If I thought the Bible was merely the product of man, I wouldn't pay much attention to it.

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Few biblical books are the work of a single author, and most have been edited and revised to produce the texts we have today.

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That is enormously speculative. As concerns the NT, it is simply incorrect. In fact, I don't know of anyone who is contending that some NT books have multiple authors. A fairly short but very nicely done treatment of this subject was done by Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing (a woman!!) titled "Why Trust the Bible".

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness... (2 Timothy 3:16, NKJV)

Nobody said anything about multiple authors. Talaniman was talking about the editing/redacting process that all the books of the Bible have gone through over the centuries. The manuscripts of the New Testament that we have tell a very interesting picture of the process.

It's also commonly accepted that some letters such as the "pastorals" weren't actually written by Paul but were written by some disciple of his some time later and put his name on them. Even most evangelical scholars accept the idea.

It's even more complex for the Old Testament, especially since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I wrote my Masters thesis on that subject. We keep hearing that the DSS confirmed the text of the OT that we have now; baloney. It's nowhere near that simple.

And many of the OT books do have multiple authors, except they're not always stated. It's possible the same is true of some NT books. You say you haven't heard of anyone suggesting such a thing, but it's clear the scope of your research is much too narrow.

Religion as a human concept goes back to the very beginnings of humanity appearing on Earth and the fact that so many bygone civilizations not only had a belief system, but many marvels of ingenuity and accomplishment is not limited to just one religion, or one civilization.

My research has shown much more commonality than difference among the many writings of the various religions and their peoples down through centuries and millenniums. Fascinating it is that groups claim their own roots but evidence suggest many roots of the same tree (Or is it TREES?).

Is this the common human flaw, to be superior (ALPHA?) to other humans? Verily it comes down to the simple choice of which part of our human natures we build on. Some have made better choices than others, and some have just followed the easiest path.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible#...d_translations

John Riches, professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, provides the following view of the diverse historical influences of the Bible:

It has inspired some of the great monuments of human thought, literature, and art; it has equally fuelled some of the worst excesses of human savagery, self-interest, and narrow-mindedness. It has inspired men and women to acts of great service and courage, to fight for liberation and human development; and it has provided the ideological fuel for societies which have enslaved their fellow human beings and reduced them to abject poverty. ... It has, perhaps above all, provided a source of religious and moral norms which have enabled communities to hold together, to care for, and to protect one another; yet precisely this strong sense of belonging has in turn fuelled ethnic, racial, and international tension and conflict.^[101]

Perhaps I can express it this way. I once heard that there is only one great question to be answered in this life. Did God create man, or did man create God? Now if man created God, then there are no more genuinely important questions to be answered. However, if God created man, then we should wonder if that God has revealed Himself, His thoughts, His ways, and His will to man. I convinced, for many good reasons, He has, and it is the Bible. It is a book unlike any other book to be found anywhere on the earth.

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It is a book unlike any other book to be found anywhere on the earth.

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Have you read any of the other religions' books?

from Wikipedia:
The Golden Rule (which can be considered a law of reciprocity in some religions) is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated. It is a maxim that is found in many religions and cultures.^[1][2] The maxim may appear as either a positive or negative injunction governing conduct:

• One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself (positive or directive form).
• One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form).^[1]
• What you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself (empathic or responsive form).^[1]

Even the Satanic Temple has elements of the Golden Rule divided among three of its Seven Tenets: #1. "Strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason."

You express your preference well Jlisenbe, and our preferences need not be the same to just debate the feelings and philosophy of one another. I have found that no matter what a person believes there are many different ways to express and practice that belief and as far as I'm concerned they are all good if they follow a Good Orderly Direction. Personally though I put NOTHING of man between the very personal relationship with the God I have come to understand and learn more as it is revealed on this life journey.

Yeah I guess I still have much to learn. I have no preference from which book I learn it from, but personal experience is the best teacher.

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Even the Satanic Temple has elements of the Golden Rule divided among three of its Seven Tenets: #1. "Strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason."

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If everyone is right, then no one is right. If everything is true, then nothing is true. It still comes down to the worship of God for which we will all some day be held accountable. If Jesus said that God's word is truth, then that will do for me.

Still, we end the discussion as friends.

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Still, we end the discussion as friends.

