Posted: September 22nd 2010
brian thomson www
You should also be aware that the Bible doesn’t simply contain “all the books”: there have been many different canons with different origins, over the years, the results of various discussions over what a “proper” Bible should contain or not. So, in one sense, the Bible on your nightstand is the product of various human-driven processes, subject to fashion and whim before being “closed”.
Posted: October 1st 2010
Eric_PK
I don’t see any way to know the intent of those who were in the path of the stories, so I have no opinion on whether any changes were deliberate or not.
If you have friends who like to tell stories, you know that the stories get embellished to improve them over time. The gospel stories (for example) were oral traditions for at least 30 years or so before they were written down, so it would be surprising if they didn’t get improved a bit as they were passed along, especially since people tend to remember things that conform with their worldview and forget the things that don’t.
Posted: October 1st 2010
SmartLX www
I think it contains false claims, but whether any of them are deliberately so from the perspective of its authors is harder to answer.
Despite the classical view that the Gospels for example were written by their namesake apostles, it’s now more commonly thought that most of the Bible was written second- or third-hand years or decades after any real events which may have formed a basis for the stories. Therefore, those who wrote the Bible were entitled to believe that what they were writing was true without having witnessed the events, and likely weren’t deliberately writing lies.
To view the question more simply, however, many of the claims were deliberately false (or, to put it more politely, fictional) when first concocted, even if people sincerely believed them later on. Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt? Someone, somewhere along the line, made that crap up.
Posted: September 30th 2010