What is the point of the Bible?

We've been waiting too long! The early Christians were prepared for the coming of the lord to happened at any moment, and within the lifetime of some of those alive at the time of Jesus. It never happened. How sad. For them, not for us.

Background: I've been poking around the different Bible versions lately to see what it says at different places of the Bible. I wasn't looking for a true version of the Bible, so no KJV, not because I believe in the word of God but despite of it. I'm an atheist. I mearly wanted a readable version for reference to see what people are referencing.

So, what did I find poking around the Bible? Well first off, the first few books of the bible can be crossed off by the natural formation of the universe. Much of the old testament is Jewish and doesn't matter to the Christian faith. There are a few stories in the new testament, but nothing of much importance to today's world.

Again, the Christians in the bible thought that the kingdom of God was coming shortly, but it never happened. Which is good for us because we would never have been born.

Oh, and it doesn't do much for the world of today. So what's the point? ... those prophecies about kingdoms rising and falling? We have, for the most part, with a few exceptions, have put kingdoms behind us for representative governments. They didn't forsee that in bible times!

 

I could say, "what is the point of this post." But, I will respond. Let's first begin with that you are an atheist. So, that means your comments are from a slanted starting point. You could have done a better job by behaving more like a true journalist instead of a talking head on CNN or MSNBC.

The next mistake you made was disting the KJV for some unknown reason. And, as an atheist. That makes no sense. The KJV of the bible is readable for anyone with a minimal educatable retarded individual or above. I had to correct some spelling issues with your post. The newer versions are watered down versions with less truth.

The Bible doesn't say when the Lord will return for the Millennium. He has returned to re-establish His Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Praise the Lord!

Your belief that the OT doesn't matter to the Christian faith is ignorance. The Fall is directly correlated with the Atonement of Christ. The OT is the preparatory time period for the NT including the preparatory Priesthood or Levitical (Aaronic) Priesthood. Then, there is the prophecy of the present time from prophets Isaiah to Malachi. Christians also believe that the U.S. Constitution was inspired of God. The God of the OT and NT. So, representative Government as we have only serves to help Christians as well as Jews. It helps other religions as well. So, representative Governments can be great for religions such as Christianity. It allows us free exercise of religion when the Marxist atheists don't try to trodden on our rights.

 

Thank you for responding. I was engaged in another topic (How does a secular or atheist person get a religious and / or spiritual experience?) where I came across the discovery of the 1,500-2,000-year-old bible that contains the Gospel of Barnabas that was in the ancient bible that isn't in the current day Bible. So I thought hey since early Christians believed that Jesus wasn't the one and only divine son of God and not crucified on a cross for our sins, and that modern-day Christians don't follow the real teachings of Christ, that it's foolish to even try to claim the Bible as real.

And, yes, I did come in with a slanted view, but it's the first time in a long time since I've looked into a religious subject.
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Many people think that the KJV is the only true version of the Bible and won't read another version. But, even though the King James Version is one of the oldest English versions of the Bible, it is in fact not based on the oldest records of early Christian writings that have been found. That's where the New International Version (NIV) comes in, because, prior to the recent finding of the 1,500-year-old Bible, the NIV used the oldest materials available to do a translation of the Bible that was more true to the original Christian materials.

Oh, you're coming from the angle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm not familiar with their teachings.

If you're going to take the first few stories of the Bible literally it's to your detriment. Because, based on history and evidence, the world was not created by the ways of the Genisis story. Instead, it's natural development over a long period of time and also evolution.

 

Like you said, you come in from a slanted view. So do scientist who believe the earth and universe are very old. They skew the scientific research when they interpret the research. The words of the "scientists" is not science. The "research" is the science and it has to be interpreted. I have plenty of PhD work in my library of scientists that interpret the research from a young earth - universe start and their interpretations work much better. So, with exception to the man and the woman in the Bible creation story, the rest actually has scientific research interpretation that works better than old earth and universe.

Gospel or story about Barnabas, the murderer, is not inspired of or by God. If you believe this, that's your right to.

 

A young Earth may fit in well with the Bible, but it doesn't fit in with evidence such as fossils that are so old they were turned into stone. How do you explain that?

