| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/8/2008 8:31:16 PM | Wow what a heated debate! 
For this question, no one can ever truly know the answer.... all we can do is guess. My thoughts on the subject is that the original writers were inspired by God, but through the course of history the word was edited many times and somewhat distorted. Essential truths in the bible will never disappear, but we get stuck with all the little questions and theories, we sometimes miss the point.
Take for example the Ethic of Reciprocity: (http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm) This one rule that all major religions share is essentially the same everywhere! If we all used this one rule in our lives, we would constantly be doing God or God's will. Of course this is essentially impossible for us humans to accomplish, but it's a good guideline. We sometimes get caught in trying to prove all the little things that we loose sight of the big slice. I am guilty of this as well. Getting off topic, but I don't believe everything the bible has to say as inerrant.... because it was edited by humans. People make mistakes when editing; by lack of literary knowledge, language interpretation, and lack of knowledge of the history of that particular region of the world.
I believe the stories of the bible were written sometime after the original events, maybe after years of being passed down verbally from generation to generation. Some stories may have been adapted from other local legends (flood story, read epic of Gilgamesh), others just the author's personal triumphs or struggles. The New Testament was written well after Jesus' ministry, Mt., Mk., Lk., and John all took their teachings from other documents in order to preserve the traditions, they were not the actual apostles. It is such an interesting topic though! I suggest to everyone to research everything, and talk to others about your beliefs. They may not agree, but listening is how we grow. Just don't get angry with what the person has to say. Well I am done with this message, became way to long! Bye people!
Interesting site to further delve into this topic is www.religioustolerance.org.
Enjoy! <3 | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 7:49:20 AM | Lets get real. The main points in the bible are taken directly from the Egyptian book of the dead (3000 BC) which includes all the Jesus attributes stolen from Horus (the sun god.)
Moses story is hijacked, along with lots more. zeitgeistmovie dot com explains it all.
"The bible has more to do with astrology than anything else." | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 8:53:20 AM |
Lets get real. The main points in the bible are taken directly from the Egyptian book of the dead (3000 BC) which includes all the Jesus attributes stolen from Horus (the sun god.)
Why the insistence upon an Egyptian funerary text? Why not the Epic of Gilgamesh for the OT, and the Bhagavad Gita for “Jesus[‘] attributes”?
The Zeitgeist movie is a poor excuse for scholarship and an unfortunate propaganda peace that has lured one too many individuals into its ethereal conspiracy theories held up by nothing more than anecdotal evidences. In my opinion, it is nothing more than an infomercial for tinfoil hats. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 9:36:44 AM | First off, I wrote the darned Bible... I'm sorry, ok? I didn't think everyone would get in such a twist over it... I was tired and awaiting my hail of stones.
Zeitgeist was fairly well done in my opinion... The religion part IS right on the money and if the political part gets you all huffy, just remember that the truth of the matter is a lie... I'd rather hear what people have to say who've done some research (even if some is flawed) rather than listening to the nonsensical coverups of those who would hide the real story.
Why the Egyptians over the Hindus? Maybe they just didn't draw the comparison but don't kid yourself... Jesus story came from many myths... Horus and Krishna are only two. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 10:20:37 AM |
Jesus story came from many myths... Horus and Krishna are only two.
The Yeshua ben El mythoi could indeed be drawing upon various sources. I will grant that the Hellenistic affinity for Egyptian esotericism could have been a driving force for someone to draw upon said traditions in drafting a new myth. At the same time, they are grounded within the Mashiac ben David legends (albeit with some embellishments as the primacy of the Mashiac ben David was no more prominent during that given time frame than the apocalyptic prophecies of a Mashiac ben Yoseph and there are many points of contact that Jesus fails to make in regards to the MbD).
Nonetheless, Zeitgeist and its proponents focus upon the similarities while ignoring the differences. They also fail to address the substantial scholarship that has been written on there being a “historical Jesus” (note that admitting there to be a historical individual proselytizing in first century Palestine does not necessitate he need be anything more than a John the Baptist figure). It also makes claims that are not supported (or at least provide contradictory evidence) in the main text (i.e. the “Bible”). The supposed affinity for astrology is contradicted by such passages as the Isaiah interlude where God mocks “star-gazers.” Also it fails to note the date most accept the division of the twelve zodiac signs (after the Diaspora of Israel).
