5 Things You Won't Believe Aren't In the Bible

[ordinaryjoe]

The old testament itself is a written account of old jewish oral histories. There is very little that can be confirmed as truth in it from other historical sources. The Dead Sea Scrolls are themselves much younger than the Old Testament and while important, do not verify the Old Testament.

Oral tradition wasn't just Chinese whispers though - there would have been many people all learning it word perfectly, testing themselves and each other making sure that there were no errors. It wasn't just the old great grandfather one night sat the little children round a camp fire and told them a few stories.

And lets also consider that hundreds (maybe thousands) of copies from different places have all been incredibly similar - many of them to the word, with differences being inconsequential to the meaning. The men who copied them out were careful not to distort what the Bible says. The similarities between the Bible and the number of copies makes it a far more reliable (in that it it similar to the original) script than pretty much any ancient text from the same sort of time.

Translations are another issue, but there is nothing to stop someone from reading the original texts (obviously not in person) - other than the slight language barrier

 

[RDM]

Oral tradition wasn't just Chinese whispers though - there would have been many people all learning it word perfectly, testing themselves and each other making sure that there were no errors. It wasn't just the old great grandfather one night sat the little children round a camp fire and told them a few stories.

And you can prove that how exactly? You can look at many other oral traditions and see that the stories do indeed change, so why is the Jewish oral tradition immune to this? What makes early Christian oral tradition immune to this? (Even the earliest Gospel was thought to have been written down anywhere from 10 to 70 years after Christ's death).

And lets also consider that hundreds (maybe thousands) of copies from different places have all been incredibly similar - many of them to the word, with differences being inconsequential to the meaning. The men who copied them out were careful not to distort what the Bible says. The similarities between the Bible and the number of copies makes it a far more reliable (in that it it similar to the original) script than pretty much any ancient text from the same sort of time.

But the bible didn't exist in it's current form until Nicea, so how can you say it is accurate? Without knowing what was not included as Nicea you have no idea of the accuracy of the finalised text.

The bible as we have it today is primarily based on a 500 year old translation of some of the copies of documents based on the original documents and oral accounts, but those documents did not all agree with each other entirely. (Different languages for a start, meaning translation errors and bias can creep in.)

Translations are another issue, but there is nothing to stop someone from reading the original texts (obviously not in person) - other than the slight language barrier

And the fact that the original texts do not exist anymore. The oldest bible is about 1600 years old and it differers somewhat from current versions (the odd missing verse).

You have to take it on a certain amount of faith that the Bible is accurate and considering some of the tranlastions that faith will need to extend to the message being accurate rather than the actual words. There is just too much missing history to be 100% sure what you have on your shelf is what came out of Nicea nevermind what was truely considered scripture by the very earliest of Christians.

 

[dekez]

That site is great, just wasted an hour damn it.

 

[wilko49]

Well, I knew all of those already... anyone else played Bayonetta? The artists for that knew what they were doing too.

 

[Snakedoctor]

Who cares really as it's all made up anyway. If you like fairy stories then fine.

 

[badcompany]

Angels, gotta catch'em all!

Looks like DMT trip to me.

 

[Lysander]

Cracked article

Stopped reading there. Bunch of sensationalist idiots. Literature for easily-impressed dullard Yanks.

 

[Destination]

The article would be worth reading if it wasn't for the misleading title. Ironically it claims that most of these things ARE mentioned in the Bible but aren't described as many people would. I doubt many Christians would be misled by popular culture beliefs though. Also worth noting that there's more than one interpretation of the Bible.

I tend to agree with you.
It claims these things are not in the bible, then quotes references to them being in the bible, but not as hollywood interprets them.
I fail to see the point in the article, many people who actually have read or studied sectons of the bible will know that for the most part angels are assoicated with violence, I don't find that surprising.
Nor is associating great evil with 'beasts', with any book, you write for your readers, so you associate evil with things people think of as evil, thus a great beast with many head and many horns etc. If the old testament was being written now it would no doubt include references to an animal that couldn't get its face out of the press, screened on its x-factor appearance, and basically was.... Snookie, Yes indeed, snookie is how they would describe the devil or antichrist etc.

Hollywood makes films to sell, look at all the vampire films we've had over the years and the massive 'changes' we've seen from sunlight disintergrating as per normal mythology to apparently making the sparkle? Someone explained the twilight phenomon to me recently, I still can't quite understand it.