And why do you call Barnabas a murderer? Based on this reading: Garden of Praise: Barnabas Bible Story, Barnabas seems to be a good person with a fine reputation as far as I can tell.

 

You just have to read the Hebrew texts to figure it out.

The whole point is the same as all religions and that is to justify one man, or a clan/tribe, as ruler over all the people in an hereditary dictatorship.

Who is the rightful heir of Israel?

Judah? Nope. Wrong answer. The lawful legal rightful heir is Ephraim.

The ranking order is:

1. Preferred half-sister wife
2. All other half-sister wives by rank
3. Preferred wife
4. All other wives by rank
5. Preferred concubine
6. All other concubines by rank

Why? Because Abram/Abraham was born in the city of Ur, and he was a priest-in-training, since it was an hereditary position and his father Terah was chief priest for El Shaddai (Sumerian name Ninurta), whose principle city was Ur.

Terah takes Abram/Abraham and his half-sister wife Serai/Sarah to Haran. Gosh, what a shocker. Haran was the principle city in the Hurrian Kingdom for the god called Teshub in the Hurrian language who was the same as El Shaddai/Ninurta.

Mystery solved.

Abram/Abraham's first-born son is Ishmael, but when Serai/Sarah has a son, Ishmael gets booted.

Why? I just told you why. Ismael's mother Hagar is a concubine but Serai/Sarah is a half-sister wife and she outranks a concubine.

The Sumerian/Akkadian birth-right custom was based on the concept of the "pure seed."

A concubine has no legal rights. A wife has legal rights, which is why wives outrank concubines. But a half-sister shares DNA with her half-brother husband, so her off-spring are more closely related to the father than a wife or concubine.

Why do people decorate Christmas trees, light yule logs and hang mistletoe?

They don't freaking know why. They're totally clueless, but there really was a reason to do those things, it's just that after centuries, people forgot the meaning behind the tradition.

Same thing here. The editors of the Hebrew texts, after centuries, forgot the meaning behind the tradition, or perhaps never understood it in the first place, and you can see that in the texts.

Take the passage with Nimrod the might hunter. It's claimed Kush is in Africa. Wrong answer. Khush was the land between the Tigris and Karun Rivers.

Classical Biblical Hebrew has a backwards "C" and a backwards "C" with a dot in the middle for the K-sound and Kh-sounds. The Kassites lived and died (and took over Sumer & Akkad and ruled for a time) a 1,000 years before this scribe was born so he has no idea who they are and since Yahweh doesn't really exist, he can't tell the scribe that it isn't an orthographic error (which is why it took so long to translate the Great Isaiah Scroll because the scribe made so many orthographic errors they couldn't tell what the hell he was saying not to mention his spelling was absolutely atrocious and he more or less spoke "Hebonics").

So, when the freaky Yahweh fanatics Jeremiah and Hilkiah are committing pious fraud forging Deuteronomy and re-writing the Tetrateuch, they don't understand why Joseph -- the 12th-born son -- gets the birth-right.

He gets the birth-right because the mothers of Reuben, Simeon and Levi are different concubines and the mother of Judah is Leah, who was a wife, but not the preferred wife. Rachel was the preferred wife and so her first-born son Joseph gets the birth-right, which is the pick of half his father's land and animals.

They're even more confused when Joseph forgoes his birth-right and passes it to his 2nd-born son Ephraim. But, if you read the texts, it's clear Ephraim's mother was a wife and Manasseh -- the 1st-born son -- was the son of a concubine or lesser wife.

So, Ephraim is the lawful rightful heir and not Judah, but look how Jeremiah and Hilkiah jump through hoops to justify Judah. They claim Reuben was disqualified because he slept with his father's concubine, and then claim Simeon and Levi were disqualified when they murdered the men of Sheckem, even though the E Text author says Abram/Abraham bought it fair and square.

To see the vitriolic hatred Jeremiah and Hilkiah (Aaronid priests) have for X-Moses and Mosaic priests, just look at what they get King Josiah to do.

They get Josiah to destroy a holy relic.

