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Post by 1 Guest on Oct 4, 2023 18:42:03 GMT -5
msims said: I already explained to you several times: Jackie has had over 3 million in unit sales.
Several times? Several times? If that's not an understatement I don't know what is. Sadly you don't seem to understand that was years ago, and at the time, people bought albums and 3 million units was not a big deal.
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Post by colt46 on Oct 4, 2023 19:44:22 GMT -5
How many 11 year olds have a gold album 💿? I would think that’s a small number! Since a lot here don’t think 🤔 Jackie deserves her platinum a status , I won’t talk about that ! So how about her Dream With Me Album 💿! I hope members here can accept her Gold status at least !
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Post by msims on Oct 4, 2023 23:13:29 GMT -5
Anyway, thanks again for trying as far as RO and the cats are concerned. Unlike all of the members of his forum, you have decency and empathy. They all just read what he writes and don't say an efing thing to him.  This is sounding less like a bot and more of a Cult worshipper. Caz and Rick are not the same person but both have identical pathologies Narcissism (Caz both attacks and projects it onto Jackie on her various pretend fan bot accounts) Manipulative Attention Seeking behaviors Caz doesnt have the ability to care about cats or anyone but Caz. Notice the hide and seek games he plays behind his aliases not just Disappointed. This is someone who thrives on attention, same with Rick and when Rick was brought up Caz took his disingenuous action, refusing to go through the protocol of making a real complaint. Unfortunately its tough for both of them to realize that the world doesn't revolve around them and their trolling. Similarly pushing "numbers" on services that rob artists and content creators. Being a dopey cult worshipper is not a solution to anything. People like donkey and colt if they arent in on the scam need to wake the ef up, its scary that they communicate directly with Jackie and push these Narcissistic insane talking point narratives. Thank you for proving my point... you are still living in the pass when it comes to Jackie's career. Enjoy living in the twilight zone.  |
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Post by Heaven Is Real on Oct 9, 2023 21:40:45 GMT -5
Is the Bible accurate?
Most people have asked, or at least wondered, something to the effect of, “How do we know the guys who wrote the Bible just didn’t make all that stuff up?” Such questions dealing with the Bible’s trustworthiness and accuracy should be answered honestly and clearly.
The approach to assessing whether the Bible is accurate in what it reports is the same used to evaluate any other historical book. The legal/forensic method and its principles are employed to judge the validity of historical texts and whether the reported testimony is factual. There are three primary tests historians use within the forensic method:
First is the bibliographical test. This examines the reliability of the available manuscripts and the time that elapsed between the events in question and their recording. When applied to the New Testament, literally no other ancient text measures up. The New Testament has tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that can be extensively compared to each other; plus, those manuscripts have the earliest dating to its recorded events of any historical book. In other words, the books of the New Testament were written very soon after the events they describe, leaving no room for legend to creep in. In fact, Paul cites more than 500 eyewitnesses to the risen Christ, “most of whom are still living”—meaning that his readers were free to check out the truth for themselves and confirm the accuracy of what he wrote.
Another proof of the New Testament’s early dating exists in the writings of early Christian leaders such as Clement (c. AD 95), Ignatius (c. AD 107), Polycarp (c. AD 110), Justin Martyr (c. AD 133), and others. Historians have determined that the entire New Testament could be completely reconstructed from citations from the early church fathers, with the exception of 27 verses, most of which come from 3 John.
The second test used by historians to assess the accuracy of ancient texts, including the Bible, is the internal evidence test. This test concerns itself with whether there are multiple attestations of the events in question and whether those accounts are free of contradictions (i.e., do they match?). With respect to the New Testament, multiple eyewitness accounts exist that all tell the same story. As for contradictions or manuscript variants, the overwhelming majority of biblical variants are inconsequential, consisting of spelling and numerical differences, sentence word order changes, etc. This leads scholars such as Neil Lightfoot to say, “Practically all of the variations found among the manuscripts do not affect our present text. Although a few textual problems remain, these are explained in the footnotes of most recent translations” (How We Got the Bible, Baker, 2003, p. 104).
The third and final historiographical test for accuracy is the external evidence test, which asks if evidence outside the document in question corroborates the text. In the case of both the Old and New Testament, countless archaeological discoveries validate the historicity of the Bible. In addition, works such as Robert Van Voorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament chronicle what non-biblical writers had to say about Jesus.
To sum up, using historians’ three key tests from the forensic/legal method for validating the trustworthiness of an ancient text, no other work from ancient history comes close to matching the reliability and accuracy of the Bible.
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Post by Heaven Is Real on Oct 9, 2023 21:50:23 GMT -5
How Accurate is the Bible?
The trustworthiness of Scripture is essential to a well-grounded Christian worldview, since it provides a foundation for authority that transcends the limitations of human reason and experience.
Many people are of the opinion that the teachings of the Bible are outdated, contradictory, and full of scientific and historical errors. With few exceptions, they have reached these conclusions through second- and third-hand sources rather than their own study of the Bible.
Consider the following statements:
The Bible says that God helps those who help themselves.
The books of the New Testament were written centuries after the events they describe.
Cleanliness is next to godliness is in the Bible.
According to the Bible, the earth is flat.
The earliest New Testament manuscripts go back only to the fourth or fifth centuries A.D.
The Bible teaches that the earth is the center of the universe.
