An investigation of the Born Again Christian's Beliefs

[Flat Earth Kyle]

I have a friend who is a Born Again Christian and he referred me to a website called Alwaysbeready.com which he said was one of their home pages and would be useful in investigating the Born Again Christians. Once there I clicked on Beliefs which gave me basically their Articles of Faith. Upon reading their first article of faith which read as follows.

"#1) We believe the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament Scripture alone to be verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original text, and that they alone are of supreme and final authority in faith and life."

Upon reading this I had 2 questions for the Born Again Christians

Question 1: What do you think about about the lost books of the Bible?

(The so-called lost books of the Bible are those documents that are mentioned in the Bible in such a way that it is evident they were considered authentic and valuable but that are not found in the Bible today. Sometimes called missing scripture, they consist of at least the following: book of the Wars of the Lord (Num. 21:14); book of Jasher (Josh. 10:13; 2 Sam. 1:18); book of the acts of Solomon (1 Kgs. 11:41); book of Samuel the seer (1 Chr. 29:29); book of Gad the seer (1 Chr. 29:29); book of Nathan the prophet (1 Chr. 29:29; 2 Chr. 9:29); prophecy of Ahijah (2 Chr. 9:29); visions of Iddo the seer (2 Chr. 9:29; 12:15; 13:22); book of Shemaiah (2 Chr. 12:15); book of Jehu (2 Chr. 20:34); sayings of the seers (2 Chr. 33:19); an epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, earlier than our present 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:9); possibly an earlier epistle to the Ephesians (Eph. 3:3); an epistle to the Church at Laodicea (Col. 4:16); and some prophecies of Enoch, known to Jude (Jude 1:14). To these rather clear references to inspired writings other than our current Bible may be added another list that has allusions to writings that may or may not be contained within our present text but may perhaps be known by a different title; for example, the book of the covenant (Ex. 24:7), which may or may not be included in the current book of Exodus; the manner of the kingdom, written by Samuel (1 Sam. 10:25); the rest of the acts of Uzziah written by Isaiah (2 Chr. 26:22).

The foregoing items attest to the fact that our present Bible does not contain all of the word of the Lord that He gave to His people in former times and remind us that the Bible, in its present form, is rather incomplete.

Matthew’s reference to a prophecy that Jesus would be a Nazarene (2:23) is interesting when it is considered that our present Old Testament seems to have no statement as such. There is a possibility, however, that Matthew alluded toIsa. 11:1, which prophesies of the Messiah as a Branch from the root of Jesse, the father of David. The Hebrew word for branch in this case is netzer, the source word of Nazarene and Nazareth. Additional references to the Branch as the Savior and Messiah are found in Jer. 23:5; 33:15; Zech. 3:8; 6:12; these use a synonymous Hebrew word for branch, tzemakh.)

Question 2 was Do born Again Christians believe that the Bible interprets itself?

 

[InChrist]

Question 1: What do you think about about the lost books of the Bible?

The so-called missing or claim of lost books from the Bible which you have mentioned were never necessarily lost books at all. From what I understand these books which were mentioned in the scriptures, were common knowledge in their day and some have survived even until today, but are not found in the Bible and were never included because they were never considered scripture in the first place. Simply because a letter, journal, or book is mentioned does not mean it is to be considered as scripture. Do you apply this same standard to the Book of Mormon? Would you say that it has missing books and is incomplete because there are books mentioned which are not included?

Book of Remembrance (3 Nephi 24:16)
Prophecies of Zenos (1 Nephi 19:10; Jacob 5:1)
Prophecies of Zenock (1 Nephi 19:10)
Prophecies of Neum (1 Nephi 19:10)
Missing Plates from Laban (1 Nephi 3:3-4)
Lost Teachings of Benjamin (Mosiah 1:8)
Lost Word of Amulek (Alma 9:34)
Lost Words of Alma (Alma 13:31)
Lost Teachings of Alma (Alma 8:1)


Question 2 was Do born Again Christians believe that the Bible interprets itself?[/quote]

I believe the Bible is complete and scripture interprets scripture.

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. Jude 3

 

[Flat Earth Kyle]

I admit there are a great many books that were not included in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon is a compilation of excerpts from a collection of a great many other books which were ancient scripture and if they were to be revealed today would still be considered scripture.

As for you, you don't consider the missing prophecy that foretold Christ would be a Nazarene as scripture? What are the terms that need to be present in order to consider something scripture. It seems like you are putting a lot of trust in the Nicean Creed. Do you consider the Nicean creed scripture?

Question 2: If the Bible interprets itself could you please help me out with these three issues.

Issue #1
• There is no “original” Hebrew manuscript that we have to translate the Bible from. In other words we have copies of copies of copies and no manuscript today that is in Moses’s handwriting. The issue here is that we have many different manuscripts that are about the same things, but not all of them are exactly the same, for example there is the Masoretic text which is what the King James Bible is mostly translated from, but there is also the Septuagint which contains several of the oldest ancient translations of the Old Testament, however there are also the Dead Sea Scrolls which are the oldest Biblical but each one is different, so if each manuscript is different, which is the most right?

Old Testament Manuscripts:
-Septuagint
-Samaritan Pentateuch
-Dead Sea Scrolls
-Targum
-Diatessaron
-Muratorian fragment
-Pe****ta
-Vetus Catina
-Masoretic Text

New Testament Manuscripts:
-Alexandrian
-Egyptian
-Eclectic
-Western
-Byzantine



Issue #2
• Words with multiple definitions.
Some Bibles are different translations of the same manuscript.
Most words in most languages have ten or more definitions making reading and understanding the interpretation of each word in a verse a big multiple choice test. My question is where is the answer key? It has been said that it is found in the cross references, but where is the answer key to those cross references to verify that the interpretation of those cross references have the correct translation?
Issue # 3
• Idioms- If the Bible interprets itself where does it give an explanation of what each idiom means?
For example:
- To covereth one’s feet or go down for water both mean to go to the bathroom (found in 1Sam. 24:3 and Ex 7:15
- wink with the eye means to show genuine hatred (Ps. 35:19)
- To send hornets means to send the military (Ex. 23:28)
- To speak to the rock means to take the rock off the well (Num. 20:8)
- To have teeth as white as milk means to have abundant flocks (Gen. 29:12)
- And bald head means to need to repent (2 Kings:23)