The Bible is a compilation of myths, legends, history, folktales, poetry, prophecies, and ethical instructions with the greater purpose of revealing God's nature and plans first to the people of Israel and then to everyone else. By 'greater purpose' I mean the purpose of the compilers, of course.

The compilers must have lived very long ago then and have had a very good idea of what the law should be as well as our relationship with God and with each other. Archaeologists have determined the oldest part of the Bible is Miriam's song in Exodus. And this oldest part of the Bible also contaisn the 10 Commandments, still the basis of what most people agree is the foundation of law and ethics. Specifically this account is also in the book of Deuteronomy, which Shaphat and Huldah showed to Josiah, the last good king of Judah. He did try to reform Judah's laws and religious practices as a result, but lost his life twenty years before Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

What we now know as the Old Testament was assembled firstly as a result of this very traumatic event. Archaeologists have found that the widespread idol worship practised before 586 BC had been utterly discontinued afterwards. The Hebrews of the Babylonian Captivity would also need to preserve their different identity to that of their captors lest they ended up like their Israelite cousins at the hands of the Assyrians. Daniel is a Biblical book that confirms this. The huge amount of contributors from this era also attests to the trauma of the siege of Jerusalem, a historic event. They include Isaiah from Hezekiah's age, Jeremiah from the successors of Josiah, Ezekiel, Daniel from the Babylonian captivity, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah. These contributions were followed up by Nehemiah, Ezra, Esther and Malachi fifty years later, when the Hebrews were allowed to return to Jerusalem.

4. How come Jesus opposed the Pharisees? Was it because they were very strict about God's Law and Jesus came to show a better way?

No, it was because the Pharisees liked their little bit of power and privilege, insisting on religious practice being done only in Jerusalem and not recognising even Jewish practitioners who knew little Hebrew and spoke Greek or Latin instead of Aramaic, let alone the despised Samaritans. They liked saying 'Do what I say, not do as I do". They imposed the rules too rigidly on the weak and downtrodden whilst letting themselves off too lightly. They withheld knowledge of the law by referring to an 'oral code' to which ordinary people might not have access if they didn't live in Judea at the time or speak the language.

The Pharisees liked to legalistically complicate things, whereas Jesus summarized the 10 Commandments as saying simply: Love God with all your heart, your soul and your strength. Worship him and give Him thanks for His Great Glory.

And to love your neighbour as yourself.

This much has been realised eventually even by the Jews themselves, who later set down the Tanakh, as it is today, about 400 AD, and why they permit translations. No wonder that the Pharisees did not like Jesus' criticisms of them, and no wonder that St Paul had a mission to go to the West where his fluency in such languages as Greek and Latin was so important to the congregations he spoke to as well as to the Gentiles who converted to what became Christianity. This is why the Septuagint became the original Old Testament, since it was based on the Greek translation of Hebrew Scriptures the Egyptian Jews organised for themselves at the behest of their leaders. It is also why the books of the Apocrypha not included in the Protestant Old Testament are not included in the Jewish Scriptures either.

Where, exactly, does the Koran say who the successor to Mohammed is? Now, not being an Islamic scholar, my reply would have been " the four righteously guided caliphs, and then the uluma."

Some learned Muslim might have replied "For the answer, look up, especially 5:55, "Only Allah is your Wali, and His ....""

Then I would have said "Oh, you're a Shi'ite, and that's a minority view"

And our learned Muslim would have said

"It might be a minority view, but is it the right one?

Since I don't understand Arabic, without access to an English translation of the Koran, I won't be able to look anything up. I won't be able to transliterate the alphabet let alone understand the words. It would be as useless as telling me that a complicated mathematical equation or theorem proves this or that or how light came to be, when I barely scraped through Veggie maths at High School. So I won't be able to know whether a learned scholar is right or wrong. It will have to be you who will inform me about the Koran when I can't do it for myself, whether you are right or wrong.

Whilst I agree that liturgical languages including Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, or even Shakespearean English are crucial in preserving those languages, their beauty and the fidelity of their texts, they shouldn't do this at the expense of the everyday vernacular used by the congregation who need to know what is said and who need to have things explained simply, in terms they can understand.

This is why St Paul made it his life's work to preach all around the Mediterranean what he believed and knew to be the truth about God and about Man. Sorry, I posted at the same time as yours directly before mine. I hoped to shed a little light on the subject.