The English Bible is a translation of a translation of a translation (etc.) of the original, and fresh errors were introduced in each stage of the process.
How many of these statements do you think are true? The answer is that all of them are false. Yet these false impressions persist in the minds of many, and misinformation like this produces a skeptical attitude toward the Bible.
we will consider a number of objections to the accuracy and reliability of the Bible to help you make a more informed decision as to whether or not it is authoritative.
How can you be sure that the Bible is the same now as when it was written? The Bible has been copied and translated so many times! Haven't you ever played the game where people sit in a circle and pass a sentence from one person to the next until it comes back around in a completely distorted version? If that could happen in a room in just a few minutes, think of all the errors and changes that must have filled the Bible in the centuries since it was first written!
There are three lines of evidence that support the claim that the biblical documents are reliable: these are the bibliographic test, the internal test, and the external test. The first test examines the biblical manuscripts, the second test deals with the claims made by the biblical authors, and the third test looks to outside confirmation of the biblical content.
I. The Bibliographic Test
A. THE QUANTITY OF MANUSCRIPTS
In the case of the Old Testament, there are a small number of Hebrew manuscripts, because the Jewish scribes ceremonially buried imperfect and worn manuscripts. Many ancient manuscripts were also lost or destroyed during Israel's turbulent history. Also, the Old Testament text was standardized by the Masoretic Jews by the sixth century A.D., and all manuscripts that deviated from the Masoretic Text were evidently eliminated. But the existing Hebrew manuscripts are supplemented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (a third-century B.C. Greek translation of the Old Testament), the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Targums (ancient paraphrases of the Old Testament), as well as the Talmud (teachings and commentaries related to the Hebrew Scriptures).
The quantity of New Testament manuscripts is unparalleled in ancient literature. There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, about 8,000 Latin manuscripts, and another 1,000 manuscripts in other languages (Syriac, Coptic, etc.). In addition to this extraordinary number, there are tens of thousands of citations of New Testament passages by the early church fathers. In contrast, the typical number of existing manuscript copies for any of the works of the Greek and Latin authors, such as Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, or Tacitus, ranges from one to 20.
B. THE QUALITY OF MANUSCRIPTS
Because of the great reverence the Jewish scribes held toward the Scriptures, they exercised extreme care in making new copies of the Hebrew Bible. The entire scribal process was specified in meticulous detail to minimize the possibility of even the slightest error. The number of letters, words, and lines were counted, and the middle letters of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament were determined. If a single mistake was discovered, the entire manuscript would be destroyed.
As a result of this extreme care, the quality of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible surpasses all other ancient manuscripts. The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided a significant check on this, because these Hebrew scrolls antedate the earliest Masoretic Old Testament manuscripts by about 1,000 years. But in spite of this time span, the number of variant readings between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text is quite small, and most of these are variations in spelling and style.
While the quality of the Old Testament manuscripts is excellent, that of the New Testament is very good--considerably better than the manuscript quality of other ancient documents. Because of the thousands of New Testament manuscripts, there are many variant readings, but these variants are actually used by scholars to reconstruct the original readings by determining which variant best explains the others in any given passage. Some of these variant readings crept into the manuscripts because of visual errors in copying or because of auditory errors when a group of scribes copied manuscripts that were read aloud. Other errors resulted from faulty writing, memory, and judgment, and still others from well-meaning scribes who thought they were correcting the text. Nevertheless, only a small number of these differences affect the sense of the passages, and only a fraction of these have any real consequences. Furthermore, no variant readings are significant enough to call into question any of the doctrines of the New Testament. The New Testament can be regarded as 99.5 percent pure, and the correct readings for the remaining 0.5 percent can often be ascertained with a fair degree of probability by the practice of textual criticism.
C. THE TIME SPAN OF MANUSCRIPTS
Apart from some fragments, the earliest Masoretic manuscript of the Old Testament is dated at A.D. 895. This is due to the systematic destruction of worn manuscripts by the Masoretic scribes. However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from 200 B.C. to A.D. 68 drastically reduced the time span from the writing of the Old Testament books to our earliest copies of them.
The time span of the New Testament manuscripts is exceptional. The manuscripts written on papyrus came from the second and third centuries A.D. The John Rylands Fragment (P52) of the Gospel of John is dated at A.D. 117-38, only a few decades after the Gospel was written. The Bodmer Papyri are dated from A.D. 175-225, and the Chester Beatty Papyri date from about A.D. 250. The time span for most of the New Testament is less than 200 years (and some books are within 100 years) from the date of authorship to the date of our earliest manuscripts. This can be sharply contrasted with the average gap of over 1,000 years between the composition and the earliest copy of the writings of other ancient authors.
To summarize the bibliographic test, the Old and New Testaments enjoy far greater manuscript attestation in terms of quantity, quality, and time span than any other ancient documents.
II. The Internal Test
The second test of the reliability of the biblical documents asks, What claims does the Bible make about itself? This may appear to be circular reasoning. It sounds like we are using the testimony of the Bible to prove that the Bible is true. But we are really examining the truth claims of the various authors of the Bible and allowing them to speak for themselves. (Remember that the Bible is not one book but many books woven together.) This provides significant evidence that must not be ignored.
