Holy Bible: Inspiration or Idolatry?
“The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures sacred to Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Rastafari and others. It appears in the form of an anthology, a compilation of texts of a variety of forms that are all linked by the belief that they are collectively revelations of God.” (Wikipedia)
Over one hundred million copies of the Bible are sold annually.
The full Bible has been translated into 683 languages.
The bible is a remarkable book and one of the most popular books ever written. But is it really all it says it is? Some people say that it is inspired. Some elevate it to such a high level of authority that it is above God to the point that it seems to be worshiped. Some say it is inerrant and inspired, the perfect word of God. sometimes we forget that we don’t have any originals even though we know that copies and translations are man made and not inspired. Everything we have is based on human handwritten, scribed, translated, “corrected”, and even interpreted copies to make it easier to understand or more clear. It was common practice for scribes to rewrite it with their own expertise to correct things and make them what the scribe thinks it should have been. But I have questions that go beyond all of these human factors to much greater issues that are anchored in the way the universe is, or as some would say, anchored in how things were created.
Christian Bibles range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, the 66 books of the canon of some denominations or the 80 books of the canon of other denominations of the Protestant Church, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon. The first part of Christian Bibles is the Greek Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the above 24 books of the Tanakh but divided into 39 (Protestant) or 46 (Catholic) books and ordered differently. The second part is the Greek New Testament, containing 27 books; the four canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation. For example, the King James Bible contains 80 books: 39 in its Old Testament, 14 in its Apocrypha, and 27 in its New Testament.
The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches hold that certain deuterocanonical books and passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Christian churches may have minor differences in their lists of accepted books. The list given here for these churches is the most inclusive: if at least one Eastern church accepts the book it is included here: Biblical canon
Beyond Christian churches there are holy books for almost all of the different religions in the world. “Religious texts are texts related to a religious tradition. They differ from literary texts by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual practices, commandments or laws, ethical conduct, spiritual aspirations, and for creating or fostering a religious community.[1][2][3] The relative authority of religious texts develops over time and is derived from the ratification, enforcement, and its use across generations. Some religious texts are accepted or categorized as canonical, some non-canonical, and others extracanonical, semi-canonical, deutero-canonical, pre-canonical or post-canonical.” Religious text
There are some 4,300 religions of the world. This is according to Adherents, an independent, non-religiously affiliated organisation that monitors the number and size of the world's religions. List of religions and spiritual traditions
“When it was published in 2001, the World Christian Encyclopedia counted 33,830 denominations worldwide; with the amount of debate and division over theology and orthodoxy since then, that number is undoubtedly higher.” Denominations | Topics
Here, I’m focusing on the Christian Bible and the wide variety of officially inspired books across denominations. Some consider the canon of the bible to be “closed” and others believe in continuous revelation and see their holy book as being open to new revelations to be added. Just like the number of variations and sects of churches, there are a wide variety of holy books.
Inspiration
the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
"Helen had one of her flashes of inspiration"a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea.
"then I had an inspiration"Inspiration of the Bible is used in a very specific way in Christian Evangelical theology. It is believed that God himself wrote the Bible. “Inspired” is the reference to the actual words of the Bible being “God breathed” or spoken directly from God's mouth using the hand of the writer to write down exactly and precisely the word of god. There are some Christians that see inspiration as metaphorical. There is no mention of inerrancy in the bible.
Inerrancy
Incapable of being wrong.
Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact". Some equate inerrancy with biblical infallibility; others do not.
Idolatry
the worship of idols or graven images.
extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone.
"we must not allow our idolatry of art to obscure issues of political significance"The worship of a sacred artifact like a holy book instead of the intended object of worship. I was raised in a fundamentalist church that seemed to me like interaction with the bible was more important than with god himself with the authority of the bible being above all else.
There are many issues related to inspiration and inerrancy that have caused me much cognitive dissonance.
Relationships and Experiences can be Direct or Indirect
An artist can be known indirectly by their creative works.
An author can be known indirectly by the creative writings or books they write.
An artist or an author cannot be known directly without face to face interaction. Without this, there can be no direct relationship.
If you had an artist or author that you greatly admired and you spend your life in pursuit of the goal of meeting that person and maybe developing a relationship, why would you settle for less than a direct relationship unless the person is dead, too dangerous, or so unavailable and unapproachable that the only way to know them is indirectly? That would by definition not be someone I would admire or even want a relationship with.
If that author or artist was stronger, more knowledgeable, and more compassionate than anyone on earth, why would they not make sure that they could meet their greatest fan or greatest worshipper directly, face to face? Why would they refuse??? Are they impotent, unwilling, antisocial, antibenevolent???
A long distance relationship pales in comparison to a face to face relationship. But in this story, God is completely unavailable to the point that if we were to look at him, it would kill us. Who created that huge barrier to the relationships that are supposedly core to Christianity. He is omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, yet so distant as to be invisible and silent.