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Why end it? This discussion is EXACTLY what this site and this topic need. It's getting views plus it's not only fun, but challenges and stretches my thinking.

OK with me. I just don't want to bore anyone. (<:

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

If everyone is right, then no one is right. If everything is true, then nothing is true.
Still, we end the discussion as friends.

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As long as we're still here, I need some clarification.

To wit: "If everything is right, then no one is right. If everything is true, then nothing is true".

I'm not a logician, but this seems to violate basic rules of premise and conclusion. The one directly contradicts the other. Of course, there may be something very profound here that I'm missing. Something like a play on/with words?

Let's put it this way. We have a problem in math which is 3 x 3 =___. I say it is 6, you say it is 9, and another person says it is zero, so we decide that we must all be right. If any and every answer is considered to be right, then the concept of "rightness" loses any meaning. The same thing pertains to truth. If, for instance, everyone's view of Jesus is considered to be true, despite the fact that there are many contradictions in those views, then the concept of truth has lost all meaning. To say that something is true is to make a meaningless statement under those circumstances.

I gave you the shorthand version in my statement. More accurately we would say, "If everyone's views are considered to be right, no matter how contradictory they may be, then the concept of rightness loses meaning." What was the radio program that said, in some fictitious town, that all of the kids were above average? Same idea. Everyone cannot be above average, and divergent views of truth cannot all be right.

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divergent views of truth cannot all be right

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Then, like Pilate asked, "What is truth?" How do we figure it out?

I think we should listen to the earlier statement of the man Pilate asked the question of.

Dwashbur, I just saw your earlier response. Didn't intend to ignore it.

You stated, "Nobody said anything about multiple authors." If you would look in the quote above your post, I quoted what the Wikipedia article stated. It very plainly said that few books were the work of one author.

You also state, "It's also commonly accepted that some letters such as the 'pastorals' weren't actually written by Paul but were written by some disciple of his some time later and put his name on them. Even most evangelical scholars accept the idea." That is an exaggeration of a rather high order. For anyone other than Paul to have written either of the letters to Timothy, he would had to have been a liar/forger pure and simple. I say that because of the intensely personal nature of the two letters in which Paul states his great love and affection for his spiritual son, Timothy. It is hard to imagine how anyone in the early church would have accepted them as authentic if the author had not been Paul. Daniel B. Wallace and two others have a very good discussion of the process of accepting the Canon of the NT in the book "Reinventing Jesus".

So far as the OT goes, I would like to hear your thinking on how the DSS do not give evidence of the faithful copying which took place over the centuries. Most of the material I have read on the topic point to the book of Isaiah since there had been one scroll (now two) of that book found complete. A comparison of that scroll with the Masoretic Text, dated at least a thousand years later, showed remarkable agreement between the two texts.

Gleason Archer stated, "Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The five percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling."

I understand that the same can be said for the book of Daniel. It is a more difficult case since Daniel was not found intact as Isaiah was, but it has been possible to "assemble" most of the book from fragments found.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

I gave you the shorthand version in my statement. More accurately we would say, "If everyone's views are considered to be right, no matter how contradictory they may be, then the concept of rightness loses meaning." What was the radio program that said, in some fictitious town, that all of the kids were above average? Same idea. Everyone cannot be above average, and divergent views of truth cannot all be right.

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Your "longhand version", by adding "...no matter how contradictory they may be...", entirely changed the meaning so that it turned out to be the exact opposite of your original statement. Of course, contradictory views cannot all be true at the same time. Logic 101. It has nothing to do with everyone being right leading to no one being right. That's a different proposition.

As to the radio show, the "average" being compared is to the wider or universal average, not to others in the same town. Again, these are basic ideas depending on context for their meaning.

But I don't want this to bog down in a discussion of logic. Your point seems to be there are varying ways of understanding Christianity, but only one way is the truth. That begs the question "Which way is that"?

Each group has their own version of the truth, and they support that truth by quoting the Bible. Whose quote wins? (Rhetorical).

The real question, as Wondergirl (and Pilate) asked, is how do we figure out what truth is. More specifically, what is the truth in the case at hand? Women as Sunday school superintendents. Jesus never answered that question because no one ever asked him.

Paul is the one who is most definitive about the role of women in church. His mind-set was that of one who believed that the end times would come during the lifetime of some still alive in Paul's day. That informed some of his teaching. And we know he was wrong about that. Was he also wrong about the role of women in church? Could he have been?

