Evolution of the bible

Sorry these answers are so brief. I have learned from experience that if you throw up something that serves as a lesson in historiagraphy, you get ignored and mired down in tangents. So tabloid answers for you!

Kipperhell wrote: »

Depending on when and where you are born the bible is different. So how can people claim this is the word a god. It seems to be the policy document of an organisation.

Undeniably, it has been used as a policy document (or more like a policy weapon) by institutions but the Bible that you buy from any bookseller (I'm a big fan of the TNIV) is pretty much universal and based on very early and widespread manuscripts. There is a phenomenally strong lineage back to the early decades of the texts' existence. (That doesn't mean that it's true, but it means the Bible is true to what the authors meant to write... )

Kipperhell wrote: »

1) At what point did god stop interfering directly in the affairs of man? One minute he is talking to Adam and killing first born children then he just stops directly interacting

It is the belief of Christianity that he never stopped being passionately involved. I mean, that is what Christmas is- the invasion of finite time by the infinite God. Pretty cool to think about, even if you are sceptical of it.

Kipperhell wrote: »

2)God has a lot of vengeance and then his son comes along preaching forgiveness. This just simply doesn't seem to add up.

I can't give you a one sentence summation on that one cos you do highlight a real issue that any serious Christian struggles with. His Son, however, talks about hell more than anyone else in the Bible and is pretty clear that while forgiveness is offered to everyone, it's an offer people need to take seriously. All I can say is that I think the picture presented of God is a lot less like the grandad in those Werther Original ads than many of us have been presented with and so the problem you highlight is somewhat diminished when you consider his personality in all its dimensions.

But forgive me for the scant response.

Kipperhell wrote: »

3) The ages of early man with Adam living so long

I think the first 11 chapters of Genesis are often mis-interpreted by Biblical fundamentalists but most people are able to see them in very clear terms as a kind of poetry answering fundamental questions of "Why" (not "how) and laying foundation stones for the rest of the Bible project, so to speak.

Kipperhell wrote: »

1)Saints: Do you really think all saints preformed miracles? The last Pope and Mother Teresa?

Roman Catholicism and some other denominations have this interpretation of saints, but interestingly, in the New Testament, saint is a word used to describe every Christian. Even the traditions that honour some special disciples as "saints", would understand the miracles to be performed by God, as far as I know.

Kipperhell wrote: »

2) Prayer: Why does a god need worship or what effectively is the point of prayer

Prayer is communication with God. The Bible paints this full-bodied picture of a God who desperately yearns for relationship with every single human. In plain terms, he likes us. He wants us to talk to him. Prayer, at base, is actually just this. It doesn't need to serve any utilitarian purpose.

Christianity doesn't think God needs worship. Worship, the word, means worth-full. So worship isn't some obedient duty we must coldly perform, but the natural bubbling over that happens when ever we come into contact with worthy things; be that a great restaurant or a brilliant movie or a beautiful girl that makes you laugh. We naturally praise the good things in our life. So it is meant to be with God.

Kipperhell wrote: »

3) Exclusionary views which most seem to have with the belief this is the only way to go are you are damned forever

Again, great point. I can't do it justice in a brief answer but my best effort would be to suggest that often we think of God and it bears no relationship to the God presented in the Bible, although we think it does. This God we imagine is like a Stepford God. You know the Stepford Wives movie? He always does what we like him to do, he never contradicts us or challenges us or puts us out. But by definition then he isn't God. Instead of being our Master, he is our servant. And I think the Christian idea of God might be a fantasy, but the Stepford God we often try to do business with is DEFINITELY a fantasy!

Kipperhell wrote: »

1) Does the bible claim earth is the centre of the universe?

No

Kipperhell wrote: »

2) Quite a few people seemed to be brought back to life so why is Jesus extra special.

Wow. Maybe one day I'll get to write a book on just this topic. Inadvertently you touch on what I think is one of the most interesting ideas in the whole of theology. But the New Testament doesn't think that Jesus "came back from the dead", but rather that he came back from life afterlife. Jesus wasn't resuscitated, he was resurrected. Between these two things there is a huge difference and maybe BC or PDN or some of the other Christians here can develop that idea for you, if you are interested.

Kipperhell wrote: »

3) [a]Why did God need his son to open the gates of heaven?

If God is perfectly pure, then as you see joked about in the movie Dogma, he by definition can't admit the imperfect into his presence. All of us have feckered up our lives or others at various points and Christians call this sin, which actually just means "missing the mark". But since God is the source of all life, eventually to be seperated from God means to be seperated from life. In a very real sense, the wages of sin is death. To make it possible for us to be reconciled with God, God himself came and moved into the neighbourhood in the form of Jesus. Jesus then lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died. He basically paid our cosmic debt in our place and so opened the way for us to have a restored relationship with God, to come to terms with ourselves and to have peace with others and with our wider environment.

Kipperhell wrote: »

It was always suggested they had a different opinion so Jesus took matters into his own hands.

I think you got this one wrong a little. The Bible from very early on in the Hebrew scriptures is hinting all over the gaff that Jesus was going to come to bring about the turning point.

Kipperhell wrote: »

4) The Son of god is god but there is only one god?