As for the Horus alignment. Might I point out that the Biblical record does not signify Jesus’ birth to have occurred on December 25th. In fact this would be an example of the film not being “right on the money.” In the ANE it would be ludicrous for sheppards to be out at that time of year. Lambing season occurred in the Spring. It shows an abysmal knowledge of Christian history and the events surrounding Christian’s adopting December 25th as the celebratory time for Jesus’ birth. Also, I sent an email to the department of Near East Studies at Andrews University after I first watched the film asking about the name “Isis Mary.” The response was that they (in the spirit of full disclosure, the respondent was an undergraduate) were unaware of any ANE text that tied this suffix of “Mary” to Isis. Also, I have been unable to find any reputable information showing Isis to be a virgin.
Maybe the film’s portions are “right on the money.” But, I personally feel short-changed. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 10:28:16 AM | Slight clarification on this statement of mine:
I have been unable to find any reputable information showing Isis to be a virgin
This is at least not until after the melding of Mut with Isis which was (to my knowledge) not a complete melding within all of Egyptian mythological texts, and especially not within the BotD. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 11:45:37 AM |
I personally feel short-changed.
No worries, its only the internet!
I was sold long before the movie came out. Parallels between the bible and the book of the dead / Egyptian religion are astounding.
Didn't it say 3 out of 4 of the sources that quoted Jesus were misinterpretations, based on only 1 sentance? (out of dozens of writers/scholars who didn't write a word about Jesus) The last source they claim is fake.
Irregardless, The Jesus story / pagan origins is enough for me. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 4/9/2008 8:38:16 PM | | The question is who wrote the Bible. lol Answer that! | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 9/16/2008 11:26:02 AM | | All I know is that it's written in two ways. Spiratual and phisical. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 9/16/2008 11:42:42 AM | Dear sum1reel, the Quran was not written solely by Mohammed.
It was came through a series of revelations to the prophet. After each revelation, he would instruct his companions / caliphs during his time to write them down.
It took about 22.5 yrs for the Quran to be completed portion by portion. although it wasnt compiled in a chronological order by the prophet himself, it was compiled by one of the caliphs under the supervision of the prophet himself before his death. | |
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| Book of Daniel - By a Leveitcal priest during Persian Occupation
Posted: 9/16/2008 12:40:12 PM | This one is a clear example of cultural accultration as well as a fair amount of plaegerism on the part of "Daniel".
It is an excellent example of remarketing several local Persian mythologies and reintroducing them as biblical mythology.
Most of the primary character names are based on local dieties, noteably Mordichai.
Another really powerful example is the Book of Jonah - total rip-off of Assyrian mythology - doe.nt even try to cover it's tracks on that one.
I used to be a biblical theology student - can read and write in Hebrew and Greek.
Total waste of time. | |
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| the real issue is the canonization process and local mythologies , very political
Posted: 9/16/2008 2:45:22 PM | See Council of Nicea 325CE and Council of Carthage (I believe 299CE).
A bunch of guys basically sat in a boardroom and hand picked what fit via referendum.
Another good source of debunking biblical mythology is called "God and the gods".
It just debunks pretty well all of it.
Not for the faint hearted so it may cause some people and existential crisis of faith - and I actually am one myself - just not in the western paradigm | |
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| the real issue is the canonization process and local mythologies , very political
Posted: 9/16/2008 7:48:41 PM | RE msg 3 by the OP:
that understand the Bible to be a aggregate of disparate texts rather then a unified coherent whole. The theory has been stated as much as 100 years ago. I cannot speak for the NT, as I have not read it. But in the OT, it is often based by the type of name used for G-d. As names in Hebrew have a meaning, such as David meaning beloved, or Solomon (Shlomoh) meaning "peace", the name of G-d in Hebrew have a meaning that relates to aspects of G-d. When we look at who is speaking to G-d, at who G-d is speaking to, and the style of language is used in the Hebrew, it becomes unerringly clear that the meaning of each name fits the context of the aspect of G-d being referred to. In some parts, G-d is referred to as the Eternal. In others, as the Omnipotent. In others still, as the Omnipresent Eternal. In each case, it suits the discussion.
