Bede

Actually, sidewinder, you'll find people being misquoted on these boards the whole time. If God, or Michael Turton, communicated to me and I then wrote down what I thought he was on about, it wouldn't necessarily be God or Michael's fault that I made a horlix of passing the message on.

I think the bible was inspired by God in the way that a kid's efforts at forming clay could be inspired by Michaelangelo. David is perfect (bar his toe) but a five year old trying to express that is likely to produce something of a mess, even if directly guided by Michaelangelo himself.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

sidewinder

Bede: I think I should understand your position more clearly before we proceed much further.

1. Do you believe that the Holy Bible (Catholic or Protestant version) is the one and only revelation of the god of the universe to human beings?

2. If you believe this, would you agree that the eternal fate of each person is decided by their acceptance or rejection of this revelation contained within the Holy Bible?

Atticus_Finch

In short, yes. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the bible, in its autograph form, as opposed to copies, is the inspired, inerrant word of God. I am one who holds to this conviction.

Obviously, we do not have the autographs so it would be difficult to prove that there was any error in them. However, the manuscript evidence allows use to have great confidence that the versions of the bible generally used today are largely consistent with the autographs. Where there is doubt, most translations make a note of the fact.

Regards,

Finch

Kosh

Do you think Michaelangelo would send the kids clay
sculptures out to the world as a sales sample?

Bede

Sidewinder, read my site. It makes clear what I believe and even why I believe it. I'm not going to repeat myself here as it is readily available elsewhere. Check out Who I am

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

foursquareman

Just one thing, alma means virgin, young woman who is of marriageable age, or maid, or newly married. At crosswalk.com it notes that there are no instances of this word where it describes a woman who is not a virgin. Isaiah is giving more info than the girl being a virgin. So your point isn't really.

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: foursquareman ]</p>

WJ

Many argue that Jesus was not all that clear in his, what I'll call, sarcastic use of parables. Sometimes, after saying the same things 20 different ways, or even putting it in simple propositional logic terms, communication breakdown occurs.


So beyond the interpretation, divinely inspired, fallible human writing's issues, what's a 'muh' left to do? Of course as SK would say, without risk, there is no faith.

walrus

sidewinder

How convenient for Christians that we don't have the original copies. Why do you think your God wouldn't make sure that we have the original copies. I mean, after all, it is "His" one and only revelation to mankind. Why be so careless about it?

On the subject of contradictions, how do you explain the contradictions between the stories contained within the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)? For example, there are two stories of creation, two stories of Noah's ark, etc. Most scholars agree that the explanation for the repeats in the Hebrew Scriptures is that there were two versions (possibly more but I don't think we have any to prove it)of the same story floating around Israel, and an editor eventually collected these stories and put them into the books we now have in the Hebrew Scriptures. Do you disagree with this?

Atticus_Finch

If you read closely, I indicated that I believe we have good copies of the autographs. God placed his word into a literate world (Roman Empire) with a single dominant language (Greek) and a unified political system over a very large area. I think that was nice work.

Close examination of the various versions of events in the OT show that they are mostly complimentary rather than contradictory. There are a few, very few, hard cases but in light of the over all consistency and accuracy of the scriptures, they should be given the benefit of the doubt in the hard cases.

Regards,

Finch

hezekiah jones

Hey Atticus, actually we do have the "autograph" for the Noah's fludd myths. It's called Tablet XI.

<a href="http://www.hist.unt.edu/ane-09.htm#Gilgamesh_on_the_Web" target="_blank">Gilgamesh on the Web</a>

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: hezekiahjones ]</p>