Apparently, God’s social and relationship skills are lacking and his leadership skills are also immature. As a child I learned that fear does not motivate people for real change. I was raised to know that it is love that creates change. Fear provides an external locus of control. What fosters real change is an internal locus of control. But if god is all knowing, how did he miss that one?
I never understood the monstrous and mean god of the old testament. Here are verses noting the context for the 10 commandments in Numbers 15:
v.18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
v.19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
v.20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
In Stark Contrast
I’ve been taught all of my life that the bible is all I need for everything pertaining to life and godliness. The reason why is that it is god’s word. It is directly spoken by god through the authors and it is inspired and inerrant. Therefore it is the highest authority, above priestly hierarchy, spiritual traditions, bible professors, church proclamations, and religious creeds.
Over the years, while still holding fast and clinging to the faith, I modified my beliefs in this way: god reveals himself in both his word and his works. Like a creative expression, the universe speaks of the glory of god. But being a good fundamentalist, I still believed at that time that the greatest authority and revelation of god is the bible.
What do we know about God’s revelation to mankind?
We have the universe that is quite amazing in and of itself. But how does that reveal god? And even if it inspires awe and wonder, why should that awe and wonder extend beyond that which is actually revealed to us, the manifest universe?
We know that the two primary characteristics of god is silence and invisibility.
If god can reveal the manifest universe to us, why do we only get second hand revelation through the works of the gods? Why not direct revelation? In other words, if you admire an artist or author, it is one thing to get to know and understand that artist or author by admiring a painting or reading their book. But why can’t we even have a face to face conversation, which is the only real way of “knowing” another?
If such awe and wonder of creation is really something that points to god, how can such greatness be contained in a book?
The problem of language:
Human language is made up of words and words can never be the reality itself. All they can ever do is point to reality.
And due to the nature of words, they can never represent that which is real. They can only represent my interpretation of what is real. They represent an image in my head that I am trying to convey to you. And then there are the images in your head. The words that I use, containing my images are then interpreted by you. You in turn create your own image in your head that is as close as you can imagine to the image in my head. Never does my reality match your reality. And never are images or words the actual reality. And never can the images in my head be god. It can only be an image of god. This is the nature of creation itself.
So we end up trying to combine two images of reality into one without ever touching reality itself and without ever being able to read each other’s minds.
Then we consider the inspiration of scripture. God is using imperfect and inaccurate language to reveal the attributes of god. This is, in itself, destined to fail. Language is manmade and somehow this faulty convention is sterilized to become perfect, without error by god whispering in the ear of the human author that is using handwriting fraught with error and human thinking fraught with images, projections, and all manner of illusion and imperfection.
Oh yeah, don’t forget that English did not even exist back then.
Small-Minded, Human-Centric Thinking
Our galaxy is like a grain of sand in the universe. And our solar system is like a grain of sand in this galaxy. And mankind is like a grain of sand in our solar system. And we think that all of this was created for man? What a waste of space. What puny thinking. What a puny, pitiful god. What proud and puffed up human beings to think and imagine this. Did you know that there are 10,000 stars for every grain of sand on earth?
Does this really sound like the design and creation of an all wise, all knowing, and all loving god or more like the stories that self centered, puffed up men might tell themselves? It reminds me of the story mankind made up about the earth being flat with the whole universe, sun, and solar system revolving around us. We outgrew that one.
Is it our purpose to love god and be in relationship with our image of that god? Then what a bad joke. If I was determined to be in relationship with another person, I would not show that person who I am by writing a book or by creating a sculpture. Those are all nice but I’d be completely missing the point if I were never to meet that person face to face. I could not, I would not be invisible to that person. I would not be silent to that person. That would not only be foolish but it would also be rude and just plain fake and hypocritical. If I were not willing to be visible and speak to that person face to face then I would be a fraud and the person would conclude that I’m also a liar. Any relationship needs to be direct and face to face, not second hand and indirect.
If there is some sort of god that is supposedly omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, then we must put high expectations on this god if that god is real. Second hand relationships are not good enough. A god that powerful and that loving would not allow any barrier to stand between the object of love and self. Without using all of that god’s inner resources and strength, then that god does not want a relationship. Never did. Never will. That is not even human love, let alone divine love. The most puzzling thing of all is that god created us in his image to be like him, which means that he would not only meet but also exceed expectations that humans impose on themselves. Why wouldn’t he make it possible?
Then there is the logistics of inspiration. Does the god occupy the person like demon possession? Or is the author totally and unconsciously controlled like a robot? Is the person that is writing scripture god or man, since only a god can be perfect? Does that person know they are inspired while they write? Is it just the mind that is occupied, what happens to the hand? Is it still fallible? Or is the hand occupied and mechanically controlled to ensure that human fallibility does not mess up the writing. How exactly are the mistakes prevented? Are the pen and the parchment inspired also?
