I always laugh at morons who go around "quoting" Jesus. What they're really quoting are secondary sources' (at best) stories about events that (supposedly) occured 30-70 years earlier. What a fucking joke.
yep... if you look at the "alternative" bible verses, you will find that there are many, many different translations. for instance... take the 23 Psalm, my favorite bible verse, btw (very poetic ): these are just a few of the many different versions... A Psalm of David. The LORD [is] my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. – <CITE style="FONT-STYLE: normal">King James Version.</CITE> A song of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Even when I walk in the valley of Darkness, I will fear no evil for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff – they comfort me. You set a table before me in the presence of my adversaries; You anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. May only goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days. – <CITE style="FONT-STYLE: normal">Judaica Press.</CITE> The title of the two and twentithe salm. `The salm, ether the song of Dauid. The Lord gouerneth me, and no thing schal faile to me; in the place of pasture there he hath set me. He nurschide me on the watir of refreischyng; he conuertide my soule. He ledde me forth on the pathis of riytfulnesse; for his name. For whi thouy Y schal go in the myddis of schadewe of deeth; Y schal not drede yuels, for thou art with me. Thi yerde and thi staf; tho han coumfortid me. Thou hast maad redi a boord in my siyt; ayens hem that troblen me. Thou hast maad fat myn heed with oyle; and my cuppe, `fillinge greetli, is ful cleer. And thi merci schal sue me; in alle the daies of my lijf. And that Y dwelle in the hows of the Lord; in to the lengthe of daies. – <CITE style="FONT-STYLE: normal">Wyclif Bible, 14th Century, in which it is Psalm 22.</CITE> The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment: He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. Thou hast prepared a table before me, against them that afflict me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice) which inebriateth me, how goodly is it! And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord unto length of days. – <CITE style="FONT-STYLE: normal">Douay-Rheims Bible, in which it is Psalm 22.</CITE> ^ from wikipedia (search 23 Psalm) Then here's a modern day version: Your hands Reached into the depths of darkness Your arms Pulled me to the light above Your voice Spoke the word that broke my heart Your eyes Burn with holy passion, fire, and love You lead Me beside the quiet waters You walk In the shadows of deaths darkened door You make Tables right before my enemies You take oil and then you pour it over me The Lord is my Shepherd, I will fear no evil You are my Shepherd, God,I will fear no evil Surely goodness and mercy cover me All the days of my life they cover me Surely Im going to dwell in the house of the Lord Forever and ever and ever and ever more You are my refuge, You are my refuge O God http://www.gettherhythm.com/j/jason_upton/psalm_23.html
of course everything in the Bible isnt going to be exactly correct word for word. no i didnt live in the time era of Jesus and no, i wasnt there to listen to his teachings and hear what he had to say. sure, there are probably many "misquotes" not only about what Jesus said, but other texts in the Bible. though, its more than enough for me to know that the Bible is inspired by the Word of God. its not necessarily exactly what words Jesus says in the Bible, but the message behind it; thats all that matters!
Jesus doesn't even have to be real for me to believe in Him. Made up, real- it doesn't matter. If Jesus was a concept or a person it doesn't matter to me. I believe in it.
im sure there are the same messages portrayed not only in other religious texts, but everywhere else in the world today. the only difference is that only one of them is inspired by the Word of God!
If it is written by man, how are you so sure that it comes from the mouth of god? We cannot see his lips move, we cannot hear his voice, we cannot call him up on the telephone, we have to take someone else's word for it. In court, one is innocent until proven guilty... If we put this theory to the test, you will find plenty of "reasonable doubt". IF, if we put god on trial, we would find his existent to be of doubt... even a little bit of doubt in the courtroom gets you aquitted. Therefore, if as the bible says, we are to follow the laws of our land, then we cannot accept the bible as "fact".
