Bible
If believing the bible as the sole source of truth makes one a Christian, then by pure logic and common sense, the followers of Christ when He was on this earth, including His original 12 apostles, were all non-Christians. Take a minute to think how absurd that sounds.
One strong bias that the anti-Mormon authors of books, pamphlets, and videos have is their position that the scriptures known as the Bible is all God has ever declared to mankind. They claim that it is completely accurate, error less, and infallible. Some of them actually raise the status of the Bible equal to that of God, and actually worship it as such.What does The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, believe in? Mormons believe in the Bible, and treat it as the Word of God. The Mormons read it, study it, and accept it as Holy Scripture. But……..Mormons believe that the scriptures were written by men, translated be men, and that we interpret them as men. The scriptures are a mixture of the divine and the human mind. Mormons do not believe that any scripture is perfect…..including the Book of Mormon.
Mormons are not alone in this belief. This belief is also shared by many non-Mormon, knowledgeable, Bible scholars. Something to “Google” on a rainy day ;-) .
What I find most interesting is the fact that there are, in the English language alone, over twenty (20) different versions of the Bible, there may be more, but that was all I could find. See this non-Mormon site:
Now if you look up a particular verse, you may get a number of changes found from Bible to Bible. So which Bible is correct? (And who said that it was the correct Bible? ;-) )
The following examples will show that the existing text of the Authorized Version of the Bible shows many errors, contradictions, and confusing statements:
2 Kings 8:26 — Ahaziah began his reign at age 22
2 Chronicles 22:2 — he began at age 42
Matthew 27:5 — Judas died by hanging himself
Acts 1:18 — He fell burst open, and his bowels hushed forth.
Mark 15:25 — Jesus was crucified the third hour
Luke 3:23 — He was still before Pilot the sixth hour
1 Kings 4:26 — Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses
2 Chronicles 9:25 — He had only 4,000 stalls of horses
Mark 16:14-19 — The Ascension took place in a room
Luke 24:50-51 — It took place outdoors
James 1:13 — God tempts no man
Genesis 22:1 — God tempted Abraham
These are but a few of the many, many, differences that can be found in just one version of the Bible. I shudder to think of all the differences in all the 20+ Bibles in the English language!
Is it unchristian to believe that the Bible is infallible?
The Gutenberg press was not invented until the mid 1400’s, so all of the previous Bibles were written by hand and man, one book at a time. Doesn’t logic tell you that perhaps someone at some time made an error in transposing from one book to another?
Martin Luther is called the father of the Reformation. This is what one web site says of his translation of the Bible: Luther’s translation of the Bible
into the German vernacular, making it more accessible to ordinary people, had a tremendous impact on the church and on German culture. The translation also furthered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation,[5] and influenced the translation of the English King James Bible.
Does anyone really believe that Martin made NO mistakes in his translation? This is the same Martin Luther who took out some of the books in the Old Testament, because he didn’t believe that they belonged. But is Martin Luther unchristian because he had strong feelings against certain books of the Bible that he thought weren’t worthy of being in the canon of scripture? Is Martin Luther unchristian because, as a monk in the Catholic Church, he was ex-communicated and therefore went out and started his own church? Even Martin Luther, father of the Reformation and Lutheranism, didn’t believe that the Bible was without error.
Nowhere does the Bible claim to be infallible. To say that the Bible is infallible, means that your interpretation of the Bible is infallible, which is very close to saying that you are infallible.
Today, many Christian churches have a different number of books in their canon, which says that the problem of canonical has not yet been solved.
The Bible itself lists several books that are not in the Bible today. Here is a short list of some of them - there are many more:
Book of the Covenant (Exodus 24:7)
Book of Enoch (Jude 14)
Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
Book of Statues (1 Samuel 10:25)
Book of Jasher ( Joshua 10:13 )
Interesting that both the Book of Jasher and the Book of Enoch have been found since our modern Bible was canonized. Simply “Google” Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch for some interesting reading.
Finally, the Bible never declares itself complete or infallible. Never. But if the Bible is as complete and infallible as the anti-Mormons claim it to be, why hasn’t it lead to a oneness of mind, a oneness of religious beliefs?
What is your true object of worship? I don’t believe that you can worship God and the Bible. Truth comes from one source, and I believe that one source to be God the Father.
The Bible does not have to be infallible to get its message across.
[...] Bible [...]
Changes in the Book of Mormon… « This I believe…….
March 4, 2008
Hello,
The Bible does claim to be the inspired word of God, and it does claim infallibility. Psalm 119:160 says, “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever.”
You are right that there are hundreds of translations in English, and thousands of translations in hundreds of other languages. Are they all perfect? Of course not, and no one claimed they are. God inspired the original authors, and the original documents are perfect. If you don’t like any of the translations, you can learn Greek, and you can read manuscripts of the New Testament from less than a century after it was written, in the original language.
The question is not so much are there mistakes in translation, but are the Greek manuscripts from as early as 125 A.D. accurate? If someone wrote a recipe, and hand wrote 20 copies of it, and then each of the copies was copied 20 times, there would be 420 copies of the original recipe. If the original were lost, and someone wanted to recreate it, they could examine the copies. While there might be a few misspelled words in a certain percentage of them, it would be easy to determine what the original recipe said, if any care at all were taken in the copying process. If someone wanted to change their copy, they could try to do that, but it would be easy to reject it as a fake.
