2004.06.D.03 A Reality Check - Is the "Bible" REALLY the Inerrant Word of the Almighty Created by James3 on 8/17/2019 7:50:33 AM A Reality Check - Is the "Bible" REALLY the Inerrant Word of the Almighty
Greetings
Another mail that seemed worth forwarding.
It also addresses an extremely challenging topic which I ask you to take time over and pray over.
Warm regards and blessings
James
Hi ...
>>> SOME POINTS ADDED AFTER I HAD WRITTEN MUCH OF THIS DOCUMENT <<<
BEFORE YOU REPLY TO ANYTHING IN THIS MAIL PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE MAIL AND TAKE TIME TO DIGEST IT - A DAY OR TWO MIGHT BE HELPFUL 😊
In order to provide context to what I write below, let me mention that in March 1993, based on certain dramatic events in my life, I CHOOSE to believe that "the Bible" was the "Word of God". I prayed along the lines of "Father, these people tell me that this book IS Your Word. There is much I do not understand about what is contained in this book. However, I CHOOSE to believe those who tell me this is Your Word and I ask you to answer ALL my questions."
Since then I have asked VERY MANY QUESTIONS, some of which I have obtained answers to immediately and some of which I have waited years for answers that I was not ready to receive earlier. In my correspondence with you I have been confronting possible answers to certain questions that I have asked over a number of years and OTHER questions I have avoided asking because I was concerned I could not handle the answers!
My correspondence with you has brought me to a place where I am willing to confront a number of these issues - in doing this I want to express my appreciation for the work you and I have done together in recent weeks.
At the same time, the tentative conclusions I have reached on certain points are VERY DIFFERENT to some of the conclusions you have drawn and potentially confront some VERY fundamental beliefs that you hold.
I ask you to consider my conclusions prayerfully and, IF I have missed something, I ask for your assistance to see what I have missed - getting into judgmental and other language will not help me, reasoned debate will 😊
At the same time, I ask you to consider the possibility that YOU may also have missed some things and that what I propose below may go a long way to resolving some very important differences in what you and I have been seeing.
>>> WHAT I WROTE FIRST <<<
Before I get back to specific replies to the two items that I received Friday morning I would like to share with you some thinking I have been doing over the last few days.
I have been out of town and spent about five hours on the road each way so had quite a bit of time to think about what we have been discussing and what I saw when I skimmed your doc's on Friday morning.
What I am going to share relates to information and thoughts which I am still evaluating and which are therefore NOT definitive. I DO, however, think that it confronts and explains many of the issues that you have raised.
It also confronts a number of uncomfortable facts, some of which I have been avoiding for years - like the issues that you have raised regarding the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, etc.
This extends to OTHER apparent inconsistencies, some of which I have been avoiding as well and which you have NOT raised.
The point I want to raise - which I appreciate is highly controversial and therefore ask you to be temperate in your reading and slow in your response - is, whether ANY of the writings from Genesis to Revelation in the traditional Protestant "Bible" or the Jewish "Torah, Writings and Prophets" are, in fact, IN TOTALITY, the WORD of the Almighty!!
This is NOT THE SAME as saying that there is nothing in these writings that is inspired by the Almighty, only that NOT ONE SINGLE entire body of text from chapter 1 verse 1 to the end is fully inspired and fully reliable.
Please consider the following:
Exodus 20:1-19
1 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
13 Thou shalt not kill.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
(KJV)
Deuteronomy 5:1-27
CHAPTER 5
1 And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.
2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.
3 The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.
4 The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire,
5 (I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to shew you the word of the LORD: for ye were afraid by reason of the fire, and went not up into the mount😉 saying,
6 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
7 Thou shalt have none other gods before me.
8 Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:
9 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,
10 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
11 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.
13 Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:
14 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
15 And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.
16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
17 Thou shalt not kill.
18 Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
19 Neither shalt thou steal.
20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.
21 Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.
22 These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.
23 And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire,) that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders;
24 And ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath shewed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth.
25 Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us: if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, then we shall die.
26 For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?
27 Go thou near, and hear all that the LORD our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the LORD our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it. (KJV)
Based on the two passages from the King James Version there ARE differences to the extent that Deuteronomy in several places contains words or phrases that are NOT in Exodus and in a few places the sentence construction is different, most obviously "Thou shalt not steal" etc versus "neither shalt thou steal".
NONE of these differences in my opinion DETRACT from the essence of the message.
HOWEVER, the writer of both passages appears to claim that what is recorded is EXACTLY what the Almighty said when He spoke from the mountain.
As I see it, this presents us with a serious problem - on superficial consideration of these two passages, the Almighty is indicated to have spoken differently in the two accounts. The people are ALSO reported to have spoken differently in the two accounts.
Now this is REALLY challenging since the essence of BOTH these passages relates to words which the Almighty allegedly wrote with His OWN finger in STONE!
