Bible Fails

[halbhh]

No worries

Have a good night.

I'm more than happy to agree to disagree - if you think that the cento solution is more plausible than the mistake theory then fair enough.

I will look at this issue further in my own time since it interests me. I'll see if I can find more scholarly sources discussing it from both sides.

I guess it's easy in the one sense since I don't really have anything at stake here - if it turns out that Matthew didn't make a mistake it's not going to change my view on inerrency because of the hundred other errors I think are in the bible; whereas I understand that from the inerrentist side the burden is much heavier in that a single example of an error destroys that bibliology (which is why I fought so hard to find solutions back in my evangelical days).

Instead of say what seem as if clear examples, maybe it would be of more use for you and me (maybe) to focus instead on what you really think is a harmful wrong thing in scripture, instead of merely what you think might be a mistake. Something that matters a lot, a big one, if there are any. For instance, I've often helped people learn why Peter and Paul at first wrote to slaves to remain slaves and cheerful servants to their masters, instead of seeking freedom, or just running away, as we'd suggest today. That is, at first -- these remain-slaves verses, that were the initial things written to Christians who were slaves or indentured. Or the verses about women being instructed to be quiet in services or such. Another thing we'd clearly not do today.

Those would be good examples of something of bigger consequence, and some of those that I looked at already in depth, and can help with.

 

[Galateasdream]

Instead of say what seem as if clear examples, maybe it would be of more use for you and me (maybe) to focus instead on what you really think is a harmful wrong thing in scripture, instead of merely what you think might be a mistake. Something that matters a lot, a big one, if there are any. For instance, I've often helped people learn why Peter and Paul at first wrote to slaves to remain slaves and cheerful servants to their masters, instead of seeking freedom, or just running away, as we'd suggest today. That is, at first -- these remain-slaves verses, that were the initial things written to Christians who were slaves or indentured. Or the verses about women being instructed to be quiet in services or such. Another thing we'd clearly not do today.

Those would be good examples of something of bigger consequence, and some of those that I looked at already in depth, and can help with.

For the purposes of showing inerrency to be wrong all errors have an equal weight: utterly destructive.

Inerrency rests on the idea that the bible is wholly without error. Therefore it is a most precarious situation: show a single error, no matter how insignificant, and inerrency simply cannot be true.

This is why apologists for inerrency have to put so much work into defending every single thing - like a simple misquotation - because admitting just one mistake would act as a universal acid that dissolves the whole fragile edifice.

I believe that the Matthean misquotation is a very strong example of where error is more plausible than all other suggested solutions - indeed, some evangelical scholars recognise that they have no sensible solution to the issue and can merely council believers to wait until one comes along and trust that there must be one because they are already pre-committed to inerrency.

 

[halbhh]

For the purposes of showing inerrency to be wrong all errors have an equal weight: utterly destructive.

Inerrency rests on the idea that the bible is wholly without error. Therefore it is a most precarious situation: show a single error, no matter how insignificant, and inerrency simply cannot be true.

This is why apologists for inerrency have to put so much work into defending every single thing - like a simple misquotation - because admitting just one mistake would act as a universal acid that dissolves the whole fragile edifice.

I believe that the Matthean misquotation is a very strong example of where error is more plausible than all other suggested solutions - indeed, some evangelical scholars recognise that they have no sensible solution to the issue and can merely council believers to wait until one comes along and trust that there must be one because they are already pre-committed to inerrency.

Oh is that all.

Those discussions -- rarely involve people listening. lol

I've been pretty friendly and patient with many such types preaching that. I tried carefully explaining, over time, without poking at them or pointing out 8 mistakes at a time (too much for them) to the people who actually repetitively say stuff like "scripture is inerrant", as very often they are the exactly the same people making the most egregious errors in even basic understanding of what the text said in the first place.

What you tend to see (but I even avoid assuming is always the case for their sake) is what they really think is 'inerrant' is really just their own pet (and simplistic and error filled also usually) doctrine, time after time. It's very consistent.

Ironically, they...well, need to at first even begin to apply what they are putatively preaching (what they pretend to be preaching, but are not), which is to learn what the scripture actually did say, more accurately. And you know...it seems like about 50%+ of the time, they have used the KJV, just to help them misconstrue what the text really said more easily. Ok, rant finished.