And of course, as far as theological discussions of the afterlife goes, one should keep an open mind to the third possibility:

... re=related

When I die I may not go to heaven
I don't know if they let cowboys in
If they don't just let me go to Texas,
'Cos Texas is as close as I've been.

Just turned to my wife, who was born in Texas and spent most of her life there, about the notion that one just might go to Texas after death (snort):

"I think Heaven's going to look a lot like Texas, yes." (Grins) "Texas, in my opinion, being one of the most beautiful places in the world -- I believe it's a really good example of God's creativity and His genius for beauty. And I think that will be perfected in Heaven, and I look forward to seeing Texas perfected in the New Earth! ... However, I don't think all the New Earth will look like Texas, because that would be boring! The New Texas would lose its uniqueness!"

Now watch my in-laws storm in here and bypass all that great stuff above, just because I said -- and I quote -- "snort" in the first 'graph.

Though I live in Texas and love the state, I have to say I love Colorado much more. Part of it is that I am a mountain type of guy and love to explore real mountains (Texas does not have real mountains). Mountain top views are among my favorites because not only does it show you how small you really are, it shows just a glimpse of the grandeur of what God can make. And here is the real kicker. This is the world post-God's judgment of the Flood. And if God could leave things this beautiful after completely wrecking things up with the Flood, how much more was the original creation? And even more so the new Heaven and New Earth? We will never get the full picture until we get there and I am so excited about seeing what God has in store for us when we get there.

Just turned to my wife, who was born in Texas and spent most of her life there, about the notion that one just might go to Texas after death (snort):

"I think Heaven's going to look a lot like Texas, yes." (Grins) "Texas, in my opinion, being one of the most beautiful places in the world -- I believe it's a really good example of God's creativity and His genius for beauty. And I think that will be perfected in Heaven, and I look forward to seeing Texas perfected in the New Earth! ... However, I don't think all the New Earth will look like Texas, because that would be boring! The New Texas would lose its uniqueness!"

Now watch my in-laws storm in here and bypass all that great stuff above, just because I said -- and I quote -- "snort" in the first 'graph.

Did not.

mm

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

My country - Dorothea Mackellar.

The biggest concern for me is whether or not the islands will still be there...I don't have the verse in front of me, but there's one which states that there won't be any islands anymore. There will still be shipping and trade, but no islands. Alcorn attempted to tackle this one in Heaven, but this is one of those speculative issues that doesn't seem to have a real answer.

Anyways, everyone knows that the New Earth will look like North Carolina. As if God would populate the afterlife with a bunch of guys wearing cowboy hats...sheesh!

I expect the belief about islands came from the verse that said there wouldn't be a sea to put them in:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. --Rev. 21:1

This sort of thing is easier for the poetry-minded Christian to explain. In Judeo-Christian apocalyptic writings, "the land" was code for Israel and/or the righteous, and "the sea" was code for "the nations" or the unrighteous. They used code phrases because the Romans read the mail, and a prophecy saying, "the conquerer would be overthrown" was a fast ticket to prison. So by the code of the day, "no more sea" meant that in the new heaven and the new earth, there would be no more conquerors and no outsiders. Everyone who got in belonged. Also, since the sea physically divides nations, "no more sea" means that God's people will all be one people.

The literal-minded Christian says, "no more actual oceans." Some say it because the verse says "the sea was no more." Others say, "well, humans can't live on an ocean, so God will get rid of it because it's of no use to humans." (That is, if humans don't see a use for it, God must not have a use for it; He couldn't have created it for His glory, or whatever.) Still others see the oceans as a bad thing, as leftovers from Noah's Flood, and think that God will get rid of them because He hadn't wanted them in the first place.

With prophetic literature we have to be careful to figure out when something is meant literally or poetically (i.e. "God owns the cattle of a thousand hills" doesn't mean that God doesn't own the cattle on hill #1,001).

Otherwise we risk getting literalistic:

ex., that "144,000" righteous elsewhere in Rev. doesn't just mean "the perfection of Israel and all its righteous from the beginning to the end of the world" (poetic)

or "144,000" righteous means that 144,000 people are getting into Heaven and/or have a special reward (literal)

or "144,000 pure Jewish men who have never defiled themselves with women" really means 144,000 Jewish male virgins (literalistic. If you're a child, a woman, or a man who has ever been married, you don't get in!)

End times talk ...

