Is the bible....

Is the bible the literal word of God or an interpretation of ideas set forth by God?

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it is a mere work of fiction written down over countless generations.



the easiest/quickest way to create a religion:

1) Come up with a story, should take about 1 page.
2) Pile on the bullshit, should take about 999 pages.
3) Come up with a set of morals/beliefs to fit the bullshit and the story
4) Wait for followers to flock.

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"Obama is going to make Hitler look like a boyscout."

It's an inspirational tool

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoQb8vb4blA

Uh huhuhuh, you said "tool", uh huh huhhuhhuh!

Yeah yeah heh heh hmhm heh!

metaphor to explain and mesmerize the local village idiots.

Imagine explaining a billion years of evolution to them with no scientific equipment.

good thing they didn't dig up dino bones 100's of feet in the ground.

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I'll go with option C:

A collection of fables used to explain things the people of those times didn't have the scientific knowledge to understand, and a tool to teach morals and values.

Basically, the Bible is the same thing as Greek Mythology or ancient Chinese proverbs.

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No evolution:
Dinosaurs = Jesus Horses

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you guys must get a hard on over this stuff.

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you guys don't know anything about the bible...

#1 what the bible is will depend on who you ask. crazy fundies like YZF will say its the literal word of god written by his hand himself.

#2 biblical study has pretty well established that the bible was penned by various people over the course of hundreds of years; with later books even reinterpreting older ones. the actual books in the bible are selected from a much larger group of various books put out by various sects within the jewish/christian community.

just to illustrate the catholic bible has more books then the christian bible. there are other churches that also have variations on the bible that exclude certain books and include other ones.

the core books of the bible are the canon, and it changes depending by who you go by; but i believe its typical practice to go by the protestant selections. all other books are 'aprocryphal' works.

the reinterpretation of earlier works by later works has become formalized in the jewish tradition of midrash - truth through interpretation; since the way of prophecy was literally closed in the old testament.

also books that are supposedly written by biblical characters as first hand accounts are generally accepted as being penned by other authors writing decades or centuries later. its been a while since college but i believe this term of art is 'pseudipigrapha.'

there's alot of interesting stuff to be read here. the deluge has various interpretations depending on what books you choose to read.

a. god gets pissed at people and tries to drown them all (core belief)
or
b. angels known as the grigori (the watchers) teach people magic, have sex with women and breed giants, god gets pissed and tries to drown the giants and stupid people (book of enoch)

and whats really interesting is if you take an apocryphal work, and go back to the established versions of the bible, you can see traces of the interpretations in there.

for my above example; enoch's story is fleshed out in the book of enoch. hes basically the first scribe, like ever. and then got snatched him up and made him a chronographer of all events, like forever. in the KJV version (which mainstream christians read) enoch is mentioned in the geneologies in genesis and it says something like, 'he lived so and so years, and then he was not, for he walked with god.'

another example can be found in the story of the grigori. even in the KJV version of the deluge, it says "the sons of god" slept with the "daughters of men." if you never read the aporcryphal works, you wonder why the author made such a strange distinction between sons of god and daughters of men... it's because the author was referring to literal sons of god, aka soon to be fallen angels. the modern interpretation of sons of god is now just regular men; which has essentially changed the meaning of the deluge story.

I always have said the KJV version was a boring story.

I'll bet they left a lot of books out because they knew people would call B.S. on it much faster if it had angels fucking women to make giants and wizards.

That sounds like Harry Potter. That's a bible I'd like to read.

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I AM A DUDE!

Only the gospels of Jesus Christ can be considered the actual word of God, as he was God incarnate and his actual words were recorded. The rest of the bible is considered to be inspired by God through divine revelation.

Not that you agnostics and atheists really care, but I thought I'd tell what I know....

You were there, huh?

Wow, what a relief they cleared that up...