A believer should think God is inerrant, but not their own personal understanding (nor their own pet translation, paraphrase, or total invention out of thin air (ok, you can tell I've gotten tired of arguing with them, eh?).

As to the text itself, we'd do well to do what I call read-to-gain, where the goal is not some ideological one (not driven by doctrine, creed, ideology, etc.), but the opposite -- to read merely to gain the jewels, of which there are very very many of course. Have you read this one? --
Isaiah 55 NIV

(the NIV really shines here in this one, since it included Jewish scholars in the translation group)

 

[halbhh]

Sometimes the best way to change the situation is...actual scripture.



1 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.

3 Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a ruler and commander of the peoples.
5 Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”

6 Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”

Isaiah 55 NIV

 

[Shadow Wolf]

New What bible fail is the most 'oof!' in your opinion?

Seeing the word "Holy" printed on the cover.

 

[Galateasdream]

Seeing the word "Holy" printed on the cover.

 

[PruePhillip]

Is this like the "agenda" of the blacks during the civil rights movement (and beyond) in getting Jim Crow repealed? Is this like the "agenda" of women lobbying for equal wages? Is this like the "agenda" of dreamers who've been here since they were toddlers wanting to remain here as full citizens? Is this like the "agenda" of citizens of Central America resisting the oppression of dictatorial regimes? Is this like the "agenda" of Jesus and the Christian movement resisting the systemic violence of Roman occupied Palestine? Is this like the "agenda" of Jews fighting for independence in 1967? Is this like the "agenda" of the colonies fighting for independence from Britain in the 1770s?

Every minority group has to fight for their voice and their rights. And always, those in power dismiss the importance of that fight as an "agenda," intimating that it's some dark, forbidden, and unnecessary act.

Yes, even these groups can have "agendas" because, having achieved what they thought
they wanted - it didn't really achieve personal happiness, or the cause could be exploited
further for political or economic gains.
Feminism is a classic case of agenda - the situation feminists are in today with their man
hating, speech controlling, children hating, politically correct, tattooed imitators of men but
with attitude.
Generally if a cause has a moral intent then inevitably there's agenda attached to it.
Slavery is not of this category, IMO.
Are you fine with Pederasty? Young gay children have rights too, and their day will
come.

 

[PruePhillip]

Seeing the word "Holy" printed on the cover.

Can you define "Holy"
Would you like to see people being holy?
and give examples of where you have seen holiness?

 

[sojourner]

Yes, even these groups can have "agendas" because, having achieved what they thought
they wanted - it didn't really achieve personal happiness, or the cause could be exploited
further for political or economic gains.
Feminism is a classic case of agenda - the situation feminists are in today with their man
hating, speech controlling, children hating, politically correct, tattooed imitators of men but
with attitude.
Generally if a cause has a moral intent then inevitably there's agenda attached to it.
Slavery is not of this category, IMO.
Are you fine with Pederasty? Young gay children have rights too, and their day will
come.

This is unhinged.

 

[sojourner]

Seeing the word "Holy" printed on the cover.

In what way do you feel that the appellation “holy” is out of line?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

and give examples of where you have seen holiness?

Definitely not in the Bible. Genocide, slavery, murder, child abuse, incest, misogyny, the ways promoted as good, holy, and godly in the Bible are, often, selfish, destructive, bigoted, wicked, and cruel. Even Jesus with his "golden rule," doing what "I" want others to do, which doesn't work well for a basis of morality because a proper moral foundation must consider others without putting "I" at the center of it all.
If anything, the Satanic Bible promotes a sense of morality that is far more "holy" than the so-called "Holy Bible."

Feminism is a classic case of agenda - the situation feminists are in today with their man
hating, speech controlling, children hating, politically correct, tattooed imitators of men but
with attitude.

Do much lumping together?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

In what way do you feel that the appellation “holy” is out of line?

The general attitudes and behaviors of god, his laws, and his prophets. Basically, almost all of it. Especially things like "happy is he who dashes your little ones against the rocks" or "rip the unborn from the womb." Those are the words of people and beings who are best described as monstrous and demonic, not holy and righteous.

 

[PruePhillip]

Definitely not in the Bible. Genocide, slavery, murder, child abuse, incest, misogyny, the ways promoted as good, holy, and godly in the Bible are, often, selfish, destructive, bigoted, wicked, and cruel. Even Jesus with his "golden rule," doing what "I" want others to do, which doesn't work well for a basis of morality because a proper moral foundation must consider others without putting "I" at the center of it all.
If anything, the Satanic Bible promotes a sense of morality that is far more "holy" than the so-called "Holy Bible."