A number of biblical authors claim that their accounts are primary, not secondary. That is, the bulk of the Bible was written by people who were eyewitnesses of the events they recorded. John wrote in his Gospel, And he who has seen has borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe (John 19:35; see 21:24). In his first epistle, John wrote, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of life . . . what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also (1 John 1:1, 3). Peter makes the same point abundantly clear: For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty (2 Peter 1:16; also see Acts 2:22; 1 Peter 5:1).
The independent eyewitness accounts in the New Testament of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ were written by people who were intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ. Their gospels and epistles reveal their integrity and complete commitment to the truth, and they maintained their testimony even through persecution and martyrdom. All the evidence inside and outside the New Testament runs contrary to the claim made by form criticism that the early church distorted the life and teachings of Christ. Most of the New Testament was written between A.D. 47 and 70, and all of it was complete before the end of the first century. There simply was not enough time for myths about Christ to be created and propagated. And the multitudes of eyewitnesses who were alive when the New Testament books began to be circulated would have challenged blatant historical fabrications about the life of Christ. The Bible places great stress on accurate historical details, and this is especially obvious in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, Luke's two-part masterpiece (see his prologue in Luke 1:1-4).
III. The External Test
Because the Scriptures continually refer to historical events, they are verifiable; their accuracy can be checked by external evidence. The chronological details in the prologue to Jeremiah (1:1-3) and in Luke 3:1-2 illustrate this. Ezekiel 1:2 allows us to date Ezekiel's first vision of God to the day (July 31, 592 B.C.).
The historicity of Jesus Christ is well-established by early Roman, Greek, and Jewish sources, and these extrabiblical writings affirm the major details of the New Testament portrait of the Lord. The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus made specific references to John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and James in his Antiquities of the Jews. In this work, Josephus gives us many background details about the Herods, the Sadducees and Pharisees, the high priests like Annas and Caiaphas, and the Roman emperors mentioned in the gospels and Acts.
We find another early secular reference to Jesus in a letter written a little after A.D. 73 by an imprisoned Syrian named Mara Bar-Serapion. This letter to his son compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Christ. Other first- and second-century writers who mention Christ include the Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus (Annals) and Suetonius (Life of Claudius, Lives of the Caesars), the Roman governor Pliny the Younger (Epistles), and the Greek satirist Lucian (On the Death of Peregrine). Jesus is also mentioned a number of times in the Jewish Talmud.
The Old and New Testaments make abundant references to nations, kings, battles, cities, mountains, rivers, buildings, treaties, customs, economics, politics, dates, etc. Because the historical narratives of the Bible are so specific, many of its details are open to archaeological investigation. While we cannot say that archaeology proves the authority of the Bible, it is fair to say that archaeological evidence has provided external confirmation of hundreds of biblical statements. Higher criticism in the 19th century made many damaging claims that would completely overthrow the integrity of the Bible, but the explosion of archaeological knowledge in the 20th century reversed almost all of these claims. Noted archaeologists such as William F. Albright, Nelson Glueck, and G. Ernest Wright developed a great respect for the historical accuracy of the Scriptures as a result of their work.
Out of the multitude of archaeological discoveries related to the Bible, consider a few examples to illustrate the remarkable external substantiation of biblical claims. Excavations at Nuzi (1925-41), Mari (discovered in 1933), and Alalakh (1937-39; 1946-49) provide helpful background information that fits well with the Genesis stories of the patriarchal period. The Nuzi tablets and Mari letters illustrate the patriarchal customs in great detail, and the Ras Shamra tablets discovered in ancient Ugarit in Syria shed much light on Hebrew prose and poetry and Canaanite culture. The Ebla tablets discovered recently in northern Syria also affirm the antiquity and accuracy of the Book of Genesis.
Some scholars once claimed that the Mosaic Law could not have been written by Moses, because writing was largely unknown at that time and because the law code of the Pentateuch was too sophisticated for that period. But the codified Laws of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), the Lipit-Ishtar code (ca. 1860 B.C.), the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1950 B.C.), and the even earlier Ur-Nammu code have refuted these claims.
