(All links on the page) Is the Word of God infallible? And are the stories within the Bible truly of God’s? Well, let’s examine the historicity of the Bible first. In 1707, John Mill studied just 100 Greek NT manuscripts and found roughly 30,000 differences and errors (“The New International Encyclopædia,” Edited by Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck and Frank Moore Colby, Edition of 1905). There are now currently 5,400 Greek NT manuscripts in existence from antiquity, and no two are alike. There are currently 24,000 NT manuscripts all together from antiquity, and no two are alike. There are over 400,000 errors and differences amongst all them (Norman Geisler, “Updating the Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament,” 2013). The original Gospels were all written about 70 – 100 after Jesus apparently lived, therefore they are not eyewitness documentation to what really happened or to what Jesus said and did. The gospels were written by well-educated Greek writing Christians, not by the illiterate Aramaic-speaking peasants of Jesus and his followers. 97% of poor Jews living in 1st century Judæa were illiterate and couldn’t read. Mark, John, Paul, Thomas, and Revelation do not mention a virgin (Paul in fact never mentions Mary or Joseph or any of Jesus’ miracles). Many scholars suspect the few lines in the initial chapters of Matthew and Luke that mention the virgin birth were added after-the-fact. Furthermore, Israeli historians help maintain and curate the oldest known Hebrew version of the Book of Isaiah, which was found during the 40’s and 50’s, and it’s dated to be around 3-2 century BC. In Isaiah 7:14, it says “young woman”—not “virgin.” For almost 1,800 years, in order to support a virgin birth story, religious scholars chose a Greek mistranslation to claim as the accurate piece. The fact “virgin” originally was “young woman” rocked Christianity in such a way, that even translations of the modern bible have had to change the “virgin” term: New World Translation, Jerusalem Bible, The Bible in Basic English, Revised Standard Version, New Life Version, The New English Bible, etc. (For further reading: Dead Sea Scrolls, Book of Isaiah.) ~ So what about some of the stories in the Bible? The Exodus story, in which 600,000 souls wandered a desert for 40 years (original figures exclude women and children, and that would amount to a figure of 1 million people), has absolutely no evidence to support it. Archaeologists and historians agree upon this, there is no denying the Truth. The Jerusalem Post published an article on April 14, 2013, stating quite bluntly that “the Exodus is so fundamental to us and our Jewish sources that it is embarrassing that there is no evidence outside of the Bible to support it.” (Article can be found here.) The L.A. Times has noted David Wolpe, a well-respected Rabbi who once debated the infamous Christopher Hitchens, stating openly: “The truth is that virtually every modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.” (Article can be found here.) ~ The story of Noah and the flood is originally from the ancient Sumerian culture, which automatically causes the later Judeo-Christian version to be obsolete. I have already addressed this topic in a previous article of mine (here), but the information is suitable for this one as well: Ancient Mesopotamia gave birth to the Sumerians around 5,500 BCE. One of our first civilizations in recorded history. This is where we find the first form of writing, the earliest Babylonian numerals, the first irrigation systems, and so on. Luckily for us, the Sumerians wrote their stories on tablets that survived the ages. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a poem that stretches back to around 2,100 BCE . Its later versions extended throughout the centuries, orally distorted and manipulated by generations. The poem is still incomplete to this day because of the diversity of sources and lost fragments. But it’s possible to get a clear picture of the flood story found in some ancient cuneiform scripts—a story eerily similar to the one found in Genesis. From the Standard Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI, lines 8-14: “Ūta-napišti spoke to him, to Gilgamesh: “I will disclose to you, Gilgamesh, a secret matter, and I will tell you a mystery of the gods. The city of Shuruppak — a city you yourself know…that city was old and the gods were inside it, (when) the great gods decided to cause the Deluge.” Lines 19-34: “Prince Ea was likewise under oath with them, but repeated their words to a reed fence… ‘O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubara-tutu, demolish the house, build a boat! Abandon riches and seek survival! Spurn property and save life! Put on board the boat the seed of all living creatures!’—‘The boat that you are going to build, her dimensions should all be matching: her breadth and length should be the same, cover her with a roof, like the Apsû’.’ I understood and spoke to Ea my master; ‘I hereby concur, my lord, with what you told me thus. I have paid attention; I shall do it.’” Lines 128-133: “For six days and seven nights, there blew the wind and the Deluge, the gale [and flattened the land]. When the seventh day arrived, the gale relented, [the Deluge and the battle]…the Deluge ended.” Lines 142-143: “On Mount Nimuš the boat ran aground, Mount Nimuš held the boat fast and did not let it move.” The quotes above are from the University of London, which can be found here.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 06:12:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015