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parhelic_muffin

- 3 years ago

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The Bible: Fact of Fiction?

Is the bible really the true word of God, or is it a collection of stories by a few guys who wanted to mix it up? What do you think?

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Like many early mythologies, it takes some historical facts, and blows them up with huge hyperbole.

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Some of it may be historically accurate (as histories go), but all of it almost certainly not. Considering it was passed down orally for a couple hundred years before it got put down in writing and then was copied and copied and copied and translated and translated and translated, it is likely to be mostly inaccurate. I mean, some parts are lifted wholesale from previous religions! There are a bunch of contradictions. My final verdict is, it's a really old book. Read it as a book. There is not one single book in the world that has all of the answers to life's persistent problems. But there is some wisdom to be gleaned from it.

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thanks for your posts so far, I know the question has been asked about 100 times this week, but I'm asking to get some perspectives for a christian theology class, and I couldn't find any of the others on the collective.

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I hold it as the true written word of God, inspired by a perfect Spirit working through imperfect vessels. (whew!). What that means is that I hold it as fact, when read through that same perfect Spirit. If you go to the Bible with just yourself in front of your eyes, yourself is what you'll find. If you go interested in miracles, chances are the passages about miracles are all you're going to see. If you go looking to learn about love, those are the passages that will speak to you and the rest will remain silent. If you go looking for condemnations (for self or others), they're there. If you go looking for contradictions hey, you'll find them! If you go looking for reasons why not to believe, you'll find those too! Because all others passages won't meet your search parameters and for all intents and purposes will not exist, be diminished, excluded, explained away. So when reading the Bible in the same Spirit it was written in, you see context. Not just of the words that came before and after, but the larger context of the people's life and times, who's doing the writing, to whom, the purpose, the searching, the imperfections, even the different way they recorded things compared to today. "Self" is there . . . but is willing to be on the back burner for a while. This is when the truth of any Spiritual text speaks. But if self is front and centre, self is all you will see, all you will hear -- and then perhaps you'll walk away insisting the fiction of self is actually Divine Truth! "But God told me so! I saw it in His word!". But who was "god" when you were reading? Who's "word" formed the basis of what you went looking for?

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Asked and answered

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Fiction. Based on a few loose facts.

@parhelic_muffin Cumming, GA

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