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Post by donkey on Oct 9, 2023 22:08:15 GMT -5
How Accurate is the Bible? The trustworthiness of Scripture is essential to a well-grounded Christian worldview, since it provides a foundation for authority that transcends the limitations of human reason and experience. Many people are of the opinion that the teachings of the Bible are outdated, contradictory, and full of scientific and historical errors. With few exceptions, they have reached these conclusions through second- and third-hand sources rather than their own study of the Bible. Consider the following statements: The Bible says that God helps those who help themselves. The books of the New Testament were written centuries after the events they describe. Cleanliness is next to godliness is in the Bible. According to the Bible, the earth is flat. The earliest New Testament manuscripts go back only to the fourth or fifth centuries A.D. The Bible teaches that the earth is the center of the universe. The English Bible is a translation of a translation of a translation (etc.) of the original, and fresh errors were introduced in each stage of the process. How many of these statements do you think are true? The answer is that all of them are false. Yet these false impressions persist in the minds of many, and misinformation like this produces a skeptical attitude toward the Bible. we will consider a number of objections to the accuracy and reliability of the Bible to help you make a more informed decision as to whether or not it is authoritative. How can you be sure that the Bible is the same now as when it was written? The Bible has been copied and translated so many times! Haven't you ever played the game where people sit in a circle and pass a sentence from one person to the next until it comes back around in a completely distorted version? If that could happen in a room in just a few minutes, think of all the errors and changes that must have filled the Bible in the centuries since it was first written! There are three lines of evidence that support the claim that the biblical documents are reliable: these are the bibliographic test, the internal test, and the external test. The first test examines the biblical manuscripts, the second test deals with the claims made by the biblical authors, and the third test looks to outside confirmation of the biblical content. I. The Bibliographic Test A. THE QUANTITY OF MANUSCRIPTS In the case of the Old Testament, there are a small number of Hebrew manuscripts, because the Jewish scribes ceremonially buried imperfect and worn manuscripts. Many ancient manuscripts were also lost or destroyed during Israel's turbulent history. Also, the Old Testament text was standardized by the Masoretic Jews by the sixth century A.D., and all manuscripts that deviated from the Masoretic Text were evidently eliminated. But the existing Hebrew manuscripts are supplemented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (a third-century B.C. Greek translation of the Old Testament), the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Targums (ancient paraphrases of the Old Testament), as well as the Talmud (teachings and commentaries related to the Hebrew Scriptures). The quantity of New Testament manuscripts is unparalleled in ancient literature. There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, about 8,000 Latin manuscripts, and another 1,000 manuscripts in other languages (Syriac, Coptic, etc.). In addition to this extraordinary number, there are tens of thousands of citations of New Testament passages by the early church fathers. In contrast, the typical number of existing manuscript copies for any of the works of the Greek and Latin authors, such as Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, or Tacitus, ranges from one to 20. B. THE QUALITY OF MANUSCRIPTS Because of the great reverence the Jewish scribes held toward the Scriptures, they exercised extreme care in making new copies of the Hebrew Bible. The entire scribal process was specified in meticulous detail to minimize the possibility of even the slightest error. The number of letters, words, and lines were counted, and the middle letters of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament were determined. If a single mistake was discovered, the entire manuscript would be destroyed. As a result of this extreme care, the quality of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible surpasses all other ancient manuscripts. The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided a significant check on this, because these Hebrew scrolls antedate the earliest Masoretic Old Testament manuscripts by about 1,000 years. But in spite of this time span, the number of variant readings between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text is quite small, and most of these are variations in spelling and style. While the quality of the Old Testament manuscripts is excellent, that of the New Testament is very good--considerably better than the manuscript quality of other ancient documents. Because of the thousands of New Testament manuscripts, there are many variant readings, but these variants are actually used by scholars to reconstruct the original readings by determining which variant best explains the others in any given passage. Some of these variant readings crept into the manuscripts because of visual errors in copying or because of auditory errors when a group of scribes copied manuscripts that were read aloud. Other errors resulted from faulty writing, memory, and judgment, and still others from well-meaning scribes who thought they were correcting the text. Nevertheless, only a small number of these differences affect the sense of the passages, and only a fraction of these have any real consequences. Furthermore, no variant readings are significant enough to call into question any of the doctrines of the New Testament. The New Testament can be regarded as 99.5 percent pure, and the correct readings for the remaining 0.5 percent can often be ascertained with a fair degree of probability by the practice of textual criticism. C. THE TIME SPAN OF MANUSCRIPTS Apart from some fragments, the earliest Masoretic manuscript of the Old Testament is dated at A.D. 895. This is due to the systematic destruction of worn manuscripts by the Masoretic scribes. However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from 200 B.C. to A.D. 68 drastically reduced the time span from the writing of the Old Testament books to our earliest copies of them. The time span of the New Testament manuscripts is exceptional. The manuscripts written on papyrus came from the second and third centuries A.D. The John Rylands Fragment (P52) of the Gospel of John is dated at A.D. 117-38, only a few decades after the Gospel was written. The Bodmer Papyri are dated from A.D. 175-225, and the Chester Beatty Papyri date from about A.D. 250. The time span for most of the New Testament is less than 200 years (and some books are within 100 years) from the date of authorship to the date of our earliest manuscripts. This can be sharply contrasted with the average gap of over 1,000 years between the composition and the earliest copy of the writings of other ancient authors. To summarize the bibliographic test, the Old and New Testaments enjoy far greater manuscript attestation in terms of quantity, quality, and time span than any other ancient documents. II. The Internal Test The second test of the reliability of the biblical documents asks, What claims does the Bible make about itself? This may appear to be circular reasoning. It sounds like we are using the testimony of the