Would you care to discuss the Nova article (in details) of "The Origins of the Written Bible?"?
Here are some excerpts that caught my eye:
”We tend to read the Bible from our own viewpoint—that is, we tend to think of the Bible as if it came from a world of texts, books, and authors. But the Bible was written before there were books.”
“In ancient Palestine, writing was a restricted and expensive technology. Writing was controlled by the government and manipulated by the priests. [Emphasis mine] Writing was seen as a gift from the gods. It was not used to canonize religious practice, but rather to engender religious awe. Writing was magical. It was powerful. It was the guarded knowledge of political and religious elites.”
“Biblical literature became a tool that legitimated and furthered the priests’ political and religious authority.”
Do you think that the instance of many religions that The Bible (or Koran) is the literal word of God stems from those ancient superstitions about writing?
All discussions about any aspect of the article are welcome.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
6 Answers
None of the ancients were able to read and write. The old testament stories were passed on verbally for a couple of thousand years.
About the time any of the Bible stories contemporary to the New Testament were written, it would have been on papyrus. You can count on less than one hand the number of ancient papyrus documents that still exist today.
The words we read today were copied from papyrus onto vellum in the first centuries CE.
The actual original words, or even their origin is not knowable to us.
Well, that is the gist of the article, @josie.
@Dutchess_III
In that case, no. Certainly literacy was regarded as the exclusive province of the Church, and while it imparted great power to the Church, the principle in this case is not the mystical power of writing. The principle is that there is such a thing as a prophet.
Plus, the Bible is different than the Koran.
The Bible has unknowable authors. What truly happened or what was actually said is anybody’s guess.
Abraham,Moses and Jesus and others are regarded as prophets, but nobody who might have heard them or seen them left a contemporaneous account, or if they did, it is long gone. Not everyone agrees that they actually existed. The only references to Jesus outside the Bible is Tacitus and Josephus, over a century after the fact. Their testimony could just as easily be hearsay. So I guess at that point anybody can say what they want about Biblical scripture, but the only validation they have is tradition.
On the other hand, Mohammed lived in a time when his words could be contemporaneously heard and written and his life could be accurately chronicled. His existence is validated by multiple historic sources. We know how many children he had, and we know the date of his death.
Since he was regarded as a prophet in his time, his word would be regarded as the word of God.
So if you believe that God speaks to the vulgar material world through prophets, and if you needed real evidence that your prophet actually existed, you might find Mohammed to be more credible.
But you first have to believe the previous premises that God is there, and that He speaks to us through a prophet so we can understand what He is trying to say.
It seems like if you believe that, you might believe just about anything. But to each his own.
In my experience, those that believe that do believe just about anything. Those types are also wide open to believing the most ridiculous conspiracy theories out there. Well, they’ve been taught from a young age not to trust their common sense.
The thing that I find most interesting about the bible is the sway it holds over so many as accumulating knowledge increasingly demonstrates the myriad of absurdities in its teachings. There are those in the world who can find spiritual value in a fortune cookie or a racing form, and I suppose that’s fine, but it is the tendency on the part of certain fans of the bible to insist on the book as an unimpeachable record of historical fact that I find galling.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
