Why does the Bible so fail to meet this mark? One obvious answer, of course, is that neither the Bible nor any derivative work like the Quran or Book of Mormon was actually dictated by the Christian god or other celestial messengers. We humans may yearn for advice that is “god-breathed,” but in reality, our sacred texts were written by fallible human beings, who try as they might, fell short of perfection in the ways we all do.
But why is the Bible so badly written? Falling short of perfection is one thing, but the Bible has been the subject of literally thousands of follow-on books by people who were genuinely trying to figure out what it means. Despite best efforts, their conclusions don’t converge, which is one reason Christianity has fragmented into over 40,000 denominations and non-denominations.
The writing of the bible could be referred to as one of the worst cases of the game "telephone" in existence. Written and repeatedly re-written, edited and cherry-picked in fragments over 1500 years by literally hundred of individuals, often mis-translating from one language to another, and finally carefully edited to please kings and powerful clerics, the king james edition would not bear any comparison to the collected parts of the "ancient version", allegedly written by 40 or so men who definitely were not anywhere near the alleged locations of any of the sites referred to. No wonder it's a mess.
What she said.
@shockwaverider Yeah!
It was written in Latin and translated to English and picked apart by scholars and computers. Who would of ever thought it could be figured out and logic and science would prove it to be fake?
The old testament is in Hebrew, and Aramaic. The new testament was collected by Origins Adamanties in Greek ( translated from Coptic and Ancient Greek) then defined by The Council of Nicaea. The Holy Roman Catholic Church later translated it all into Latin, then came The Authorized Version ( King James Version) then Gutenberg into German, ad infinitum ad et nausium. Remember playing telephone when you were a kid, the errors just keep compounding.
Not poorly written, poorly translated. the A.V. The authorized version (K.J.V.) is rife with grammatical errors, misplaced punctuation, and personal/political bias. The subsequent translations/versions only compound the errors. In Hebrew the literal translation of the first sentences in Genesis are " At first there was nothing and god, and god saw the nothing and said "here is light (energy)" and light was. and god divided the light (energy) from the dark (matter) and said this is good/useful. It was evening it, was morning, it was the the first day" Very different than what most versions say.
True! but most religious people do not realize this fact.
It was written by ancient people, for ancient people in many languages over the course of, perhaps, several thousand years. One problem is transliteration. For example, my name might be John. A Spanish speaker might suggest that my name is Juan. No, my name is John, no matter what language an interpreter might try to translate it into. Not the best explanation, I know. Then there's the intentional mis-translations meant to serve biases. For example, go back to the Hebrew Bible (old testament) in its original language. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's a mis-translation. A better interpretation of the text is "When God began to create..." Those two statements mean two very different things. And there's latter people trying to project their own values upon writings that have absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with them-current believers. That's just a very short list of how the thing we know as the Bible came to be so very poorly written. Now, as a work of literature, it can be a great read! Just don't take it any more seriously than Days of Our Lives.
A very small section of humanity could be considered linguists. In America , t was around 9% at the turn of the 20th century. My guess is, that that number was much, much smaller when the King James bible was translated. For example, the word for virgin and young woman was the same. Think about that!! The opportunity to influence whole p[population of mostly illiterate people was enormous and tempting. Like Skyfacer says: an excellent device for controlling the believers."
Not to mention that every reference to woman as prophet was changed to woman as servant.
Excellent way of putting it - much better than my try earlier. Thanks!!
Who knows how the bible was originally written since there are no original texts, it has been translated multiple times, copied by hand multiple times, edited multiple times, modified to suit those in power. It is just a jumbled up mess of interpretations. That is why I refer to it the big book of multiple choice. (IMHO)
Well, few works have had same the scrutiny the bible had. So over time from the Nicene Council to the King James edition, there must have been some corruption. The only chance for consistency was after the Gutenberg press and even that was iffy. Funny how most of the splintering stems from the new testament. That was a real mess.
Too many authors were illiterate and pushing an agenda. Kind of like Yahoo!News and Fox.
Never trust a book that refers to you as sheep, for it was probably written by wolves.
