Here's a terrific Newsweek piece, "BIble: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." Lengthy, and well worth reading. But be warned, Christians.
You'll never be able to believe in the divine inerrancy, or even historical accuracy, of the Bible after being exposed to Kurt Eichenwald's review of how the Bible -- especially the New Testament -- was cobbled together in distinctly flawed human ways.
Not surprisingly, a quick review of the over 2,000 comments on the online article reveals that fundamentalist Christians refuse to accept the scholarly reality discussed by Eichenwald.
Here's a get real response I liked.
I don't understand all the Christians complaining about this article unless they have never read a book in their life except the bible. 22 years in ministry, degrees in ancient literature, a seminary degree and a law degree and everything in this article was taught at my conservative seminary!
The problem is most pastors realize that if they tell their congregation the truth, their mythology bubble will be burst and they will stop providing money to pay their salary and for that big building they like to preach in.
Most Christians have never examined their faith critically, never dealt with real doubts and never read the bible for what it actually says. To avoid cognitive dissonance Christians, of the fundamentalist variety, tend to bury their heads in the sand rather than deal with the difficult questions.
For me, I have a much stronger faith knowing the truths mentioned in this article, than walking along believing the mythology I was force fed as a child. Grow up fundies and read what your bible actually says!
Here's some passages from the article that will give you a flavor for it. I just wish "BIble: So Misunderstood It's a Sin" was required reading for every Christian who wrongly believes the Bible is the word of God.
But once again, the verses came from a creative scribe long after the Gospel of Mark was written. In fact, the earliest versions of Mark stop at 16:8. It’s an awkward ending, with three women who have gone to the tomb where Jesus was laid after the Crucifixion encountering a man who tells them to let the disciples know that the resurrected Jesus will see them in Galilee. The women flee the tomb, and “neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.”
In early copies of the original Greek writings, that’s it. The 12 verses that follow in modern Bibles—Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene and the Disciples and then ascending to Heaven—are not there. A significant moment that would be hard to forget, one would think.
The same is true for other critical portions of the Bible, such as 1 John 5:7 (“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”); Luke 22:20 (“Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you”); and Luke 24:51 (“And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven”).
These first appeared in manuscripts used by the translators who created the King James Bible, but are not in the Greek copies from hundreds of years earlier.
These are not the only parts of the Bible that appear to have been added much later. There are many, many more—in fact, far more than can be explored without filling up the next several issues of Newsweek.
... By translating the same word different ways, these modern Bibles are adding a bit of linguistic support to the idea that the people who knew Jesus understood him to be God. In other words, with a little translational trickery, a fundamental tenet of Christianity—that Jesus is God—was reinforced in the Bible, even in places where it directly contradicts the rest of the verse.
...Which raises a big issue for Christians: the Trinity—the belief that Jesus and God are the same and, with the Holy Spirit, are a single entity—is a fundamental, yet deeply confusing, tenet. So where does the clear declaration of God and Jesus as part of a triumvirate appear in the Greek manuscripts?
Nowhere. And in that deception lies a story of mass killings.
...Why would God, in conveying his message to the world, speak in whispers and riddles? It seems nonsensical, but the belief that he refused to convey a clear message has led to the slaughter of many thousands of Christians by Christians. In fact, Christians are believed to have massacred more followers of Jesus than any other group or nation.
Those who believed in the Trinity butchered Christians who didn’t. Groups who believed Jesus was two entities—God and man—killed those who thought Jesus was merely flesh and blood. Some felt certain God inspired Old Testament Scriptures, others were convinced they were the product of a different, evil God. Some believed the Crucifixion brought salvation to humankind, others insisted it didn’t, and still others believed Jesus wasn’t crucified.
Indeed, for hundreds of years after the death of Jesus, groups adopted radically conflicting writings about the details of his life and the meaning of his ministry, and murdered those who disagreed. For many centuries, Christianity was first a battle of books and then a battle of blood. The reason, in large part, was that there were no universally accepted manuscripts that set out what it meant to be a Christian, so most sects had their own gospels.
...And then, in the early 300s, Emperor Constantine of Rome declared he had become follower of Jesus, ended his empire’s persecution of Christians and set out to reconcile the disputes among the sects.
Constantine was a brutal sociopath who murdered his eldest son, decapitated his brother-in-law and killed his wife by boiling her alive, and that was after he proclaimed that he had converted from worshipping the sun god to being a Christian. Yet he also changed the course of Christian history, ultimately influencing which books made it into the New Testament.
...About 50 years later, in A.D. 381, the Romans held another meeting, this time in Constantinople. There, a new agreement was reached—Jesus wasn’t two, he was now three—Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Nicene Creed was rewritten, and those who refused to sign the statement were banished, and another wholesale slaughter began, this time of those who rejected the Trinity, a concept that is nowhere in the original Greek manuscripts and is often contradicted by it.
...So yes, there is one verse in Romans about homosexuality…and there are eight verses condemning those who criticize the government. In other words, all fundamentalist Christians who decry Obama have sinned as much as they believe gay people have.
