcourt Brace History Text book, copywright 1998, entitled something to the effect of "World History". Chapters dealing with the Roman Empire, Ancient Israel, and the rise of Islam and the muslim empires.

The book spoke of a the Jesus of Nazareth in the Bible. It called him a political radical who gathered disciples who claimed he was the son of God and was executed by the Romans at behest of the Jews for being something or another...forget the term used.

and as for the rise of the muslim empires section, it mentions the Jesus of the bible being in the Quran, as a prophet, and notes that (see above).

Editted: Before anyone brings up the James Ossurary, it was proven a fake last motnh. I'll find a link if you need to see it.

[Acriku]

And what was the source of that text? The bible, right? And here we go around and around. Same for Qu'ran mentioning of Jesus. Told by those who read the books mentioning Jesus. And around and around we go...

[Andrew]

Wasn't the bible written like 20-50 years after Jesus's death? Couldn't the bible have been written by people who just wanted attention or fame or a religion to call their own?

[Duncan_ghola]

as far as i know the text of the bible is alot older than jesus

[Acriku]

Indeed, guys. It can either be divine inspiration, made-up, or hear-say.

[SurlyPIG]

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/

What your pastor doesn't want you to see...

[ordos45]

And what was the source of that text? The bible, right? And here we go around and around. Same for Qu'ran mentioning of Jesus. Told by those who read the books mentioning Jesus. And around and around we go...

Hmm..well considering they also consulted other records of the time, not just the Bible.

[Acriku]

ACE, that's my fave site concerning the bible ;)

Ordos, and what are those sources based on? What are those sources, especially? You must always question the sources, as it was a long time ago, and very hard to prove.

[Navaros]

the Bible does have factual contradictions and therefore it can not be considered absolute or perfect

however, calling it a "myth" or "story" is even more stupid than saying it is perfect

the Bible provides tons of factual data about real-world events that have happened just as the Bible says they did. the coming of Jesus being the most important.

anyone who says the Bible is just a story made up off of hearsay or the top of some guys' heads is very ignorant and silly, and has no knowledge of how the Bible was written

tho it is true that many parts of the Bible were "left on the cutting room floor" and those decisions were all made by normal men who didn't really have any sort of Divine "dipstick" to know which to leave on the cutting room floor and which to include

the Bible is mostly real and accurate, although it does have some errors. overall, the balance sways to "accurate" far more so than "myth" or "story".

[Acriku]

The bible's books were not written in a vacuum, so it is bound to have some real events (and some not-so-real), and real places. Of course, that does not have anything to do with the validity of the actual story. I say it is bullshit because it is no different than any other bullshit story like the greek mythology, the roman mythology (derived from the greek mythology), the islamic mythology, the jewish mythology, the raelian mythology, etc. And I've already addressed the bible's prophecies being fulfilled. And what about the prophecies not fulfilled, in other words wrong? That destroys any inference from a prophecy fulfilled. Do a google search and you will find some.

Do tell me how the Bible was written, that tells me that it wasn't made up from many people, or hearsay.

And an error destroys any inference from any accuracy it may have.

[Sardauker-Kirov]

Don't forget, people could have modified the bible over time.

Making up stories of their own to attract more people to the religion, wonderful stories about Noah and the great Ark.

The Tower of Babylon, stating that we're not a single race. *cough* ::)

Many stories just doesn't sound very interesting nor believeable in the bible.

Except for the infamous Jezus 'die for our "sins" part.' ( I guess if one person does something bad, it makes us all EVILLLLLLLL sinners. )

[fremfedeliteNIAC]

u know some guy figured out that for the tower of babylon to be built it would require all the resources in the solar system, and that once it was built it would change earths axis lol.

i think the bible is mostly exaggerated documetation of real events.... or just entirly made up.... and some may be true, but what i do know is that this question really cant be answered without loads of guesswork and, also any answer that we may (probably wont...) come to cant be applied to the entire bible anyway.... so there.

really it all boils down to 'faith' and stuff...... not good enough for me

[gryphon]

"is the Bible real or just some verry old story ?"