 

[mrk]

The only vampire film that has vampires sparkling is twilight, but that film series is nothing amazing anyway.

Any vampire film fan knows the real deal

I don't find anything wrong with cracked, they have some pretty good articles. I don't have a problem with "Yanks" though so maybe this is why I don't have a problem in general....

 

[Destination]

Indeed if one can tolerate the mishmash of folks who contitute 'yanks' and that of US society then you are rather tolerant indeed.
Nicely done.


My point is, hollywood change things to suit their own purposes, why would this not be the same for the bible? I find most of the article a non-starter, but it might inform lots of folks..

 

[mrk]

I see what you mean!

In my view, Cracked is what The Daily Show is to politics. It shows the skewed views of people in the real world and delivers it in such a way to be entertaining yet critical and at the same time taking the pee somewhat out of it as well - I think it's a great sandwich filled with logical/factual entertainment, but it's only that if you're prepared for it usually!

 

[p4radox]

I like Cracked. The articles are nicely laid out, funny, and the often vaguely-related images make me lol.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Cracked may be sensationalist as Lysander points out but it's also entertaining and often enough contains nuggets of information to make you think a little that it's worth reading every now and again. Generally the articles seem to be well enough researched that the information they contain is more likely than not to be true, occasionally I've got no doubt they get it wrong but I'd think it fairly rare.

 

[Fr0dders]

If we were of a religion who sought to defend criticism of it with violence (i'm not going to say which one because thats not the point)

we would be burning flags and declaring a holy war right now.

 

[ordinaryjoe]

And you can prove that how exactly? You can look at many other oral traditions and see that the stories do indeed change, so why is the Jewish oral tradition immune to this? What makes early Christian oral tradition immune to this? (Even the earliest Gospel was thought to have been written down anywhere from 10 to 70 years after Christ's death).

Well obviously I can't. Can you prove that they were any different? I was simply saying that Jewish oral tradition wasn't taken lightly, and was a lot more reliable than people assume from the words 'oral tradition'

But the bible didn't exist in it's current form until Nicea, so how can you say it is accurate? Without knowing what was not included as Nicea you have no idea of the accuracy of the finalised text.

Maybe the Bible wasn't formally known as "The Bible", but at the time, almost all Churches had accepted the same books as real and discarded the others - It was already in agreement long before Nicea... Why do you think it was so easy to decide which books were fake and which were real? And if you find just the book of Matthew alone, and it matches with every other book of Matthew found from around that period, either someone changed it and managed to destroy every different book of Matthew ever made up to that time or it is the same as the original... It doesn't matter that different parts are found in different places.

The bible as we have it today is primarily based on a 500 year old translation of some of the copies of documents based on the original documents and oral accounts, but those documents did not all agree with each other entirely. (Different languages for a start, meaning translation errors and bias can creep in.)

They agree with each other a lot more than a lot of ancient texts which people don't argue against the validity of. And the Dead Sea Scrolls (dating to between 70AD and 150AD) which were found only about 60 or so years ago are pretty much identical to what we used up until now. Does that not prove that over the last 1850 years, the Bible has remained unchanged? I think this is incredible evidence toward the accuracy of the Bible.

And the fact that the original texts do not exist anymore.

Sorry I don't think it is clear what I meant... I meant the original language/words used in the original language before translation - it was a point to counter your point about the Bible having been translated (obviously, all we have are copies of the texts themselves)

The oldest bible is about 1600 years old and it differers somewhat from current versions (the odd missing verse).

You have to take it on a certain amount of faith that the Bible is accurate and considering some of the tranlastions that faith will need to extend to the message being accurate rather than the actual words. There is just too much missing history to be 100% sure what you have on your shelf is what came out of Nicea nevermind what was truely considered scripture by the very earliest of Christians.

Ok there is an element of faith that the Bible is accurate, but it isn't just blind faith - I have a reason for what I believe, and although you see the evidence as insufficient because you can't be 100% certain that it is what was originally written, I see it as plenty sufficient to justify my beliefs that the Bible is the same as it was meant to be.

Disclaimer: I think this is all factually right although my memory is not flawless

 

[Castiel]

You might want to read the book of enoch on Angels and then you will find out where some of the depictions originated. The bible barely touches the Angels or the war in heaven.

