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Questions encountered
Hello Everyone, How is everyone doing? I hope you are all great.
I was just wondering maybe you guys can help me out a bit. I would like to get your response on this question...... What kind of questions do you encounter in your everyday life, by your fellow colleagues, that may shaken your faith in God and your trust in the authenticity of the Holy Bible? I look foreward to your responses and thank you in advance.
Your brother:
Avvaantoni
I was just wondering maybe you guys can help me out a bit. I would like to get your response on this question...... What kind of questions do you encounter in your everyday life, by your fellow colleagues, that may shaken your faith in God and your trust in the authenticity of the Holy Bible? I look foreward to your responses and thank you in advance.
Your brother:
Avvaantoni
Comments
If questions weaken one's faith, it has nothing to do with the nature of the question, or the availability, accessibility and validity of an answer. It has to do with that person's being spiritually immature. Pray, fast, confess, take communion, follow the commandments - and questions will never shake you, even if you never find the answer - an answer which is always out there.
Thank you again and God Bless
Avvaantoni
-mina
it involves the Gospels that were not put into the Bible... (that are still in Rome i think, although the person asking the question ssays they were destroyed, im not too sure)this is what i was asked:
"the Gospels that were not put in the Bible were omit from it because those Gospels talk about the humanity of Jesus, they talk about Him as a man not a God, that's why they were removed (im not sure where the person asking me the question got this info from)... so how is the Bible reliable if it was stratigically put together to only talk about Jesus as the Divine God, ignoring His human side"
i dont want answers to this or anything (if someone wants to comment though, feel free to) but that's one of the questions you might wanna research for your class and answer...
hope that helped
take care and God bless
recognised as authoritiative by the early church which was guided by the Holy Spirit - and from an objective perspective, they were rejected because they were mythical works based on gnosticism written by gnostic pseudo-authors who had no connection with the historical Christ, and NOT historical works based on the eye-witness testimony of the true aposltes of Christ who received the Holy Spirit (which the New Testament is).
Please tell your friend to consult some credible and authoritative scholarship. You will get village skeptics like this who have no idea what they are talking about.
i told the person to go check his facts and get back to me... cuz i didnt think he was making sense at all...
anyways thanks for clearing that up...
you'll hear from me if the person talks about this issue again... ;)
take care and God bless
It's hard to be in a position where you know all the evidence for the authenticity of the bible, to then try and think up stupid questions which are asked to attack the Bible, when such questions can only arise out of ignorance. So sorry, I cant help much further on this one.
That of Bible contradictions. There's three issues to consider here:
a) Hermeneutics
b) Textual criticsm
c) Historiography
A) Hermemenutics
This sounds like a fairly big word - it simply pertains to the science of interpretation. Now, we being of the Orthodox church, recognise the church and traditions as the ultimate authority in interpreting the Bible for us, so the science of hermeneutics is not really a big deal for us. But we will discuss it anyway, for the sake of objectivity.
Basically, what is relevant to hermeneutics is in determining the most appropriate way to interpret a text. This is obviously relevant to the issue of contradictions, because any alleged contradicitions arising out of bad interpretations, are invalid. When interpreting the books of the Bible: literary, social, historical, cultural, and linguistic context must be taken into account, because obviously, the Bible was written at a different time, in a different language, different society etc etc
One example of an alleged contradicition for example may be the argument: "The Bible says Jesus was raised on the third day, however if you count from friday afternoon till sunday morning, you dont have 3 days."
Which contextual factor is being disregarded in this objection? Socio-cultural-historical. Back in 1st century Jewish palestine, the word for a "Day" did not denote a 24 hour period as it does for us today. Any portion of a 24 hour period would be regarded as a day. Therefore, Friday afternoon = Day 1, Saturday = Day 2, Sunday = Day 3.
B) Textual criticism
We have to take into account the fact that, the Bible in those days was hand copied by scribes. As such, we have to take into account scribal errors - that is, when a scribe who copying hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts, misplaces a small stroke or dot in the characters of the Hebrew or Greek language, hence turning a number such as 10 000 for example, into 100 000. Most of these scribal errors usually involve the numbers, or even spelling mistakes or name mistakes etc. Therefore, these are not logical contradicitions which go to negate the Bible's authenticity. They're perfectly explainable, and to be reasonably expected type errors, which we can detect easily because of the vast wealth of manuscript evidence which we possess.
c) Historiography
We have to remember, that though the Bible is the word of God - this does NOT mean that God wrote the Bible. The Bible was written by men appointed by God - they were God's instruments. Now God didnt possess these men, using their hands to write what He wants- the apostles simply wrote according to their capacity, being guided by God and directed by Him - but not in the sense that He was standing there over their shoulders saying "Write this and that and that, and put a full stop here, and a comma there" etc. Thats not what we believe.