When they were supposedly wandering around getting bit by snakes, Yahweh tells X-Moses to get some copper, fashion it into a snake, and then mount it on a pole and whoever gets bitten can look at the snake and be healed.

So, this is a holy relic that Yahweh himself commanded X-Moses to make, and Josiah destroys it. What does that tell you about Jeremiah and Hilkiah?

This whole thing started when Mosaic priests (those descended of X-Moses) ruled the temple and backed Solomon's rival. The Aaronid priests (those descended of Aaron) backed Solomon. Solomon won and expelled the Mosaic priests from the temple, but kept the high priest Abiathar in a little gulag outside of Jerusalem so's to keep an eye on him.

Later, the Aaronid priests when to Shiloh and murdered all the Mosaic priests in an orgasmic frenzy.

Except for one. He happened to be in Beth-El at the time, and he lived long enough to see Solomon die. He had stars in his eyes because he thought Jeroboam was gonna restore the Mosaic priesthood, make him high priest and chief priest and in charge of the temple.

But, Jeroboam picked priests from all the other tribes and then had two temples, one in Dan and one in Beth-El and in front of those temples was a winged-bull made of olive wood plated with gold.

If you understand that, you'll understand the whole point of the Golden Calves story, which is to insult King Jeroboam. And he says something else. He claims X-Moses said anyone who stands with him stands with Yahweh, so the Levites rush to X-Moses, draw their swords and slaughter 1,000s of people dancing around the golden bull that Aaron made (but suffers no punishment for making it.)

The point of that passage is to justify only Levites can be priests and no others.

And, then, you could build temples and alters and sacrifice anywhere until Jeremiah and Hilkiah's forged Deuteronomy is found and it says one temple, one altar, one place to sacrifice and that's in Jerusalem.

Now everyone has to come to Jerusalem once a year to sacrifice and the Aaronid priests are swimming in money.

And that's really what it's all about. It was written by men, about men, for men, to justify some men lording over everyone else.

 

Young earth fits way better with science and archeology than old earth by far.

 

Yes, I agree. I'm glad you went into so much detail because it shows that you have really studied this.

 

You said earlier that you have a library of PhDs who say that the young Earth best fits with the available data. Ha! The science and archeology that are widely accepted show that the Earth, and the Universe, in general, are very old. There is physical evidence of these things that show that the Earth is old.

 

Be patient, kind Sir.

It is apparent that you haven't actually read and comprehended The Bible.

Be patient, kind Sir.

Those prophecies have been coming true, and there are still more which need to be fulfilled yet before all is said and done.

The purpose of the Bible is to provide Beginning Instructions Before Leaving Earth.

The gospels describe who Jesus Christ is and why he took on flesh form and came down to Earth. Romans does a great job of diving into mankind's condition of sin and how one gets saved from it. It's a good book for learning about Christianity and how to become a Christian. The books of 1st/2nd Peter, and 1st/2nd/3rd John are quite informative too. Revelation speaks largely of events which are still to come (end time prophecies).

 

"Widely accepted?" Who cares what the majority think when they are depending on the money coming from governments. I'm interested in the truth. And, the truth is that the scientific information better fits young earth, plain and simple.

 

As someone said earlier in this thread topic, you're free to believe that if you want. There are not any serious consequences to it.

 

The End of the World
Duration: 2:37


So at first, the song starts with my own thoughts on the matter that life goes on despite it being "the end of the world."

Then it goes into the emotional turmoil of a young woman who just broke up with her boyfriend. Could it be that God is emotional like the girl in that song? This song really speaks to me.

This reminds me of a thread by @DennisTate but I don't know which thread it was. My search found two threads:

1. Could God the Father be the most emotional being in the universe/ multiverse?

2. Is God deeply emotional... and is our being thankful important?

 

You gave me a life, now show me how to live, that's it.

 

I'll give you some rules to live by and things to avoid. But, it's all on you to figure out how to enjoy this freedom and not squander it away. my son...

 

I had already drifted into Agnosticism but was still looking for answers, but there were none to be had, because bible study isn't really bible study. It's more like brain-washing and indoctrination.