I would contend that none of them are the inspiried word of God. No evidence to suggest that it is. The God of Abraham is not even a peace loving kind of guy. But hey, keep picking that Bible apart if it makes you happy. I am long done with those days. Thank Mr. Deity for that! Yeah, God is God and God is Satan. Wraps everything up into a neat little package to defend against the assault of logic and reason. What is more reasonable to conclude... 1) God was bored so he told a lot of people his message so they would write it down in books, but then he decides that is not efficient. Why should everyone on Earth have access to such wisdom? No, that makes no sense. Instead I will inspire only one book from now on, and the rest will simply be plagiarism. I will call this book the Bible and give it to my favorite people in the world, the Jews. So God does and he sets up a system that is designed to fail because he has a great sense of humor. Years go by and he decides to send the Messiah he has been promising, the man who will do away with the designed-to-fail system God set up in the first place. So, God sends Christ down to Earth and during his life makes sure he never writes anything, and no one who is with him pens the history either. That just would not make sense. Christ does what he came to do, and X amount of years after the fact, people finally decide to write about it, because God finally lets them. God finally has his book! A few thousand years in the making, it is pretty awesome. Of course, it is not complete yet. No way! That would not be efficient. So instead, many people from the early Christian church decide to put their own Bibles together. You have some people sticking Luke in there, it being the only Gospel, others do not like that so they add this or that, and others take a completely different approach. God sits by and watches, confident that one day, his book that is present will finally be assembled... If only, if only God could do something about it? Oh! Enter Constantine, God leads him to many victories so that this Emperor can order a council be assembled, that would bring an end to the debate that is raging inside the Christian "Church". He gives them one edict, to assemble a book that all can agree with that defines the religion, so there are no more splinter cells and branch offs, so that Christianity is united! Of course, God is actually the one who made these people choose the books they chose (some of the books in the Bible we all know and love were excluded from the early version) and finally! After so many years! The inspired word of God is finally assembled and put together! There is much rejoicing in the land. Years later, Christianity is fractured, more than ever. Denomination wages war against denomination, new books are added, others are taken away. All of course, inspired by God, right? Or, do we pick and choose which events in the history of the Church were actually inspired by God? The inquisition obviously was not, even though the God of Abraham did worse things throughout the OT... Yeah, let us pick and choose. Of course, we will not all agree on what to pick and choose, but it seems to be the preferred method. After all, since God slapped his book together, he has decided that he does not need to talk to us anymore. No new revelations are coming, none are obviously needed! Of course, then God decided to talk to a man in a cave, and God told that man that the revelations he were to receive were the final ones, nothing else is coming. But hey, what do the Muslims know, right? They obviously got it all wrong. *shakes his head* or 2) People throughout history did something dangerous, something never before seen, something so shocking and unbelievable that it could not ever have possibly happened! They used logic and reason to answer certain moral questions and arrived at the same answer. This happened over and over again, as different groups of people who had little to no contact with each other, came up with the same ideas. Some of it could have even been something as shockingly impossible as plagiarism. People used these insights as religious messages from their God, over and over again, it gets added to different philosophy, different religion. In the end what do we have but a collection of books, written by people, who used their brains to pen the words we read. No God said anything to them. No divine being whispered the secrets of the universe into their ear. No almighty creator imposed upon us his will, ignoring our own that we supposedly have. Yeah, I think I will go with option number two as the more likely of things to have happened.
We are God so if we wrote it- it's still the word of God, just a pathetic version of Him at times but others quite amazing. As limited and imperfect forms I don't think it's all correct. But we have the power of reason to decide what is and what isn't. It's easy to shoot the idea of God out of the air using the Bible as a reference. But when that isn't the only idea of God, you have some work cut out for you. You cannot keep pointing to the God of Abraham as the proof of non-existance with me. The God of Abraham was a representation of a powerful individual in my eyes, but by no means all of reality. At most it was just a story with a message. Still I believe in the message because I can view it how I please. Ya, I tend to cut out the things I don't like and leave what I do in a fable. Call me crazy.
Of course you can view it as you please. lol, what does that mean? Nothing other than people tear the Bible apart until they find a message in it that they can agree with. You know, if I really wanted to, and was trying really hard to look for something specific, I could find it in any book ever written. It is not hard to find what you're looking for when you're willing to interpret anything as being what it is you seek. "The cat hates dogs" <-- Well, if I really wanted to I could use this as a message for justifying racial prejudices in humans. It does not say that, it does not even come close to suggesting anything like that, but I can take whatever I want from that message. Does it mean I have found some awesome insight? No. Does it mean that I have found truth? Of course not. All it means is that, I wanted to believe something and gave myself an excuse to do so. I am not trying to disprove God, at least not the concept. That cannot be done, no more than someone can prove the concept. The God of Abraham is a fairy tale however, and I can prove that, as much as anyone can prove that Osiris is a fairy tale. As for the, we are God, stuff... I do not buy it. God got bored, so he made the universe and everything in it, with himself, so that he can play out a boring game of life. Seems very human to me, as all Gods seem. Perfect beings are not fragile and weak minded. All-powerful beings are not monkeys with magic. I could of course be wrong about that, but if I were to find out that God was as flawed as all of us, I would be very disappointed, and I would not be able to call such a being, God. No matter how much power he had at his command.
there really isnt much to say in response to you, liquid. i will, though, say this: christianity is not confined to the texts of the Bible or even the quotes of Jesus Himself. it is an experience; it is a journey. i suppose we should pay our dues to the enlightenment thread, because this is really what its all about. once you have reached this "enlightenmnt", everything from the Bible, including what Jesus had to say (regardless if its exactly word for word), will all make sense in ways you did not previously think possible. all christians can really do is hope that everyone becomes part of this beautiful spiritual enlightenment; a process that is needed activation before any kind of revelation begins. im not sure if that makes any sense at all, i apologize.
There's my beef with organized religion. The followers who attempt to push their faith on others. Like has been said many times, I like Christ as a concept, it's just Christians I can't stand.
alright alright. no need to get defensive. geheheeheehee. ah great. another one of those debates started up... heh, was there a need to be defensive after all? or was being defensive a contributor to the ensuing conflict of delivered perspectives? free your minds people. you can agree. though... http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fDp7pkEcJVQ you gotta laugh at us really.
ionno, i believe in a higher power...but i see each religion as a different way to hustle people. basically they're just con artists to me. but im drunk.