Therefore, there may be discrepencies with regards to the eye-witness testimony of the Apostles.
I want you to think of something. Lets assume 2 people walked down the street and they saw a car zoom by at lightning speed. They both just incidently happened to witness this, and they wanted to record down this event. One writer says the car was a blood-type red. The other writer says the car was Maroon. As we can see, from their respective eye-witness perspectives, their is a slight discrepency with regards to the colour of this car. Does this mean their accounts are invalid? Does this mean we should declare the event of this car zooming down at lightning speed, a non-historical event? Certainly not. Similar type discrepencies occur in the Gospels - which are ultimately quite harmonious. This does not negate the events that took place, nor does it negate the authenticity of the Bible as the word of God. In fact, such discrpencies only affirm the authenticity of the Bible, because it proves that there was no collusion between the authors i.e. it proves authentic the fact that these events were witnessed by more than on different author. If the accounts were EXACTLY the same it would suggest one copied off the other, and hence historically speaking the testimony is not as strong.
Hope that helped.
Avvaantoni
pray for me
Again, cultural and historical context comes into play. There are indeed gender issues – many of these are simply a reflection of the patriarchal society in which the Biblical texts developed. But this in no way relates to the “worth” of a woman. Both man and woman were created in the image of God, and this is the greatest attestation to their equal worth.
I need to find out exactly what it is my friend told me...but at the time i got prety offended...it was about the church and what they believed on this issue.....i might start a convo on it another day.....
Dear AvvaAntoni
with the idea that the bible is sexist...some people argue that this reduces the credibility of the bible ...i don't really know what to tell people who say that ...all i know is that it's kinda like putting christians in a loose-loose situation cuz if the bible was written in the feminine form then it would be the men complaining.....
also..I was talking with my religion teacher at my school (it's catholic)
I was trying to prove that homosexuality is wrong according to the bible (I used some verses in Romans) and he was saying that the writer of romans was always in arguements with the disciples of Jesus becuase he had different ideas than what Jesus had and so you have to take that into consideration when you're reading the bible (he was basically sugeseting that not everything in the bible is trustworthy)
I hope that helps you...
(if someone can comeup with an answer to this.....that would be really great!)
The disciples had disputes with regards to missionary work - i.e. how to evangelise the gentiles vs evangelising the Jews, not with regards to doctrinal issues – and that’s because they were mere humans, not Gods. How does this reflect on the trustworthiness of the Bible? It doesn’t, it has nothing to do with it, simple as that. Your teacher is an idiot, plain and simple.
thanks Iqbal
Luke 16:17
1 Peter 1:24-25
Psalms 33:11
Psalm 11:7-8
Psalm 18:30
Psalm 119:86, 89
2 Corinthians 1:20
1 Kings 8:56
Mark 13:31
The Bible is AUTHORITY
II Pete 1:20-21
Psalm 33:6,9
Psalm 138:2
Jn 5:39
Matt 7:24-25
Prov 30:5
Jn5:24
Jn 12:48-50
The bible is Healing:
Psalm 107:20
Prov 3:1,2
Prov 4:20-22
The list goes on on and on and on.
The Bible is also GUIDANCE.
It teached the Christian how to deal with:
Fear
Confuse emotions
Anger
When you fell Blah (sorry that the best word i could find)
confused
depressed
discourged
embaressed
empty
forsaken
frustrarted
guilty.............
The list is HUGE.....
Now ask the person if the authenticity of the Bible can possible remain in question : ;D
She was teaching us John Donne’s poetry – and the lesson concerned the CONTEXT of his poetry. Anyway, this poetry is religious, and so in discussing the meaning of a certain line, the Bible came into the discussion. She took the opportunity to throw in her 2 cents about the Bible – asserting herself with authority and confidence about how the Bible contradicts itself. I was known to be a very outspoken kind of guy – I got in trouble a lot, especially for being a smart alec to my teachers. So I put her on the spot, and asked her to tell me one contradiction. She laughed at me and said,
“ahh there’s hundreds, don’t be ridiculous”.
I stood up, and challenged her in front of the whole room:
“I dare you to name me ONE contradiction right now. If you’re going to make a claim, back it up miss – Come on im waiting, just ONE contradiction. You said there’s hundreds, I just want ONE, hurry up, im waiting to crush your credibility.”
She stopped laughing, she looked a little uncomfortable and said:
“I cant name any off the top of my head obviously”
– I cracked up, and got a few people laughing with me, and told her that she COPPED OUT, and that OBVIOUSLY she has never seen a contradiction and she is just speaking from hearsay. At this point she got angry, and challenged me saying that if she had a Bible in front of her, she would easily point out a contradiction, she then told me to sit down and to stop distracting the lesson else she would give me a time out (punishment system of the school).
