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Post by Kenny on Feb 9, 2005 18:32:13 GMT -5
What would you say if someone came up to you wanting to be saved, but had a couple of questions? Incidentally, their questions pertained to the authenticity of the Bible. Their questions can include: Who wrote the Bible? How can there be a world-wide flood? Has the Bible been changed over the thousands of years? What about all the translations? Is the Bible scientific?
How would you answer these questions and can you? Well, if you are the latter, be sure to check out this thread and learn some stuff - if you are more of the former then post away!
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Post by Soulfyre on Feb 10, 2005 3:16:25 GMT -5
Have at it, Kenny! I will watch for awhile from the side, knowing the good work you have done in putting much of this information together. I'm sure you can provide us with a good ready reference to use for just such questions. In Christ, Matthew (soulfyre)
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Post by rgrove on Feb 11, 2005 19:27:13 GMT -5
What would you say if someone came up to you wanting to be saved, but had a couple of questions? Incidentally, their questions pertained to the authenticity of the Bible. I'll take a shot I suppose. The answers are written in a conversational style as if I was speaking to the person actually asking the questions. God! ;D Okay... Couldn't help myself. The Greek word the Bible uses to describe scripture is "theopneustas". It means "God Breathed". So Paul tells Timothy in the Bible " All Scripture is breathed out by God". In other places in the Bible it says that "the Holy Spirit said" and then quotes a passage of scripture from elsewhere, for example. This means that the men who wrote scripture were inspired by the Holy Spirit working in them to communicate God's purpose to His creation in a way that we can understand. That is, through writing. While everything that the men who wrote scripture was inspired by God, we cannot say that they were mere conduits or anything like that. They were men with personalities and other characteristics that clearly come through in the various different books of the Bible. God used truly fascinating men for the task I think you'll find. Unlike the works of pagan writers, these men openly acknowledge their failures, otherwise embarrasing situations, and other aspects that showed them to be genuine human beings just like us. Do you have a copy of a Bible? If not I'd be happy to give you one that I have here in my car. There's one particular book by an apostle of Jesus named John that would be a great place to begin reading. Easily. The water just had to be higher than the land was at the time. The Bible tells us that water from "the fountains of the deep" came forth so there was probably a great deal of underground water. It also rained considerably. But before the flood the world was a much different place. There's no real reason to conclude that there was enough volcanic activity to create mountains the size of those we see today. But if there was a worldwide flood, then computer models tell us that there would have been tremendous activity on the earth's crust moving the plates and causing them to collide with one anther. This would have resulted in extraordinary volcanic activity as well as the folding of large sections of the crust which is evident in such areas as the Andes. Does that help? Great question. There's a science called "textual criticism" which looks at all of the different fragments and books available. This research has shown the Bible to be extraordinarily well kept. For example, much later Hebrew texts for the Old Testament have been compared to the findings in the dead sea scrolls and the differences were insignificant. Just transposition errors and other minor things that happen when you make copies. As for New Testament textual criticism we see amazing continuity. we have very well preserved original fragments and texts go back to the first and second century that collected together make up most of the Bible as we have it today. The writings of the New Testament were also translated very early into other languages besides Greek so that we can make comparisons on what changes might have taken place. It's a fascinating thing to research! I hope you look into it further. I'm certain you'll find it's the most well preserved ancient document in existance. I assume you're talking about all of the recent translations in the English language? If so then it has more to do with American culture than anything else. For instance, if you translate the Bible you own the copyright on that translation. Unfortunately most of the companies that have undertaken a Bible translation retain their rights and want royalties for extended use of their translation. In fact the Southern Baptist Convention just did a new translation so that they could eliminate the payment of royalties for their publications and reduce costs in the long run. It's as irritating to most American Christians as to anyone else. Go into a bookstore and stand in front of all the translations and try to figure out which one you should use! Most people settle on the one they grew up with (frequently the King James Version which was the only Protestant translation for a few centuries) or the one that is in the pews of their church. Other people, like myself, make decisions based upon the translation philosophy of the translators. But that's somewhat rare overall. Does that help? Do you know which one do you have? If you don't have one I have a Bible out in my car I can give you along with a few short booklets that may be of help you understand it as well. The Bible is not a scientific text, but it is accurate in it's statements when it touches on natural phenomena and historic events. The question is pretty general, though. Is there something more specific you had in mind? These would be my first conversational reactions to people asking these sorts of questions. I purposely didn't go do any research, but just wrote free form so it would be more real, so if I made any mistakes feel free to correct. These are good questions and are pretty common, but usually I find people are really just on the road towards the problem of evil and how Christianity handles that. It's the ultimate destination in many, many cases. Yours In Christ, Ron
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Post by fairbank on Feb 11, 2005 23:50:38 GMT -5
"Is the Bible scientific?" There are so many books on that topic, but a great visual and explanation was spoken in the early 90's by the late James Montgomery Boyce at the Bolton conference. He said something like this: Scholars, archaeologists, and other scientists see a great deal of material in the Bible which is supported by the data from their respective disciplines. Additionally, the Bible has much material which is scientifically still in question or under investigation.
Imagine a line drawn between two points; some of it is dotted, most of it is solid. Let's let the portions of the Bible that have been proven to be scientifically accurate be represented by the solid portion of that line. The material about which we are still not sure is represented by the dotted portion of that line.
Scholars may disagree about how much of the line should be solid and how much should be dotted, but all HONEST scholars agree on this point: As time passes, and as the data comes in from archaeological digs, and from other scientific disciplines it is the SOLID line that is getting longer, and the dotted line that is getting shorter."
Eric
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