the bible

Hi Bill,

I think, that it's up to person to decide what to accept and how.

Person can see the Bible as the holy book to beleive in it, from A to Z, in all its words, from the first page till the last page, no matter what "they, non-beleivers" say.

Another perspective can be to assume that after so much time have been passed from the creation of the Bible, it could be effected and changed from the original message dramatically. An argument can be that even a comma put in a different place of the sentence can change its meaning. The reasons for changes in the Bible could be lack of abilities to transfer the original message, corruptions during translations, especially in the old times, or even strategic chages in the Bible by some people in power, interested to justify their interpretations of Bible, knowing how much influence it has on many.

From this perspective, a choice can be to reject the Bible as the whole, beleiving that because of the possible changes, it doesn't even worth to read it and can mislead you.

Another choice can be to read it critically, trying to understand the hidden messages between the words, relate the spiritual teachings from the Bible to your personal spiritual experiences, and investigate how much value the Bible has in your life by yourself, despite of any talks, arguments and beleifs.

People are different and many choices and perspectives on this issue are possible.
Different people approach the power of free choice differently.

Vadim

None of it.

Why blindly believe anything?

Is that not where much confusion, and many mistakes have their beginnings?

Consider it an unproven possibility

Túrin

Actually, the Bible itself doesn't teach that it is the Word of God. The Bible teaches that Christ is the Word of God, and the ultimate revelation of God to mankind. Scripture is simply said to be inspired by God, but many consider it to be inspired in the sense that it carries many deep truths underneath the surface.

Personally, I don't think the words of the Bible were dictated by God. I believe that the writings of the Bible were written by men, perhaps very enlightened men, and for that reason there can be some truth in it, just as there is truth to be found in the writings and teachings of other enlightened individuals.

The Bible teaches that the Kingdom of God is to be found within us, and that we have to die to our selves and let the spirit of Christ live in us. I think all of the main principles taught in the Bible are very Gnostic. This is especially obvious when reading the New Testament, especially the Gospels, in my opinion.

I agree with Vadim. It depends on the person's choice on how to approach the writings in this book and in everyone. I have a Bible in my room which was given to me a long time ago because I was raised up in the catholic religion; my country is mostly catholic because of past historic events.
So I read it sometimes trying to catch the message in every single sentence. I like to do it with common sense, without identifying too much with what is written, just trying to get what it is saying and see how much can I understand from my own experience, or even look forward for future experiences that could help me understand better what I read. Sometimes I get shocked on how little I know, how little I can understand a specific line, paragraph, page.. How little is my ability to directly understand something I read and to know if it's true or not. This just leaves me unable to sincerely know the whole truth about what I read rather from just accepting it or rejecting it.
I personally think that accepting it all just like it, and even without having read it all would block me from really looking into finding the truth and perhaps understanding the message behind the words given inside. Looking into it on a wider perspective, I think that accepting or rejecting immediatlly clouds our potential as human beings to search and wonder; wonder in the way that makes us constructivelly question our existence, experience, live, and learn.
I guess it's better to look to experience and find truth and not to block our learning, and oportunity to experience, with something as pasive as simply accepting or rejecting.

I resonate alot with what Steven's post was saying regarding the bible being an inspired work.

I went to a christian school for awhile and they made us read the whole thing practically. What they taught was pretty one-sided and reflected their theories, with little to no info derived from gnosis.

I got little out of it, but I was young. Now I am more into the occulted and hidden meanings and scripts like the gnostic gospels.
The bible was not written with one speciffic thing in mind, it's a collection of different writings from different sources.
And it starts with the pentatauch, 5 old testament books of Judaic lore, given to Moses - a priest of Osiris. Yeshua doesn't apper until the book of Mathew, the new testament.

So I think there is alot of truth to be disovered but not very many will find it. There's alot of different contributors from different religions but too many people get hung up on that.

As far as being the "word of God" - kinda backwards logic. I think misinterpreted from the idea of the Logos, the verb, the word 'being' God instead. Not alot of people understand what that means. Jews get it I think, based on what I know of the Kabbalah but christians contemplated it with objective logic instead.

!

Hi Apakhana,

Thanks for your comment, I don't know much about the bible so I found it very interesting.

Especially the part about Moses being a priest of Osiris!

David