Bible to prove that the Bible is true. But we are really examining the truth claims of the various authors of the Bible and allowing them to speak for themselves. (Remember that the Bible is not one book but many books woven together.) This provides significant evidence that must not be ignored. A number of biblical authors claim that their accounts are primary, not secondary. That is, the bulk of the Bible was written by people who were eyewitnesses of the events they recorded. John wrote in his Gospel, And he who has seen has borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe (John 19:35; see 21:24). In his first epistle, John wrote, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of life . . . what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also (1 John 1:1, 3). Peter makes the same point abundantly clear: For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty (2 Peter 1:16; also see Acts 2:22; 1 Peter 5:1). The independent eyewitness accounts in the New Testament of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ were written by people who were intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ. Their gospels and epistles reveal their integrity and complete commitment to the truth, and they maintained their testimony even through persecution and martyrdom. All the evidence inside and outside the New Testament runs contrary to the claim made by form criticism that the early church distorted the life and teachings of Christ. Most of the New Testament was written between A.D. 47 and 70, and all of it was complete before the end of the first century. There simply was not enough time for myths about Christ to be created and propagated. And the multitudes of eyewitnesses who were alive when the New Testament books began to be circulated would have challenged blatant historical fabrications about the life of Christ. The Bible places great stress on accurate historical details, and this is especially obvious in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, Luke's two-part masterpiece (see his prologue in Luke 1:1-4). III. The External Test Because the Scriptures continually refer to historical events, they are verifiable; their accuracy can be checked by external evidence. The chronological details in the prologue to Jeremiah (1:1-3) and in Luke 3:1-2 illustrate this. Ezekiel 1:2 allows us to date Ezekiel's first vision of God to the day (July 31, 592 B.C.). The historicity of Jesus Christ is well-established by early Roman, Greek, and Jewish sources, and these extrabiblical writings affirm the major details of the New Testament portrait of the Lord. The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus made specific references to John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and James in his Antiquities of the Jews. In this work, Josephus gives us many background details about the Herods, the Sadducees and Pharisees, the high priests like Annas and Caiaphas, and the Roman emperors mentioned in the gospels and Acts. We find another early secular reference to Jesus in a letter written a little after A.D. 73 by an imprisoned Syrian named Mara Bar-Serapion. This letter to his son compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Christ. Other first- and second-century writers who mention Christ include the Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus (Annals) and Suetonius (Life of Claudius, Lives of the Caesars), the Roman governor Pliny the Younger (Epistles), and the Greek satirist Lucian (On the Death of Peregrine). Jesus is also mentioned a number of times in the Jewish Talmud. The Old and New Testaments make abundant references to nations, kings, battles, cities, mountains, rivers, buildings, treaties, customs, economics, politics, dates, etc. Because the historical narratives of the Bible are so specific, many of its details are open to archaeological investigation. While we cannot say that archaeology proves the authority of the Bible, it is fair to say that archaeological evidence has provided external confirmation of hundreds of biblical statements. Higher criticism in the 19th century made many damaging claims that would completely overthrow the integrity of the Bible, but the explosion of archaeological knowledge in the 20th century reversed almost all of these claims. Noted archaeologists such as William F. Albright, Nelson Glueck, and G. Ernest Wright developed a great respect for the historical accuracy of the Scriptures as a result of their work. Out of the multitude of archaeological discoveries related to the Bible, consider a few examples to illustrate the remarkable external substantiation of biblical claims. Excavations at Nuzi (1925-41), Mari (discovered in 1933), and Alalakh (1937-39; 1946-49) provide helpful background information that fits well with the Genesis stories of the patriarchal period. The Nuzi tablets and Mari letters illustrate the patriarchal customs in great detail, and the Ras Shamra tablets discovered in ancient Ugarit in Syria shed much light on Hebrew prose and poetry and Canaanite culture. The Ebla tablets discovered recently in northern Syria also affirm the antiquity and accuracy of the Book of Genesis. Some scholars once claimed that the Mosaic Law could not have been written by Moses, because writing was largely unknown at that time and because the law code of the Pentateuch was too sophisticated for that period. But the codified Laws of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), the Lipit-Ishtar code (ca. 1860 B.C.), the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1950 B.C.), and the even earlier Ur-Nammu code have refuted these claims. The bible, while it has some good lessons, was written my men in the middle ages at a time when society was highly superstitious and scientifically illiterate. This is 2023...time to grow up and stop belieing in Santa Claus and gods. |
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Post by Heaven Is Real on Oct 9, 2023 22:12:26 GMT -5
It is accurate to say that God wrote the Bible. According to 2 Timothy 3:16, Scripture is “breathed out” by God. Throughout the Bible, it is obvious that God is being quoted: over 400 times in the Bible, we find the words “thus says the Lord” (NKJV). The Bible refers to itself as the Word of God dozens of times (e.g., Psalm 119; Proverbs 30:5; Isaiah 40:8; 55:11; Jeremiah 23:29; John 17:17; Romans 10:17; Ephesians 6:17; Hebrews 4:12). The Bible is said to proceed from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). However, saying that God wrote the Bible does not mean He took pen in hand, grabbed some parchment, and physically wrote the text of Scripture. His “writing” of Scripture was not a physical action on His part. Rather, God’s authorship was accomplished through the process of inspiration, as human writers wrote God’s message. So, it is also accurate to say that inspired men of God wrote the Bible. The doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture essentially teaches that God “superintended” the human authors of the Bible so that their individual styles were preserved but the end result was precisely what God wanted. When Matthew, for example, sat down to write an account of Jesus’ ministry, he relied on his memory (he was an eyewitness to the events he recorded) with help from the Holy Spirit (John 14:26), keeping his intended readership in mind (Matthew wrote for a Jewish audience). The result was the Gospel of Matthew—a narrative full of Matthew’s vocabulary, Matthew’s grammar, Matthew’s syntax, and Matthew’s style. Yet it was God’s Word. The Spirit had so guided Matthew’s writing that everything God wanted to say was said, and nothing