Is the Bible the word of God?
I hear it all the time, "The Bible is the word of God", and "the only way to God is through the Bible", so this got me thinking about Gods word and how fickle it is. To put my thinking into perspective lets got way back in Christianity to the time just after Jesus died. As an early Christian God decided you did not need a Bible. Jesus certainly did not have one, and neither did any of his disciples.
It was a pretty hard following all the Biblical codex`s back in time, but I have tried to be as accurate as possible.
The first Christian "Bible" I could find was a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. It was different to the Hebrew canon in that it contained books called, "anagignoskomena" (that's a mouthful!). It was only a couple of hundred years later that the Old Testament and the New Testament were put into the same book. However it was very different to the Bible we know of today. It included books like the Book of Nehemiah, Esdras and the Book of Esther. This early Bible was called the Codex Vaticanus.
I will quote what Tertullian had to say about the early versions of the the this Bible, "This may be understood to be the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel"
A couple of years later another version of the "Word of God" was written called the Codex Sinaiticus. It too based its Old Testament content on the Greek Orthodox Septuagint. It was to be called the Codex Sinaiticus. Codex Sinaiticus is written in Greek like the Codex Vaticanus and included such books as the Epistle of Barnabas, and The Shepherd of Hermas .
Now things go pretty well for another 200 years and then God decides new revisions to His Word need to be done, so he contacts this bloke called Jerome (who at the time is a womaniser in Pope Damasus's court), and asks Jerome to translate the Bible from Greek into Latin. However God has a change of mind and decides to deviate from tradition and instructs Jerome not to use the Greek Septuagint as his source for the Old Testament but rather to use Hebrew Tanakh. The oldest known copy of the Vulgate Bible is known as the Codex Amiatinus.
Not many changes happened after this as the Church consolidated its power and everyone became religious. We call this time period the Dark Age. A time when human ingenuity was regarded as sacrilege and anyone who defied or questioned "the Word of God" was often tortured to death.
It was not until 1388 when John Wycliffe created the first English version of the Bible (based on Vulgate), that the common English world got to read the Bible, but God was not finished changing His Word yet.
In 1546 God got involved in Catholic / Protestant Church politics and called together the Council of Trent whereby through the "guidance of God", the Catholics came to the conclusion that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was still right and that the deuterocanonical books really should be in the Bible. Gods Word got revisions in both 1563 with the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for Calvinism.
Even today the Bible is still being revised. A couple of weeks ago they found an ancient papyrus of the book Relevations. It was discovered in that Book of Revelations that the "Mark of the Beast" is not "666" but rather, "616".
If the Bible really is the "Word of God" then God word appears to be as fickle as that of man and man's politics. I also got to asking myself, If the Bible has changed so often in its history, who is to say that it is not going to change in the future? Do Christians assume the Word of God to be static and therefore will not investigate further or do they understand there are more changes to come?
While researching this topic I came to the conclusion that a subject as vast and complex of the origins of Biblical scripts and how they came to be in the Bible could not be covered in a simple blog post. I have done my best to give you quick run down on the basic development of the Bible but in truth there is a lot more information and many more factors that contributed towards its evolution.
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be looking into more specific events on the Biblical Highway. There are some very interesting events in the History of Christianity that I would like to introduce to you as the months go on such as Apocrypha, the Council of Nicea and how the Bishop Irenaeus decided to use only 4 of the 12 Gospels.
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wtf is wrong with all you people?
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Leetest form of linux there is. The primary OS I now use. Kubuntu, Dapper Drake, 6.06 LTS. I really think people should use this as their default OS
For those of you who dont know, I run Kubuntu OS as my desktop OS. With all the queerness of Microsofts Anti Piracy campaign, I have decided to completely leave the MicroSoft world. Sure, I loose windows media player and some gaming choices. However, you do get awsome games like warsow that are completely open source, and LOADS of fun to play. If you are in South Africa, there is a South African warsow server gracefully hosted by Web Africa. When in the game just type "connect warsow.webfafrica.co.za" And you will connect to the server to be able to jam with the rest of us.