It doesn’t end there. In the same section of Romans that is arguably addressing homosexuality, Paul also condemns debating (all of Congress is damned?), being prideful, disobeying parents and deceiving people (yes, all of Congress is damned.) There is no bold print or underlining for the section dealing with homosexuality—Paul treats it as something as sinful as pride or debate.
...But the history, complexities and actual words of the Bible can’t be ignored just to line it up with what people want to believe, based simply on what friends and family and ministers tell them.
Nowhere in the Gospels or Acts of Epistles or Apocalypses does the New Testament say it is the inerrant word of God. It couldn’t—the people who authored each section had no idea they were composing the Christian Bible, and they were long dead before what they wrote was voted by members of political and theological committees to be the New Testament.
The Bible is a very human book. It was written, assembled, copied and translated by people.
That explains the flaws, the contradictions, and the theological disagreements in its pages. Once that is understood, it is possible to find out which parts of the Bible were not in the earliest Greek manuscripts, which are the bad translations, and what one book says in comparison to another, and then try to discern the message for yourself.
And embrace what modern Bible experts know to be the true sections of the New Testament. Jesus said, Don’t judge. He condemned those who pointed out the faults of others while ignoring their own. And he proclaimed, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”
That’s a good place to start.
Excelent post Brian, thank you..I to have never been able to take the Bible as the literal Word of G-D, but I had a strange encounter with the bible..I only always read it randomly, and largely out of a sense of duty, having been for so long involved with Eastern thinking I thought it only fair to give my own background some time...I picked up the book, after some time in prayer, and opened to Prophecy of Aggeus (Catholic Bible) page opened at chapter2 verse19...It read..Set your hearts from this day, 24th nineth month, from the day the foundations of the Lord were laid, and lay it up in your hearts...Well it so happened that, that very day was 24thnineth month..Coincidance? Maybe.. But as Sant Mat says..There are no coincidances in Sant Mat.
Posted by: june schlebusch | January 03, 2015 at 04:02 AM
This bible-debunking reminds me :
I came across Geoffrey Falk's Stripping the Gurus via your site (the link was posted in either one of your posts or perhaps in a comment).
While I enjoyed the book, I found it too, well, cavalier (not as in "not respectful enough", but as in "not researched enough and not thorough enough".
Not to run that book down, not in the least : it's a really great (and really courageous) beginning, but perhaps there'a need, a glaring need, for a comprehensive (and really well-researched and authoritative) work (researched in incontrovertible detail and depth) that examines all religions in detail and debunks them (provided the bases of those religions are suspect, as is likely, but of course it wouldn't be right to assert that a priori).
Let's see, who am I reminded of as someone who'd likely do a really great job in producing this potentially paradigm-challenging work? A certain Brian Hines come to mind! :-)
But of course, even if such incontrovertible proof were published, would the general thinking on religion be really affected? Would it really shake the world? I mean it SHOULD, of course, but WILL it? Somehow that part seems less sure, given the nature of faith.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 04, 2015 at 07:11 AM
provided the bases of those religions are suspect...
Aren't all religions "suspect", to say the least? Is there such thing as a religion that is not an expression of faith, i.e., based on the absence of credible evidence?
Posted by: x | January 04, 2015 at 12:37 PM
Aren’t all religions “suspect”, to say the least? Is there such thing as a religion that is not an expression of faith, i.e., based on the absence of credible evidence?
You’re absolutely right, x. All religions are most certainly suspect. No two ways about it!
Actually I was speaking in the context of this particular post. About taking the fight to the enemy, as it were. (The “enemy” here representing not just the loons who believe blindly, but also that portion of our own minds that fantasizes and hopes that just perhaps there’s something to all this. So the "enemy" is, generally speaking, just the adversary in this particular debate.)
One of the cornerstones of the Christian faith is the validity of the Bible as the word of God. Now obviously the whole concept of a Holy Bible is hokum (absent proof that it ISN’T hokum), and naturally the onus of proof for this lies squarely on the Bible worshipping loons, not on skeptics like us.
However, what Kurt Eichenwald has done is to take the fight to the camp of the Bible-worshipping crackpots, as it were, and examined one of their key assumptions. And, by proving that the Bible is no more than a mish-mash of writings cobbled together over time, debunked that key assumption, namely that Bible is directly the word of God. (To be very fair, and fully accurate, I did not myself click on and read that link myself. I’ve only read Brian’s post here, and I’m piggy-backing on Brian’s ‘expertise’ when I say all this, and assume he’s right when he says that this particular debunking has been conclusive and thorough.)
Another way to thus debunk the Bible would, I suppose, be to comprehensively list the whole bunch of factually incorrect as well as morally iffy proclamations within it, and then, basis that solid and incontrovertible background, ask what the odds are that ANYTHING within this work can be trusted absent outside proof.
This isn’t either-or, of course, to debunk the Bible you’d probably best do both, debunk the myth of its origin, as well as show the obvious errors within its contents.
And then, having conclusively demolished the validity of the Bible, you move on to debunk the other remaining cornerstones of the Christian faith.
