Tag: scripture

This Chapter Turned Stabby

~ AlienCG ~ Leave a comment

Judges Chapter 12

After Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, the Ephraimites were none too happy with him, so they told him so. After all, it was the second time now that they were excluded from the battlefield. Apparently they didn’t answer the call fast enough or something. Well, this turned a bit stabby, I would say.

5Then the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. Whenever one of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” When he said, “No,” 6they said to him, “Then say Shibboleth,” and he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty‐two thousand of the Ephraimites fell at that time.

Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 383). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

After Jephthah judged Israel for six years, he died and was buried at Gilead. He was followed by Ibzan who had thirty sons and thirty daughters who, if I read this accurately, he traded to another clan for thirty girls for his sons. This sounds like a movie, but with fewer brides and brothers. Then Elon (not that one) judged and died. Then Abdon ruled and…

14He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys; he judged Israel eight years.

Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 383). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Somehow I picture all these sons and grandsons on donkeys 24/7, never dismounting and walking in lockstep. I am looking at articles about humor in the Bible, because there’s has to be some in here, although it’s probably only funny if you were there. Anyway, that’s all for Chapter 12. The next few chapters deal with one of the more famous characters in this book…Hallelujah!

Who Wrote The Bible?

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This week, I am looking at an article from Answers In Genesis by Dr. Jason Lisle who is an Astrophysicist, but also believes in the young earth. He is tackling a question from a reader about how we’re supposed to know that the Bible was written by God.

Link: https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/a-question-of-authorship/

First, the Bible itself claims to be the inspired Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16). For some reason, many people seem to dismiss this as if such internal evidence doesn’t count.

https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/a-question-of-authorship/

Lisle uses the Bible itself to point to the authorship of the Bible. However, he cites 2 Timothy which is an issue all by itself. According to biblical scholars, Paul’s letters to Timothy are believed to be forgeries and not written by Paul at all. Also, Lisle doesn’t seem to take into account the concept of ghost writers. The book The Art Of The Deal by Donald Trump was not written by him, but by Tony Schwartz. The Bible was, according to scholars, written by fallible humans who had their own agendas. Saying that the Bible is God’s word because the Bible says it’s God’s word is circular reasoning. However, he uses an example:

But this is a double standard that they would not apply to most other books. Consider my book Taking Back Astronomy. This book claims to have been written by me, and most people would accept that it really is written by me simply because it says so.

https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/a-question-of-authorship/

Yes, Jason, people believe that you wrote the book that has your name on it because you’re a corporeal human being. There are also sources outside of your book that say that you actually exist. People who don’t accept the premises written in your book will not be condemned to an eternity of hellfire and torture. Also, your book will not be used to persecute people for generations to come. Of course, Jason gives away the game in the third paragraph of his response:

After all, how else would we know that the Bible is written by inspiration of God unless it said so?

https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/a-question-of-authorship/

Uh, written by God and inspired by God are two very, VERY different things, Jason. If I write a book called The Traveler’s Manual To The Universe and I say it was inspired by Douglas Adams, that doesn’t mean that it was written by Adams. I simply took inspiration from his work (I would probably also get hit with a copyright lawsuit). I have no doubt that the Bible was written with the thoughts and admiration of the authors’ gods in their minds, but it wasn’t written by gods.

Rejecting the claim that the Bible really is God’s Word will inevitably lead to the absurd consequence that knowledge would be impossible. Any alternative to the Bible is “sinking sand” and will not support a rational worldview (Matthew 7:24–27). This is because only the biblical worldview can account for those things necessary for knowledge.

https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/a-question-of-authorship/

I love when they do this (and by “love” I mean “hate” in this case). Our knowledge does not come from an origin point of any type, but from observation of something we can currently see, then we work out how it got that way. Then we end up at another question from a little further back and work out how that happened and so on. That’s how the Bible was written, too, most likely. The stories, especially in Genesis, were told to explain how the world got that way. “Why are people imperfect?” Because the first humans ate fruit and the gods got angry. “Why are there different languages?” Because people tried to build a tower and the gods got angry.

The Bible is not a good book to live by. As I have discussed in the past, it’s not an instruction manual for anything. It is not to be taken literally. It contradicts itself in several places. Its rules are mostly inapplicable except in one region at one period to one group of people…and before you say the sixth commandment, when is the last time you built an altar in accordance with Exodus 25 through 31? Yes, there are laws that can apply today, but they are few and far between. Many of the laws are about the proper animal sacrifices for the proper day of the week.

The rest of this article is using arguments from fine tuning and special pleading that others with a more scientific background would be more qualified to discuss. I just wanted to discuss the idea of authorship and why we know that the Bible is not written by an all knowing god.