There are answers for all of the objections you raised, and those aren’t even interesting objections. Some of them are even silly, and not contradictions at all. A couple of websites you can look through (if you really care to see an explanation) are: http://drdino.com/articles.php?cat=15 and http://www.carm.org/bible_difficulties.htm
The first thing Satan did to Eve in Genesis 3:1 was to cause her to doubt what God said to her. What standard do you use to judge whether Joseph Smith was really a prophet? The irreconcilable differences between Joseph Smith and the Bible should cause people to reject Joseph Smith–not the Bible.
Thanks,
Bill
billphillips
March 10, 2008
Bill,
The verse you quote in Psalm is correct - The Lord’s word is true….everything that He said was true. But not necessarily all that was written by man into the Bible is true. Again, during Christ’s sojourn on this earth, and during his Apostle’s sojourn on this earth, there was no Bible. The Bible was compiled years after the death of Christ and His Apostles..by men with good intentions, but still men nevertheless. How do you account for the missing books that are mentioned in the Bible? How do you account for Martin Luther rejecting books that were in the Catholic bible? Did Christ tell him to do so? How do you account for the many different interpretations of the Bible found on the earth today, and subsequently we have hundreds of different denominations all claiming to have the correct interpretation? That to me is reason enough to believe that there is much confusion in the Christian world today.
I love the Bible…I study the Bible, but I don’t believe that it is infallible, and I still don’t see where it says that it is indeed infallible….not in any plain language. You and I can interpret all day long, but that will not make our interpretation any more correct.
“Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secrets unto his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7
That is why I am thankful that we have a living prophet on the earth today to guide and direct us.
Thanks,
jp
ifokus
March 10, 2008
JP,
The Bible is inspired by God. Inspiration means that God, through the Holy Spirit, caused the writers of the Bible to write the accurate and authoritative revelation of God. It is God breathed (2 Tim. 3:16) through the instrumentation of the apostles and prophets (2 Pet. 1:21). The Bible is the word of God, and as Psalm 119:160 says, all His words are true. As a Mormon, you certainly believe in miracles and the supernatural. Why do you think God gave us such a messed up Bible? Why couldn’t He preserve His Word? Either you believe the Bible is messed up, and God blew it, or it was never the Word of God in the first place.
Everything you say about the Bible being compiled by men is true about LDS scripture. You reject the Bible as being infallible, because the LDS church says it’s fallible. If they said anything other than that, Mormonism would crumble, because it’s clearly unbiblical. The Bible is the Word of God or it’s not. Why can God get the Book of Mormon to you intact, but be unable to get the Bible to you intact?
The New Testament was completely finished by 100 A.D. The Old Testament was finished by about 700 B.C. So it’s just not true that the early church and Jesus had nothing to go on. Jesus quoted the Old Testament extensively. The Bible was in it’s accepted form very early.
Why did Martin Luther take out the apocrypha? The same reason that if someone gave me a quad I would take out the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price and D&C. It’s from a religion that I reject, just as the apocrypha was from a religion that Martin Luther rejected. We aren’t reliant on the Catholic church to determine the canon of Scripture. We have manuscripts of the New Testament that long predate the Catholic church.
While there are hundreds of denominations, all Christians believe the following 5 things:
1. Jesus is both God and man (John 1:1,14; 8:24; Col. 2:9; 1 John 4:1-4).
2. Jesus rose from the dead physically (John 2:19-21; 1 Cor. 15:14).
3. Salvation is by grace through faith (Rom. 5:1; Eph. 2:8-9; Gal. 3:1-2; 5:1-4).
4. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus according to the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4; Gal. 1:8-9).
5. There is only one God (Exodus 20:3; Isaiah 43:10; 44:6,8)
We can disagree on modes of baptism, what to sing and how long the pastor should preach. But Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Assembly of God, etc. all believe those 5 things. I would ask the same thing about Mormonism. Why is the SLC branch of Mormonism more correct than any other branch?
How do you test to see if your prophet is correct? The Bible says the standard for a prophet foretelling the future is perfection (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)? Are you aware that your prophets fail that test miserably (D&C 84:2-5,31)? What if one prophet says, “Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 3, p. 266), and down the line they change their mind? What do you do? How do you know which one is right?
From what I understand, Mormons believe the Father is Elohim, and Jesus is Jehovah. The problem with that is that the Bible is so clear that there is only one God (Isaiah 43:10), and it also says Jehovah is Elohim (Deuteronomy 4:35). You’re betting your eternity that the Bible truly is not only incorrect, but totally screwed up. The first of the ten commandments is that you will have no other gods before Jehovah (which Mormons believe to be Jesus). Do you place the Father before Jesus? Do you pray to the Father, or just to Jesus? If you pray to the Father, you’re breaking the first commandment, and you’re doing so unrepentantly. The Bible makes it clear that the consequences for idolatry is eternity in hell (Revelation 21:8). You better hope and pray that the Bible doesn’t just have a few mistranslations, typos, or missing books, but is totally ruined.
Please think about this. Your entrusting your eternity to the reliability of Joseph Smith.
Thanks,
Bill
billphillips
March 11, 2008