In other words, the writers of both these passages apparently should have had access to an absolutely reliable source of information insofar as the ten words or commandments were concerned and YET they appear, at least in the KJV English, to be different.
The first thing we find is that "Thou shalt not" and "neither shall you" are both translations of EXACTLY the same Hebrew.
The New International Version does not have this particular inconsistency - it is a translation inconsistency and therefore easily put aside.
If we consider Deuteronomy 5:14 there are 26 words in the Hebrew, in Exodus 20:10 which says essentially the same thing there are only 18 words and yet BOTH are presented as VERBATIM accounts.
Deuteronomy 5:15 "And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." (KJV)
does NOT occur in Exodus 20 and yet BOTH are presented as VERBATIM accounts.
There are other parts which, at least at first glance, appear to be inconsistent with a statement that "this is EXACTLY what the Almighty said".
This is ALSO inconsistent with a view that the writer of each passage was inspired by the Almighty to a level where what was written was a verbatim transcript of words the Almighty spoke and therefore that these writings constitute the infallible WORD of the Almighty!
Now I accept that you may have a REALLY SOLID, WATER TIGHT ANSWER to this.
However, I have been trying to ignore the above for several years and your points over the last week have brought me to a point where I cannot ignore them any longer.
Believe me, it would be REALLY NICE IF you have a water tight answer that I can accept. However, right now I want to address the possibility that you do NOT!
Please bear with me on this! 😊 😊
The above is compounded by other passages that I can think of but which I do not want to discuss in detail. I will just list a few from memory as I do not think my present point will be greatly served by digging for them.
A number of items have come to mind in the last few days. As I say, this is from memory so specifics MAY BE INCORRECT so do not get too concerned about the detail. The items that have come to mind include:
1) Reference to Caleb in Deuteronomy and Joshua which include a number of verses that are more or less a verbatim transcript - problem is that the timing that one deducts out of Deuteronomy does NOT appear to correlate with that indicated in Joshua.
2) A passage, I think somewhere in Kings or Chronicles where the same text, running to quite a few verses is repeated more or less verbatim several pages apart - again there is a chronology problem and other problems.
3) The reports about whether Yah or Satan prompted David to number Israel.
4) I have an idea that there appear to be time sequence errors in at least Daniel, Isaiah and Jeremiah - i.e. the events, which appear to be reported in chronological sequence on closer reading appear not to be.
5) An apparent error in a genealogy somewhere where, if the reported age of Jacob (I think) at the time he went to Laban is correct, then most of Jacob's son's married when they were around ten to fourteen years old and this was a tendency in later generations as well. This conflicts, I seem to recall reading, with a report elsewhere in the writings that indicates that these same men were considerably older when they married.
Some of the above are well documented, quite widely known and there are all sorts of explanations for them. However, in my opinion, the explanations for at least some of them are no more credible than the explanations that I have read for the discrepancies between Matthew and Luke regarding the genealogy of Yahshua. They do not work for me.
I do NOT want to get into detail debate about specific points, there may well be legitimate explanations for at least some of the above.
THE POINT that I am wanting to make is that, as far as I can guage at this time, there are a NUMBER of anomalies which I find to be cause for concern.
Let us RETURN to the Words allegedly spoken by the Almighty at Sinai and recorded in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.
IF someone holds that these writings are the writings of inspired prophets and without error - as MANY believers do, then I submit to you that in order to be consistent with what you wrote to me in the latter part of last week we must then draw conclusions that look something like the following (again, let us not get into detail):
1) The two accounts do not agree to the last detail.
2) One or both accounts are therefore in error that is they are lies.
3) The person who wrote the account that is in error must therefore be a liar and a false prophet.
4) Since many people hold that Moses wrote BOTH those texts then MOSES is a liar and a false prophet.
5) If Moses is a liar and a false prophet then the Almighty did not appear at Sinai and the Ten Commandments are a hoax.
6) Since the person most widely regarded by believers in the Almighty as the most reliable prophet of all time (Moses) now appears to be a liar and a false prophet it seems likely that the Almighty does not exist and Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all false religions.
7) Evolution theory is therefore probably correct!
I AM NOT SAYING THE ABOVE IS TRUE!
I AM saying that if I apply the judgments you have applied to Yahshua and those who wrote about him to Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 then the ENTIRE FOUNDATION of my faith and your faith is potentially eliminated.
NOTE that there ARE people who apply the above line of argument to discount all that you and I hold dear!
NOW
Let us try a different line of thought:
1) NOT ONE of the writers of ANY passage of writing (typically called "book") in any of the collections whether Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, etc that I know of starts their body of text with something that even looks vaguely like the following:
"I ... name ... hereby take oath and swear that I am a prophet of Yah the eternally self existent. I declare that all that I am about to write was given to me by Yah personally and that I have recorded it faithfully and without error and that the Almighty has personally confirmed to me on completion of this document that it is a verbatim transcript of what He said to me and is without error. Accordingly I ... name ... do hereby take oath and swear that all that is contained in this body of writing IS THE WORD OF YAH. May Yah judge me severely and may I burn in eternal fire if any word that I have written proves not to be given by Yah. Signed before the following witnesses at ... place ... on ... date ..."