There is only one God. But this God is in three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. It's the old St. Patrick shamrock dealy.

Hope this helps.

There's actually 11 different questions in your OP, and some of them are 'biggies' that could easily deserve a thread in their own right.

Kipperhell wrote: »

The thing I don't get about the bible and faith in it is all to do with time.

It seems pretty well established that the bible new and old were written by many people over time. We also know that at points books were added and also taken away. It is then translated and translated and eventually certain versions were said to be final.

Now this seems pretty well established so here is where I have a problem. Depending on when and where you are born the bible is different. So how can people claim this is the word a god. It seems to be the policy document of an organisation.

When Christians say that they believe in the authority of the Bible it is important to understand what exactly we mean. A few people do actually mean that one particular English translation is, word-for-word, the Word of God - however such a view is, in the eyes of most Christian thinkers, plainly nonsense. Most theologians and Christian thinkers agree that was is inspired by God is the original text of the Old and New Testaments (the original autographs is the technical term) in Greek and Hebrew). This is why students in Seminary study Greek and Hebrew - no translation is absolutely perfect. The purpose of textual criticism is also to discover and emend any small copyist errors that might have crept into the manuscripts over the years, so that the text we work from today is as close as possible to the original autographs (although there is an incredible wealth of manuscripts from a very early age, no-one claims to actually possess the original copies).

Very early on in the Church's history, and in quite an informal way, Christian communities in different places (Palestine, Rome, Greece, North Africa etc) came to accept the same set of books as being Scripture. There were plenty of other Gospels and Epistles floating around, and here and there you might get a minority group trying to insert an extra book or take one away, but in fact there was rapid and widespread agreement as to which books were canonical. The organisation simply ratified what had already happened informally when it endorsed the 27 books of the New Testament as Scripture.

There is such a wealth of manuscript material that scholars are in agreement over the content of the original text of the vast majority (over 99.9%) of the Bible. Any disputes that remain, while fascinating to theologians, tend to be over minor details that in no way affect our understanding of the Bible in regards to any matter of faith.

While no translation is perfect, even someone who doesn't read Greek or Hebrew can, if they are interested, read commentaries that will tease out every possible shade of meaning of a particular Hebrew or Greek phrase.

At what point did god stop interfering directly in the affairs of man? One minute he is talking to Adam and killing first born children then he just stops directly interacting

I agree with Excelsior that God has never stopped intervening. That is why Christians believe in miracles. He certainly appears to do so less often, but maybe that is to be expected - just as a parent does less things for a child once they get older and learn to tie their own shoelaces etc. Also, part of growing up is learning to live with the consequences of our own actions without being rescued by our parents all the time.

God has a lot of vengeance and then his son comes along preaching forgiveness. This just simply doesn't seem to add up.

Sin is serious stuff - I think most of us, including Christians, treat it far too lightly. The Old Testament concentrates particularly on the seriousness of the consequences of sin, which needs to be judged. The New Testament declares that Jesus came to pay the penalty for sin on our behalf - therefore opening the way up for forgiveness and salvation.

Saints: Do you really think all saints preformed miracles? The last Pope and Mother Teresa?

I agree with Excelsior that every true Christian is, in the biblical sense, a saint. You would probably need to discuss this with a Catholic who believes that God has a set of 'first-class' Christians. I think Mother Theresa was a great woman who helped thousands of starving people. That, in my book, is a lot more important and special than whether she worked a miracle or not.

Prayer: Why does a god need worship or what effectively is the point of prayer

We need worship. Worship remind us of our need for God and helps us to avoid the kind of pride that leads us to treat others like dirt. It also encourages our faith in God's ability to help us and answer our prayers.

Exclusionary views which most seem to have with the belief this is the only way to go are you are damned forever

I know that today postmodernism has fostered the belief that truth is relative - but in fact the law of non-contradiction is still the basis for our understanding of truth. For example, in a court of law it is accepted that you cannot be in both your living room and at the scene of a bank robbery at one time, therefore we have the concept of an alibi, because the law of non-contradiction tells us that if you were actually at home then it was impossible to be at the bank robbery. The law of non-contradiction also applies to religion. If different religions make mutually exclusive claims (as they do) then they cannot all be true. It is not unreasonable to believe that one is true and the others are wrong. What is unreasonable is to force that belief onto others.

Does the bible claim earth is the centre of the universe?

No.

Quite a few people seemed to be brought back to life so why is Jesus extra special.

As Excelsior has said, others were resuscitated. They would still die eventually. Jesus was raised to life never to die again.

Why did God need his son to open the gates of heaven? It was always suggested they had a different opinion so Jesus took matters into his own hands.

The entrance fee into heaven was perfection. No human that ever lived made perfection, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus lived a sinless life and opened the gates of heaven, not just for Himself but for all that will place their faith in him.

The Son of god is god but there is only one god?

The Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three Persons in one Godhead. I could expand, but the whole thread would be derailed petty rapidly and it has been discussed in other threads recently.

I realise these answers may well raise a whole lot of extra questions, but others will have to answer them as I'm flying off to Cameroon, West Africa this afternoon for a week of preaching and teaching. Have fun!