arkon

Well that's another mistake in the bible IMO, If it had said, "let there be light" first and then he created all the crawly things and sky and dirt and oceans then, maybe that would have been more believable as the light he created could have been the big bang. The bible has it back to front, he creates everything and then makes light.

I I were a religious nutter I would sort of edit the bible a bit on the next editions and change the order of things to make it more believable.

esperanza

I'm pretty sure the creepy things that crawleth come after the light.

In fact day and night are at the beginning aren't they?

Edit: No, heaven and earth is first, then light, then day and night.

moneypenny20

When did hell appear?

Hutch

The first recorded mention of Slough was in 1196, but it wasn't officially annexed as hell until the town planners did a number on it in the post-war era.

northerner

You're on the money there Hutch LOL!

birdynumnum

gold star to you
xx

moneypenny20

You're obviously feeling mellow. Otherwise you would have mentioned Perth

esperanza

iPom

This is why there are several translations of the bible available for you scholarly types to check out in detail. It's quite common for one to say or infer a completely different story to another.

There's the Septuagint for example, which is the first translation from the Hebrew bible from the 2nd or 3rd C I think, and it's still used by the Greek church today, so if you're perusing 'true' religion, the Greeks have a fairly interesting line to follow.
In the 2nd C, there were two other versions of the bible translated to satisfy the Christian and Jewish lot... and then from that came the old latin, the Coptic, Amharic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic and the Persian....

And then, don't forget the Vulgate from the old Latin... I mean it just goes on and on.

Although many of the original documents are gone, many were translated and transmitted to us by hand copying of documents to preserve them. Those that did the copying of the original works were highly fastidious and based their whole livelihood on their work. Most of the stuff came from Koiné Greek, and there's a vast number of other books which still survive which are written in the same script, so it's fairly safe to say that scholars are able to be pretty sure what they say as the ability to translate Koiné Greek has existed for many years.

This is also why we have Aristotle's books and Plato's manuscripts in English today (although bear in mind Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' – Composed c. 380 B.C.; earliest available manuscripts are 1400 years later - and yes, I had to look that up)


There's criticism of the Old Testament here, but I should point out that most religions are based on the New Testament, not the old. However, the OT has many surviving books... I'm sure you know about the Dead Sea Scrolls for example, fragments of which survive.

Although 2000-3000 years for a historical manuscript (the bible) to be created is a long time and it seems like it could have been mucked around with in that time, you have to remember that it was written in a highly civilised time by people who knew what they were doing.

The chinese whispers thing mentioned here also is dubious. This does not happen with written texts. If you take a document to one typist, then another, then another, to be copied, there's a good chance that after 20 or 30 copyings of said manuscripts, there will still be no significant change.
Biblical manuscripts do differ with punctuation and some spelling but the actual doctrine of the biblical manuscripts does not and what you read in the bible is not so far removed from what was originally written.. probably only 4-5 generations. I'm sure you have family stories which have survived longer than that intact.

What is more an issue with the bible is that the King James version, for example, might have been peachy to understand in 1611, but in 2007, it's a bit more tricky and this is why new versions come out all the time.

The bible also was never formed into chapters and verses - I think that came in around 1500 or somewhere, and this gives people the ability to take things out of context or pick and choose what they want to tell.... not always a good thing.
However, Arkon has found out, it breaks it up into more manageable chunks!

And that is what you get for being a vicar's kid.

Enjoy your book, Arkon.

arkon

Well if I could find my old books I had as a kid, "Plop the owl that was afraid of the dark" or "Stig of the dump", I'd rather read them, much more realistic and just as likely to be true.

iPom

I have a copy of Stig if you'd like to send me your address.

Wol

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough...

iPom

Why stop at Slough?

Wol

I used to share a pad in Slough in around 1963 - and it was a dump then! I suppose that now, it's a multicultural dump...

esperanza

Haven't you been doing your homework!?

The chinese whispers effect would happen through translation between different languages though- even the interpretation of one language is ambiguous enough. As for the family stories, my elderly relatives could never agree on what happened when they were younger, let alone several generations back! But maybe that's just my family...

I did find this quite interesting, from a sure about a evolution v creation courtcase in 1925 USA, it summarises some of of the various creation stories & interpretations:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...pes/gen1st.htm

(And yes I have given it a lot of thought today, but I had very little else to do and I think it's quite interesting! Besides, my brain needs a workout every now and then and it certainly won't get one at work this week...)