I was a street cop for a couple of years until I was a detective sergeant, and then a private investigator and then I worked for a couple of law firms, so I'm well suited to investigate.

So, I did blocking for all 4 gospels: location blocking, cast blocking and action blocking (I did plays.)

Right? So Matthew says Jesus was here, and then he went there, and then he went somewhere else, and you do that for all 4 gospels and what you have labored to produce is total confusion. There are 100s of conflicts and contradictions.

Then you do cast blocking. So Matthew says Jesus was in this place with these disciples, and Mark says, no, it was these disciples, and Luke has different disciples there, and then John says Jesus wasn't ever there in the first place.

Again, 100s of contradictions and conflicts. Then you do action blocking. What Jesus doing or saying? They can't agree on anything.

No prosecutor would ever put any of the 4 gospel writers on the witness stand because any competent defense attorney would rip them to shreds. They're unreliable and have no credibility. Hell, they can't even agree on the day Jesus was crucified. How said is that?

I mean they're supposed to be channeling god or whatever and they can't even get the day he died right because the god-thing is too damn dumb to remember when his only begotten son was crucified.

If you take archaeology courses, the Sumerians came south out of Armenia/Georgia and set up shop. They developed a cosmogony and those stories diffused out to other cultures that arose later like the Hittites, Hurrians, Mari, Nuzi, Mitanni, Eblaites, Elamites, Gutians and Kassites.

It's like the game you play in English class where the teacher whispers to a student, "There's four fire trucks at a 3-alarm fire on Main Street and they rescued 5 dogs" and then by the time the last student in class gets it, it has morphed into, "There's a 12 hour sale at Macy's!"

It's like that, except each civilization puts their own little cultural spin on the stories.

The original stories have much more detail.

The original story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about destroying Nabu's armies, but the Hebrews changed it into god got made because a whole lotta people wanted to have sex with Lot and his daughters.

Anyway, there ain't nothing to it. It's all just fantastical wishful thinking and even that wouldn't be so bad, except Jesus wants everybody to be good slaves and obey their masters and enjoy their dictatorships.

 

The Bible as a book did not exist until a committee of story tellers, writers, and artists produced three 75 pound master copies in the late 680s-early 690s in response to the Uthman Koran written in the 640s. One copy still exists. There is no earlier Bible on this planet. The Christians had relied on oral stories and a few ragged manuscripts but they didn't have a uniform fairy tale book.

The current KJV is just a revision of the 1769 Revised Oxford Edition of the 1611 KJ Bible.

The 1611 KJV is a revision of the Geneva Bible. The 1611 KJV had 80 books.

When they revised the 1769 Revised Oxford Edition in 1881-1885 they deleted the 14 books of the Apocrypha.

The purpose of the biblical stories is to teach complete obedience and total loyalty to the Boss (the God character, the emperor, the chief priest, the king, the family father, the Jesus character). The stories do not teach morality. The only major character who did exactly as he was told to do without whining was Noah. He was given an assignment that he didn't have a clue as to how he was going to do it but he got to work and got it done. When it was over he killed a lot of the animals for a big barbecue and he got falling down drunk. Even the Jesus character whined.

 

The bible is full of opposites and contradictions, which isn’t surprising since it was written by mankind.
Then along comes preachers priests and the like to say their particular spin is the correct one. Even to the point they establish often unbending societies and cults where those humans say theirs is the only proper interpretation of those contradictions.
Money is to be made and others are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by those self appointed leaders. On this thread there are humans who will insist their take on that contradictory book is the correct one.
They will argue chronology, translation, hierarchy of verses chapters and texts, they will declare that counter argument and challenge is insincere and motivated by the devil.
So ‘thou shalt not kill’ is ignored when it comes to eating fish or slaughtering fatted calves.

 

Understand, the purpose of the biblical stories is to teach complete obedience and total loyalty to the guy in charge (god, the chief priest, the emperor, the king, the family father). The stories dont teach morality. In essence, the Bible is just a military code of conduct manual. If the Boss tells you to invade a country and to kill everyone there, that is what you are supposed to do. The Bible has stories that explain the consequences when that wasn't done. The intent was to indoctrinate people to follow orders without a second thought even when those orders went against a person's own judgment.

