In the Bible, it says clearly that no one should make a dare to edit or correct the Bible by any words. But many chapters and contents are extremely censored from the original Bible. How is this acceptable, and how do we know the truth and full story about the entire life?
(Finally, some of the replies and trolls I received made me more confused. But thanks a lot for the reference replies.)
There is no "original Bible." Different sects of Christianity have different canons that they consider "scripture."
Most Protestants adhere to 66 books divided into the "old" & "new" testaments. Roman catholics include several more books commonly called the "apocrypha" or "deuterocanonical" books.
Various traditions in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox sects such as the Syriac Orthodox church or the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church include even more books and depending on the specific tradition, don't even have a closed canon of official scripture. They don't really think of scripture in terms of being officially canonized, it's more of a spectrum from "more authoritative" to "less authoritative."
There was no defined canon for any of the early Christians for several centuries. Early Christians circulated many different epistles, religious poems, stories, legends, sermons, and parables, often just by oral tradition.
Some, like the gospel of Mark, are considered fairly historical by many scholars, others are more fantastical or don't have as solid historical attestation.
There is active debate amongst scholars about authorship of the now canonized Biblical corpus and the level of historicity.
Take the Bible for what it is; an impressive and important historical work, really a small library of ancient literature. It's not a magical text though, it was written by people in very specific sociological and historical contexts and should be studied and examined with those in mind.
If you find it enlightening and inspiring to your life and it helps you be a better person to others, that's great. And if you attach special spiritual or religious meaning to it, that's your call. But that doesn't change the nature of what the Bible is and where it came from.
And on top of that, different translations can effectively make different stories as well. Just look at the story of Dinah. Most translations day that she was assaulted but some would suggest that she just had consensual sex. That's a distinction that effectively makes it a different story depending on who did the translating.
Lemmy is, like, all atheists. You're going to get a lot of "we can't" answers.
Yeah, Biblical inerrancy is specific to a subset of Protestants. They're just loud about it. The Catholic church has also flirted with it, but their stance has always been that the church itself is the final authority on all matters, and in Vatican II they soften their endorsement of it with something like "inerrant for the purposes of salvation".
It's possible lay believers of other denominations sometimes take the same stance out of confusion, though. I've never personally heard someone say "I'm a Christian that doesn't believe the Bible is all authentic".
You haven't met a single Christian that knew anything about their religion then.
Sad truth.
I have to consider both aethist and believers opinion in order to get a clear picture. So it doesn't really matter.
The Bible doesn't say that you shouldn't edit or correct the Bible because the authors of the Bible didn't have the rest of the Bible.
Moses gives some explicit commands to the Israelites to not modify the commands he gives in Deuteronomy, but that doesn't really apply to the other books.
Likewise, some guy named "John" warns against anyone adding or removing from the account of his acid trip in Revelations, but that doesn't really apply to other books.
The "Bible" was constructed over a long process and while what many think of as the "Bible" was finalized by 400AD there are still disagreements today (See Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Mormonism, and many other smaller sects).
The original authors wrote disparate works for distinct purposes at distinct points in time. They were not writing with the goal of manufacturing a multi-thousand year story bound as a single volume.
How do we know the full story?
We don't. We use archeology, biology, anthropology, and other scientific disciplines to determine a likely path of the story of humanity as a whole. Some disciplines use the books of the Bible and other contemporary accounts to guide areas of future study, but if you want a single source for the history of the earth, humanity, or even the Israelites the Bible isn't going to offer an honest perspective.
Revelation 22:18-19, which says:
"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
This is what mean by nobody should edit/correct the bible.
First of all, as others said, the Bible is a book composed of many books and letters written by many people over an incredibly vast span of time. Consistency is almost impossible. But, for what it's worth, where does the Bible say "that no one should make a dare to edit or correct" it?