Why do this? One doesn’t strictly need to, actually : you’re absolutely right, x, when you say (or imply) that the onus of proving that the Bible is a magic-book, and that Christianity is the One Magic Creed, is on those who buy into that magic. But one would do this for probably any (any one, or more than one, or perhaps all) of the reasons why one takes the trouble to write any seriously researched book (as opposed to simply settling the question to one’s own individual and personal satisfaction) : to influence other people (which immediately raises the question, why bother influencing other people—and the answer is that it’s cool if one doesn’t want that, and no need then to bother with this project, at least in so far as driven by this particular motivation) ; to conclusively settle the (Christian) religion question once and for all ; because the work itself will probably be of great interest to someone with a research-oriented mind and general inclination towards areas such as this ; and no doubt also for the money (perhaps even riches) and recognition (perhaps even fame and celebrity) that such a project, successfully undertaken, will hopefully bring in.
And I was saying (just thinking aloud) that perhaps someone would do this, rigorously and conclusively, for ALL religions, not just Christianity.
- - - - -
But then, even if someone did take the trouble to do all this, and managed to execute it flawlessly, would they still, at the end of it all, really cause the world to shudder and shake out of the religious stupor that has held it captive so long, and still holds so many so strongly?
Doubtful, given the nature of faith! To take the example of just the Christ-cult itself (the many different versions of the Christ-cult, that is) : First, I suppose this has already been done by different people at different times, to more or less degree (I’m not aware enough of such research, but it seems likely, at least with Christianity, that such debunking has already been done piecemeal if not exhaustively), and yet it’s not awoken those who refuse to stop dreaming. Also, believers have innovative ways of countering such research (even if/when conclusive) to their own loony selves, perhaps by saying that God moves in mysterious ways, and chooses to let his Word filter down to us fallible mortals in such roundabout ways (so that debunking the provenance of the Bible may well end up actually further cementing the faith of the faithful, who see a further miracle in the way God’s word is conveyed to us in bits and pieces, over centuries, or some circuitous nonsense like that).
And finally, should those who undertake this project dare to include within the ambit of their study that unique religion, that One religion that stands out head over shoulders for its exceptional sanity in a whole clutch of very sane religions, that religion which ironically takes its name from Peace, whose name actually MEANS “peace” (among other things) : well then, in that case, the faithful followers of the One True Prophet (Peace, paradoxically, Be Unto Him) would probably settle the question far more conclusively than mere words, whether spoken or written, ever can : via far more robust arguments like the sword, gun, bomb or suicide vest.
Have you read “Stripping the Gurus”, x? Just in case you haven’t, do try it out : you I’m sure will enjoy how he’s savaged (tried to, that is) the wise men who, across faiths, try to hand down the Truth (with capital T) to us. The ebook is available free online, just plug “Stripping the Gurus” into Google. I found it a wonderful concept, and a potentially MAJOR project, but executed very shoddily, and nowhere near fully exhaustively (or convincingly). Much too little actual research there, and it was all presented rather hysterically. I repeat, I’m not trying to run the book or its author down on here : on the contrary, I salute his idea and courage and effort. After all this was just one single man working alone, unassisted, over a few short months. But the idea of researching religion’s bases, taking the fight to the enemy, and (probably) debunking those bases (“probably”, I say, because we can’t in all fairness really assert this a priori without first doing that spade work) : that’s a HUGE idea and project, with potentially HUGE impact.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 05, 2015 at 04:43 AM
...that unique religion, that One religion that stands out head over shoulders for its exceptional sanity in a whole clutch of very sane religions, that religion which ironically takes its name from Peace, whose name actually MEANS “peace” (among other things) : well then, in that case, the faithful followers of the One True Prophet (Peace, paradoxically, Be Unto Him)
What are you referring to? Is there such a thing as a "sane" religion? Faith is a form of insanity, how ever venerated or tolerated, so do tell what the hell you're talking about.
Posted by: x | January 05, 2015 at 03:42 PM
...that unique religion, that One religion that stands out head over shoulders for its exceptional sanity in a whole clutch of very sane religions, that religion which ironically takes its name from Peace, whose name actually MEANS “peace” (among other things) : well then, in that case, the faithful followers of the One True Prophet (Peace, paradoxically, Be Unto Him)
What are you referring to? Is there such a thing as a "sane" religion? Faith is a form of insanity, how ever venerated or tolerated, so do tell what the hell you're talking about.
That was a lovely comment, x. You’ve got me ROFLOL!
The only thing that I’m undecided about, as I struggle to type while simultaneously rolling on the floor laughing out loud, is whether you’ve got a wicked sense of humor and I’m laughing at your wickedly straight-faced joke, or whether I’m laughing at you.
If the former, then the laugh’s on me! If the latter, then hint : Just re-read my earlier post a bit more carefully.
Poe’s Law at work! The law, taken literally, applies to fundamentalists ; but of course its application is far more general in practice, and it works just as well for fundamentalist-bashers : as you’ve so brilliantly demonstrated here.
Cheers!
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 08, 2015 at 05:32 AM