more Bible discussion

[raggamuffin]

I'm new here and thought I would open up a topic for discussion. My apologies if this has been discussed before; the last bible thread only seemed to touch on the issue.

I don't place any particular faith label on myself, although I consider myself a spiritual person. I was raised in a Christian church, later abandoning the organization altogether do to what I viewed as inconsistencies and hypocrisy.
One of the main issues that divided me as a youth and later led to me leaving the Christian church was the idea of the bible being the perfect and holy word of god.
I ask Christians how they can believe words that were written and compiled by man to be the word of God, but all I receive are circular answers that always include something vague about "faith" or "trusting in Jesus".
The Bible has essentially been edited for content, has it not? It has been translated every which way and some books have been left out merely because some MAN had the balls to say "THIS book is the word of god, but THIS book ISN'T."
I believe in Jah, Yahwey, Jehova, God, or whatever name you want to give for the force that created us, but isn't it a bit presumtious of us to say that words written by men were chanelled by God?

[out_of_Zion]

Yes, there actually was a topic just recently about this begun by haileemperor.  I linked him to an article that discussed it, but I'm not so sure you'd really find it beneficial.  The article I linked him to discussed whether or not Christ said the things attributed to him in the canonized Greek Scriptures.

I understand what you say about some books being canonized and others not, and it's basically decided by committee.  Unsetting, I agree.  But I have done a lot of the research and reading of Gnostic gospels and whether you want to say one or the other is the Word of God becomes irrelevant in light of the fact that the actual books that are in the Bible are coherent with one another - even interdependent.  Now, you compare Gnostic gospels to these books and you don't find the same scriptural dependencies, or even references to one another.  The Gnostic book will seem to stand out on its own.  This same principle applies to the Book of Mormon.  There may even be serious contradictions.  Using the last example, for instance, the Book of Mormon claims we have immortal souls that live in a spirit realm following our death.  Ecclesiastes 9:5,10 simply states that the dead "are conscious of nothing" (5), and there is "no devising, knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going."  --  SO, in short, if there are contradictions or it is not coherent to the message of the preexisting prophecies and Hebrew scriptures, then it is likely not inspired from Jehovah.  Take to heart the counsel provided to Timothy,

"However, the inspired utterance says definitely that in later periods of time some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons..."  -1 Timothy 4:1

The reason I emboldened the phrase "inspired utterances" is to show that even non-scripture is inspired.  It's just not inspired of Jehovah God.  If you're not comfortable with the choices the church leaders of old made, then I recommend you conduct your own research.

I, for one, believe that Wisdom (an "apocraphal book" from the Catholic Douay Bible), attributed to have been written by King Solomon were in fact actual sayings from King Solomon, but written by a disciple of his.  The wisdom and counsel is very similar upon comparision.  You, too, might reach similar conclusions regarding other books.  But, as a rule, the vast majority of the non-canonized books I read differ vastly and seem to have little basis in the teachings of Yeshua or in the words of Jehovah God.

peace & blessings

This article below is a short article that discusses the Bible's importance.  It's not highly scholarly or anything - just something to look over if you wish.

http://watchtower.org/library/w/2000/12/1/article_01.htm