Is there any truth to the Bible?

Because you will be called heretic and will be burned. The religions around the world have been doing this. They are scared of facing real questions. Questions that might shake the very base of religions. http://www.teafire.blogspot.com/

but religion is about faith. If you try to prove God, then God doesn't really exist for you. If you can't look around and see what a miracle life is then you aren't looking hard enough.

The DNA strands in a single cell if printed on typing paper is so long, it would fill volumes of paper and a room full of file cabinets. The code is so perfect, that each cell "knows" what it is supposed to do. Nothing in this universe is as you see it. Everything you know or see is the result of how your brain interprets it. Your world is unique to you. and in the midst of all this amazing stuff, you have been created, or evolved or however you want to say it, to be able to meditate, think and pray. You have the unique ability to question God and believe in Him both at the same time. If you can't see God in yourself then you won't find Him anyplace else either.

Blind Faith.......you have choices...you can believe or you don't have to. You can study and question or you can follow blindly. As Jesus said, "The problem with the blind following the blind is that they both can end up in a ditch."

are discouraged from challenging or questioning scripture. the fun thing about Judaism is that we spend all our time proving and questioning and analysing.
Have you actually read the Talmud, by the way? And are you aware of the Oral Torah or Oral Tradition as it is sometimes called. The stories (which you sometimes rightly identify as having anachronisms like camels) were handed down for generations in the oral storytelling tradition prior to Moses' time, hence the discrepancies re camels. Do not start off by telling me the israelietes didnt exist and that the bible is purloined sumerian and Egyptian mythology. When you link Ra to the word Israel it is clear you dont speak Hebrew or Aramaic or even ancient Egyptian. And I believe you are a student of Egyptology, no?

This is the belligerent, bombastic blog!

You cannot prove God. God doesn't need the proof. We do.

holidays, the jewish interpretations, the concept of original sin doesnt even exist in Judaism (we consider it a move up in independence, that Eve acted like a jewish wife pushing her husband to leave her daddy's company and strike out on his own).
You and Gnosis demonstrate familiarity with the Bible but NOT with jewish interpretation or meaning of it.
Catholics baffle me because - to my limited and humble brain - they break the first two commandments all the time, by having statues in church and by believing in Jesus' divinity (even the Messiah is not divine, according to Jews, but a human). The idea of praying to Jesus seems blasphemous to Jews.
I say all this with great respect. Christianity has some beautiful and complex tenets and has inspired (or at least commissioned0 some of the greatest art humanity has BUT I simply question the need to change everything. If Christians base things on Judiams, why the need to have the liturgy in Latin rather than Hebrew? All kinds of q's like that.
But I do enjoy examining the similarities too.

This is the belligerent, bombastic blog!

because I believe that you are absolutely right. Jesus NEVER asked to be worshiped. In fact it was against everything He said.

Jesus said he was there to do his Father's work, he never claimed to be God. I don't understand the Christian movement to make Jesus...God.
I also don't understand why the church has embraced Paul's philosophy. Jesus actually said Peter was the rock upon which the church was to be built. Paul's teaching and Peter's are totally opposite as was the difference between Paul and Jesus.

As a Christian, Jesus is my teacher. He taught two commandments which were Old Testament commandments. He NEVER took Judaism out of his teaching.

every Biblical archaeological find has proven not disproven Biblical claims. Many places which were thought to be mythical actually turned up where they were supposed to be.

is why people try so hard to discredit the Bible. Why should it matter to them? They don't have to adhere to any of it if they don't want to.

The world is full of misinformation. Pliney the Elder wrote an encyclopedia in which about 1/2 is misinformation. That misinformation is still being taught.

Too often it is people who misunderstand, misinterpret, and misuse information whether it is religious or otherwise. That doesn't make the book wrong or bad...it just means people made a mistake.

You are correct, the world is full of misinformation; you are also absolutely correct in your statement that this does not make the book bad or people bad.

The problem we have is that every decision we make is based on the best available knowledge we have from all available sources. If we do not have the correct information we can't possibly make the correct decisions.

What we need to be careful of is basing anything on wishful thinking or the opinions of those who may not have had the required knowledge in the past.