RE msg 12 by themadfiddler:
Literacy is a specific skill that human societies develop at certain points that are traceable through the archaeological record. Hmmm..interesting. Jews didn't really interact very much with other cultures until the last millennia. Even then, AFAIK of non-Jewish history, there isn't much history of the Jews recorded by non-Jews until the last century, because frankly, we were a blip on the horizon of Christian Europe and Muslim Middle East and North Africa. From what I can see, we just weren't important enough, or large enough of a population, to make a massive blob on things, other than the occasional pogrom, or a few anti-semitic references in Shakespeare.
Even Proto-Hebrew did not exist until the 11th century BCE. Wow! That would be news to most religious Jews. A classical proof that Jews were writing in Proto-Hebrew about that time, would be a text that could only have been written by Jews, and would never have entered the non-Jewish consciousness, such as the 600 orders of the Mishnah, that pre-dated their compaction into 6 orders by Rebbi Yehudah HaNasi, or a book by Yair Ha-Giladi (the Giladite), or any of the judges that followed him, or any of the characters that appear in the Bible or the Midrash that non-Jews really never took any interest in whatsoever, such as Benayahu Ben Yehoyadah.
Otherwise, that isularity between Jews and non-Jews could have easily meant that the non-Jews were developing their own languages independently of Jews, especially since Proto-Hebrew alphabet was the script that replaced Assyrian cuneiform as the main writing system of the Assyrian empire.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/aramaic.htm
It could have been a bad choice of name. Post-Cuneiform, or Proto-Aramaic, might have been a better choice. People often don't name things well.
No one was literate that early and no one was writing Bibles. Quite true. The Jews didn't give Bibles away. We're not allowed to encourage converts and are required to dissuade non-Jews from conversion, because they only need to keep the Seven Noachide Laws. The dissemination of Biblical literature amongst non-Jews only started with Christianity. Before then, it would have been a sin to hand out Bibles to non-Jews.
So very few non-Jews had access to any Bible, before Christianity, and so no one, no anyone of the vast majority of the knowledgeable world, that being those who weren't aware of the extremely insular Jews, that being the non-Jews, weren't writing Bibles, until the introduction of Christianity.
The first Hebrew Bible was not written and collated until the First Temple Period. Well, I would definitely say that the Old Testament as we know it today didn't begun to be collated until the beginning of the Second Temple, because there are books from Ezra who was from that period.
However, it would be very difficult to claim that there was no Bible before then, as the Bible clearly states that each king MUST write his own book of the Chumash, and hold it with him wherever he goes. If this was not true until the First Temple was built, then King Saul, King David, and King Solomon would not have done this. The people would have noticed the discrepancy.
It "may" have been a collection of oral traditions earlier than that and obviously borrows from other cultural traditions lifting the Adam and Eve and Flood story clearly from other cultures like the Canaanites. That is always a possibility. Just like the story that the Americans fought the British would be a myth in another thousand years. The acid test is always whether or not the culture is absorbed, as the culture is what carries the myths. The culture is NOT Arabic, or Semitic. It is too far removed from the culture of the rest of the Middle East and North Africa to have ever been from that culture. That is why it is difficult to say that the myths carried over, but the culture did.
Now, my family is Moroccan. We have some of Moroccan culture. But I've visited many Moroccan families, and the culture that belongs to Morocco is indigenous to the village they lived in, and because Jews have made a detailed history of their genealogy, that part of the family's culture appears to have changed whenever they moved. That culture usually exists as a type of dish, such as Moroccans have Chamin, and Ashkenazim have Chullent. But that is as far as the culture goes. Apart from things like dishes, which as I said, changed on changing town, which happened often, the rest appears to have been at odds with the rest of the indigenous population. So the rest of my culture is NOT from Morocco, but from tradition of Jewish origin. However, as I explained, it is just too far from the culture of the people who live there, to have been from them.
It could be that it came from somewhere else. However, I am not a person who believes that all cultures are copied from other places. Otherwise, I would believe that there was nothing new whatsoever in Canada, that was not copied from England, its mother land, including all the myths and stories, and all the history and culture of Canada, excepting that culture within Quebec, that came from France, and so assuming that all of Canadian decisions, and culture even today, must have originated elsewhere. It implies that there is no original thought by any Canadian, ever. I do not accept that. So I do NOT assume that ANY culture gets its myths from other cultures, unless I have verification from the people and documents of the culture itself that declare that actually happened, or something equally as damning, that eliminates any other possibility. In short, I allow for the possibility that people can think for themselves.