Well, it certainly is an old stroy, I doubt that can be questioned as it's been around for a few years now. Besides that, I'm pretty shure the Bible is real. There is a copy of it an my bookshelf, and even my local book store has one. And trust me, my local bookstore hasn't got anything really, just a few car magazines and loads of porn for the tourists on the camping in my little town.

So for me to both that is a yes

Although if the things in it are real .. . people in those days where convinced that when thunder went through the sky. .God's where playing up there, they thought that some humans are per definitian superior to others. How objective can they have handled situations described in The Bible. [ and even so, how objective can we judge them in these days ]

After a few decades, the only people capable of reading the origionall language the Bible had been written in where Arabics. Living in Itally and Griece translating it for "Western European" people who considerd it the foundation of there religion. . . . you must admit there is some ironny in there, .. . we arn't even capable of reading it ourself and need Muslims to translate it. . ...

I must admit, it has done a great job into giving hope and faith to millions of people. Although from time to time it also gives the opposite.

For the remaing I agree with Acriku.. .

[TMA_1]

or just some old story some guy made up and every one started to like it and then took it up as a relegin?

Wasn't the bible written like 20-50 years after Jesus's death? Couldn't the bible have been written by people who just wanted attention or fame or a religion to call their own?

argh... The bible was not written by one man.lol CLaims like this are blech. The dead sea scrolls date many of the old testament books back to at least 200 to 300 bc. Not only that, but they are obvious copies of older old testament writings.

Some of the prophesies in the bible are too specific. The prophesy in daniel that describes in exact detail the overthrow of babylon by medo-persia, and then by greece, and then by rome was mentioned by josephus in an interesting story. When alexander came to jerusalem, God had given word to the high priest not to side with their old ally the persians, and to accept the domination of the macidonian greeks. Alexander peacefully came to the city, saw the temple and other grand structures and marveled at the jews. He showered much praise upon them, and the high priest showed him daniels prohpesy. Alexander then stated that he must have been ordained by God to conquer the known world. After this, alexander sacrificed the specific sacrifice of attonement of sins with the high priests. Of course he wasent a believer, but he believed in the jewish God, and feared taht if he didnt worship all the gods he came across, that they would be wrathful towards him. Superstition was alive in even the most rational peoples of that day.

Other prophesies in daniel describe the famous "70 weeks". In it' it measures christs birth to the exact year. There were astrologers who in interest of the jewish messiah cast prophesies that described the exact year as well. Granted that is evil and usually bogus stuff, but it is pretty amazing anyway.

You cant just discount something because you dont like it. You also cant deny the fact that many of you dislike it. Those of you who are less critical, I give thanks for. Not for you guys though who are just as bad as people like pat robertson.

Read calculating god acriku. It was written by an athiest, but one that understood that many scientists batton themselves down to the establishment. Many good scientists have become athiests because they see it as the correct way, and do not add any agenda to it. People like you do though. And nobody can change your mind. Its ironic isnt it? That there is no smoking gun that proves evolution, but you deny the existance of a God because you say there is no smoking gun.

[Acriku]

The thing about prophecies, is that we don't know a lot about them. It's possible to have the prophecies written after it happened. It's possible to have the people reading these prophecies and go out to make them true. It's possible that they were very lucky in their guesses. It's possible that that may have been thought out to be the most likely event. It's possible that a god is giving people these powers. We just don't know.

You cant just discount something because you dont like it. You also cant deny the fact that many of you dislike it. Those of you who are less critical, I give thanks for. Not for you guys though who are just as bad as people like pat robertson.

You assume my only reason for discounting it is not liking it. This is so absurd I'd have to laugh about it to forget it. I do not like most parts, but I admit there are good parts to the bible. But I use other methods to discount the bible. I also admit that it's possible for the bible to be true. But I do not think it is very probable. Those who are less critical, you shouldn't give thanks, you should tell them to be more critical of things and always question things around you.

Read calculating god acriku. It was written by an athiest, but one that understood that many scientists batton themselves down to the establishment. Many good scientists have become athiests because they see it as the correct way, and do not add any agenda to it. People like you do though. And nobody can change your mind. Its ironic isnt it? That there is no smoking gun that proves evolution, but you deny the existance of a God because you say there is no smoking gun.