I believe you are referring to Revelations which is, arguably, one of the
oldestyoungest if not theoldestyoungest book in the canon (I don't remember for sure but I believe it is) and also not universally appreciated. Luther famously criticized Revelations, and I think rightly so. There was also some contention at the time of canonization in Nicea around Revelations. So, just because one book says it, doesn't mean it's the final word on the issue. There are Christians that don't see much weight or value in Revelations. I certainly don't, I don't believe it's an eschatological text revealed by God. I think the only way Revelations makes sense is to read it as an historical text and critique of Nero that was written post hoc to rationalize and comfort Christians for what they suffered by explaining that they will soon be rewarded for their faith because they are in "end times". Of course, we now know, thousands of years later, that they weren't.Besides, I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean by "edited" or what "life" you're referring to, although I'm assuming you're talking about Jesus. Have you read the Scriptures in their original languages? I have at least read and translated the Christian Scriptures in and from Greek, and they need editing. It's not possible to have a transliteration of it that reads well, it takes some finesse and art. Even the Scriptures in the Greek are compiled from different manuscripts and codices because there often are errors or damages in manuscripts so you can't just find the one "Gospel of Marx" manuscript, for example, and use it to translate it perfectly. You need to find several to get the whole story of one gospel together and then translate them into a single text, so you're using several sources to put the story together in Greek and then translate into a different language thousands of years later. Naturally, this creates issues and makes it so that the Bible isn't an unaltered text in its final form. Unless you read it in its original language, this is unavoidable—and, as I said, even if you do read it in Greek, you will still have an "edited" text.
Does it matter? I think it creates issues and one should be able to critically examine these textual criticisms in order to form a better picture of the origins of their belief and better parse what and how to believe, but I don't think editing or inconsistencies inherently invalidate Christianity nor Judaism.
I meant Gospel of Mark, but I'm not going to change it and no one better dare edit or correct it or a spectre will haunt them.
Thank you for replying...
By edit i mean this verse in Revelation 22:18-19, which says:
"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
I believed that doing so can change the entire meaning on bible.
And by life, in my personal opinion i believe the bible is a guide to live life and only god have the quality to guide us among life and no human should never try to manipulate his true words.
Also i was very obsessed about thinking all of this censorship thing.
Actually i didn't readed the originally written bible, probably nobody could.
Most of the things you said make sense and gives me a clear picture about the reality of my worry.
Of course.
Well, if it helps, and I hope it will, the author of Revelations wrote Revelations before there was canonization into the Bible we know today. In other words, when Revelations was written it was a stand-alone "book". The Bible didn't exist at the time.
So, when the author of Revelations says 'don't change anything in this book', they mean and are talking about the Book of Revelations—not the Bible as a whole which didn't exist.
In terms of the ethical value of things like the Gospels, the value is still there. The teachings we have are the teachings we have, if they are valuable to you then that's great and you should follow them! Jesus says a lot of things which are great to practice. But it's ultimately up to you to decide whether to believe in the teachings, and then it is up to you to struggle to put them into practice. That doesn't change.
If you found out there were some changes to the Bible, would you stop believing in "love your neighbor as yourself"? No, because it still has value as an ethical teaching. If you want it to be the direct word of God, then that might be more difficult to prove as fact. But I choose to believe that what Jesus says sounds like what I would expect from a God anyway so I don't personally have an issue. I hope it helps you though, it is ultimately your decision to choose what, how, and why to believe in something.
You shouldn't trust any Bible. They are myth books that should not be considered other than as very peculiar literature.
You said so because of the censorship, or just because you are an aethist?
A-T-H-E-I-S-T.
Write it repeatedly until you learn it.
I'm an atheist because there's no good reason to believe in gods. The Bible is a book full of nonsense, myths and stories. That is obvious to anyone reading it without the prejudice of indoctrination.
Ah you're starting to see the cracks that finally gave me the distrust to leave the church. The church has thrown out entire books of the Bible because they didn't agree with the messaging. How can I go to a church to where they literally threw out gospels just because they didn't like it?
Welcome to the path my friend. I was extremely Christian, but I was shocked that the church would do that. I mean how dare man edit the word of God at all?! I'm not sure what I believe, but I know the church was corrupted
IDK, convert to Islam if you're that worried about reading your holy texts in their original language?
That won't help. Qur'an was also edited and altered over time.
Personally, I don't see a need for Christians to covert to Islam, especially for something so trivial. The religions are so similar already, and Muslims already believe that Jesus was a prophet and other aspects of Christianity. If a Christian has some deviating opinion from mainstream Christianity, I am willing to bet good money that there was already a sect or group that had the same idea a long time ago. There's no reason not to just consider oneself part of that group without having to convert religions and still hold Islam in high regard.
I know too many people that converted to Islam from Christianity for silly reasons like this that were already addressed by some other Christian group or whatever, in my opinion. I understand if someone is coming from a totally different religion and wants to be Muslim, that's okay to me I guess. But Islam and Christianity are already so similar, there's almost no point. I think some people just got caught up in the anti-Islamaphobia wave (good thing) and then fetishized Islam as the better or politically acceptable religion among Leftists that doesn't have similar issues to Christianity (not good, in my opinion).
