One of the many problems I have had with the bible as being the word of God is that it being written in the manner that it is written, makes it subject to human interpretations, and can be easily changed and manipulated in many different ways. The first place where it is vulnerable is in the transcribing of the scriptures from oral traditions to the written word.
When the bible was first put down in writing it was subject to human error in the transmission of the words, the scribes own biases or beliefs as to what the passages he was transcribing meant, and finally; the translation of the documents to other languages. There are so many ways in which the texts of the bible can have easily been changed and rewritten. Not to mention the councils that chose what which books were to be included in the bible itself.
Because the bible can be interpreted in so many ways I think that this is the very reason why we have so many Christian sects today. It is an eye opener to go to your local library or even do a search online and see exactly how many sects fall under the banner of Christianity. I believe that all of these sects are simply a testament to the confusion and disagreement among the churches as to what the bible is trying to say on certain matters.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations if you can't reach this link directly just copy and paste it to your browser and it will take you to the article I looked up for this blog post. According to wikipedia there are around 38,000 Christian sects! Now that is alot of interpretations of the same book according to each of these groups own understanding.
Biblical interpretation methods does nothing to help sort out all of this doctrinal confusion. There are several ways to interpret passages of scripture, most commonly there is the literal, the allegorical, and the metaphorical. There are others but just for the sake of illustration I have mentioned the above three, in closing the sheer number of Christians sects are a testament to how confused this whole bunch of believers are regarding god and all matters of religion.
Good article
ReplyDeleteThe total non-existence of harmony among Christians was one of the things that puzzled me most back during my days as a believer.
It's so great to finally understand why the whole belief system fails to achieve any cohesion: the entire bible is a big fat man made series of one line of B.S. followed by the next line of B.S.
THANKS, man. Love your stuff.
billybee
Can anyone tell me why can't they see the obvious? one supposed god, one belief??
ReplyDeleteLightning,(I meant poor ole god) burned a baptist church down to the ground close to where I live, and a methodist church was located just across the street, yet none of the baptists would attend the methodist church, the whole two years it took to build the new one back....talk about self-righteous, Holy Crap!
Of course they just built a new fancier church...duh. Now they're in line for another strike from god...lol
I agree, there are tons of Christians sects. and to be honest, I'd have to give you this one. I could see this as a big reason why people mistrust Christianity.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem with Biblical interpretation is 1) One uniform method. People should interpret books in the bible according to their genre.
2) It was written in many different cultures
3) Our own presumptions