Being written by an atheist doesn't automatically mean I'll think it's true. And yes I can have an agenda sometimes, but not always and only when I feel there is use to having this agenda. What's so bad about my agenda? As long as it is not run by emotion, and only to 'fight off' the churches that try to impose their morals and values on everyone else by law, or people who try to limit someone's rights. My agenda is for everyone to have all the rights everyone else has. But since I can't do anything now, I will debate about it to hone in on the issues and become more familiar with them.

And here we go back to evolution. TMA, evolution isn't proven. That's not science. But it does have more than enough evidence to accept it as truth. That is, until a theory comes along that provides evidence that evolution is wrong, provides an alternate theory with enough evidence supporting it, and explains why the theory of evolution worked. I do not deny your god, we've talked about this before. And it isn't ironic, because it isn't true. I accept evolution for now because it has a lot of evidence supporting it. I do not accept the idea of a god for now because it does not have any evidence supporting it. But let's get back on topic here.

[Edric O]

Within a few decades, gryphon? Over 600 years passed between the death of Jesus and the creation of Islam! And even longer before the Arabs ever set foot in Italy or Greece. By that time, the Bible had already been translated into dozens of languages. Muslims never translated the Bible for any Europeans.

As for the original question of this topic: Not all events described in the Bible are meant to be taken literraly. Genesis and Revelations are full of allegories and metaphors. But besides those two chapters (well, actually they're books), the rest of the Bible is a literal transcription of events. Whether you believe it or not, that's another story. Just remember that "this is just too weird" is not a serious argument against anything. The "weirdness" of an event is just a matter of your subjective impression.

[Acriku]

You accept that they are not literal, so why not go further and say more books are not literal? Like Job and the whale, the dying for sins, talking ass, rabbit chewing its cud, hell the entire bible?

[Edric O]

Because there has to be a good reason why something isn't literal. In Genesis and Revelations, the reason is that they are talking about the distant past and distant future, which include events that are beyond the comprehension of simple 5th century BC farmers, and maybe beyond our comprehension as well.

[gryphon]

yes it was ;) parts of the Old Testement was translated by people from the Middle East [ current geografical scale ]. No "european" [ of that time ] had adequate knowledge of the language it was written in so it had to be translated. [ same with the work of Plato and Aristottle, where in some weird way we know that the works of one of them hasn't been temperd with or altered, and the other's work isn't all a direct translations. Most of the work of Arristottle has been made up out of scripts of the student he had, just written in a way and signed like it was his origionall work ]

[ the date of decades mentioned by me was a hyperbolical statement, my appologies for that, thought that mentioning the time where Arabic people where the only good translators in the world would be enough to know the date roughly ]

The whole Bible is full of event that is beyond the comprehension of 5th century farmers. It is even still out of comprehension for us. For that matter, the whole Bible can be ment as literal interpretation and just claiming Genesis and Revelations should be is . . well using the argument for your own point.

[ note: although we mostly know eatchother from previous debates here, I havn't been posting in this section for a while. So if I should sound harsh or cruel that's not my intention, just that I can have a very direct way of saying things [ we all have in here from time to time ;) ] think we are all debatig here for the fun of it rather then calling eathother names. So if I sound harsh in any way, let me know. . it's new for me again debating with you ;) ]

[Edric O]

The Bible was already translated into Greek in the first century AD (after all, St. Paul knew Greek), and from Greek to Latin was just a small step, seeing how there were hundreds of thousands of people in the Roman Empire who knew both languages.

As for the Middle East, I need to remind you that all of it (except the territory of present-day Iran and Iraq) had an overwhelming Christian majority before being conquered by the Arabs.

And what on Earth do you mean by saying that "the whole Bible is full of events beyond our comprehension"?? By "events beyond our comprehension" I meant the complex physics and mathematics that would have to be used for describing the creation of the universe, as well as all the knowledge about biology and astronomy which would have seemed insane to ancient farmers.

How could you describe the Big Bang to a farmer living in the 5th century BC so that he would understand it? You would have to say something like:

"And God said, let there be light! And there was light."