I'll admit that I was making a bad faith suggestion lol. OP's concern over censorship and Lemmy profile makes them come off kinda reactionary. Plus, the question seems kinda goofy.
For sure, I do think it's either a bot or a troll fishing but it's a subject worth discussing. Haha
It does have the nice feature that the holy book as it exists is definitely a faithful copy of the one dictated by the known, independently attested historical figure.
Of course, most of the actual practices derive from the Hadiths, lol.
Pretty much any version we know now has taken very liberal translations to change the meanings. Most scholars agree that the translations were not accurate. Then on top of that entire books of the Bible were debated and thrown out, the gospel of Mary magdeline is the most famous. They picked and chose what message they wanted.
Pretty much any version we know now has taken very liberal translations to change the meanings.
That's not true. Bible translations differ wildly on the approach they take, but there exist many (at least for English) that are focused on offering a rendition as close to the original meaning as possible. Also, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Koine Greek have been deeply studied over centuries and are well understood, so accurate translations are possible with the exception of a small percentage of rare vocabulary. Obviously, perfect translations aren't a thing, but that's a moot point and not exclusive to Bible translations.
Most scholars agree that the translations were not accurate.
Which scholars? Which translations? These blanket statements make no sense. Again, many translations have been made or reviewed/proofread by scholars of the Bible's languages, making your claim dubious at best.
Then on top of that entire books of the Bible were debated and thrown out, the gospel of Mary magdeline is the most famous. They picked and chose what message they wanted.
It's no secret that settling on a canon was a process that took centuries both in Judaism (for the Tanakh) and in early Christianity (for its New Testament), and was never really finished in the latter case, considering the different canons in use in the major Christian churches even today.
That said, I think this process was a necessity. In early Christianity, there were hundreds if not thousands of Jesus-inspired texts floating around, so if the new church was to have any sort of guiding document(s), they had no choice but to pick and choose. Of course, if you think a text (like the Gospel of Mary you mention) is an important witness of the early church, or a more accurate reflection of early Christian thought than are the New Testament writings, you have every right to make that argument. But I don't think it's fair to hold it against early Christians that they "picked and chose what message they wanted", because that's kind of the whole point of founding a new religious movement.
I mean the original bible that written by collection of texts written in different languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) over a period of 200-300 BCE.
An answer for this in Muslim's book Quran is that all the previous books god itself sent were edited by humans as time went on.
Though its defence on whether Quran would be edited by humans is that god will not let it happen, there's the argument that which in that case why did God let the previous books get edited in the first place?
What do you mean by censored? Do you have examples of censored "chapters and contents"? And what do you mean by the original Bible?
Yes, of course.
Both of these things need defining before anybody can answer your question.
"Censoring", the way I understand the word, means that there's some kind of institution charged with overseeing and removing parts of a text. So I wonder at which point in the development of the Bible you believe this has occurred.
I've argued in a different comment that it's no secret that certain texts were picked and chosen by the early church as part of its canon, but that (in my opinion) is a very different thing than censoring. To give an analogy: If I was an editor and had to choose the "100 greatest novels of the 20th century" for a book, I would not be "censoring" those I didn't choose. Therefore I'm asking you what exactly you mean by censoring, and if you can give examples of censorship happening in the development of the Biblical texts.
Secondly, "original Bible" is not at all easy to define. The (Christian) Bible is a collection of texts of diverse genres, by a multitude of authors, in three languages, spanning at least seven or eight centuries in their development. None of the original manuscripts have survived. Instead, for every part of the Bible, there exist different copies which sometimes differ slightly, sometimes starkly. This is the reason textual criticism of the Bible exists as a field of scholarship. Most notably, the (older) Septuagint version of the Book of Jeremiah is about one eighth shorter than the (later) version of the Masoretic text.
All of this means that if you're going to talk about the "original Bible", you have to tell us what you mean by that. Do you mean
- the original manuscripts of each individual book or passage, all of which are lost?
- the oldest surviving copies of each passage, respectively?
- the Septuagint (and if yes, which version of it)?
- the Masoretic text (and if yes, which version of it)?
- the current scholarly consensus on the most faithful manuscripts, as collected e. g. in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the Novum Testamentum Graece 28?