If you like a good disaster, I've been recommending that rarest of critters, a Catholic doomsday novel. It's "The dead and the gone" (by Pfeffer). No rapture, some swearing (!), lots of faith. Get the audiobook if you can. The narrator's great; you won't sleep for days. But if you're the kind who dwells on a book for days, proceed with caution. Very good, which means for the characters, very bad.

Don't go lookin' down on me
for not gawkin' at some paintingon a wall.
I'm to busy lookin' at the work
of the greatest artest of them all.

Anonymouse

Want to see how heavens going to look?
Take a trip to the Boundary Waters, in norther Minnesota

I'm biased of course, having been born in the state, and gave myself to The Lord there

I've got a new question for you Christians to rip apart and search for contradictions within, if any of you would be willing! I'd like to bring it against a Christian in my philosophy class, but it's always good to have someone check your work, you know? Okay here goes:

1. If man is not naturally sinful, we do not need God.
2. If man is naturally sinful, it is unjust to blame him for his sinful actions and to punish him for them.
3. God is not just, the Bible falls apart, etcetera.

Hope a couple of you will take the time to answer!

1. If man is not naturally sinful, we do not need God.

I would question the validity of this claim due to the fact that God was present before man was naturally sinful. By making this claim, you are reducing God to nothing more an a judge of sin. . . He's more than that. . . a lot more!

2. If man is naturally sinful, it is unjust to blame him for his sinful actions and to punish him for them.

Why? We serve an almighty God who has high standards; it's as simple as that! Diabetics crave sugar, but if they eat sugar and go into a coma, it's still their fault - not the fault of their disease. Even though people are naturally sinful doesn't mean that they can't make choices.

To quote the oh-so-wise Dumbledore "It is not our abilities that make us who we are, Harry; it is our choices."

3. God is not just, the Bible falls apart, etcetera

I'm not quite sure where you're going with this. Making the claim that God isn't just is impossible to prove. The God of Scripture is certainly just (I suppose you could make the claim that if the Bible is riddled with errors, then there might be room for a God who isn't just. . . and who is merely writing the Bible as propaganda, but that argument isn't going to get you very far at all!).

I'd be interested to know how this "debate" of yours goes. Scholars have been attacking the Bible and the church for several thousand years, and yet the Bible/Church has won each and every time. Anybody who seems to think that they can singlehandedly "beat" the Bible, is quite arrogant.

I can see how you can come up with your conclusion, assuming that the first statement is originally true. The problem you have is that you are starting your arguments in Genesis 3 and going forward. If you are going to attempt to 'disprove' the Bible, you need to start in Genesis 1. Yes, man CURRENTLY has a sinful nature according to the Bible. But in Genesis 1 and 2, man did NOT have a sinful nature. This is a very important part of Christian theology. It also important to know that man did not become sinful just by eating of the fruit. The eating of the fruit simply made them aware of the knowledge of every kind of good, and the knowledge of every kind of evil. Adam and Eve sinned before they ate the fruit when they decided to believe the serpent instead of God.

The problem that many people have when they try to attack the Bible is that time after time, they only use the parts that benefit them and their arguments. They don't take the full picture into account. That being said, Christian are no exception. They often only take parts of the Bible they like and live off those, but don't want to deal with the 'hard parts'. This is partly what Hebrews 5-6 talk about when discussing 'needing meat, and moving on from the infancy of milk'. All of us, need to look at the whole picture of the Bible and not just parts of it. Because parts of it will appear inconsistent but the whole has yet to be disproven. And believe me, if it could be disproven, it would have been long before now. It doesn't take modern science to figure it out. If it could have been done, it would have been done in the 1st Century when it was just getting started.

Andrew, I'd love to answer you and enjoy a discussion about that. But I haven't seen yet that you've changed beyond this:

I've already known for a while that you believe you see the message of the Cross as "foolishness," and a great joke. It's great that you, unlike many people (some of whom claim to be Christians) admit that. But the even greater joke -- and, like The Joker himself, it's actually not funny -- is that you are thinking, and operating, as if you are god. In much of you say, you even give all these moral pronouncements on everyone else, as if you're granting other posters "permission" to believe this way or that. It comes off as ridiculous and arrogant. It seems you've picked up more from morality-hammer-wielding Christians than you'd like to admit.

Believe me, I want to respect you and interact with you. But respect must be earned. So far you've showed no inclination to listen to others and actually ask what others believe, or tried to get to know them.

