Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I go by what Baha'u'llah wrote about the Bible, that it was God's greatest testimony to His creatures:It came from God? I thought it was written by men, not the manifestation. It is written as if literal and historical, but it isn't. And it's not totally accurate or authentic? But it came from God? So God was in communication with the writers?
“We have also heard a number of the foolish of the earth assert that the genuine text of the heavenly Gospel doth not exist amongst the Christians, that it hath ascended unto heaven. How grievously they have erred! How oblivious of the fact that such a statement imputeth the gravest injustice and tyranny to a gracious and loving Providence! “How could God, when once the Day-star of the beauty of Jesus had disappeared from the sight of His people, and ascended unto the fourth heaven, cause His holy Book, His most great testimony amongst His creatures, to disappear also?” The Kitáb-i-Íqán, p. 89
But that does not mean that the Bible is all literally true or all historically accurate.
I can agree with that but I can see past what people did to the substance.But never mind all of that... It is what people did with the Bible that gives some people a very reason not believe in the Bible, in religion and God.
The Bahá'ís believe what is in the Bible to be true in substance. This does not mean that every word recorded in that Book is to be taken literally and treated as the authentic saying of a Prophet.
...The Bahá'ís believe that God's Revelation is under His care and protection and that the essence, or essential elements, of what His Manifestations intended to convey has been recorded and preserved in Their Holy Books. However, as the sayings of the ancient Prophets were written down some time later, we cannot categorically state, as we do in the case of the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, that the words and phrases attributed to Them are Their exact words
(9 August 1984 to an individual believer)
The Bible: Extracts on the Old and New Testaments