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Originally Posted by OBW
Seems that the famous statement on inerrancy is much more detailed than that (and it sort of makes me want to puke).
We had a real John Bircher, er, I mean KJV only nut among us many years ago. She also claimed to have seen Witness Lee's "mantle" rise off of him and descend onto her. Let's just say that the number of tacos short of the metaphorical combination plate would leave you seriously hungry.
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That is rather humorous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
This whole "inspired" down to the precise word used thing is so insane. It is part of the source of the decoder-ring analysis of context-less fortune cookies rather than sound review of the narrative of a whole passage, which in some cases could be an entire epistle.
Unfortunately, even a lot of the grand themes of theology are partly derived in this manner. Truth is described in detailed doctrines that require a series of books to lay out in the whole (for one doctrine, not the sum of them).
I'm still interested in your take on what is the truth of the Bible. Seems that you have danced around it with isolated sayings and quotes by others who are not really answering that question. For me, the truth of the Bible is not so difficult. Neither is it a comprehensive answer to everything. It doesn't answer the age of the earth, or the number of generations of mankind on it. Neither does it describe scientific things in a manner that is satisfactory in the age of science and reason. But that is OK since that is not the purpose that I find in it.
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Interestingly enough, Greek manuscripts from the NT don’t have punctuation nor spaces so words are all run together such as: Iamnowhere This could be “I am no where” or “I am now here”. Even though educated Greeks wrote the NT manuscripts, people in that day spoke Aramaic so some words in Greek don’t work in Aramaic. Thus, you’re left wondering if maybe what they originally said was different. Of course, most of that doesn’t matter for the average person since we have as you noted a variety of translations to include the Greek interlinear. Thus, some textual scholars have gotten together and made a decision about the wording.
It may seem like I am dancing around as to “what do I believe” but some of it is intentional. When I started out this thread I noted an old paper (1977) where there were numerous articles starting with “The Truth Concerning….” so I titled this thread “The Truth” because of the irony of the articles which were written by many individuals many of us knew but were later kicked out e.g. James Ingalls etc. Max Rapoport wrote a glowing report, “The Truth about WL”, but he was later kicked out by WL.
We put so much into “what do you believe” and leave out the most important part---what are you doing about it? I only want to believe what I am acting on or only act on what I believe. Gandhi carried around his entire life the Sermon on the Mount but it was a living reality for him. From my perspective Jesus believed in the worth and dignity of every person as was demonstrated by his actions as well as justice, equity and compassion.
This is interesting but not necessarily relevant is that Jesus seems to have been educated in Greek although he spoke Aramaic. Why didn’t he write down his thoughts for the ages so there wouldn’t be this wrangling about who wrote what etc? It appears that Jesus thought he was bringing the Kingdom of God to the earth in his generation and the disciples and he would be ruling the kingdom. This is consistent with the idea of the Messiah in the Jewish writings. Thus, Jesus may not have seen the necessity. Paul seems to have thought the same thing about the kingdom based on his writings and actions but at least he left some writings.