I consider this a book that every South African should read to get perspective in their lives. Its honesty is most refreshing and Al Lovejoy`s ability to capture in words the essence of a culture and history of a generation of south Africans is amazing. Al Lovejoy has earned a lot of respect from a generation of youth who appretiate the truth. Thank you Al.
Other reviews:
‘Acid Alex is quite simply one of the most shocking autobiographies I have ever read. It is also well-written, addictive, excellent.’
– Sue Blaine, Business Day
‘Heartbreaking! Entertaining! Intelligent!’
– Erns Grundling, SL magazine
‘Nothing I have read has sketched the scorched social landscape of South Africa’s last half-century with such intensity and honesty. Read it.’
– Charles Thesen, Marie Claire
‘There are elements of Hunter S Thompson, Herman Charles Bosman, William Burroughs and William Wharton. But in the end it is an amazing story told in a unique voice. A voice moulded by pain, a voice honed by a government reformatory..., whetted by the SADF, and sharpened by Pretoria Central.
It is the story of a man who went to hell and came back, a morality tale, a Bildungsroman, the narrative of a f*ckup who found redemption, and the anthem of a lost generation.’– Caspar Greeff, Sunday Times
‘Truly, as Koos Kombuis says, this is “an astonishingly breathless story” … Besides being a great read, Acid Alex is an invaluable record of a type of mania that gripped a certain type of South African in the last quarter of the 20th century. It’s a book that’s going to appeal to many young South Africans who currently have to turn to the United States for their myths of pointless excess, and it’s going to inspire them. Not necessarily in a particularly savoury way.’
– Chris Roper, Mail & Guardian
This book is more than just a suggested read.
In what has to be a remarkable show of insight into the power of social networking, a British Indie band is offering their album free to download off their website. This is one band, that seems to have googled it. It looks like the older corporate models are failing and hopefully the world will not have to tolerate the insanity that is RIAA much longer.
I love artists with scope.
South Africa needs science and South Africa needs prominent scientific voices. Unfortunately, like the media in much of the rest of the world, South Africa's media is not nearly welcoming enough to the skeptical and scientific views of the world. Luckily, we have great examples from the United States and elsewhere of how self-publication through blogs can affect public discourse, promoting science and acting as a counterweight to indifference, ignorance, and gullibility. However, unlike our comrades elsewhere, South African science bloggers are unconnected and not organized. I propose to change that...Read More
Really funny flash video depicting the end of the world as the result of a nucleur fall out.
For those of you who dont know, I am South African. Im a born and bred white native african, and damb proud of it. However, I will often use words that you may not understand, local slag u wont pick up on. Click on this link to learn a little more about South African slang, aka, Safrikan!
The entire catalogue of information from 1,800 courses at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will be available free online by the end of the year. Once uploaded, it will represent one of the internet’s most important resources.
MsDewey.com
I never have never used a search engine this cheeky before :) Its great fun for about 10 minutes.
Seaward.co.za for South Africa`s best coastal real estate.
In what has to be classed as bizare, a clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.
I came across this site by Anup Shah that has a detailed look into the causes of poverty. I found some of the statistics he shows to be very embarrassing and a shameful reflection on humanity today.
* Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.
* The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.
* Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
* Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
* 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).
Anup Shah shows us the institutions, policies and people behind many of today's causes of poverty.
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp
Haha, these poor lil bunnies. A bunch of pictures of bunnies trying to come up with imaginitive ways to kill themselves.
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. A most excellent link for those of you wanting access to some amazing science.
A really nice Travian signature generator
Ever wondered how many babies are being pushed out every day, or how many people are dying every minute? Well this is the place for you then! This meter currently records those tpes of things, and with a population of 6.5 billion, there are lots of interesting stats for you to check out.
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