Do much lumping together?

So I suppose you can say that God's righteousness is not man's righteousness.
You can't say this is all myth because today you are seeing a biblical story before
your eyes - the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland - against all the odds
and without parallel. The bible says the Jews will be exiled but in the latter days
they will be called out of the nations that were their "graves"
And God did all this - the grave, the holocaust, the pogrom, the genocide etc..
And the problem for you and me is - when the Jews returns to Israel its because
OUR time is now finished. And this is God's holiness - He will do with His creation
what He will (that's in the bible, actually.)

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You can't say this is all myth because today you are seeing a biblical story before
your eyes

It's all a myth. Especially given there are still pockets of Jewish populations outside of Israel. And it's been their homeland for a very long time, so it's really nothing spectacular or phenomenal that they gained statehood (a handful of nations did after WWII/around the same time). I see no Biblical story, none of us alive today will see this "end of time" that Christians have been insisting is now, today, and soon for about 2000 years now. Your predictions are no better or worse than the myriad of other failed end-of-time predictions.

So I suppose you can say that God's righteousness is not man's righteousness.

If Biblical accounts are true then I never use a word such as righteous to describe Jehovah.

 

[halbhh]

Definitely not in the Bible. Genocide, slavery, murder, child abuse, incest, misogyny, the ways promoted as good, holy, and godly in the Bible are, often, selfish, destructive, bigoted, wicked, and cruel. Even Jesus with his "golden rule," doing what "I" want others to do, which doesn't work well for a basis of morality because a proper moral foundation must consider others without putting "I" at the center of it all.
If anything, the Satanic Bible promotes a sense of morality that is far more "holy" than the so-called "Holy Bible."

Do much lumping together?

ah, I see.

But 'death' isn't really true 'death' if there is God. "Death" is only 'sleep', from which all will awaken, given God being in ultimate control of such afterlife things.

so....since all the innocents that have died will gain eternal life in bliss, rescued from those that wanted to burn them in fires as sacrifices to idols, for instance:

Deuteronomy 12:31 You must not worship the LORD your God in this way, because they practice for their gods every abomination which the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.

(the reason certain Canaanite cities were to be totally destroyed and even the city and even the farmlands there -- to have every trace of their culture entirely removed, erased from the Earth, and everyone sent early to the day of judgement all will face, where the innocent will be separated out from the unrepentant guilty -- those that would have murdered some of them, and trained others into their same evils sent to the 'second death', but the innocent and the forgiven to eternal Life....)

So, 'genocide' is what humans do, but what God undoes. Reverses.

The general attitudes and behaviors of god, his laws, and his prophets. Basically, almost all of it. Especially things like "happy is he who dashes your little ones against the rocks" or "rip the unborn from the womb." Those are the words of people and beings who are best described as monstrous and demonic, not holy and righteous.

That infamous and frightening bit is from a Psalm in which the surviving Israelites wish those that had wholesale slaughtered their relatives, their people, would themselves also suffer the same terrible things which they had done to Israel.

It's understandable. But only God decided if nations merited such general destruction -- as He decided at that time that Israel itself merited that destruction that led to this very Psalm you quote!

Why?

Because Israel itself broke that very rule against sacrificing children in fires, and so God brought destruction and enslavement down on them, just as He had warned He would if they did that great evil.

 

[PruePhillip]

It's all a myth. Especially given there are still pockets of Jewish populations outside of Israel. And it's been their homeland for a very long time, so it's really nothing spectacular or phenomenal that they gained statehood (a handful of nations did after WWII/around the same time). I see no Biblical story, none of us alive today will see this "end of time" that Christians have been insisting is now, today, and soon for about 2000 years now. Your predictions are no better or worse than the myriad of other failed end-of-time predictions.

If Biblical accounts are true then I never use a word such as righteous to describe Jehovah.

The Jew account is utterly weird.
Imagine if some people, exiles from Iraq, declared they were Babylonians
from that ancient kingdom. And these people went back to Iraq today and
fought the Iraqis to establish a new Babylonian state. And these people
resurrected the ancient Babylonian language. Though few in number
they built not only a powerful Babylonian state but an empire as well.