 

Reference your comment about the first books of the Bible. The creation story is proven false by science. But without it there is no need for Jesus to save everyone from being sent to hell for original sin. Therefore, Christians must cling to the false Bible creation story at all costs.

The overall purpose of the Bible is the same as any and all mythology -- best explained by Joseph Campbell.

1. …the first function of mythology [is] to evoke in the individual a sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence

2. The second function of mythology is to present an image of the cosmos, an image of the universe round about, that will maintain and elicit this experience of awe. [or] …to present an image of the cosmos that will maintain your sense of mystical awe and explain everything that you come into contact with in the universe around you.

3. The third function of a mythological order is to validate and maintain a certain sociological system: a shared set of rights and wrongs, proprieties or improprieties, on which your particular social unit depends for its existence.

4. …the fourth function of myth is psychological. That myth must carry the individual through the stages of his life, from birth through maturity through senility to death. The mythology must do so in accords with the social order of his group, the cosmos as understood by his group, and the monstrous mystery.

 

Actually, several years ago now, they found an ancient Sumerian star chart with an object that doesn't exist today. They ran some simulations and found that it was in an unstable orbit and its flight path was right over Mesopotamia, and it's believed to have heated up the general area of Sodom and Gomorrah to hundreds of degrees.

Assyrian clay tablet points to 'Sodom and Gomorrah' asteroid • The Register

 

Take Radiometric dating on one hand. Plus sediment levels, erosion, expanding universe and Plate Tectonics. Then on the other hand take a fairy tale (Bible). I am going to go with the radiometric dating. If we are going to go with scripture and go with Vedic scripture instead of the Bible, the age of the Earth is about 4.3 Billion years, or close to what science says. There is no evidence that Hebrew Goat herders knew anything about the age of the earth.

 

Sure they did. God made the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th day. Extremely accurate and extremely simple. You have heard of Occam'ss Razor? Radiometrict dating is very unreliable since it doesn't take in many considerations that could affect the half life's and other important information. I've seen these so called scientist say an object is a few hundred years old when it turned out to be several thousand of years old and vice versa. Unreliable. The geology of so many places on the earth clearly show a young earth with a violent flood about 4,500 years ago. It's just the facts.
As we live through the Covid-19 pandemic, the conspicuously political ideology of many scientists that sometimes seems to foster incorrect, incoherent, or outright inept recommendations is easily seen by many people. The fact that entire populations couldn't escape being controlled by their politically motivated policies was also personally experienced by all. So many public figures who were indifferent to the marginalization of creationists and deaf to our concerns about the overtly biased group think of the "scientific consensus" now understand for themselves that when many scientists say "follow the science," what they really mean is shut up and obey. Same thing with Climate Change and Darwinism and evolution old earth. The tyranny of consensus thinking is destructive and not scientific at all.

 

No you haven't.

 

Oh yes I have...Here are two examples:
"So how do the actual data compare with the model results? First, the various isotope combinations used in the isochron method of dating are clearly discordant—they do not produce the same age for a given rock formation.5 Second, the isochron method gives erroneous ages for rock formations of known age.6 Specifically, rocks gathered from recently erupted Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand gave a K-Ar date of 270,000 to 3.5 million years, a Rb-Sr date of over 133 million years, a Sm-Nd date of nearly 200 million years, and Pb-Pb dates of 3.9 billion years—all this from rocks known to be less than 60 years old!

Another example involves lavas from the Virunga Toro-Ankole regions of the east African Rift Valleys.7 Lavas from these rift valleys known to be Pliocene (<∼ 5 million years) or younger give a Rb-Sr isochron model age of 773 million years. Igneous rocks on the rim of the Grand Canyon give dates older than the igneous rocks at the bottom, contrary to their stratigraphic placement.8 Clearly, the model does not reliably reproduce the observational data and therefore must be modified or used with appropriate caveats."

There are many including from all forms of this kind of dating. https://www.icr.org/article/8348
You can read much more on this subject by googling, if that isn't too much of an effort on your part <snicker-snicker>