Suggestion 1: first give the Christians here a positive reason to answer, by showing you're actually interested in hearing their views — and don't just want to use their beliefs for your own amusement, or to pick apart some other Christian in a class (which is a lame hobby anyway).

Suggestion 2: instead of pretending all this hasn't happened before and will all happen again, try a substantive response to The Black Glove's challenge to you from last summer (yes, I remember, for the internet knows all, sees all):

Without God, morality not only doesn't exist, it has no meaning whatsoever. "Good" and "bad" have no more meaning than "benfaby" and "gwird."

Here is what you can do, Andrew. Whenever you make a statement that has moral connotations to it, try substituting a nonsense word instead, since it will have the same meaning, according to you. Or you might try simple emoting. Thus, if you were going to say that following God is bad, you should just say, "Boo following God."

That's where you end up.

After that, further conversation about whether God judges people fairly based on what they've done, or unfairly based on what someone else has done, would certainly be interesting!

1. If man is not naturally sinful, we do not need God.
2. If man is naturally sinful, it is unjust to blame him for his sinful actions and to punish him for them.
3. God is not just, the Bible falls apart, etcetera.

I would have to agree with this, God is not just at all, and nothing in the Bible really makes sense. It's good literature though, lots of patterns and repetitions. I'd just read it for fun.

Why? We serve an almighty God who has high standards; it's as simple as that! Diabetics crave sugar, but if they eat sugar and go into a coma, it's still their fault - not the fault of their disease. Even though people are naturally sinful doesn't mean that they can't make choices.

Well since we are all sinful we do not have a choice. We are born sinful. I guess Adam made the choice for everyone. So yes God is punishing us for a choice we didn't make but that Adam did. I wouldn't describe that as being just.

Moonlight, I'd encourage you to check the Bible again — as you once did (do you remember the Predestination discussion? — and see if it really says God will unfairly punish a person for a sin that someone else did. No. Adam's sin affected our nature, according to which we ourselves make sinful choices.

So yes God is punishing us for a choice we didn't make but that Adam did.

Hmm. Are you claiming that you're perfect and have never, ever, of your own choice — whether the "sin nature" idea is Biblical or not — sinned? And thus if the Bible is true, and God is real and holy and loving, and you came before Him, you could honestly say, "Nope, I'm 100 percent clean!"?

Could you also say Yes, God, I want to spend eternity worshiping you in all I do or would you admit, You know, I want Your gifts, but not You Yourself?

Apart from God, I know I couldn't. And I'm a NarniaWeb mod and everything.

If it seems unfair to hold us all culpable for Adam's sin, I'd ask whether you personally feel just fine about the idea of a Creator and live your life to find happiness only in Him, the greatest source of joy, and follow His standards.

If people did exhibit this, I could see a sure reason to object to the guilty-under-Adam concept. But they don't. In the Biblical view, motives of pride and selfishness — wanting God's gifts, but not God Himself — underlie everything we do.

That's the Biblical view: not that we are judged for Adam's specific sin, but that all people inherit a sin nature that results in their own personal sins. Multiple times in Scripture God specifically says He only judges people for their personal sins (references available upon request).

Are my descendants cursed for my lack of belief?

I had to single this one out. Not at all. One specific verse, Exodus 20:5 (origin of the "sins of the fathers" phrase and myth) gets ripped from context a lot (read the rest, to verse 6!) to make this claim. Another reference: Deuteronomy 24:16, in which God is clear He will only punish, and commands His people only to punish, specific people for specific sins.

"Sins of the fathers," where it appears, is a reference to the sinful habits someone may pass along to a succeeding generation, which then makes it own decisions and persists in hatred of God (similar to what happens in Judges).

I can clarify this further if you like — but again, the Biblical God is constantly shown as punishing fairly, individually. In fact, the only "unfair" thing He does (if we could call it that!) is sending His Son, Christ Himself, to die in place of His people: taking the "hit" of the Father's holy wrath, out of love and mercy, for those who will be saved.

If it seems unfair to be bent toward sin because of Adam's sin, then it's unfair the other direction for Christ to suffer for it. But then for the Christian, the Balance is Restored to the Universe: humans living again in harmony with their Creator, experiencing perfect joy in Him.

And to those who (somewhat understandably!) would prefer getting along fine without God, the Christian would say: that's not how the world works. Lasting joy simply can't exist apart from God.