Why did God allow his words to be changed?

[vulcanlogician]

I really really like to have a theist's perspective in any conversation, but you are like a spambot, mercyvessel. Drich's posts amounted to more than yours do, and (you may not know) that's a low bar. Why don't you try to answer objections to the points you make? At least let us know you aren't biblebot30000.

The Bible can be made to say anything. Universal love. Repress all Jews. You name it. I don't mind if you back up what you say with Bible verses (though I'll find the Bible verses part of your argument questionable)... but PLEASE, don't write a bunch of Bible verses as your entire point. C'mon. Please try to understand that we don't take Bible verses as authoritative... THEN make your point.

I am truly Christian and the Bible is my lawbook; GOD is my Lawgiver! (Isaiah 33:22)  

Professionally, I studied law and I have a imperative penchant to quote sources of law and authority (as I would site the law - case law or otherwise - in a legal brief or memorandum, I quote the the holy word of GOD on pertinent subjects because I firmly believe and know that it is the inspired word of GOD that hasn't and doesn't fail!).  

How does your apparent unbelief and/or your reluctance to even study / analyze holy Scripture shared make me "spam bot" - because I necessarily corroborate my positions with the written word?

I WILL "write" anything that I believe responds to, or is pertinent to a point/s at issue!

Sure, and write what you'd like. I'm glad to have you here.

I mean, you went to law school?  That's awesome. That means you had some training in argument, right? You could be a really good contributor if you put that training to use! But, c'mon, you gotta admit you're relying too heavily on Bible verses in an ATHEIST forum. You gotta meet us halfway.

***

So let's consider the notion spoken of in Isaiah 33:22 "...the Lord is our Lawgiver..."

Here's my main problem with it: if you're using the Bible as a list of laws lain down by your god-- I don't buy that! That book (or compilation of books) was written by men. A bunch of ancient men are your lawgivers-- not God.

You see, I agree with you religious types that man with all his foibles and ignorance, is incapable of laying down cosmic laws. But that's just what your Bible is. An earthly document, written by men who made guesses about what God wanted or desired. Sometimes it even SAYS IT OUTRIGHT in the text: "Hi guys! I'm James. I'm writing a letter to the Twelves Tribes..."-- nothing in there about God making the letter error-free or ANYTHING. But that's what modern Christians believe. But there's no reason to think Jame's letter is the actual word of God. Maybe even James did not believe that. All that stuff is just extra-textual belief that was superimposed on the text years later by theologians.

You see my issue here? You aren't taking God's word as the ultimate truth. You are rather trusting 5th century theologians, Holy Roman Christian practitioners, and other error prone men to decide what God did or did not say.

That's my position, anyway. And a bunch of Bible verses is not going to convince me otherwise. You need another point at which to begin your argument.

[slartibartfast]

For the vast majority of time that people have been religious, we didn't write.

What religion requires, the only thing that religion requires - is that a group of people strongly agree on value assertions regarding life and how to properly live it.

" .... but perhaps that is a plus, as the holy men can adapt to the times. "

Just imagined a Shaman for the 20th time "correcting" the type of Godly sacrifice required when the promised rains don't come...

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I really really like to have a theist's perspective in any conversation, but you are like a spambot, mercyvessel. Drich's posts amounted to more than yours do, and (you may not know) that's a low bar. Why don't you try to answer objections to the points you make? At least let us know you aren't biblebot30000.

The Bible can be made to say anything. Universal love. Repress all Jews. You name it. I don't mind if you back up what you say with Bible verses (though I'll find the Bible verses part of your argument questionable)... but PLEASE, don't write a bunch of Bible verses as your entire point. C'mon. Please try to understand that we don't take Bible verses as authoritative... THEN make your point.

I am truly Christian and the Bible is my lawbook; GOD is my Lawgiver! (Isaiah 33:22)  

Professionally, I studied law and I have a imperative penchant to quote sources of law and authority (as I would site the law - case law or otherwise - in a legal brief or memorandum, I quote the the holy word of GOD on pertinent subjects because I firmly believe and know that it is the inspired word of GOD that hasn't and doesn't fail!).  

How does your apparent unbelief and/or your reluctance to even study / analyze holy Scripture shared make me "spam bot" - because I necessarily corroborate my positions with the written word?

I WILL "write" anything that I believe responds to, or is pertinent to a point/s at issue!

The OP was questioning the veracity of information in the bible as an accurate reflection of God's word due to it having been edited, collated, amended, translated, censored and exaggerated to by humans many, many times over centuries with no documented audit trail of authors or revisions. He also asks more philosophically "why did he allow people to change them so that we don't know which are his and which are made up by humans?" 

How does quoting from the very book the accuracy of which is being pondered help your argument?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

For pertinence; My best friend was a senior barrister for the Crown (Like a US ADA) A brilliant man, and the only person I've ever met who had true total recall. Saw him in action. His peers called him "The shark". Knew a great deal about the law. He was also a technophobe and computer illiterate. Knew nothing about history or literature ,was an atheist and had no interest in or knowledge of religion.

My point here is that I will defer to a lawyer in legal matters, but generally not in anything else unless he has supported his claims(s) with evidence. A person may have expert knowledge in something, backed up by at least one post graduate degree. Fabulous! To try to use that education to claim expert knowledge in unrelated fields is simply an argument from authority fallacy. Oh, having known a lot of lawyers socially, I've never seen convincing evidence that studying law made those people better thinkers. If anything they became more narrow minded and dogmatic. I'm sure there are exceptions.

Back to the topic.

Fundamentalist christians love to claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of god. well, it ain't and probably never has been, even if one accepts the claim that the Bible is divinely inspired.

As far as I'm aware the oldest extant copy of the bible is from the third century. That means from first composition till then, that bible may only have ben copied and recopied etc etc for not much over 100 years. Fantastic! BUT that meant that every other copy had ben copied and recopied by hand, for about 1200 years. Also interesting to note than in early times, many scribes were illiterate. IE they could copy, but could not read. Mistakes were made from ignorance and pieces added and subtracted at the whim of later scribes.

On top of that we have the enormous difficulty of accurately translating from Ancient Greek into a modern language.

The best explanation I've read about what the bible says or does not say is "Misquoting Jesus; The Story Behind who changed The Bible And Why" by Bart Ehrman.

"Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (published as Whose Word Is It? in United Kingdom) is a book by Bart D. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1] The book introduces lay readers to the field of textual criticism of the Bible. Ehrman discusses a number of textual variants that resulted from intentional or accidental manuscript changes during the scriptorium era. The book made it to The New York Times Best Seller List.[2]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misquoting_Jesus


Below is a link to 'The Cathedral lecture' on the topic (Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral) by Dr Bart Ehrman. Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-z8j67Ids


There are at least a dozen lectures on YouTube by Bart Ehrman on the full range of his writings.

[Jehanne]

There are at least a dozen lectures on YouTube by Bart Ehrman on the full range of his writings.

He has a number of the Great Courses, which are available on Audible, the standard twenty-four 30-minute lectures.  I like his one on "The Historical Jesus" the best, especially, the lecture covering the first hundred years after Jesus of Jewish & pagan sources that mention him, of which there are 2 undisputed references.