Anyways, I didn’t stop. I raised my hand and asked if I could go to the toilet. She allowed me. I actually went to the library and borrowed a bible. I came back with the Bible, dropped it on her desk, and asked her to show me a contradiction. Now she was really mad, and the class was loving it. She brushed the Bible aside, she didn’t even bother opening it. Then she said something along the lines of
“ok...you're asking for it....You want a contradiction? Here is one for you!” She pointed out that in the book of Acts it says Jesus was crucified on a tree, whilst in the Gospels it says Jesus was crucified on the cross.
Luckily, this was one of the alleged contradictions id heard before. I looked at the blackboard, and I saw her notes that she wrote for the poetry. She had a big heading which read “CONTEXT” It was underlined twice – and under it the different aspects of context. I took the chalk, approached the blackboard and said:
“Misssssss…how ironic that we are studying CONTEXT today…OH and I see you’ve underlined it twice…let me just add a few more underlines there for you”
I was speaking to her in a very condescending manner as if I was now the teacher, and she was the student. I started reading the aspects of context she had written – historical, social, cultural, literary – but since the Donne’s poetry was written in English, linguistics was not a concern. So I added linguistic context and started explaining:
“You see Miss…the New Testament was written in GREEK. In those days miss…the Greek word for cross, was synonymous to that for tree, because the Cross was made from trees you see…….It all comes back to the context miss”
At this point I even circled the heading “Context”. Everyone was laughing at her, and she just ended up looking stupid. I got a head teachers time out for disturbing the class, wasting time, and being rude to the teacher. But I got her back, and reported her anti-Christian remarks to the Principal. There’s not much he could do, he simply told her that she could not make any religiously sensitive comments again in the future. I just looked at her and winked and said…”especially if you can’t back it up” to which my Principal responded: “Now that’s enough,,,”
You never seem to let me down lol I can't stop laughing from your story. But I feel bad for your teacher or any teacher that had you, you seem like a very intelligent person and I pity the person that challenges you.
I had a professor that always put me on the spot because I was the only Christian in the class and he was an atheist. He would always tell me that evolution was more supported by science then creation is by the bible. I can tell many stories about this guy but the end result was after debating with me for a rigorous amount of time he is now reconsidering his position about being an atheist.
About the question that was raised about how the bible discredits women, that is not true at all and here is something that I ran across that really drives the point home. It is talking about Adam and Eve:
That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. Adam lost a rib, and without any diminution to his strength or comeliness (for, doubtless, the flesh was closed without a scar); but in lieu thereof he had a help meet for him, which abundantly made up his loss: what God takes away from his people he will, one way or other, restore with advantage.
Hope that helps
In his name
Mary
wow! I would never dream of doing that...
To Joyisgod
that's a really nice way of looking at it....the rib thing...makes us equal.....i like it
Pray for me
God bless
i first heard about the book here on the site... never read it though....
ill be sure to ask the person to check his sources next time.... i guess that's no reliable source lol
take care and God bless
Anyway, I simply forgot to say B.C.E during an oral presentation and said B.C., and she decided to interrupt my presentation just to correct me – and I just thought that was quite rude and disrespectful, so I said “oh sorry, I mean Before Christ’s Era…” No one found it funny, but I thought it was pretty good hehe
CrazyCopt, Don’t let him get away with it. I tell you why; people like that have their one-liners against Christianity which they cant properly back up - probably because theyve heard it from their uncles mum's dog's sister's cat's uncle's monkey. Like my teacher with her one-liner on Biblical contradictions. The fact of the matter is, these people are throwing around their one-liners everywhere they go. Some listeners are stupid and take what they say at face value, and adopt it as their own one-liner to chuck around – such that you have this chain reaction, where ignoramuses get duped and start duping their brethren ignoramuses by unsubstantiable one-liners.
If you put this person on the spot, and keep digging it in that their comment cannot be properly substantiated by any credibile or authoritative source, then you have crushed their one-liner, and prevented further chain reactions. This may make them think twice about things they might decide to say in the future, or it may lead them to just resort to a another one-liner. Your job is to crush the one-liners, until it finally hits them that they are desparate and their agenda is futile. Amen and Amen.
Cheers,
Fadi
The problem is sometimes he gets too theological on me, ranting on about stuff i'm not too sure of... when he starts to say something he takes a reallllllyyyyyyy long time to get the point (i remember a few times our conversation was 2hrs long [all of which occur over MSN]- and he was just getting to the point), at the end i forget what we're talking about... the problem is i have no time to sit and listen to his balbing and talk back because, as i'm sure most of us here can relate, i'm still in school studying, and the univeristy life here doesnt allow for time-wasting...
Anyways, should we debate again (which i know we unfortunately will) i'll keep in mind what you said and 'shut him off' before he can make less sense than he already does...
take care and God bless