All information must be questioned; all opinions must be qualified as opinions.

Now what do you think our quality of life would be like if we had a theological statement which said: "Humanity is all basically honest ethical and moral, any deviation from honesty is an insult to God"?

Do you think maybe things would be better than in a society which stated we are all sinners?

Best Rasmus

Behind every excuse lies a failure, to justify a failure only compounds its magnitude.

not believe or teach that we are all sinners and the real golden rue came from the Hebrews and has been misinterpreted too, it does not state that one should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rather the true rule reads: Do NOT do unto others what you would not have done to you. BIG difference.
So you see, you are refuting Christianity with every breath but you dont ever make a relevant or truthful or insightful statement about Judaism because you do not know our interpretation nor our more accurate readings (in the original Hebrew not a variety of translations).

Another example, Solomon (who did exist) never said vanity of vanities, all is vanity there is nothing new under the sun.
The translation should be Vapour or breath, not vanity.

Please visit my Judaism relatede posts, you might get someeducation. I mean this sincerely. Just simple "reading" and a different culture's interpretation (yours) of a people's book of history and law is quite arrogant and you are not reacting to the true text.

as for the bible being factually accurate, that is not the point. Is there wisdom in the laws. Do these behaviours lead to destruciton or survival of a people. Consider the Jews and how many times far greater powers have attempted their annihialtion YEt despite being o\grossly outnumbered, despite worldwide hatred and prejudice, the tiny percentage of Jewish people not only survive but have KEPT the SAME language, religion, culture, and values over four thousand years. Has any other people done that, even with odds and circumstances in their favour?? Point to one. (Ill admit Im ignorant of many Eastern histories and peoples).

This is the belligerent, bombastic blog!

Im sorry but I have a hard time believing you or anyone who isnt a Jewish scholar has read the entire Talmud. We are talking many many volumes, you know...which talmud are you more familiar with?
You must know that it occupies itself so much with justice, with protection of the weak, the sick, the poor. You must know about Maimonedes and how he discredited astrology or any kind of predictions as being superstition yet here we are, hundreds of years later, and most of the US reads its horoscope daily. More Americans believe in UFOS than in their ownb government.
The 613 commandments which Jews are supposed to follow comprise every imperative statment God is said to have made in the OT.
The first being Be fruitful and multiply.
The post on Solomon and David indicates archeological evidence for those two guys. Have you ever looked up the isralie ministry of antiquities for hundreds of archeological finds related to stories in teh bible. yes I know there is a dearth of evidence in the desert re the forty years wandering but many people have interesting theories on why that is so. Andlack of evidence does not prove a negative, you are smart enough to know that.

This is the belligerent, bombastic blog!

The number of people who have lived and died on this earth and there is no record that they ever lived?

I find it odd that people will accept other ancient writings as proof of historical events and yet many of these writings were slanted in such a way that really made them fiction. The Hittites and the Egyptians were notorius for misrepresenting the truth. Even the same exact event written about between these two peoples sounded like completely different wars because both claimed a different outcome to the war.

It happens today. News papers from around the world have their own agenda in mind when the article is written.

You know if in 500 years an archaelogist finds a news report which talks about a beautiful princess who died and the streets were filled with flowers and she was buried on a small island....it would sound like fiction....a myth, but that's the way it was when Princess Diana died.

Visit the British Museum of Science and suddenly, while viewing oddities in nature, one realizes how much of the world's mythological creatures were conceived.

Even if everything in the past wasn't written word for word as it exactly happened, they did a pretty good job of keeping records and understanding events.

You are quite correct ms Zola; just listening to the different renditions made by eye witnesses to an event indicates that we can vary widely when it comes to seeing what really happens.
This does not come from a desire to slant the truth in most instances but just from the fact we have problems duplicating what we perceive.

Now the imagination is not something that I would want anyone to abolish, life would be very boring without it, yet there are times when we need to distinguish the difference between imaginary realities and those which are factual.

We are not bad or evil, yet when it comes to determining weather anything is true we do need as many sources of information as possible, the more significant the information the more critical external verification of our sources becomes.

Best Regards Rasmus

Behind every excuse lies a failure, to justify a failure only compounds its magnitude.