That's never going to happen. Not with the ancient Edomites, Ammonites,
Amalekites, Assyrians, Moabites, not even the ancient Egyptians.
People dispersed don't hold national ties beyond five generations as a
rule. And genetically --- forget it. Yet here are the Jews, you can even
see the Tribe of Levite and the Cohanum priestly line in some of them.
Jews should be either extinct or numbering several hundred million by
now, depending on circumstances. Yet the bible says they will return
to exile after the Messiah, they will remain few in number, they rebuilt
their neglected nation - and fight for it (with one of these wars detailed
in Ezekiel 38,39 which hasn't yet happened.)

 

[sojourner]

The general attitudes and behaviors of god, his laws, and his prophets. Basically, almost all of it. Especially things like "happy is he who dashes your little ones against the rocks" or "rip the unborn from the womb." Those are the words of people and beings who are best described as monstrous and demonic, not holy and righteous.

These examples from a bullied and oppressed people are holy, but not in the you’ve imagined.

The word “holy” simply means “set apart.” God is holy because God is “set apart from humanity.” The Bible is holy because it is “set apart” from other literature as the theological understanding of God’s people. The examples you cite are holy because they are specially “set apart” as the wants, needs and wishes of a desperate people. They describe these monstrous things as ways of dealing with monstrous armies and rulers who held them in thrall.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

These examples from a bullied and oppressed people are holy, but not in the you’ve imagined.

The Nazis were a result of economic repression and social turmoils Germanic people. And, yeah, the Volkswagen was a good idea with good intentions, but we don't praise the Nazis for those vehicles or the idea that transportation should be more readily available.
It's really not much different when we read the OT and read of the genocide, rape, slavery, infanticide, and so many other atrocities found therein. Sure, it's mostly Mesopotamian and Babylonian anyways, and times were very different then, but we have no problems calling someone like Vlad The Impaler cruel and wicked because of his methods despite the circumstances surrounding his life (childhood to grave) and the bullies and invaders he was fighting against. There are times when it's kill or be killed. However, the Bible takes it so far as to even slaughter livestock, scorth the earth, and rape, pillage and plunder. It reads very much like ISIS storming through Iraq and Syria.
And that's only the beginning of moral objections towards the Bible. The ancient Hebrews did live in a very different world, but anything that has a law commanding rebellious children be killed is just not suitable for morality, especially to the degree that people take it literally. There is a reason some of the Abrahamic teachings and traditions are considered dangerous by some, and that is because some of them, when followed through, do pose bodily and mortal threats to others.
The subjugation of women is another very problematic thing. Especially in Christianity and Islam. But, according to the Bible, the OT permits fathers to sell their daughters into slavery. But Christianity has an enforced code of misogyny that heavily revolves around Paul. And Islam tends to have some appalling relationships with women, especially when we look upon Conservative and further denominations (though technically Christianity also has the command of women being very covered and sexless).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The Jew account is utterly weird.

They think that about the Christian account.

Yet here are the Jews, you can even
see the Tribe of Levite and the Cohanum priestly line in some of them.
Jews should be either extinct or numbering several hundred million by
now, depending on circumstances.

That's because they don't marry outside of their "tribe." The ideas of marrying only Jews is sometimes promoted because it does keep their lineage, heritage, traditions, and culture alive. It's no miracle or wonder. It just happens when a group remains to their ways generation after generation. Comparable in some ways to how the Japanese remained very conservative and traditional for many centuries, with many traditions and mentalities persisting today despite globalization and their very rapid modernization.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

But 'death' isn't really true 'death' if there is God. "Death" is only 'sleep', from which all will awaken, given God being in ultimate control of such afterlife things.

That's only a belief and superstition. There is no evidence, and thus not suitable for things like social policy and relationships towards others because they probably have a different idea of what the after life is. And because no one can actually prove themselves right, we just have to go with not considering it for such things. We should assume that death is death when it comes to such things. And that is a savage justification for murder. They didn't really kill them because "death isn't really 'true death?" That is inexcusable.

That infamous and frightening bit is from a Psalm in which the surviving Israelites wish those that had wholesale slaughtered their relatives, their people, would themselves also suffer the same terrible things which they had done to Israel.

Regardless, it's savage, brutal, and cruel. A different time and culture and so on, but that doesn't excuse things like rape and slavery in other times in cultures because we generally view them as bad today.