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If God was real (just go with it), then how he's portrayed in the Bible might not even be how he actually is. (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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If God, Jesus, the devil, angels, and demons were all real, we still couldn’t rely on the Christian Bible as gospal (pun intended) — it was written by humans, specifically men, who could have misunderstood or invented things. Think of it like the Snyderverse in Man of Steel: Superman is portrayed as a brooding, violent character — but that’s not his true nature. In Batman v Superman, Batman is straight-up killing people — also not his normal characterization.

So even if much of the Bible reflects real events or real beings, parts of it could still be distorted, exaggerated, or entirely made up by the people who wrote it down.

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[–] 7 points 1 year ago (17 children)

If God is real and we believe that God has the ability to interact with this world I don't think it's a stretch to think He could divinely inspire writers to write His word and to divinely inspire librarians and conservators to keep the Bible as He intended it.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    If that's what he's doing, he apparently decided to divinely inspire 6-7 major textual families of the Bible instead.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Even the Bible has been slightly altered by man though. For instance, a few of the books written in Paul’s name we know now were actually written by some of people under him from within the early church.

    So the sections written about women not holding authority within the church may have been put in there to centralize power and make the church have a patriarchal structure.

    There’s also the different translations of the Bible which can affect the meaning for some of the text. For instance the Adam and Eve story. Adam means earth in Hebrew, it was not a name. So the person we know as Adam, was created male and then personally chose to identify as male, rather than being given his gender by God. The same for Eve as well being the first woman, although IIRC Eve was her name. Still she chose to identity as the first woman.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Yeah, and there are a bunch of different translations. I know Catholics and Orthodox Christians also include different books in the Bible. I do think it's possible to view it as a living document. What is included/how it is translated is what is needed at the time.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

    That makes a lot of sense; I’m curious now what are some of the big differences between the Orthodox and Catholic versions of the Bible. I agree that the Bible can be viewed as a living document. Personally I believe more books could have been added on over the past 2,000 years.

    That makes sense as well. Take the King James Version for example which removed references of criticism about the monarchy and papal authority. Although surprisingly was still centered on presenting the Bible without a religious or political lean one way or another.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    If you’re interested, there is actually a sequal to the bible called the quran. I haven’t examined it enough to give some examples unfortunately, but I know they share some same characters and stories. What I can’t stand about the bible is Paul’s writings and I wish they would be under more scrutiny.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think it could be worth doing a class on the text of the Quran at some point. I’m aware of some small things such as a deeper focus on the rituals of prayer and worship, but I’m not aware of the specifics of the text.

    They really should be, those writings attributed to Paul really go off base from what Jesus was teaching.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Surah 3 (chapter of quran) discusses the birth if Jesus and the the prophets before, who were given Torah and the other revelations. As I’ve understood they are considered true and from the same divine source, however have been muddied over time and hence the last and complete revelation is needed and given via the prophet Mohammed.

    Then after his death, people were divided between whether to follow his divine bloodline (Shia) or his way of life (Sunnah) and they tried to capture all information about his life and teachings which were not in Quran (Hadith). The 5 daily prayers for example are not explicitly mentioned in the quran.

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