was included that God did not intend to say. Peter described the process of inspiration this way: “Prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). The prophet Jeremiah spoke of inspiration almost as a compulsion to write God’s message: “His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). There was no escaping it; God wanted to communicate, and so Jeremiah had to write. Not every book of the Bible specifies who wrote it. For example, the author of the book of Hebrews is unknown. For many books of the Bible, there is simply no way to be certain who the human author is. But that doesn’t change what we are certain about, namely, who the Divine Author is. Famous writers through history have used amanuenses, or secretaries, to produce their literature. The poet John Milton was blind by the age of 44. His entire Paradise Lost was dictated to friends and relatives—anyone who would write for him—and that’s how the entire epic was recorded (a total of 10,550 lines of poetry). Even though Milton himself did not put pen to paper, no one questions that Paradise Lost is his work. We understand the function of an amanuensis. While God did not “dictate” His Word to the human authors, the principle is similar. God, the Ultimate Author of the Bible, used human agents as His “amanuenses,” and the result was the divinely inspired Word of God. |
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Post by Heaven Is Real on Oct 9, 2023 22:14:59 GMT -5
.time to grow up and stop belieing in Santa Claus and gods. The charge that the Bible is nothing more than a fairy tale or a book of nice stories is not new. The Bible is undoubtedly the most impactful book the world has ever known, transforming innumerable lives. Why, then, would the question whether or not the Bible is a fairy tale be a legitimate one in the hearts of many around the world? From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, we read the story of God’s eternal design to redeem a fallen world. With God as its inspiring Author, the Bible is the world’s greatest work of literature, and throughout the ages multitudes have spent their lives proclaiming its truth. Many, in fact, have made the ultimate sacrifice so that others may simply hold in their hands a copy of its pages. Nevertheless, there has never been a book that has been as viciously attacked as the Bible. The Bible has been banned, burned, mocked, ridiculed and defamed. Many have been put to death for simply possessing a Bible. But still the idea that the Bible is a fairy tale persists. The “prince of this world” has been blinding people to the truth since the beginning of time. He began his “work” on earth by calling God’s words into question (Genesis 3:1-5), and he has been doing so ever since. Everywhere we look, false teaching is rampant—on television and radio, in books and magazines, in our schools and universities, and sadly, even in our churches and Christian colleges, the very places where the truth of God’s Word should most vigorously be defended. When children are taught that our ancestors crawled out of the ocean eons ago, have we not relegated creation and Adam and Eve to fairy tale status? It’s the same thing when scientists and academicians tell us we are wasting our time searching for the “mythological” Noah’s Ark. In fact, when many in the church, in order to placate the academic world, allow for a reinterpretation of the book of Genesis to accommodate modern evolutionary thought, the message sent to the world is that the Bible, apparently, means something other than what its simple, ordinary words convey. When the supernatural events of the Bible are dubbed as allegory by naturalists, it is understandable how those who have never studied the Bible can be confused as to its truth. For those who have never availed themselves of the truth of God’s Word, how likely are they to believe in a talking donkey or a fish swallowing a man and spitting him out on the shore or a woman turning into a pillar of salt? However, the Bible is most assuredly not a fairy tale. In fact, the Bible was “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), and this essentially means God wrote it. Its human authors wrote from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). That’s why this divinely woven text of nearly three quarters of a million words is perfect in harmony from start to finish and contains no contradictions, even though its sixty-six books have forty different authors from different walks of life, written in three different languages and taking nearly sixteen centuries to complete. How possibly could we have this amazing congruity if it wasn’t for God guiding the authors’ hands? We could not; it’s that simple. A righteous God would never inspire error. A just God would not call error-filled Scripture “holy and true.” A merciful God would not state that His Word is perfect if it were not, and an omniscient God could write it so that it is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. Time and again, the historicity of the Bible has been confirmed by biology, geology, and astronomy. And although the Bible may not always agree with naturalistic hypotheses, it is not in conflict with any true, established scientific facts. In archaeology, the last one hundred years have brought to light a treasure trove of biblical truths that scholars have questioned or doubted for centuries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the basalt stone containing the “House of David” inscription, a 7th century BC amulet scroll bearing the name of God, and a stone bearing the name and title of Pontius Pilate, the Judean governor who ordered the execution of Jesus Christ. The Bible is without doubt the best documented book from the ancient world, with more than 24,000 whole or partial biblical manuscripts in existence. No other document of antiquity has nearly as much evidence to confirm its reliability. Another attestation to the Bible’s divine authorship is the vast number of detailed biblical prophecies that have come true exactly as foretold. We see the psalmist, for example, telling of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ nearly a thousand years before it occurred (Psalm 22), and hundreds of years before crucifixion was even invented! Simply put, it would be impossible for human beings to have seen so far into the future with such precision and accuracy hundreds of times. Indeed, it would be completely illogical to believe these proven prophecies are anything other than the work of God. Incidentally, and amazingly, probability experts tell us the mathematical odds of just forty-eight prophecies regarding one person (i.e. Christ) coming true as foretold are one in ten to the 157th power! But the greatest proof that the Bible is not a fairy tale is the countless number of lives that have been transformed by the truths contained in its pages. Used by the Spirit of God, the holy truths of the Bible have turned millions of sinners into saints. Drug addicts have been cured by it, homosexuals set free by it, derelicts and deadbeats transformed by it, hardened criminals reformed by it, sinners rebuked by it, and hate turned to love by it. No amount of reading “Cinderella” or “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” can effect such change on the soul of man. The Bible does possess a dynamic and transforming power that is only possible because it is truly God’s Word. In light of the foregoing, the greater question, then, is how could someone not believe in these convincing, God-breathed, error-free, life-transforming truths? Unfortunately, the answer is actually an easy one. God has said that if we do not open our hearts to Him, He will not open our eyes to the truth. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would teach us (John 14:26) and guide us into truth (John 16:13). And the truth of God is found in the Word of God (John 17:17). Thus, to those who believe, these sacred words are life itself, but, to those without the Spirit, the Bible is nothing but foolishness (1 Corinthians 2:14). |