Is the original manuscript inspired? But not the many scribed copies? Not the translation into another language? What happens when there are no originals to be found, which is the actual case? We have no originals. What happens when the only text we have is written 50 years after the original? How many times has it been copied by scribes? And each time is perfect? There are no printing presses so everything must be hand copied. At times, it is changed or corrected or added to. For scribes, mistakes were not a concern and fixing them is common practice. Their main goal is to make it usable and readable. If the scribe sees the need to rewrite it or make it more understandable or correct it, that is fine. What happens to inspiration then? Neither the authors nor the scribes were taught the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy. To them there was no such thing. That came later as mankind developed his own theology.
What happens when the original text is written 40 to 60 years after the actual events, usually after the person is dead which is often the case? What if there are no eye witnesses which is also the case? What if the 4 gospels were written anonymously and the authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were added later, after it was inspired? That is what happened. The fact that the 4 gospels were not eyewitness accounts means that they were then hearsay. Writing hearsay as truth is a form of heresy.
Is it inspired only when it is first written on the page? Not when it is read, correct? What happens when it is misinterpreted or mistranslated and then rewritten incorrectly? What happens to inspiration then? Actually, inspiration only refers to the original manuscript, not the copies from the scribes or the translations throughout history. So apparently, we do not have access to any part of the bible that is inspired. Most theologians say that the best we have is reliability and accuracy of the hundreds of copies and translations. So is inspiration and inerrancy really just successive approximations?
Why does the bible not talk about inspiration? The only time it did was in Second Timothy. This was before there was a new testament to even write about. So presumably he was talking about the old testament even though he did not say anything except to call it “scripture” and that it was inspired, which was not at all defined either. Nowhere does it say anything about inerrancy. The old testament that was used by Judaism had no teaching about inspiration of the old testament either. This is a manmade teaching that was conjured up many centuries later. The bible itself was not even canonized for 400 years and even then inspiration and inerrancy was not part of the teaching. Remember: all doctrine and theology are human constructs.
The bible does not teach any of this stuff and yet it is taught that the bible is to be a Christian’s comprehensive holy book for all of life and godliness. Well, if it is not in there, then what? Where is this second authority that we were able to turn to in order to learn about inspiration and inerrancy since it is not in the bible? Is it the creeds that we recite that take authority over the bible or when the bible falls short? Where did this stuff come from and who said that these teachings are more authoritative than the bible? The pope? The priest? The sadducees? The pharisees? The hypocrites that are powerful enough? Obviously those men were hypocritically going outside of scripture against their own teachings in order to prove their own teachings.
2 Peter 1:3 “His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue.” In Evangelical circles, this is used to teach us that the bible is inspired and inerrant and is the source of all knowledge of god. When Peter wrote this, there was no new testament. The old testament was not considered to be inspired and inerrant. There is no teaching in the bible that it is the only source of the knowledge of god.
Then there is the matter of the canonization of scripture. How do we know which books are actually inspired? The way it is believed now is that a pagan king that wanted to officially adopt christianity as the religion of the empire as it endeavored to take over the world because they need to have a scripture so that people can be told what to believe, what to think, and how to act. In this situation, religion is primarily about control.
We can’t even agree on which books are supposed to be in the bible: “Christian Bibles range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, the 66 books of the canon of some denominations or the 80 books of the canon of other denominations of the Protestant Church, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon.”
“Could someone please tell me, at what point in history did God personally come to Earth and reveal which Biblical documents are officially His inspired Holy scripture, and which ones are just the fallible concoctions of human authors?
“Oh, that’s right. Never. The task of picking and choosing which books to include in the Bible was not a matter of divine revelation. Men did that. Fallible human men are the ones who ultimately dug through all the ancient manuscripts before deciding which ones to keep and which ones to toss (actually to hide and bury so that it is not questioned). This was almost certainly a difficult task, too, because forgeries were definitely a widespread problem among ancient Christians. For example, in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2, Paul himself warns openly against the existence of forged letters in his own name. It’s ironic, too, given that modern scholars actually believe that this exact letter was very likely a forgery unto itself. So what criteria could ancient scholars possibly employ that would guarantee a perfect, inerrant selection of scripture, given the abundance of textual variants, alternative theologies, and even outright forgeries?
“Let's be clear. It’s one thing to believe that God “inspired” the Bible in some roundabout, metaphorical sense, but it’s another thing entirely to describe the Bible as some kind of flawlessly divine relic. We’re talking about a book that was written by men, often times by interviewing the memories other men, only to then get translated by men, edited by men, modified by men, summarized by men, copied by men, preserved by men, translated again by men, and then compiled by men, only to finally get promoted by men as the absolutely inerrant word of God. Not only is that blatantly dishonest, but it elevates the work of fallible, mortal men to the status of Godly perfection. There’s a word for that in Christian theology, my friends. It is called idolatry, and it is a terrible, deadly sin.”
https://philosophyengineered.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-idolatry-of-bible_26.html
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