However, I cannot dictate to anyone, even someone who tells me what is the source of my culture, when he knows I know a heck of a lot more of it than him, far more than I believe he realises, and myths and stories such as beyond all of his imagining and then far beyond that.
He may not believe me. But I have studied it. I can only imagine that he simply lacks the breadth and depth of my knowledge in this subject. | |
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| the real issue is the canonization process and local mythologies , very political
Posted: 9/17/2008 8:35:46 AM |
No one was literate that early and no one was writing Bibles.
LOL! Aristotle & Plato wrote approx. 700 years before the Bible was written, mentioned nothing about a Bible or Jesus. Their works puts the Bible to shame. There were literate people - so literate, rational and intelligent, that we still study them in universities across the world! | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 9/28/2008 9:38:32 AM | The bible has over 40 authors.
A so-called "coincedence" that all happen to be Jewish and it say's the Jews are the "chosen" people by "god". | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 9/28/2008 5:48:17 PM | ^^^^^ Ooh, I hear the beginning of another "Zionist Conspiracy Theory"
The cabal has spoken: There is no cabal.  | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 9/28/2008 8:18:19 PM |
The bible has over 40 authors.
A so-called "coincedence" that all happen to be Jewish and it say's the Jews are the "chosen" people by "god".
Respectfully, just dealing with the Jewish authors alone, their identity is pretty much shrouded by time. Most scholars can identify multiple styles in some books. These are collated scripts derived from oral traditions.
More to the point, the poster is showing a lack of knowledge regarding what it means by being the "chosen people" if they intend to depict it in any kind of necessarily beneficial light... it is, according to the Jewish tradition, a position of ultimate responsibility, and very often one that leads to obvious suffering and withdrawal from the "ways of the world" and has little to do with conventional notions of being favored...rather it has to do with being the "light unto all nations" and a "priesthood to the world" for the God of Abraham.
It is, of course, but one religious tradition among the many that this world has to offer.
The sooner that people realize this the better, both for those seeking to honour it and for those seeking to vilify it because of this. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 10/14/2008 8:31:00 AM | What "conspiracy" are you reffering to romanticoptimist? Jewish people write Jewish Holy books, just like the Shinto wrote Shinto Holy books, and Buddhist wrote Buddhist Holy books. Each one saying it is the chosen people. Besides there can't be a good conspiracy because you can't get two people to agree on how to organize a Purim celebration never mind a vast Jewish conspiracy.
And yes there is something that could be considered like a cabal. Weather or not there Jewish is irrelevant since no one should have that amount of concentrated power. The Bilderburg group is very real, Alex Jones has done some research into it. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 10/14/2008 12:47:53 PM | I tried to use the link......and all I got on my browser was a snow storm with three words on it........."Something here soon"
could this be referring to the ...Resurrection....as prophesised in the good book???? Oh lordy save me....
As to the authorship.....there has been a lot of speculation, and a lot of research...much of it contradictory. In the end...it probably doesn't matter a great deal....it is what one believes that matters in the final analysis....whether that belief has a basis in fact or otherwise....the bible is one of those aggregation of texts that can mean just about anything, depending on how one interprets it. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 10/14/2008 10:09:28 PM | | interesting the bible says that the Bible is God Breathed not written. You can read the same thing 7 times and never see it as you did at the last reading. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 10/17/2008 6:33:12 PM | The bible is like an encyclopedia. Lots of contributors and not everything put in because it was not necessarily believed to be the truth. Some gospels have been found like the gospel of Phillip that give different perspectives to biblical history.
The Gospels weren't even written down until after the death of Jesus and the Bible evolved out of many years of spiritual debate. The bible is not God's interpretation of Christianity nor is it Jesus's. It's more man's interpretation of their words and even then, it was the religious scholars who put it in writing and not everyone could read.
Some theorize it was the most popular stories which actually made it in the bible. Popular doesn't necessarily mean the truth. We don't know if perhaps the Gospel of Judah was what really happened between him and Jesus or if it is the bible's account. We don't for sure if the Bible's account was just a more believable or interesting story that caught on. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 11/5/2008 7:31:17 PM | | Irving Scribes, the most read anonymous author in history. | |
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| Who Wrote the Bible?
Posted: 11/5/2008 7:35:05 PM | | I meant literal scribes, lol... those who were literate enough to either take dictation from the author or to rewrite a copy of another copy or an original scripture. | |
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