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Post by Judas on Oct 11, 2023 15:23:42 GMT -5
.time to grow up and stop belieing in Santa Claus and gods. The charge that the Bible is nothing more than a fairy tale or a book of nice stories is not new. The Bible is undoubtedly the most impactful book the world has ever known, transforming innumerable lives. Why, then, would the question whether or not the Bible is a fairy tale be a legitimate one in the hearts of many around the world? From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, we read the story of God’s eternal design to redeem a fallen world. With God as its inspiring Author, the Bible is the world’s greatest work of literature, and throughout the ages multitudes have spent their lives proclaiming its truth. Many, in fact, have made the ultimate sacrifice so that others may simply hold in their hands a copy of its pages. Nevertheless, there has never been a book that has been as viciously attacked as the Bible. The Bible has been banned, burned, mocked, ridiculed and defamed. Many have been put to death for simply possessing a Bible. But still the idea that the Bible is a fairy tale persists. The “prince of this world” has been blinding people to the truth since the beginning of time. He began his “work” on earth by calling God’s words into question (Genesis 3:1-5), and he has been doing so ever since. Everywhere we look, false teaching is rampant—on television and radio, in books and magazines, in our schools and universities, and sadly, even in our churches and Christian colleges, the very places where the truth of God’s Word should most vigorously be defended. When children are taught that our ancestors crawled out of the ocean eons ago, have we not relegated creation and Adam and Eve to fairy tale status? It’s the same thing when scientists and academicians tell us we are wasting our time searching for the “mythological” Noah’s Ark. In fact, when many in the church, in order to placate the academic world, allow for a reinterpretation of the book of Genesis to accommodate modern evolutionary thought, the message sent to the world is that the Bible, apparently, means something other than what its simple, ordinary words convey. When the supernatural events of the Bible are dubbed as allegory by naturalists, it is understandable how those who have never studied the Bible can be confused as to its truth. For those who have never availed themselves of the truth of God’s Word, how likely are they to believe in a talking donkey or a fish swallowing a man and spitting him out on the shore or a woman turning into a pillar of salt? However, the Bible is most assuredly not a fairy tale. In fact, the Bible was “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), and this essentially means God wrote it. Its human authors wrote from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). That’s why this divinely woven text of nearly three quarters of a million words is perfect in harmony from start to finish and contains no contradictions, even though its sixty-six books have forty different authors from different walks of life, written in three different languages and taking nearly sixteen centuries to complete. How possibly could we have this amazing congruity if it wasn’t for God guiding the authors’ hands? We could not; it’s that simple. A righteous God would never inspire error. A just God would not call error-filled Scripture “holy and true.” A merciful God would not state that His Word is perfect if it were not, and an omniscient God could write it so that it is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. Time and again, the historicity of the Bible has been confirmed by biology, geology, and astronomy. And although the Bible may not always agree with naturalistic hypotheses, it is not in conflict with any true, established scientific facts. In archaeology, the last one hundred years have brought to light a treasure trove of biblical truths that scholars have questioned or doubted for centuries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the basalt stone containing the “House of David” inscription, a 7th century BC amulet scroll bearing the name of God, and a stone bearing the name and title of Pontius Pilate, the Judean governor who ordered the execution of Jesus Christ. The Bible is without doubt the best documented book from the ancient world, with more than 24,000 whole or partial biblical manuscripts in existence. No other document of antiquity has nearly as much evidence to confirm its reliability. Another attestation to the Bible’s divine authorship is the vast number of detailed biblical prophecies that have come true exactly as foretold. We see the psalmist, for example, telling of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ nearly a thousand years before it occurred (Psalm 22), and hundreds of years before crucifixion was even invented! Simply put, it would be impossible for human beings to have seen so far into the future with such precision and accuracy hundreds of times. Indeed, it would be completely illogical to believe these proven prophecies are anything other than the work of God. Incidentally, and amazingly, probability experts tell us the mathematical odds of just forty-eight prophecies regarding one person (i.e. Christ) coming true as foretold are one in ten to the 157th power! But the greatest proof that the Bible is not a fairy tale is the countless number of lives that have been transformed by the truths contained in its pages. Used by the Spirit of God, the holy truths of the Bible have turned millions of sinners into saints. Drug addicts have been cured by it, homosexuals set free by it, derelicts and deadbeats transformed by it, hardened criminals reformed by it, sinners rebuked by it, and hate turned to love by it. No amount of reading “Cinderella” or “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” can effect such change on the soul of man. The Bible does possess a dynamic and transforming power that is only possible because it is truly God’s Word. In light of the foregoing, the greater question, then, is how could someone not believe in these convincing, God-breathed, error-free, life-transforming truths? Unfortunately, the answer is actually an easy one. God has said that if we do not open our hearts to Him, He will not open our eyes to the truth. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would teach us (John 14:26) and guide us into truth (John 16:13). And the truth of God is found in the Word of God (John 17:17). Thus, to those who believe, these sacred words are life itself, but, to those without the Spirit, the Bible is nothing but foolishness (1 Corinthians 2:14). Yes it is foolishness said by many that believe in a God , do you love the part where people wrote what god said , they used pencils an pens or a typewriter writing all the quotes in the book , one can't believe in all that is on CBS now a days but some how all those millions of words were taken down as hear says . really ? ! |
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Post by Fan on Oct 11, 2023 15:27:10 GMT -5
I like the part when Jesus raises from the tomb not in sunny clear day but deep in the night where as no one could see it , not very good PR .