I would suggest to you that such a declaration BY THE PERSON who wrote the text is a necessary pre-requisite to accept that text as fully authoritative.
2) Furthermore, not one of the collections of books (frequently called "The Bible" or "Torah" or "Writings" or "Prophets") that I have ever read, and I have read many translations from various sources starts of with something that even looks vaguely like the following:
"We ... list of names ... hereby take oath and swear that we are prophet's of Yah the eternally self existent. We declare that all that is contained in all the bodies of text (books) contained in this volume (Bible / ....) have been collected by us at the express instruction given to us by Yah personally and that we have assembled this collection of writings faithfully and without error and that the Almighty has personally confirmed to us on completion of this volume that every book is a verbatim transcript of what the Almighty said to the writer at the time and is without error. Accordingly we ... names ... do hereby take oath and swear that all that is contained in this compilation of writings IS THE WORD OF YAH. May Yah judge us severely and may we burn in eternal fire if any word or document that is contained in this collection proves not to be given by Yah. Signed before the following witnesses at ... place ... on ... date ...""
Insofar as NOT ONE of the people who wrote the books or assembled them has seen fit to offer such a robust guarantee, we must draw the following conclusions:
EITHER
NONE of the books have any validity - applies to NT and OT equally.
OR
1) Every single book in any collection of books, whatever it is known as, was written by a man at some stage. Much of what is written was written by third parties, much was based on observer accounts, much was written after the event. ANY ONE of these men MAY at some time have had their own agenda, may not have been fully lead by the Spirit of the Almighty at the time of writing, may have been in a hurry, may not have been recording the document for anything other than his own hasty purpose, etc with no intention that it should live for thousands of years, etc.
2) Every single book in my possession has been transcribed and translated by a number of men at various times over thousands of years. ANY ONE of these men MAY at some time have had their own agenda, may not have been fully lead by the Spirit of the Almighty, may have been in a hurry, may not have been recording the document for anything other than his own hasty purpose, etc.
3) There is no written statement to the effect that the writer claims that all they have written is entirely accurate.
4) There is no written statement that EACH scribe or translator claims that ALL that they have transcribed is complete and entirely accurate - there is NO formal document configuration management record going back to the time the document was originated and recording every person who has had anything to do with the document.
5) Given that it is probable that few, if any, human being has ever been entirely without error (there is evidence recorded that virtually every prophet who has ever lived has made at least one mistake in their life - Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it, Yahshua asked the Almighty if he might be released from execution) we must therefore accept that every text must be subject to scrutiny for possible error and cannot be taken as infallible without clear corroboration direct from the Almighty.
6) The various assemblies of books known as "the Torah", "the prophets", "the writings", "the Old Testament", "The New Testament", "the Quran", etc, etc ALL are to a greater or lesser extent subject to the above points and NOT ONE OF THEM can be taken as totally infallible.
7) However, there IS reasonable evidence to conclude that MUCH of the above writings have been inspired by the Almighty at various levels which can range from very low (Ecclesiastes to much higher ... quite a few of the writings). However, NONE of the writings can be taken ALONE, they must be interpreted as a body and then ONLY by the leading of the Spirit of the Almighty.
The answer to ALL of the above, I submit, is that we are required by the Almighty to form a CLOSE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM!
He has NEVER intended ANY writing by ANY human being to be definitive such that it absolves us of our responsibility to turn to HIM for a personal relationship and PERSONAL GUIDANCE!
Any attempt to assert that "The Bible" or ANY collection of writings by ANY human being is the infallible and the inerrant "Word of Yah" IS IDOLATRY! It is the worship of the work of men!
Accordingly, I submit to you that one CANNOT and DARE not conclude that Yahshua is a false prophet based on ANY or ALL of the arguments you present.
I also submit to you that deciding EXACTLY who Yahshua was and was not, did achieve and did not achieve is by NO MEANS EASY!
I have NOT yet had time to really get back to this point - it has taken me a LOT of time to get to what I have set out above and I consider it QUITE POSSIBLE that there are points I have overlooked and that it will take some time to sift through the above and reach clarity before I will have any real basis on which to consider the Yahshua question further.
I am interested to hear your views on the above and to get to a point where we have identified what we CAN agree and what we CANNOT agree.
I hope that I have managed to express my thoughts in a constructive manner that will result in constructive further discussion.
I look forward to hearing from you.
As I said in the introduction, I think it may be a good idea for you to take a day or so to deliberate on what is written above so that you can give me your considered opinion.
Warm regards and blessings
[MAKERATING]
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