Yeah, Revelation has certainly been a part of the Bible for 1700 years. Rome has not been the main driving force in Biblical translation for a few centuries. The simple fact that Revelations is in the Authorised King James Version (completed 1611) flattens your entire argument.
I think I got my books mixed up I'll have to go back and take a look at my notes and clear that one up my sunday school teacher would give me a ticking off. Cheers Edit: Sorry for gracing the thread with info that was way off I was muddled by something completely unrelated to discussion again apologies.
The book of Revelations has been in the bible since the bible was first put together (as are all books in the Catholic and protestant versions of the bible, although the protestants took some out). The term "Rapture" wasn't used until the 19th century, though, which may be what you're thinking of.
My main problem with the bible is who decided what books to put in and leave out? Man has too many fingers in the pie to have it truly be the word of God.
I'm a big fan of the Eastern Orthodox version of this. They call it the "primary witness" of God. I'm not a big fan of the term "Word of God" because it is so easily misunderstood. Most Christians (even those who do use the term) are informed enough to see the Bible for what it is: an assembly of several centuries of religious tradition, in the form of history, mythology, correspondence, and poetry, written by dozens of different authors in many different historical contexts. Christians don't have a book that claims (like, say, the Koran or the Book of Mormon) to be word-for-word from the mouth of God. As for who decided what went in and what stayed out, that's something that evolved over the first three centuries or so of Christianity. And contrary to what the conspiracy theorists say, most of the stuff that got left out isn't lying around for us to read, so we'll never really know why.
While the effective range of an excuse is zero meters. I was moving out the front the door when I saw this thread and got a little too excited. You should speak to the Jehovah's Witnesses they believe the bible is word for word straight from the almighty.
And parts of those books are plagiarised from the bible IIRC. So if they are the exact word of god then it's probably fair to say that the thing they nicked it from is too (if you believe that sort of t'ing).
I can't speak for them, but every book in the New Testament is openly credited to a human author. That's one of the really shaky things about the Book of Mormon. It was supposedly written by an angel in prehistory, but it borrows word-for-word from the Seventeenth Century King James Bible. It even contains translation mistakes from the King James.
Not really. It was done by consensus over a period of a few centuries. That group used that selection, and that other group used that other selection, and that other group used yet a different selection, and so on, and they all talked about it and cross-pollinated each other, and came to an agreement based upon shared experience.
Thats my point, different groups having input as to what is the true word of God. If its his word its his word, no discussion.
But that's the discussion. These are books written by men, so the discussion is whether they're divinely inspired or not. How else could they do it? The texts that coalesced into the bible as we know it are largely consistent with each other. The so called gnostic gospels for example however can be quite different.
It sounds like (and this might be wrong) that you're assuming a fact not in evidence: you're assuming that the individual books were dictated by God, or more properly, that Christians allege that. I acknowledge that some church bodies do allege that, but it's neither fair nor honest to impose that view one EVERYBODY. AFAIK there are only two Christian church bodies that can genuinely trace their lineage back to the actual historical Apostles of Jesus: the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Neither of those bodies allege dictations. In fact, I have never heard of a church group that alleges dictation that was formed before the mid 1500's. Actually, those groups were usually formed after the year 1800. The question should be how were the individual books treated for the first approx. 1500 years, not how are they treated now by some johnny-come-lately.
I actually think you and I are sort of agreeing to the same point. My point is that we are to take the bible as the word of God, or dictated by God. But that man has had too much influence on the bible. Such as, what if the book of Revelation was written by some guy after a weekend of doing tequila shots or he's having a bad acid trip? (or whatever they did a thousand years ago) I just find it difficult to believe that anything written by man doesn't have a secular influence somehow twisting what the Lord would supposedly say. And if man is somehow writing books of the bible without being dictated by God, and man is imperfect at birth, how can we write something that is to be taken as the Gospel? There are many different books called 'the bible', who's to decide which one is the 'correct' bible?