Jesus took a longer view and we have examples of his dealings with women. As a matter of fact, quite a few examples.

How would each have answered the question?

It's like the blind men and the elephant. Each thinks they know what an elephant is like based on their own experiences and so they disagreed with anyone who didn't share their views. Isn't that why every religion has their own doctrines and traditions, or VERSION of the truth, even within the same religion?

I suppose you don't need FACTS when you have FAITH. Or is it you have faith that ancient man was conveying facts? I have studied many religions and they seem to basically say the same thing (With a few variances, of course.), but argue over who is right and who is wrong. Just like those blind men.

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I suppose you don't need FACTS when you have FAITH. Or is it you have faith that ancient man was conveying facts? I have studied many religions and they seem to basically say the same thing (With a few variances, of course.), but argue over who is right and who is wrong. Just like those blind men.

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Only the Christian faith has a Savior who is raised from the dead. Only the Christian faith gives salvation on the basis of faith, quite apart from works. I can hardly imagine how anyone could say that all religions say the same thing. Now some of the moral teachings are similar, true enough, but the teachings about the nature of God and our relationship with Him are wildly different.

I might add that my faith is based upon truth. I don't know what you are referring to when you suggest I don't need facts when I have faith. When did they become mutually exclusive?

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Your "longhand version", by adding "...no matter how contradictory they may be...", entirely changed the meaning so that it turned out to be the exact opposite of your original statement. Of course, contradictory views cannot all be true at the same time. Logic 101. It has nothing to do with everyone being right leading to no one being right. That's a different proposition.

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It did not change the meaning at all. It only clarified it. Surely no one would think that, in the real world, everyone professing truth would all be professing the same truth. Rather plainly there would be contradictions in the opinions of "everyone". I would have thought that was a given.

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Jesus took a longer view and we have examples of his dealings with women. As a matter of fact, quite a few examples.

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Not women in leadership roles, and that is the core of this thread.

As to Paul, I never cease to be amazed at how casually people tend to question Paul's writings. I would only say that once you have written 13 New Testament books, then you will have arrived at his position. I don't say that in any spiteful or mean manner at all, but nor would I care to so easily question a clear statement as Paul's directive in 1 Timothy.

I think it all comes down to how we view the Bible. I view it, for a number of good reasons, as being God's Word to man. When Paul wrote, he didn't just write his own convictions, but God spoke through him. If that is not true, then we should get rid of it. If it is true, then we should revere it, but under no circumstances do I intend to pick and choose that part which I will accept on the basis of this culture we live in now. There are parts I don't completely understand, but I have no taste for the middle ground where man elects to make himself the judge of what is right and wrong. If there is truly a God, then it should be our business to pursue Him with passion, worship Him, and obey Him.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

Only the Christian faith has a Savior who is raised from the dead. Only the Christian faith gives salvation on the basis of faith, quite apart from works. I can hardly imagine how anyone could say that all religions say the same thing. Now some of the moral teachings are similar, true enough, but the teachings about the nature of God and our relationship with Him are wildly different.

I might add that my faith is based upon truth. I don't know what you are referring to when you suggest I don't need facts when I have faith. When did they become mutually exclusive?

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If I may respectfully ask my friend, what is the nature of the God as you understand it and the relationship with man that is so different than other religions?

To clarify, I did not mean you the individual, but the more broad collective "you" as far as not needing facts when you have faith. Personally I find it hard to NOT question the words and actions of men in general no matter the religion, or FAITH, or age. History is full of men who do bad deeds in God's name and proclaim divine entitlement to shepherd their sheep to slaughter. In truth I don't question God or his nature, just the word of man (Not YOU, personally but again the collective man).

I think that TRUTH is to be sought, so we can make better choices and honor the gift of CHOICE given to us as humans.

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It did not change the meaning at all. It only clarified it. Surely no one would think that, in the real world, everyone professing truth would all be professing the same truth. Rather plainly there would be contradictions in the opinions of "everyone". I would have thought that was a given.

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Addition: So if everyone's opinion is right, then the concept of "right" ceases to have meaning. That was the point of the statement. If "right" is to have meaning, then some of those opinions have to be wrong unless, of course, by some miracle, "everyone" agrees in all points. When was the last time you saw that happen?