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Post by msims on Nov 10, 2023 15:29:51 GMT -5
Since its no longer on topic/it was already off topic I decided to place it here: Animals are NOT people, however much one may care for or about them. Legally, they ARE property, if with some protections. I don't want dead cats, but far more than that, I don't want a person hurt just over dead cats. Not everyone an afford human-level medical care for animals. "Not everyone an afford human-level medical care for animals." If you can't afford a veterinarian, perhaps you shouldn't have an animal in your home to begin with. Then alot of people would not be able to own animals because vet bills can be expensive. But if someone is that concerned about the health of one or two cats, then quietly offer to send Rick money so he could take them to the vet. The Karen-like responses by Caz is just drama queen bs. |
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Post by ChrisR on Nov 11, 2023 12:24:35 GMT -5
Since its no longer on topic/it was already off topic I decided to place it here: "Not everyone an afford human-level medical care for animals." If you can't afford a veterinarian, perhaps you shouldn't have an animal in your home to begin with. Then alot of people would not be able to own animals because vet bills can be expensive. But if someone is that concerned about the health of one or two cats, then quietly offer to send Rick money so he could take them to the vet. The Karen-like responses by Caz is just drama queen bs. So, your solution is if the animal gets severely ill, let it just suffer? |
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Post by Beachguy on Nov 30, 2023 18:09:39 GMT -5
Entertainment !!!! How many Jewish names can you think of in the Entertainment world ?, how many Jewish names can you think of as great minds ? , in health , in art , in all the fields ? 50 or 100 or 200 ? 300 , how can you ? , the Jewish people are only 0.2 % of the worlds population , 0.2 % !!!!!!!!!!!!!  ??, Does a German know any Jews in Berlin ? , The Jewish people have the highest degrees of high IQs in the world , why ? is the Son of God Jewish ? , the answer why they are of great minds is from the moment they are born education is the key to success , how many great minds were killed off from 1936 to 1946 ? , a perhaps a cure to cancer ? or ? ? ? ? ? etc etc etc etc etc etc , why are the Jewish people so hated . in 1970s the 4 large countries around them went to war on this tiny country and they were the winners in the end . Is it mind over matter it is Amazing . Amazing !!! |
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Post by donkey on Nov 30, 2023 18:13:16 GMT -5
Entertainment !!!! How many Jewish names can you think of in the Entertainment world ?, how many Jewish names can you think of as great minds ? , in health , in art , in all the fields ? 50 or 100 or 200 ? 300 , how can you ? , the Jewish people are only 0.2 % of the worlds population , 0.2 % !!!!!!!!!!!!! ??, Does a German know any Jews in Berlin ? , The Jewish people have the highest degrees of high IQs in the world , why ? is the Son of God Jewish ? , the answer why they are of great minds is from the moment they are born education is the key to success , how many great minds were killed off from 1936 to 1946 ? , a perhaps a cure to cancer ? or ? ? ? ? ? etc etc etc etc etc etc , why are the Jewish people so hated . in 1970s the 4 large countries around them went to war on this tiny country and they were the winners in the end . Is it mind over matter it is Amazing . Amazing !!! |
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Post by Beachguy on Dec 1, 2023 11:19:04 GMT -5
Entertainment !!!! How many Jewish names can you think of in the Entertainment world ?, how many Jewish names can you think of as great minds ? , in health , in art , in all the fields ? 50 or 100 or 200 ? 300 , how can you ? , the Jewish people are only 0.2 % of the worlds population , 0.2 % !!!!!!!!!!!!! ??, Does a German know any Jews in Berlin ? , The Jewish people have the highest degrees of high IQs in the world , why ? is the Son of God Jewish ? , the answer why they are of great minds is from the moment they are born education is the key to success , how many great minds were killed off from 1936 to 1946 ? , a perhaps a cure to cancer ? or ? ? ? ? ? etc etc etc etc etc etc , why are the Jewish people so hated . in 1970s the 4 large countries around them went to war on this tiny country and they were the winners in the end . Is it mind over matter it is Amazing . Amazing !!! I see this was taken off the Entertainment thread !!! haha the Jewish people own the Entertainment world , duh ! besides does the owner here like little girls or dislikes Jews ? , Jews are born with a high I Q from gens handed down an what do they do with it ? , they study study study , my question is if any bright mind here in this forum can think , are they Gods' Chosen Ones ? |
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??, Does a German know any Jews in Berlin ? , The Jewish people have the highest degrees of high IQs in the world , why ? is the Son of God Jewish ? , the answer why they are of great minds is from the moment they are born education is the key to success , how many great minds were killed off from 1936 to 1946 ? , a perhaps a cure to cancer ? or ? ? ? ? ? etc etc etc etc etc etc , why are the Jewish people so hated