"It is a horrible idea, that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us, waking and sleeping, who knows our thoughts and convict us of thought crimes; Who can judge us while we sleep for things that may occur to us in a dream. Who can create us sick, as apparently we are, and then order us on pain of eternal torture, to be well again. To demand this, to wish it to be true, is to wish to live as an abject slave." -Christopher Hitchens
It is about how it was constructed, which is a LONG story. here I will link to to some short films explaining that.
Thanks for these videos! They are excellent.
@zblaze Your very welcome
Answer: No one would dare try to edit the author.
If you are talking about someone like Jesus, he never wrote anything in the Bible. Jesus is only quoted by those he spoke to.
@BettyColeman I was just making a joke
The Dead Sea scrolls are still being deciphered. The original writtings were Sumerian, translated to Hebrew then Latin and so on (?). With so many translations what could go wrong?
I totally agree! The Bible is somewhat historical, a bit geographical, and a whole lot of sermons and passion. It was a method to keep the masses in line forever. LOL
What? The scrolls were cracked long ago except for small parts of two of them which were cracked last year and didn't mentioned anything about the bible.
Secondly all the scrolls are in Hebrew and Aramaic both langagues fully known.
It make a zero sense to claim anything besides maybe genesis is from Sumerian culture.
The bulk of it are oral traditions that someone decided to record centuries after the stories began.
Because they are oral traditions, people used rhyming and other tricks of poetry to make the stories easier to remember and recite.
And they rhymed in their vernacular (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) not in English.
And then they've been translated into a bunch of different languages before you read them in English.
You're reading an English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic poem.
Umm where does the bible rhyme in Hebrew? I mean besides some of the psalms which even there are hardly rhythms just clever alliteration.
You really can't rythym words in Hebrew.
Hi, @engineer_in_nj, and thank you for your quibble. Please note that I used the phrase "rhyming and other tricks of poetry."
@ErikGunderson sorry didnt mean to come off as being pedantic. I was actually curious. Psalms is the only place I can think of that has it, and only in very small parts of it. That incremental letter trick is cute. Start the first sentence with the first letter, start the second sentence with the second letter, etc. Is there anywhere else?
I admit I never got the hang of the extended-trope system, just the basic ones.
The Bible was so poorly written because it was dictated by God, to people who weren't all that good with shorthand? Also, it was kind of long and boring, partly because God spoke without any sense of humor. God also had to learn Greek... tough language I assume.
It sounds like you believe a god exists Steve, or is this just an attempt at humor????
When you look at the history of the Bible's development, it is no wonder that it is filled with ambiguities and contradictions. You would think if this was the text to guide all of humanity, it would be crystal clear. The fact that there are 1000's of different Christian denominations is evidence that it fails completely.
Franken-book...
Stitched together edited over and over...
Mistranslated... Politicised... Colaged...
They say if christyanity was a star trec race the would be the Borg.
"You WILL be ASSIMALATED...
RESISTENCE is FUTILE!"
More than 40 English versions...
Take your pick...
If it is "the word of god"
Then she is pretty fucked up.
Just say'n
The original text were classical Hebrew, classical Aramaic and classical Greek and always dependent on the skill and good will of the translator.
I would say that most of it was written when they had poor launguage skills. It was a time when many times there was not a word to describe what they saw. They used pictures (hieroglypghs) and anyway they could to preserve the events they experienced. The also were not educated to our degree. The did their best. The oldest form of language was pre Greek. Few. I mean like 2 people in the world can translate it today. After a time, it was rewritten in Greek A while later, it was rewritten in Latin. After that many translations, you lose a lot of what was meant. There are languages today that don't have a word for something English might have. For an example. the outside of the top of a building in English is roof. The inside of the roof is called ceiling. Columbian Spanish, one word means both. So changing languages can change meanings. The Bible stayed about the way it was I believe until Henry 8th. Henry got easily borded with women, did not get along with them. He either beheaded his wives or exiled them. The religion of Great Britian then was Catholic. The Pope did not grant divorces. So, in order to Henry change wives in a more humane manner, he decided to change the written Bible and create another religion. Hence, the St James version and the new church of England's religion is mostly Anglican. So that is why the bible made no sense. You went from people who though a flood was a plague from God, etc. Most of the old testament was written in 600 AD.