Also the seraphim are not technically the Angels or archangels that are referred to most in the bible.

With the exception of Archangel Michael who is referred to as a Seraph in his war with lucifer the others are described as being like men, the lowest two choirs of archangels and angels anyway.

The same is true with their description of the Thrones. They fail to tell you that the description is actually of an Ophan and they may not be the same thing at all.



http://www.catholic.org/saints/anglchoi.php

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelic_hierarchy?wasRedirected=true

The article is somewhat selective regarding angels anyway.

 

[boxman2000]

Think you'll find Catholics are a subset of Christians, just as Eastern Orthodoxy is a subset and Protestants are a subset...

Similar to Christians, I mean, of course they're similar, they are Christians!!!

Hmm, well if you want to be really picky then Roman Catholicism is not the same as Protestant Christianity - infact the word Catholic means 'universal' so the clue is in the Roman part TBH.

It would be a mistake to umbrella Roman Catholicism with Protestant Christianity as basically the RC teachings curse any/all who do not agree with their views (including Protestants) - Council of Trent.

RC stems from what we now call Protestantism.

Often when people accuse Christians of adding/removing stuff from the Bible it is often through the RC church with writings such as the Council of Trent etc.

Not to go out RC bashing but just to clear that small matter up.

 

[boxman2000]

The oldest copy of the bible is still somewhere in the region of 350 years after the death of Christ. Oh and it misses a few bits out that are in later bibles too...

The canon (collection of biblical books) was much after the death of Christ (New Testament, OT was at least 100BC) but the books/letters were already in existence long before this date and corrolated.

Evidence exists of the authenticity of manuscripts that had been copied countless times (OT) - plenty of info out there on that.


Yes, that quote about Gnostic books is correct in it's statement - have been doing a theology course and covered that. Basicly the books contradict other parts of the bible and do not work either historically, doctrinally or collectively. Again, plenty of info on that.


With regards to the contradiction in the gospels, wouldn't mind knowing more on where you found that (not being sarcastic as I really do want to know the verses to see for myself).

Good debate!

 

[boxman2000]

They agree with each other a lot more than a lot of ancient texts which people don't argue against the validity of. And the Dead Sea Scrolls (dating to between 70AD and 150AD) which were found only about 60 or so years ago are pretty much identical to what we used up until now. Does that not prove that over the last 1850 years, the Bible has remained unchanged? I think this is incredible evidence toward the accuracy of the Bible.


Ok there is an element of faith that the Bible is accurate, but it isn't just blind faith - I have a reason for what I believe, and although you see the evidence as insufficient because you can't be 100% certain that it is what was originally written, I see it as plenty sufficient to justify my beliefs that the Bible is the same as it was meant to be.

Very well put.

Far too many people will blindly believe anything without proof. Faith has to come into all belief systems somewhere.

My point is, hollywood change things to suit their own purposes, why would this not be the same for the bible?

Based on what? Writings of athiests and critics or just your opinions?


The truth is we all have to make a decision whether to believe the bible and entrust our lives to Jesus..... the consequences shown in the bible were not designed for man but for Satan, the beast and false prophet (Rev 20:10).

Surely isn't it worth finding out the full facts?

If the bible is wrong, well, then I die and either that's it and cease to exist or find everyone in heaven.... RESULT

If the bible is right, then the consequences are not worth imagining.

Oh, the bible isn't wrong IMO

 

[Ceryndrion]

It amazes me, if you look at the different choirs of angels, to consider what kind of drugs the writers of the bible had to be on, in order to come up with the following..

Seraphim - six wings; two covering their faces, two covering their bodies, and two with which they fly.
Cherubim - four faces: one of each a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle. four conjoined wings covered with eyes, and they have ox's feet.
Thrones - wheel-within-a-wheel, their rims covered with hundreds of eyes

Dominions - believed to look like divinely beautiful humans with a pair of feathered wings
Virtues - No description but possibly liked to Thrones/Wheels
Powers - Again, no description

Principalities - No direct description other than wearing a crown/sceptre, assumed to look human
Archangels - Mostly human
Angels - Traditional human + wings etc.

Okay, so later in the list it got more human, but the first choir are just crazy